Did Martin Luther regret the Reformation

[ignatius777]

I’m as much to blame.

What if I started a thread about this issue? I would make the title “Why does the Catholic Church insist upon a celibate priesthood?” and my OP to say “Why doesn’t the pope change this rule?” Will you come on it and discuss it?

Most certainly

 

[latingirl]

Universalist.

Sure Luther had the purest on intentions, he just took things to far. Ever heard the saying “The road to hell is paved with good intentions” ?

 

[peteyk]

Perhaps he did regret it , but we’ll never know. My take is that if it were not Luther , it would have been someone else, based on the corrupt church goings on at that time. One thing he would not have envisioned however , was the tremendous proliferation of the Christian message over the next 500 years. I do believe Luther was a sick man in some respects and his mental state deteriorated over time. Pray for him and all those who lived at that time. They did not have easy lives…

 

[Contarini]

I’m sorry if this topic does not fit, I couldn’t think of anywhere else to ask my question.

I used to have a book that told me Martin Luther himself regretted the Reformation saying that his spreading the Gospel has produced madness. It seems if he were alive today he would be very upset about the divisions he caused. Every person can now intepret Scripture as they please, learning from Luther;s example and break away from their church when they don’t agree. Is this what Luther would have wanted? Was this the 'madness " he spoke of?
.

Luther said things like that on occasion, but people misinterpret Luther because he spoke rhetorically and liked hyperbole (same with the infamous “sin mightily” quote). He’s quoted as having said that if he had foreseen what would happen he wouldn’t have “begun to teach the Gospel” (see this (http://www.chnetwork.org/forum/ecumenism-other-religions-misc-apologetics-and-human-wisdom/martin-luther’s-regrets-as-to-the-relative-failure-of-the-ltreformationgt/?wap2) of such statements compiled by Dave Armstrong–lists of quotes like this should be used with caution when we can’t see the context, but it’s a place to start). That doesn’t mean that he thought he was wrong. He believed to the end that his teachings were the Gospel and that the “Papal” doctrines were from Satan. But he believed that as long as Satan had radically corrupted the Gospel, sending people to hell through works righteousness, Satan wouldn’t bother spreading so much of other kinds of wickedness. Once the true Gospel was once again clearly preached, Satan would attack people in other ways, including by spreading many counterfeits of the Gospel which themselves claimed to be evangelical. Luther in fact once said (in his sermons on the Sermon on the Mount, I believe) that the corruption of late medieval monasticism was in a way something to be grateful for, because otherwise people would not have believed how devilish monasticism was (even at its best).

Of course, Catholics can legitimately claim that Luther was making the best of the obvious fact that morals had declined since the Reformation, and that doctrinal chaos had ensued. However, we can’t rule out the possibility that Luther exaggerated these things in order to make a paradoxical point about the importance of preaching the Gospel even if everything else fell apart as a result.

To understand Luther’s apocalyptic view of the world, I recommend Heiko Oberman’s *Man Between God and the Devil. *However, Oberman tends to assume that people already know the basics about Luther’s life–my wife had to read this book for a class in grad school and found it very confusing, not being very familiar with Luther beforehand.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

Perhaps he did regret it , but we’ll never know. My take is that if it were not Luther , it would have been someone else, based on the corrupt church goings on at that time.

Of course, our perception of the Church of that time as particularly corrupt may be largely an illusion based precisely on the fact that the Reformation happened.

Luther always insisted that his Reformation was not about moral reform–that was one of the reasons he sometimes spoke as if it had actually made things worse (again, Luther loved paradox and hyperbole).

I think you’re right that there would have been some kind of split in the Western Church without Luther, but it would have looked very different, and it’s possible that it might have been smaller and more manageable.

 

[Contarini]

Clearly he did regret this, by the statements he made at the end of his life. He realized the doctrine of Sola Scriptura he invented created more problems and divisions when separated from the Church.

Luther didn’t invent Sola Scriptura. Sola Fide, yes. Sola Scriptura, no. For one thing, he didn’t use the phrase “sola scriptura,” and he claimed to have learned the principle of basing all doctrine on Scripture from his Catholic theology professor.

I would say that Luther used previously existing ideas about the authority of Scripture in a radical way, but he was not alone in doing so–Zwingli did so more radically, and I don’t think he did so because he learned the idea from Luther. Between scholasticism’s emphasis on Scripture as the authoritative text for theology, and humanism’s emphasis on getting back to original sources, the idea was in the air.

 

[guanophore]

All I would like for you to do is to give Martin Luther the benefit of the doubt. You sneered at him in an earlier post. “Talk about pride” you said. That’s not an argument and anyway it’s not fair to talk in such a sneering way about a dead person that can’t answer back. I’m pretty sure it’s a sin as well. So instead of bringing up Congresswomen Giffords and immediately after you’ve brought her into it say she has nothing to do with it, you’ve now got the chance to say something reasonable and fair about Martin Luther. I urge you to withdraw your unfair and judgmental comment about Martin Luther and to say that you have no problem with the suggestion that he did what he did because he was prompted by his conscience.

