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Lutheranism: Martin Luther
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Lutheranism is a major Protestant denomination, which originated as a 16th-century movement led by Martin Luther. Luther, a German Augustinian monk and professor of theology at the University of Wittenberg in Saxony (Sachsen), originally had as his goal the reformation of the Western Christian church. Because Luther and his followers were excommunicated by the pope... Lutheranism developed in a number of separate national and territorial churches, thus initiating the breakup of the organizational unity of Western Christendom.
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Lutheranism is a monotheistic, Trinitarian religion that acknowledges Jesus Christ as the Messiah. It is a Protestant religious denomination within Christianity which traces its roots to Martin Luther, who was the founder of the Protestant Reformation. The heart of the Reformation was in Germany, where Martin Luther lived and taught, and the Lutheran Church arose from those pastors in Germany who intended to remain faithful to the goals of Martin Luther and the Reformation. The key works of Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon were gathered together with the three ecumenical creeds (Nicene Creed, Apostles' Creed and Athanasian Creed) into the Book of Concord, which is ... referred to as the Lutheran Confessions.
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The reference above to "certain developments within Lutheranism" points to the two paths between which Lutherans chose beginning in the early seventeenth century and continuing on through the mid-eighteenth century. They persist to this day under the terms "Pietism" and "Lutheran Orthodoxy." Both had deep roots. As should be evident, Orthodoxy can claim parentage in the heavily doctrinal character of Lutheranism from the outset, through the Genesio Lutherans, the Formula of Concord, Martin Chemnitz with his monumental Examination of the Council of Trent (1565–1573), and into the professorial life of seventeenth-century Lutheran theological faculties. Pietism, on the other hand, can claim its origins with Martin Bucer (1491–1551) of Strasbourg and a tradition that produced such luminaries in the movement toward a more "heartfelt" religion, as evident in two later products of Strasbourg, Johannes Arndt (1555–1621) and his Vier Bücher vom wahren Christentum (1606; Four books on true Christianity), and Philipp Jakob Spener (1635–1705), the collegia pietatis, and his Pia Desideria (1675), which is still read and cherished by many. That the two parties did not think well of one another is evident from the story about Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), who was frustrated by a powerful Pietist preacher at the Church of St. Thomas in Leipzig.
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From the beginning, Lutheranism had to wrestle with the problem of its relation to civil authorities, Although Luther was a rebel against papal teaching he was docile about reforming the civil order and rejected radical revolts by the peasants. Fearing anarchy more than authoritarianism, the lutherans gravitated to biblical teachings that stressed the authority of the state more than the civil freedom of its citizens. Most of them were content not to separate church and state, and in the Peace of Augsburg (1555) approved the principle that the ruler determined, the faith of the ruled. Later Lutherans have enthusiastically embraced republican and democratic government as applications of the principle that God is active in different ways through the two realms of civil and churchly authority. Many German lutherans were silent or cooperative... when the Nazi regime took over the church; only the Confessing Church, led by Martin NIEMOLLER, opposed the regime outright.
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Lutheranism of today should of course assert its right in every situation to make use of the most suitable of the liturgical forms it has inherited. But it must then ... be ready to ask whether these forms, as found in the complete Lutheran Mass, could not be used as originally intended, in a complete Communion service. Experience from many quarters, especially Denmark, points in the direction that Communion service every Sunday can be a quite natural observance. In the light of the history of Lutheran worship, it is necessary to ask the question with what right one withholds from the congregation the opportunity to experience the wealth of the Gospel in Word and Sacrament, which Martin Luther wanted to liberate from all human bonds. When this question becomes a real, burning issue, then Lutheranism will begin to find the way to Luther and thus, on a very important point, to its own full realization.
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Among all the major individual varieties of Latin Christianity to emerge from the Reformation, Lutheranism stands alone for two reasons. In the first place, it bears the name of an individual. Secondly, its hallmark, more vital even than the reference to Martin Luther (1483–1546), consists of its formal, agreed-upon confessions of faith, in particular the Unaltered Augsburg Confession (1530), but ... (save in Scandinavia) the Formula of Concord (1577) and the other documents contained in the Book of Concord (1580), which claim faithfulness to both the Scriptures and Luther's teachings. To answer the question, "What is Lutheranism?" therefore requires, at least in principle, no more than a careful reading of these theological sources with the understanding that conduct flowed from conviction. It can be no surprise, then, that Lutherans have traditionally relegated all other religious matters—liturgy, polity, hymnody, spirituality, and the like—to the realm of adiaphora or "things indifferent."
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