Martin Luther by Brad, Grady, and Jimmie

Martin Luther was a German priest who was a key player in the Protestant Reformation in the 15th and 16th centuries.  He spent his early years going through school undecided on what he wanted to do in life.  Eventually, he decided on serving God.  Using reason, he challenged the conventional philosophies of Roman Catholic Christianity at the time leading to his excommunication from the church.  This also lead to his arrest.  While in jail, he spent his time translating the bible and forming his philosophy on his idea of how Christians should act, much of it conflicting with Roman Catholic ideology.  After his release, Luther laid the foundation for his church.

Martin Luther converted to Christianity after he was caught in a thunder storm and promised his life to serving God by becoming a monk, if God saved him from death.  He then joined the Augustinian Order, which led to his studies at the University of Wittenburg and put him under the education of William of Ockham, a German teacher and theologian.  Luther was persuaded to denounce the pagan philosophers, but followed the philosophical idea of Reason, instead of Romanism.  However, he had his mind changed when he witnessed a papal visit and his personal philosophy changed.  He started to believe that Reason was not the sole way to salvation, but a balance of Reason and biblical scripture.  Instead of believing in the Roman Catholic’s idea of salvation through good deeds, he states that salvation is given from God as gift and all the humans need to do is accept the gift.  He also believed that God inspired human laws through the Ten Commandments given in The Bible.  Lastly, Luther offered his understanding of God by saying God is hidden and no man can see Him face to face because every human is born with sin.  This means man cannot be redeemed by philosophy, but must turn to the revelation of God.  This theology inspired the main beliefs of the Christian denomination, Protestantism.

Jimmie is going to be presenting on Martin Luther’s 95 theses.  This is a broad topic, so he will highlight a couple of them.  Then, he will go into depth as to what they meant as far as the shaping of the Lutheran Reformation.  This will explain a little bit about how Luther got himself into hot water with the pope and virtually entire countries.  Finally, Jimmie will try to tie this all together as to what this means for us today in a philosophy class.