Is This What Protestantism Is Really About??

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**Martin Luther:

“If men believe in Christ and accept Him as their personal savior, His justice will be imputed to them and they will go straight to Heaven. It does not matter what evil they have done during their lives. It does not matter whether they are, or not, repentful of their sins. It does not matter at the moment of their death whether they have contrition or not, or if they are in a state of Grace. If they accepted Christ as their “personal” Savior, they will be saved.”

“I do not wish to see or hear anything of Moses. If we allow the Ten commandments any influence on our conscience they become the cloak of evil, heretics, and blasphemers. If Moses should intimidate you with his Ten Commandments, tell him right off to chase himself to the Jews. Moses should forever be looked about with suspicion, even as a heretic, damned, even worse than the pope and the devil.”

Luther changed Scriptures so that wherever it said to “do pennance”, he wrote, “to do better”. In Acts 19:18 where it says, “Many of them came and confessing their sins”, he wrote, “They came acknowledging the miracles of the Apostles.” In the Annunciation where it said “Full of Grace”, he changed it to “Thou gracious one”. In Romans where it said “We account a man to be justified by faith”, he wrote “We hold man justified by faith alone without the works of the Law”.

When questioned about his addition of the word “alone” he stated,

“If your pope annoys you with the word, tell him that I will have it that way. Popes and asses are one and the same thing. To the devil with anyone who censures my translation without my will or knowledge. I will have it that way. I am the doctor of all the doctors of popidom. These popish asses are not able to appreciate my labors.”

Regarding the Jews, he wrote,

“Burn their Synagogues and schools. Put them on fire, their homes, their prayer books and their Rabbi’s.”**
 
Nope. He was right about justifcation by faith. But, on other points he was way off-base and to a certain extent reflected the spirit of the times, etc…
 
None of your quotes have a citation showing from whence they came, that’s mistake number one. A couple of them seem quite dubious to me. The first and second one seem bogus, especially with the quotations used in that manner? Not Luther’s style.

When it comes to the comments about the pope, it’s to be expected in those times. Given the fact that Luther was excommunicated by the pope, you can understand a tad bit of resentment, right? Excommunication in Europe meant YOU HAD NO HUMAN RIGHTS anymore! You could be slaughtered, robbed, raped, beated, murdered, you name it, because you were excommunicated. Excommunication was hardcore and very demeaning. Luther rejected this excommunication and rejected Roman authority long before that. He felt, much like other protestants AND Catholics, that the world was soon coming to an end. Read Diarmaid McCulloch’s book about the Reformation to get into this idea. With that mindset, with the corruption personally and theologically of the papacy, Luther and other reformers felt the pope to be an anti-christ, a heretic himself.

You have to be in the mind of those folks living in those times to understand the rhetoric.

But that’s beside the point. Great men like Richard Hooker, one of the greatest Anglican reformers, was very kind and complimentary to Rome and the Genevan protestants. He used no such rhetoric or negative talk about his opponents and yet I’m sure, because he was a reformer and a protestant, you’d trash him in CAF just as much as Luther.

It all gets down NOT to the point of how these guys comported themselves, you just don’t agree with them and want to smear 'em up. That’s how CAF works. Very little respect is given to amazing men like Luther, Calvin, Cranmer, or Hooker. I’d like to see more disagreement coupled with a little bit of intellectual respect and appreciation. I can disagree with people and not think them insane. They fought for what they believed was right. They weren’t bad guys.

Luther, in my opinion, is one of the greatest heroes of Western Civilization in the last 600 years whether I agree with him or not. He is an architect of Western thinking…

And now…prepare for the lynch mob to attack me!
 
I do not believe any of the quotes in the OP reflect what non catholics think or believe, or are what they are all about.
 
gurneyhalleck1 said:
None of your quotes have a citation showing from whence they came, that’s mistake number one. A couple of them seem quite dubious to me. The first and second one seem bogus, especially with the quotations used in that manner? Not Luther’s style.

When it comes to the comments about the pope, it’s to be expected in those times. Given the fact that Luther was excommunicated by the pope, you can understand a tad bit of resentment, right? Excommunication in Europe meant YOU HAD NO HUMAN RIGHTS anymore! You could be slaughtered, robbed, raped, beated, murdered, you name it, because you were excommunicated. Excommunication was hardcore and very demeaning. Luther rejected this excommunication and rejected Roman authority long before that. He felt, much like other protestants AND Catholics, that the world was soon coming to an end. Read Diarmaid McCulloch’s book about the Reformation to get into this idea. With that mindset, with the corruption personally and theologically of the papacy, Luther and other reformers felt the pope to be an anti-christ, a heretic himself.

