Five hundred years before a post on a blog could have national and global impact,
Martin Luther made a primitive posting on a door. The Church has been reeling from
this event’s consequences ever since.
Recently, someone suggested to me that Luther was only asked by the pope to recant
48 of his 95 theses. Does anybody know if this is true? If so, which theses were
acceptable and which were not? I wonder how events might have played out if Luther
had chosen to be less defiant.
“Think of all the people now spending eternity with Christ because of some little monk’s temper tantrum.”
Well, I obviously don’t have the same opinion of the salvific quality of Luther’s 95 feces, I mean theses. Sorry 🙂
I feel that the Catholic faith was true then, is true today, and will be true tomorrow as well.
According to Barzun’s From Dawn to Decadence, “When the pope’s bull condemning 41 of the 95 theses arrived in Wittenberg, it gave Luther an opportunity for a demonstration: he burned it publicly, to the great delight, naturally, of the university students crowding around him.”
I’ve heard the number 41 before. It seems that Luther received a bull from Leo X in 1519 asking him to recant 41 of the theses, because the others had to do primarily with vagaries of Catholic theology that Luther simply misunderstood, or with abuses that Rome also disapproved of.
Sorry again; that last post was unnecessary.
That’s right. Luther posted his theses on October 31, 1517. Barzun: “To the pope, who at the time was the esthetic voluptuary Leo X, Luther’s outburst was just another little monk’s showing off is learning. The document was handed over to clerical bureaucrats who took three years to pick out the heresies.”
The Bull was Exsurge Domine, June 1520.
Wow! God can use even some “little monk showing off his learning”! Think of all the people now spending eternity with Christ because of some little monk’s temper tantrum. Praise God!!
God save us all from bureaucrats.