It is against the forum rules to bring up politicians by name.

Committing sins because someone believes they are “prompted by their conscience” is most definitely a problem. In fact, it may be an even more severe problem when a person’s conscience is seared as with a hot iron, so that they cannot distinguish holiness from sin.

 

[JustaServant]

Did Martin Luther regret the Reformation?

I’m sure he does now.

 

[UniversalistGuy]

UniversalistGuy;7491335:

All I would like for you to do is to give Martin Luther the benefit of the doubt. You sneered at him in an earlier post. “Talk about pride” you said. That’s not an argument and anyway it’s not fair to talk in such a sneering way about a dead person that can’t answer back. I’m pretty sure it’s a sin as well. So instead of bringing up Congresswomen Giffords and immediately after you’ve brought her into it say she has nothing to do with it, you’ve now got the chance to say something reasonable and fair about Martin Luther. I urge you to withdraw your unfair and judgmental comment about Martin Luther and to say that you have no problem with the suggestion that he did what he did because he was prompted by his conscience.

It is against the forum rules to bring up politicians by name.

I’m sorry.

 

[UniversalistGuy]

Universalist.

Sure Luther had the purest on intentions, he just took things to far.

If he was acting according to his conscience I don’t see how he could stop without going against his conscience and thereby committing a sin in the eyes of God.

Ever heard the saying “The road to hell is paved with good intentions” ?

Yes, I have. It’s a proverb that I’ve heard used as a handy punch line in all sorts of situations. You’re surely not going to use it to prove he went too far are you?

 

[UniversalistGuy]

Did Martin Luther regret the Reformation?

How can you be sure?

 

[Esdra]

**

"It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins" (2 Mach. 12 :46)**

One question: What does “2 Mach.” stand for? Which book is that?
I’ve never heard of that abbreviation before!

 

[UniversalistGuy]

"It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins" (2 Mach. 12 :46)

One question: What does “2 Mach.” stand for? Which book is that?
I’ve never heard of that abbreviation before!

I think it stands for Machabees. Click here.

 

[Esdra]

Esdra:

One question: What does “2 Mach.” stand for? Which book is that?
I’ve never heard of that abbreviation before!

I think it stands for Machabees*). Click here.

No, I don’t think so, as in the **NAB **in 2 Maccabees 12:46 it says:

46 Thus he made atonement for the dead that they might be freed from this sin.

But thanks for the answer!

PS: ) It’s Maccabees, not Machabees.
**
EDIT: Oh I see, it’s a quote from the Douay Reims*:

46 It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins.

But then, why is 2 Maccabees abbreviated to 2 Mach and not 2 Macc, as you see it normally?

 

[UniversalistGuy]

No, I don’t think so, as in the NAB in 2 Maccabees 12:46 it says:

But thanks for the answer!

PS: *) It’s Maccabees, not Machabees.

I think you’ll find that it can be spelled both ways. You’ll also have to take into account the preconceived ideas that different translators bring to their work.

 

[agent_grey]

By starting a church/religion Luther made a bold claim to be God. If he was wrong and I believe he was… then yes he regrets that blasphemous claim with an extreme and painfull knowledge of his unforgiveable sin.

 

[UniversalistGuy]

By starting a church/religion Luther made a bold claim to be God. If he was wrong and I believe he was… then yes he regrets that blasphemous claim with an extreme and painfull knowledge of his unforgiveable sin.

I’ve never heard anybody suggest that he claimed to be God. Are you Eastern Orthodox?

 

[gcnuss]

While I don’t have specific quotes here in front of me, it is a matter of record that Luther was quite unhappy with the directions taken by other reformers, e.g, those who cast aside belief in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist (Zwingli, Schwenckfeld, et.al.) and those who denied the efficacy of infant baptism (Anabaptists).

 

[Contarini]

By starting a church/religion Luther made a bold claim to be God.

Nonsense. Overstatement ruins a good case. He wasn’t claiming to be God, but he was claiming that his doctrines were the Word of God. That didn’t make him God, just a person who had understood Scripture correctly. That’s still a bold claim, and one that I don’t think is supported by the evidence. So scale down on your rhetoric and you have a valid point.

Edwin

 

[Esdra]

While I don’t have specific quotes here in front of me, it is a matter of record that Luther was quite unhappy with the directions taken by other reformers, e.g, those who cast aside belief in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist (Zwingli, Schwenckfeld, et.al.) and those who denied the efficacy of infant baptism (Anabaptists).

Just a side note: Even Zwingli and the other Swiss Reformators were not happy with the thoughts of the Anabaptists. That’s also the reason why they splitted in Switzerland!