As I understand it, he went so much out on his limb that he is quoted as stating:
Martin Luther, Letter to Melanchthon, August 1, 1521: “If you are a preacher of grace, then preach a true and not a fictitious grace; if grace is true, you must bear a true and not a fictitious sin. God does not save people who are only fictitious sinners. Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly, for he is victorious over sin, death, and the world. As long as we are here [in this world] we have to sin. This life is not the dwelling place of righteousness, but, as Peter says, we look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. It is enough that by the riches of God’s glory we have come to know the Lamb that takes away the sin of the world. No sin will separate us from the Lamb, even though we commit fornication and murder a thousand times a day. Do you think that the purchase price that was paid for the redemption of our sins by so great a Lamb is too small? Pray boldly—you too are a mighty sinner.”
:ehh: Really, dude? You took a brilliant paragraph explaining the beautiful thing that is God’s Grace —how He saves real, truly, evil sinners and transforms them into saints— and you seize on one measly sentence that is clearly hyperbolic? Really? Look, Luther was a lot like Pope Francis. Said a lot of things that are true, but can be twisted to mean something else when separated from their proper context. Don’t twist things.
But following your rationale here, would you seriously argue against Luther’s point? Would you seriously say that God is incapable of forgiving someone who has committed fornication and murder a thousand times in one day? Did Jesus not really mean it when He said that anyone who hates his brother is a murderer and anyone who looks lustfully after another is an adulterer? Because that’d likely make everyone on these boards guilty of commiting fornication and murder a thousand times a day. Oh, perhaps it’s not the sin that’s at issue for you, but rather the forgiveness? I guess Jesus didn’t really mean it when he told us to forgive others 70 times 7 times? You don’t want to go down this rabbit hole. The truth is, even by Catholic measures, Luther correctly states the limits of God’s forgiveness with regard to true repentance: nothing.
…but he did not stop at such exaggerated exegesis, it seems that he went as far as attacking Jesus’ Divinity through His Flesh (though in his blinded rant he may not have seen it as an attack on Jesus):
"Christ committed adultery first of all with the women at the well about whom St. John tells us. Was not everybody about Him saying: ‘Whatever has He been doing with her?’ Secondly, with Mary Magdalen, and thirdly with the women taken in adultery whom He dismissed so lightly. Thus even, Christ who was so righteous, must have been guilty of fornication before He died.”
“I have greater confidence in my wife and my pupils than I have in Christ”
“It does not matter how Christ behaved – what He taught is all that matters”
Again, you take these so far out of context (because you’ve given none) that I must assume you are simply uninformed and copy & pasting from some anti-Lutheran blog; an educated person could never conscience knowingly misrepresenting someone who’s beliefs are so close to their own.
The first quote is from the Table Talks, which were second and third-hand accounts of what Luther is purported to have said. These weren’t published theological points or even bits of sermons that Luther edited for clarity or accuracy. This was “
Francis on the airplane,” if you will. Speaking contemporaneously, fast and loose to get a point across. No one seriously believes Luther considered Christ to have physically committed adultery. That’s blasphemous. Luther is clearly relaying what others were saying about Christ (“Was not everyone about Him saying…”). Kind of like saying, “Gee, that priest spends so much time with communists, I bet he’s one himself!” – when the simple truth is that he’s witnessing to people in Cuba. It isn’t so difficult to read.
The second quote, which, again, you’ve supplied no context for, is simply Luther admitting that even Christians can be plagued by doubt (he does this with a flair of hyperbole, as was his schtick). Maybe these words help;
“Who among us - everybody, everybody! - who among us has not experienced insecurity, loss and even doubts on their journey of faith? Everyone! We’ve all experienced this, me too. Everyone. It is part of the journey of faith, it is part of our lives. This should not surprise us, because we are human beings, marked by fragility and limitations. We are all weak, we all have limits: do not panic. We all have them!” - Pope Francis
The third “quote” isn’t even a real Luther quote, but a shoddy paraphrase. I’ve seen it before. Why don’t you present the context, eh? This is taken from a letter that Luther wrote about false teachers, who would proclaim what their “Christ” had done, but their “Christ” was not the Christ found in our Faith and the bible.
There’s the rub.