In fact, Martin Luther was the key initiator of the Reformation. It is important to know who the key Reformers of the Reformation were, what they believed and how they lived. After all, Jesus said you will know them by their fruit. Most people do not know some very shocking things about Luther:
#1: Martin Luther was a consenting partner in the murder of other Protestants.
Luther fully supported his followers when they slaughtered thousands of Anabaptists simply because they believed that when a person came to faith they should be baptized. Can we really trust anyone who actually had a hand in killing so many other Christians?
#2: Martin Luther rejected some of Roman Catholicism but unfortunately kept some of the false doctrines and these doctrines were adopted by many who were involved in the Reformation.
Among his heresies and false doctrines:
- Baptismal Generation: One must be baptized to be saved.
- Infant baptism
- Life and salvation are given to the believers in the sacraments.
- Believed and taught that Mary was not just the mother of Jesus but of all.
- Veneration of Mary.
- Believed and taught that Mary remained a virgin in perpetuity.
Luther taught salvation by faith alone but insisted that salvation also came through works and through the sacraments.
#3: Martin Luther had powerful influence on future Reformed doctrines that would later be known as Calvinism.
Luther's greatest influence later adopted fully by Calvinists was his denial that man has free will. This was perhaps Luther's most passionate belief. He wrote a book on the subject entitled "On the Bondage of the Will". In this work Luther argued that man did not have free will after the fall in the garden. He concluded that man is under Satan's domain and incapable of coming to God unless God removes Satan's hold. He held that man could not have salvation unless God unilaterally changed man's heart first. Luther intimated that this must be so because God is sovereign and if man could respond then God's sovereignty would be maligned.
The above is clearly a foundation for what Calvinism believes even to this day. Luther taught Calvinism before Calvin did. Calvinism could just as well have been called Lutherism.
#4: Martin Luther attempted to remove several books from the Bible.
Luther made attempts to remove the New Testament books of Hebrews, James, Jude and Revelation from the canon. Remember that the next time you read from one of these.
#5. Martin Luther is alleged to have made utterly slanderous remarks about Jesus including this one:
Christ committed adultery first of all with the woman at the well about whom St. John tells us. Was not everybody about Him saying: "Whatever has he been doing with her?" Secondly, with Mary Magdalene, and thirdly with the woman taken in adultery whom he dismissed so lightly. Thus even Christ, who was so righteous, must have been guilty of fornication before He died.#6: Martin Luther openly criticized the Biblical authority of books from the Old Testament:
(ref. Trishreden, Weimer Edition, Vol. 2, Pg. 107)
His statements include:
"The history of Jonah is so monstrous that it is absolutely incredible." ('The Facts About Luther, O'Hare, TAN Books, 1987, p. 202.)
"The book of Esther I toss into the Elbe. I am such an enemy to the book of Esther that I wish it did not exist, for it Judaizes too much and has in it a great deal of heathenish foolishness." (Ibid.)
#7. Martin Luther was anti-semitic and wrote a book called "On the Jews and Their Lies" in which he made several vitriolic statements in regard to his disdain for the Jews.
"Jews are young devils damned to hell." ('Luther's Works,' Pelikan, Vol. XX, pp. 2230.)
"Burn their synagogues. Forbid them all that I have mentioned above. Force them to work and treat them with every kind of severity, as Moses did in the desert and slew three thousand... If that is no use, we must drive them away like mad dogs, in order that we may not be partakers of their abominable blasphemy and of all their vices, and in order that we may not deserve the anger of God and be damned with them. I have done my duty. Let everyone see how he does his. I am excused." ('About the Jews and Their Lies,' quoted by O'Hare, in 'The Facts About Luther, TAN Books, 1987, p. 290.)Many Nazis used Luther's many anti-semitic comments to validate their desires to exterminate the Jews:
In Daniel Johah Goldhagen's book, Hitler's Willing Executioners, he writes:
"One leading Protestant churchman, Bishop Martin Sasse published a compendium of Martin Luther's antisemitic vitriol shortly after Kristallnacht's orgy of anti-Jewish violence. In the foreword to the volume, he applauded the burning of the synagogues and the coincidence of the day: 'On November 10, 1938, on Luther's birthday, the synagogues are burning in Germany.' The German people, he urged, ought to heed these words 'of the greatest antisemite of his time, the warner of his people against the Jews.'"Many Nazi's gave credit to Luther for giving the German people their "mandate" to expunge Jews from their nation. Luther seems to have been a major influencer of Nazi anti-semitism.
#8: Martin Luther turned on fellow Reformer Zwingli.
Zwingli was the other most well-known early Reformer but Luther did not like the man. Luther hated Zwingli so much that when Zwingli was killed in battle he said: "he got what he deserved.... His death proved I'm right and he's wrong..."
So much for unity and mutual admiration among the early reformers.
#9: Martin Luther actually disliked the Ten Commandments and even went so far as to change them.
He actually took out the second commandment which he did not like and then divided the tenth commandment into commandments #9 and #10. Regarding his contempt for the Ten Commandments he stated:
“If we allow them – the Commandments – any influence in our conscience, they become the cloak of all evil, heresies and blasphemies” (ref. Comm. ad Galat, p.310).#10: Martin Luther made comments that condoned and even promoted man sinning.
"If you are a preacher of grace, then preach a true and not a fictitious grace; if grace is true, you must bear a true and not a fictitious sin. God does not save people who are only fictitious sinners. Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly . . . as long as we are here [in this world] we have to sin. . . . No sin will separate us from the Lamb, even though we commit fornication and murder a thousand times a day"
(Letter to Melanchthon, August 1, 1521, American Edition, Luther's Works, vol. 48, pp. 281-82). (Bold emphasis mine)
"When the devil comes to tempt and harass you . . . indulge some sin in hatred of the evil spirit and to torment him . . . otherwise we are beaten if we are too nervously sensitive about guarding against sin . . . I tell you, we must put all the Ten Commandments, with which the devil tempts and plagues us so greatly, out of sight and out of mind."
(Table Talk in De Wette, 5.188; De Wette was a protestant scholar who collected the most significant sayings of Luther in several volumes). (Bold emphasis mine)
In Summary
Jesus said that we would know false teachers by their fruit. Luther's fruit was bad in just about every way possible. Everyone should know the truth about Martin Luther. My intent in this article is not to arbitrarily attack Luther without purpose. My intent is to expose Luther, the Reformation and Calvinism as having a very faulty foundation that should be questioned, exposed and condemned. The source of Calvinism is the polluted spring of the Reformation and this source is found in the Reformation's founders including the Father of the Reformation, Martin Luther.
I suggest readers of this article also read by blog article "Reformed or Deformed" as it contains more information on the Reformation and its questionable roots.
Darrell Brantingham
(Check out my pithy comments on Twitter @confrontcalvin)
