{"id":6633,"date":"2015-11-01T09:55:59","date_gmt":"2015-11-01T15:55:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=6633"},"modified":"2015-11-01T09:55:59","modified_gmt":"2015-11-01T15:55:59","slug":"on-the-reformation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=6633","title":{"rendered":"On the Reformation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joseph Loconte:<\/a><\/p>\n

Luther also benefited from the era\u2019s discontent: The entanglement of church and state had compromised the spiritual aims of the Catholic Church. Pope Leo X, a kingpin of the powerful Medici family\u2014described by historian Roland Bainton as \u201celegant and indolent as a Persian cat\u201d\u2014embodied the problem. Luther attacked his policy of indulgences, cash payments in exchange for forgiveness for souls suffering in purgatory.<\/p>\n

Leo offered indulgences to finance a new St. Peter\u2019s Church in Rome. The proclamation by church officials\u2014\u201cas soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs\u201d\u2014set Luther ablaze. \u201cWhy does not the pope,\u201d he demanded, \u201cwhose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the basilica of St. Peter with his own money rather than with the money of poor believers?\u201d<\/p>\n

Luther\u2019s challenge might easily have collapsed, however, had he not lived when European territories were acquiring national identities: Germany, France, Spain, Portugal and England. Because the church was the largest landowner in Europe, rulers could seldom avoid a papal dispute over revenue. Luther escaped the hangman\u2019s noose in part because he won the backing of a German prince fed up with Rome. But most important, Luther succeeded because he tapped into the root of revolutionary change: the human desire to know God.<\/p>\n

Medieval Catholicism had reduced a vibrant faith to rituals and obligations, mediated by church authorities and performed under the threat of corporal punishment. Luther\u2019s breakthrough was a spiritual achievement: a return to a gospel of grace that brought the believer into a relationship with Jesus. \u201cWhat man is there whose heart, upon hearing these things, will not rejoice to its depth, and when receiving such comfort will not grow tender so that he will love Christ as he never could by means of any laws or works?\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

Here is Luther\u2019s contribution to the modern world: a doctrine of freedom of conscience, rooted in a religious view of human nature and the nature of belief. \u201cFor faith is a free work, to which no one can be forced. Nay, it is a divine work, done in the Spirit, certainly not a matter which outward authority should compel or create.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joseph Loconte: Luther also benefited from the era\u2019s discontent: The entanglement of church and state had compromised the spiritual aims of the Catholic Church. Pope Leo X, a kingpin of the powerful Medici family\u2014described by historian Roland Bainton as \u201celegant and indolent as a Persian cat\u201d\u2014embodied the problem. Luther attacked his policy of indulgences, cash […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6633"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6633"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6633\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6634,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6633\/revisions\/6634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}