Martin Luther: Similar to Judas?

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How come protestants often call the Catholic Church the “whore of Babylon” among other things when Martin Luther was basically a modern equivalent to Judas? Martin Luther started Catholic, but betrayed the true church founded by Jesus himself and started his own church. How is he any different from Judas?
 
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From my understanding Luther’s original intention was never to create a new church. He was mad at what the Church was doing with indulgences. To be fair to Luther, many churchs were, indeed, selling spirituality for a price.

Here’s a decent article from what I think is a reliable source


Point 16 gives insight into his character…he was an abused and mistreated boy who grew into a depressed and scrupulous man. 23 gives a bit more understanding of who he was.

Satan is very different. He chose to deny God. Luther, for all his faults, seemed to believe he was called by God to do what he did. We cannot confuse the two issues. Reforms were VERY needed. Luther muffed things up BADLY by speaking for God when he could not.
 
My first response was to the title, which could offend the numerous good and devout Protestants who were born into their faith, and live their Christian lives as faithfully as they can…and to remember Jesus’ words, John 10,16
“I have other sheep* that do not belong to this fold…”
John 14:2 In my Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you.
Whatever Jesus means by that statement, He does show and pen heart and the open heart of the Father.

I hear what you are saying, but this post may help to answer your concern? https://forums.catholic-questions.org/t/why-did-luther-leave/23118

Luther was a well-intentioned (if also damaged) person who had some legitimate concerns…obviously he had others, but would probably have remained unknown to the centuries, and not begun a separate church, but for the pressure placed upon him.
Judas, on the other hand, freely chose to deliver Jesus, up to arrest, torture, and murder. He didn’t follow that action with any useful or good action, he hanged himself.

Lord we pray, according to Your words in John 10:16, that all “will hear my voice, and there will be one flock…” under one Shepherd, a Christianity united in faith and practice.

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)
 
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Agreed but for the part that Luther was a “good” man. Luther was an incredibly downtrodden, abused and misguided man who put himself in an incredibly untenable position which lead to his eventual fall from grace.
 
Thanks for the replies! I must admit the title I made is rather uncharitable, for this I am sorry. Thanks for clearing my understanding up a bit on Martin Luther. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:
 
Thanks! I didn’t really know if you could do that. Now I know though. 😁
 
The myth that Luther didn’t want schism is completely unfounded.

Luther did want schism. It was his main goal.
To speak plainly, my firm belief is that the reform of the Church is impossible unless the ecclesiastical laws, the papal regulations, scholastic theology, philosophy and logic as they at present exist, are thoroughly uprooted … a resolution from which neither your authority, although it is certainly of the greatest weight for me, much less that of any others, can turn me aside."
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Luther to his mentor, Jodocus Trutfetter, May 9, 1518
The cause, to my thinking, has not yet commenced in earnest and much less can these gentlemen from Rome look to see the end. I shall send my little works to you so that you can see if I am right in surmising that the real Antichrist whom Paul discribes (1 Thess 2:3) rules at the Roman Court. I think I can prove today that he is worse than the Turks.
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Luther to Wenceslaus Link, December 11, 1518
I have published and I do declare, basing on the words of Peter and Christ, that if the leaders, the bishops, and all other loyal followers do not admonish, arraign and accuse the erring Pope, whatever may be his crimes, and hold him a a heathen, they are all blasphemers of the way of truth and deniers of Christ, and are, with the Pope, to be eternally damned. I have spoken.
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Luther pamphlet against Prierias, June 25, 2015
I have cast the die. I now despise the rage of the Romans as much as I do their favor. I will not reconcile myself to them for all eternity, nor have anything to do with them.
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Luther to Spalatin, June 1520

 
I would guess that maybe Judas Iscariot was confused. Surely not sinless, as we all fall short. But I guess he was disappointed that Jesus did not launch an uprising, and become the king of the Jews, so Judas started to doubt that Jesus is the Messiah, so I guess he converted back to Judaism, and betrayed Jesus to the authorities, as he started to believe like the hostile Jews, that Jesus broke the Sabbath and blasphemed, so he deserved the death penalty according to the Law of Moses. Then sometime later, Judas started regretting betraying him, after all, he had followed him for 3 years, so he committed suicide.
Now personally I believe the Law of Moses was wrong in demanding punishment, even the death penalty, for working on the Sabbath and for blasphemy. So if God inspired parts of the Bible, he or she did not inspire those commandments.
Luther, I suppose, was a well meaning man, but also confused, since he too believed in the inerrancy of the Bible.
 