You have to be in the mind of those folks living in those times to understand the rhetoric.

But that’s beside the point. Great men like Richard Hooker, one of the greatest Anglican reformers, was very kind and complimentary to Rome and the Genevan protestants. He used no such rhetoric or negative talk about his opponents and yet I’m sure, because he was a reformer and a protestant, you’d trash him in CAF just as much as Luther.

It all gets down NOT to the point of how these guys comported themselves, you just don’t agree with them and want to smear 'em up. That’s how CAF works. Very little respect is given to amazing men like Luther, Calvin, Cranmer, or Hooker. I’d like to see more disagreement coupled with a little bit of intellectual respect and appreciation. I can disagree with people and not think them insane. They fought for what they believed was right. They weren’t bad guys.

Luther, in my opinion, is one of the greatest heroes of Western Civilization in the last 600 years whether I agree with him or not. He is an architect of Western thinking…

And now…prepare for the lynch mob to attack me!
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If Luther is one of your greatest heroes of all times, then why do you claim to be Roman Catholic? Luther was a heretic, a hater of the Catholic church. You say try to understand him, that there were mistakes with the papacy, BUT LET ME REMIND YOU, THERE WERE NO MISTAKES WITH THE DOCTRINES OF THE CHURCH. DOCTRINES WERE NEVER CHANGED BY THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. LUTHER CHANGED THE WORD OF GOD TO FIT HIS MINDSET IN THAT DAY. Now, I think perhaps, as a “Roman Catholic” as you are, you might want to learn a little about your own faith, about your own Doctors of the Church.
Here we go again, another “Roman Catholic” who claims that Protestanism, a divorce from the Catholic church, was a good thing…good grief…🤷
 
Woah now. I personally would not call Luther a hero, but your representation of Luther is nothing short of abominable.
OneTrueCathApos said:
If Luther is one of your greatest heroes of all times, then why do you claim to be Roman Catholic? Luther was a heretic, a hater of the Catholic church. You say try to understand him, that there were mistakes with the papacy, BUT LET ME REMIND YOU, THERE WERE NO MISTAKES WITH THE DOCTRINES OF THE CHURCH. DOCTRINES WERE NEVER CHANGED BY THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. LUTHER CHANGED THE WORD OF GOD TO FIT HIS MINDSET IN THAT DAY. Now, I think perhaps, as a “Roman Catholic” as you are, you might want to learn a little about your own faith, about your own Doctors of the Church.
Here we go again, another “Roman Catholic” who claims that Protestanism, a divorce from the Catholic church, was a good thing…good grief…🤷
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None of your quotes have a citation showing from whence they came, that’s mistake number one. A couple of them seem quite dubious to me. The first and second one seem bogus, especially with the quotations used in that manner? Not Luther’s style.
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I went to CCEL (ccel.org/l/luther/?show=worksBy) and searched the first phrase and got no hits. It is possible that it was written in some work that isn’t in CCEL–or it could be as you suggested: the quote is bogus.
 
OneTrueCathApos said:
**Martin Luther:

“If men believe in Christ and accept Him as their personal savior, His justice will be imputed to them and they will go straight to Heaven. It does not matter what evil they have done during their lives. It does not matter whether they are, or not, repentful of their sins. It does not matter at the moment of their death whether they have contrition or not, or if they are in a state of Grace. If they accepted Christ as their “personal” Savior, they will be saved.”**
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I would have ignored your post if not for this quote. This is obviously not Luther. Luther never talked about “accepting Jesus as your personal savior.” **
“I do not wish to see or hear anything of Moses. If we allow the Ten commandments any influence on our conscience they become the cloak of evil, heretics, and blasphemers. If Moses should intimidate you with his Ten Commandments, tell him right off to chase himself to the Jews. Moses should forever be looked about with suspicion, even as a heretic, damned, even worse than the pope and the devil.”
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**

