Luther’s Life

Wartburg Castle was a hunting castle that belonged to the ducal family of Saxony. To the present day, it lies in the Thuringian forest in north-central Germany.

The imperial Diet of Worms of 1521 was in many respects the culmination of the first phase of the Luther’s Reformation. As opposition increased, and as he studied the Scriptures in their original languages, Luther’s departures from late medieval theology grew ever more significant.

Between 1537 and 1540, Martin Luther and his onetime colleague John Agricola fiercely debated the role of the Law in the Church.

Even before the meeting at Marburg, Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli had each written forcefully against the position of the other regarding whether the true body of Jesus Christ was present in the Lord’s Supper. In what came to be known as the Great Controversy, it was clear that Luther and Zwingli could not come to agreement on this doctrinal issue.

Luther’s use of Scripture to challenge the pope came to a climax in the early summer of 1519 when Luther and the renowned theologian John Eck met face to face in Leipzig to debate the main topics of contention raised by the Wittenberg theologians.

Many events were set in motion by Luther’s posting of the 95 Theses on October 31st, 1517, but ironically, not the very thing he intended. The 95 Theses were meant for theological debate, a debate that never occurred. Any expectation of a lively academic disputation was consumed by a firestorm that reached far beyond Wittenberg and Germany to the pope himself.

The burning of the bull was not something Luther did lightly, or with great pomp necessarily. He later told his friend and superior Johann von Staupitz that he did this while “trembling and praying.”

Calvin is considered by some the one who codified the Reformation in the form that it finally took and is considered by the same to be the truly premier theologian of the era. So, who is Calvin, and what should we think of him as Lutherans? What did Luther think of him?

In the year 1529, Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli came face to face in the city of Marburg, Germany for a discussion on political unity among protestants.

There are few men of the 15th and 16th centuries that deserve our attention more than Erasmus Desiderius of Rotterdam. He represents the pinnacle of Christian humanism, an intellectual movement that revitalized classical and biblical scholarship north of the Alps.

If you want to start an argument among Lutherans, just bring up the topic of worship and the liturgy. What was Luther’s preference? Whose side was he on?

Martin Luther was born in Eisleben on November 10, 1483 to Hans and Margarethe Luder. Whereas Luther’s mother was from an economically prosperous family, his father was from more humble origins. His family was nevertheless...

he friendship and partnership of these two men towered above any other relationship in Wittenberg or beyond. Of the seven documents contained in the Book of Concord, three were written by Melanchthon and three by Luther.

In the 95 Theses, Luther’s response to indulgences was several fold. First, it must be understood that at this point Luther’s teaching on justification was not completely developed and so at first he did not reject the very idea of indulgences, as he later would. Instead, Luther argued that...