I suggest you read actual Catholic statements regarding Luther, such as the following
Twentieth-century Catholic research on Luther
  1. Twentieth-century Catholic research on Luther built upon a Catholic interest in Reformation history that awakened in the second half of the nineteenth century. These theologians followed the efforts of the Catholic population in the Protestant-dominated German empire to free themselves from a one-sided, anti-Roman, Protestant historiography. The breakthrough for Catholic scholarship came with the thesis that Luther overcame within himself a Catholicism that was not fully Catholic. According to this view, the life and teaching of the church in the late Middle Ages served mainly as a negative foil for the Reformation; the crisis in Catholicism made Luther’s religious protest quite convincing to some.
  2. In a new way, Luther was portrayed as an earnest religious person and conscientious man of prayer. Painstaking and detailed historical research has demonstrated that Catholic literature on Luther over the previous four centuries right up through modernity had been significantly shaped by the commentaries of Johannes Cochaleus, a contemporary opponent of Luther and advisor to Duke George of Saxony. Cochaleus had characterized Luther as an apostatized monk, a destroyer of Christendom, a corrupter of morals, and a heretic. The achievement of this first period of critical, but sympathetic, engagement with Luther’s character was the freeing of Catholic research from the one-sided approach of such polemical works on Luther. Sober historical analyses by other Catholic theologians showed that it was not the core concerns of the Reformation, such as the doctrine of justification, which led to the division of the church but, rather, Luther’s criticisms of the condition of the church at his time that sprang from these concerns.
  3. The next step for Catholic research on Luther was to uncover analogous contents embedded in different theological thought structures and systems, carried out especially by a systematic comparison between the exemplary theologians of the two confessions, Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther. This work allowed theologians to understand Luther’s theology within its own framework. At the same time, Catholic research examined the meaning of the doctrine of justification within the Augsburg Confession. Here Luther’s reforming concerns could be set within the broader context of the composition of the Lutheran confessions, with the result that the intention of the Augsburg Confession could be seen as expressing fundamental reforming concerns as well as preserving the unity of the church.
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http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/p...doc_2013_dal-conflitto-alla-comunione_en.html

Unfortunately there are many Catholics who seem wholly ignorant of new Catholic research on Luther and only seek to vilify the man and deepen and perpetuate the divisions between Protestants and Catholics, totally in opposition to the Vatican. There are also many “Luther quotes” that do not bear close examination that have been exposed as fraudulent.
 
(continuing)

From the last line of the previous quote, you will see that the Catholic Church’s view is that Luther was NOT out to split the church, but to preserve its unity. Anyone who says otherwise has set himself against official Catholic teaching and is thus a schismatic. Anyone doing so is furthering schism and deepening the division between Protestants and Catholics, something the Vatican very much frowns on. Not my idea but official Catholic Church teaching.

There are also NUMEROUS “Luther quotes” that have been proven fraudulent and malicious in origin that some people will swallow because they make Luther look bad. My question on this is why do they bother, as there is plenty of stuff he actually DID say to nail him on. But from the above you will see what happens when Catholic scholars said when they actually examined this. So you can look at a few choice trashy quotes or what the Church has said when it has examined his writings in toto.
 
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Martin Luther was actually right in his concerns . Reforming the Church is a constant need. Look at Vatican 2. Though some would disagree on that example. Many of the issues Luther brought up dis in fact end up being resolved in the Church at the Council of Trent. In a weird way Luther could have been a hero to the Church had he reverted back to the Church and had more dialogue. Yes he was ex communicated . I always found reformers like John Calvin to be worse in the sense of heresy. Luther was Catholic but didn’t agree with things such as indulgences. In the end the Church did do away with many of his concerns. However the Protestant Reformation was not the answer. Church Reform was. And always is needed in God’s Church.
 
PluniaZ said:
The myth that Luther didn’t want schism is completely unfounded.

Luther did want schism. It was his main goal.
To speak plainly, my firm belief is that the reform of the Church is impossible unless the ecclesiastical laws, the papal regulations, scholastic theology, philosophy and logic as they at present exist, are thoroughly uprooted … a resolution from which neither your authority, although it is certainly of the greatest weight for me, much less that of any others, can turn me aside."
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This source is published in 1908 - clearly before current Catholic scholarship on Luther. It is possible all these quotes are fraudulent in any case.
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  1. Both thought they were doing the right thing. As far as we know, neither ever repented.
  2. Luther never denied Christ, he simply chose to follow the leading of a different spirit. A spirit which appealed to his substantial ego, duping him into believing it was actually his conscience.
  3. Judas inspired unity through his sin. Luther incited division.
 
@po18guy I invite you to look at actual Catholic teaching on Luther that you will find I already posted in this thread.

As a faithful Catholic, you will want to conform your thoughts and statements to the Church where it has spoken, no? 😄
 
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Wouldn’t compare him to Judas at all.

He saw abuses taking place and it angered him. The Church didn’t take him seriously enough and it spiraled out of control.

I believe, based on some of his commentary, that he suffered from scrupulosity. He couldn’t feel any joy unless he believed in his own theology that assured his salvation.
 
Melodeonist said:
How come protestants often call the Catholic Church the “whore of Babylon” among other things when Martin Luther was basically a modern equivalent to Judas? Martin Luther started Catholic, but betrayed the true church founded by Jesus himself and started his own church. How is he any different from Judas?
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Martin Luther began with the 95 theses (1517) and by denying free will. He published in 1525 a rebuttal called The Bondage of the Will. It is a rebuttal to the De libero arbitrio diatribè sive collatio (A Discussion of Free Will) of Erasmus (published 1524) defending the Roman Catholic doctrine, which Fr. Desiderius Erasmus wrote to the excommunication of Luther (1521), article 36.
“Some of these errors we have decided to include in the present document; their substance is as follows: … 36. Free will after sin is a matter of title only; and as long as one does what is in him, one sins mortally.”
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  • 1517 95 Theses
  • 1520 Exsurge Domine (Papal Bull)
  • 1521 Excommunication of Martin Luther
  • 1524 A Discussion of Free Will (Erasmus)
  • 1525 The Bondage of the Will (Luther)
 
Huh?

What I posted was Vatican direction to Catholics. No “IF”.
 
SojournerOnEarth said:
Huh?

What I posted was Vatican direction to Catholics. No “IF”.
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Um, we can disagree with it. It’s not an infallible statement or anything. As Catholics we should seriously consider it but we don’t have to completely agree with it.
 
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