This I believe is authentic, but as often with Luther’s hyperbole, must be understood in context. (Of course you don’t want to do that–it’s so much fun not to.) Luther also included the Ten Commandments in his catechisms and, I have heard, meditated on them daily. He is using “Moses” here as shorthand for “the demands of the law.” And the point he is making is that, in his theology, you cannot get to God by trying to keep the Ten Commandments. The Commandments are a guide teaching you how to live, but they are not the road map for how to get to God.
**
Luther changed Scriptures so that wherever it said to “do pennance”, he wrote, “to do better”. In Acts 19:18 where it says, “Many of them came and confessing their sins”, he wrote, “They came acknowledging the miracles of the Apostles.” In the Annunciation where it said “Full of Grace”, he changed it to “Thou gracious one”. In Romans where it said “We account a man to be justified by faith”, he wrote “We hold man justified by faith alone without the works of the Law”.
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**

Actually the phrase “without the works of the law” is an uncontroversial translation of the Greek. The controversy surrounds the use of the word “alone,” which has no exact counterpart in the Greek, but which Luther argued was necessary to convey the sense of the original. (The bit of bluster that you quote about not having to give an answer for his translation choice to the Pope was followed by a careful linguistic argument which Catholic apologists, of course, carefully ignore.)
**
“Burn their Synagogues and schools. Put them on fire, their homes, their prayer books and their Rabbi’s.”
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**

Luther said some very nasty things about the Jews. But this was hardly unique to Protestantism. That doesn’t excuse him. But if it’s “what Protestantism is really about,” then it’s also what Catholicism is really about.

Edwin
 
Oh, I beg to differ. Luther made up the line “personal” savior in the 1500’s. Personal is not in the bible. Luther had conjured it up.
Furthermore, Luther wasn’t as concerned about alleged papal “corruption” as he was about changing church Doctrine and monkey-wrenching church authority.
He also had an infantile desire to destroy his opponents, which is surely a sign that Luther “had issues”.
The early Protestants (Luther), were claiming infallibility…in far more sweeping and revolutionary terms than any pope ever did. The entire Protestant experiment starts with the axiom that Luther was right when he dissented from the Catholic church.
This axiom, of course, is at least downright ridiculous. The Holy Roman Emporer Charles V accurately described the situation:
**“It is preposterous that a single monk should be right in his opinion and that the whole of Christianity should be in error a thousand years or more.”

**Think about it my non-Catholic friends., someone wakes u one day deciding they are right and all of Christianity is wrong…
 
OneTrueCathApos said:
**Martin Luther:

“If men believe in Christ and accept Him as their personal savior, His justice will be imputed to them and they will go straight to Heaven. It does not matter what evil they have done during their lives. It does not matter whether they are, or not, repentful of their sins. It does not matter at the moment of their death whether they have contrition or not, or if they are in a state of Grace. If they accepted Christ as their “personal” Savior, they will be saved.”

**
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Site your source, my friend. Site your souce on this. This is not what Luther believed, nor how he spoke of faith. Site your source.

Jon
 
Luther even stopped short of calling himself a prophet, he didn’t mind comparing himself to the prophets.
**“Who knows but that God has called me and raised me up? They ought to fear least they despise God in me…” (Works of Martin Luther Vol. III, 12-17)

** Luther suffered from grandiose delusions. Here are more quotes:
**“Therefore, I now let you know that from now on, I shall no longer do you the honor of allowing you—or even an angel from heaven—to judge my teaching, or examine it…WHOEVER DOES NOT ACCEPT MY TEACHING SHALL NOT BE SAVED–**for it is God’s and not mine.” (Luthers Works vol. 39)

You know, we often hear complaints from Protestant apologists and other partisans about the excessive, intolerably, “autocratic” authority of the papacy, yet papal proclamations are not even in the same Universe as these above, from the founder of Protestanism.
These quotes from Luther are all of a piece: They all indicate that he considered himself some sort of infallible, unquestionable, spiritual/theological guide or authority. Lots of people claim this, why should Martin Luther have been regarded differently from any other self-proclaimed prophets?

I think this is a perfectly legitimate and highly important question that Protestants would do well to ponder.
 
I’ll go even further: There will be no major healing of the Catholic vs. Protestant rift in the Body of Christ until Protestants recognize Luther for what he truly was: A very, very sick man.
 
OneTrueCathApos said:
I’ll go even further: There will be no major healing of the Catholic vs. Protestant rift in the Body of Christ until Protestants recognize Luther for what he truly was: A very, very sick man.
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Pope OneTrueCathApos, what is your purpose to achieve here?
Do you have any statement from Holy Father that agrees with this emotional rant?
 
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