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Summary Of Luther's Letter To Pope Leo X

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In The Freedom of a Christian Luther wrote a letter to Pope Leo X in response to his criticism of Luther’s teaching. Luther was “attacking false or unchristian teachings” but he did not attack the pope personally (Tranvik 34). Luther did not like the ungodly teachings from the flatterers whom the pope had allowed into the Roman Church. Luther wants the pope to consider the position the pope is in and perhaps defend the enemy of peace (Tranvik 43). Luther also wants the pope to recognize some of the things the pope was wrong about such as the sale of indulgence and absolute authority of the church. More importantly, Luther wants the pope to perceive and perhaps accept that Luther was right with his teaching which was based on the Scripture. Luther’s purpose for writing the letter to Leo is to explain the good intentions from Luther to the pope prior to sending the short essay - to abstain any conflict (Tranvik 45).
In the short essay, Luther explains the freedom of a Christian by …show more content…

The outer being is the one to do good works and serve others. Christians do good works out of love and seek nothing but to serve God and their neighbors (Tranvik 73). This is what makes the outer being servant of all. To do good works, we control our body and “the goal is to have the body obey and conform – not hinder – the inner person and faith” (Tranvik 72). Then, we discipline our body to serve our neighbors. We serve our neighbor without an expectation of reward in return for our service - the work is done in faith and out of pure love. “As our neighbor is in need and lacks the things that make us rich in faith, it is important to keep in mind that we, too, were in need and lacked God’s mercy” (Tranvik 83). We help others as we are being helped by God. We are dependents upon one another. We live in Christ through faith alone and continue to serve our neighbor with love (Tranvik 88). We do good works to please

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His major objection about his church are the indulgences because he knew that they were false. “Indulgences were payments to the Roman Catholic Church in return for pardons for one’s sins and grants of salvation in the afterlife.” Martin Luther stated that he didn’t approve of indulgences because they were false as well as expensive, so he didn’t want people to buy meaningless pieces of papers. Luther believed that getting rid of your sins with paper was not the right thing to be doing and that the church had been receiving money for lying. He said that the people who buy these indulgences will be “eternally damned” with those who taught them.

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Luther believed that the church did not have any power over the bible. For example, in the 22nd and 23nd statement he says “As a matter of fact, the pope remits to souls in purgatory no penalty which, according to canon law, they should have paid in this life. If remission of all penalties whatsoever could be granted to anyone at all, certainly it would be granted only to the most perfect, that is, to very Few” (Martin Luther: Ninety-Five Theses). In the 95 Theses Luther challenges common beliefs about purgatory.

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Luther believed that salvation was achieved by the grace of god and not by doing the work that the church demanded. The Reformation was so much more than a religious revolution even though it started out with a religious nature, it exceeded pass religion.

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As Luther is fighting the corrupt Papacy he writes this, “Faith is a living, bold trust in God’s grace, so certain of God’s favor it would risk death a thousand times trusting in it.” Luther writes this to show what true religion is, to show what a truly faithful person should do, believe in their God and give him every bit of faith from someone's person. The Papacy hates Luther not because he is wrong, but because he is right, which means if Luther was right and the masses believed him all the power that was held by the church would crumble into nothing; most importantly though the Papacy members personal power would crumble into nothing. During the early phases of the Reformation, Luther wrote the 95 Theses, which described everything he found wrong with the church at this time. The Theses was the catalyst, which set off the ticking time bomb of corruption and irreverence.

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Theses, posted in 1517, criticized the sale of indulgences and called for a debate on issues of faith and authority within the Church. He emphasized the doctrine of justification by faith, rejecting the Catholic Church's teaching on the necessity of good works for salvation. Luther also advocated for the priesthood of all believers, asserting that all believers have direct access to God and the ability to interpret the Bible for

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Luther believed the church was corrupt. He challenged the church by producing the 95th

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Martin Luther was an Augustinian monk who had a spiritual crisis. He deeply wanted to be a good person, but he saw that there was so much corruption in the church. He saw that the priests were doing many immoral things. The priests created something called indulgences where it was stated that anyone could be absolved of their sins by paying money. They would then make multiple offices and continue this scam so that they would get more money from people.

