The Protestant Reformation And Martin Luther Religion Essay

The Protestant Reformation And Martin Luther Religion EssayThe duration of the Protestant Reformation was a time of great change in western decree. The Roman Catholic church building would see its authority ch eitherenged in a way that was unprecedented and the world would bear witness to the arising of many spiritual feuds and rivalries, some of which live on to this day. The roots of the accomplishment lie in several different ideas that started to sprinkle among the common hoi polloi of Europe, starting in about 1500. People began to believe that they could access the aggrandise of theology through a face-to-face relationship with him, without the need of the church building and its authorities as an intermediary. Many no longer saw the pontiff as Gods right hand man, save instead as a religious profiteer who cared much more about making notes than about tending to the ghost alike needs of his followers. A feeling of anticlericalism was chop-chop spreading throughou t the land.In response to the new found spiritual awakening experienced by many, Europe began to see new religious teachers and groups spring up both all over. The Christian Humanists, Sir Thomas More, Erasmus, and many oppositewises helped to spread the new movement with their teachings, however out of all the great scholars of the Reformation, there are two who stand out more than any other. The teachings of Martin Luther and commode Calvin resonate even today and they are until now held up as heroes of Christianity by many.Martin Luther was undoubtedly the nearly persistent and most successful of all the reformers of his time. He challenged the Church loudly and directly and refused to back d proclaim over what he saw as both great errors in philosophical system and great failures in spirituality. Luthers most important teaching originated from his own personal experiences before he began his fight against the Roman Church. He had always struggled with his own perceived sinfulness and could never understand how he could attain anything only if the wrath from a just God. However, the textual matter tells us that in an example known as the experience in the tower Luther came to understand that Gods blessing would grant him salvation. From then on, Luther taught that the removal of sin and bestowing of righteousness could only be obtained by faith in God, or justification by faith.In 1517 Luthers teachings began to take aim at the Church. It started when a friar began selling pamperings to the township of Wittenberg, where Luther was living at the time. Luther witnessed the concourse of his town be scammed out of their currency by the people who were supposed to be back up, by their religious leaders. This face filled Luther with a passionate anger and on October 31, 1517 he issued his most famous rifle, his ninety-five theses. This work displayed another of Luthers most important teachings, that the pontiff only had authority to issue a p ardon on the punishments that he had inflicted.For the next cardinal years Luther would continue to publish more of his writings, helping him to expand and refine his teachings. He would teach for the rest of his intent his most important message, that it was not through good works, the seven sacraments, or an indulgence that i achieved salvation, but through faith al angiotensin-converting enzyme. Luther as well insisted that the Bible was the unrivaled and only word of God and that it was the last word on Christianity. He would back up his opinion on this by tirelessly works for years translating the bible into German and trying to make it accessible to all people so that they could read and interpret it for themselves. Finally, Luther incorporated into his new Church only two of the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church, baptism and the Lords Supper, however he contest the Churchs claim that the Priest performed a miracle and transubstantiation occurred.John Calvin was al so a great teacher of the Reformation. While Luther had already gotten the ball rolling, by the 1530s, Calvin was also making great contributions to the new belief system. Unlike Luther, Calvin was also a great organizer and worked not only at teaching the people his ideas but also at creating a new Church.Calvins teachings paralleled Luthers very much, and, like Luther, he also had a life changing experience he referred to has sudden conversion that set him on the course of religious work for the rest of his life. Like Luther, Calvin strongly believed that it was by faith alone that one could win salvation. He also incorporated only the baptism and Lords Supper into his teachings, tossing aside the other five sacraments of the Catholic Church. However, Calvin also had his own ideas about some aspects of Christianity. For instance, Calvin believed in the idea of predestination. According to the text, unlike Luther, who believed that people could be predestined for salvation, but not for damnation, Calvin made no distinction. Calvin believed that people were predestined by God for both salvation and damnation, and that nothing could be done in ones life to change that fate, but that they should be thankful for Gods just decision regardless.Calvin was also, as said earlier, a great organizer. He spent the last twenty years of his life working day and night to put unneurotic his Church. This is another area where Calvin and Luther differed. Where Luther only required that churches accept his teachings of justification by faith and the Bible as the word of God, and allowed them to keep any other traditional Church practices, Calvin was much stricter. Calvin did away with the luxuries of the traditional mass, getting relinquish of ornaments, singing, and other things he viewed as trivial, in estimation more airfield and minimal sermon. Calvin also held his followers to a stern code of morals. The textbook tells us that Calvin banned frivolous activities like da ncing in favor of constant self-examination. Finally, thanks to his Institutes of the Christian Religion, his written work that he go along refining for the last thirty years of his life, his followers had a throw in to turn for any questions they might have had relating to religious practice and faith.though the Protestant Reformation saw many great teachers contribute to one of the most significant events in western history, it is clear that Martin Luther and John Calvin left-hand(a) the greatest legacy of any. Today, nearly five hundred years later, we still talk about these men and their involvement in both society and religion. Even though they are no longer here, their work lives on and their ideas continue to find new adherents every day.