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The 95 Theses, which were courteously written to the Pope, denounced the sale of Papal Indulgences and attracted the attention of German aristocrats who were tired of paying so much to the Church. Due to the printing press, Luther’s 95 Theses were printed quickly and translated into many different languages so that his writing became available and popular throughout Germany. The Pope responded to Luther’s accusations by mandating that Luther recant. Luther then realized that the Church was far more corrupt than he thought, so he announced that the Pope and Catholic Church had been wrong in the past and were wrong again at that time.

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People were unhappy with the way the clergy were treating their people and it was clear that corruption was throughout the Catholic church. The state of the Catholic church, while significant, was simply a backdrop for Martin Luther in his early life. Ironically, he was on the side of the Catholic church in his early life; he was “a university professor of theology and a member of the Catholic clergy,” (Dutton, 390). This close integration with the church made it surprising that he was the one to lead a religious reformation. However, it was his knowledge of scripture that made his message so

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Martin Luther didn't agree with many of the practices and beliefs of the Catholic Church. He didn't agree on some of the practices of the clergy like simony, the sale of church offices, nepotism, the giving away of church offices to family members, and pluralism, the holding of more than one church office at a time. He also was really against the sale of indulgence, documents sold by the Catholic Church lessening penance or time in purgatory. He thought that the church was only selling indulgences to earn more money and that indulgence didn't really do what they promised. He also didn't like the fact that people didn't read the Bible and thought that

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One of the major problems with the Articles of Confederation is that power was established state by state and limited power to a central government. The Constitution fixed this by balancing powers between the states and the Federal government. Also they created three branches of government: legislative, judiciary, and executive. Other solutions to the Articles of Confederation made by the Constitution were levying taxes by Congress, Congress having the right to control trade between states and countries, amendments became easier to ratify, and the executive branch had the power of checks and

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Martin Luther’s reasons for challenging the Catholic church changed after he translated the New Testament. Before the New Testament was translated (document A), Martin Luther had a very respectful tone displayed through his writing. In document A, Luther was bothered by the practice of indulgences, but continued in his letter to say that he was not blaming anyone. 18 years later in Document B, Luther had translated the New testament and realized that the Pope was misinterpreting the scriptures. He was then very disrespectful through his words and blamed the Pope for taking people’s money and by so believing that the person who paid for the indulgence was saved.

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Luther was a devoted monk who practiced and believed in the Church’s teachings until he visited Rome. In Document 5, it says, "He received the impression that ‘Rome, once the holiest city, was now the worst.’ " In Rome, Luther came to realize one thing: the Church was not what it claimed to be. An example of this is when Pope Leo X, after emptying the Vatican’s coffers, sold indulgences to the public, exchanging money for salvation, or another time when a priest stated, "if there was a hell, Rome was built on it." Luther saw the corruption firsthand and decided to start gathering information to oppose the Church.

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Starting from the statement that Christians receive salvation through faith and the grace of God. Luther also stated, “The churches rituals did not have the ability to save souls. ”Also Luther talked about how the Church and the Pope make errors often. This had gone from a need for reforming indulgences to a whole

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On All Saints Day, October 10th, 1517, Martin Luther wrote a lengthy letter named as “The Ninety-Five Theses” to the Bishop Albert of Mainz (“Martin Luther”). This letter stated that the Bible is the central authority of the Protestant religion and one can attain salvation by their loyal faith to God. “The Ninety-Five Theses” letter became a huge impact for the Protestant Reformation, and it was one of the major reasons why this religion was spread around Europe; however, it also focused on practices from Catholic churches about baptism and absolution (“Martin Luther”). The Protestants used the letter to form their ideas about God and to start their own church denominations. In addition, Protestantism helped a lot during this movement because its belief is that God saved everyone by His faith to Jesus Christ, himself.

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