Luther And The Reformation Essay

Humanities Final

The Reformation was a 16th Century European movement, which caused momentum to change the current practices and authority of the church to be questioned. To many historians it marked the beginning of a modern era and a large development forward in history as Luther not only reshaped the authority of the church, he also provided a movement away from their teachings with the creation of many new denominations. Luther effectively challenged the church as a result of new technologies and the Spirit of Inquiry, which enabled the undermining of the churches current political authority. The success of his challenge was by no means unsupported with a political dynamic in the Germanic states that was hostile to the centralisation of power in Rome. Although people in Europe were not prepared to abandon the concept of Christianity, they were willing, with large support, to abandon the tainted Roman Church (C. Warren Hollister

As it was known ‘…the Church was for centuries the dominant and intellectual and moral authority throughout Europe.’ (Bartlett R Ed., 2010 p. 264, 265). This very subject on the churches corruption and doctrine of indulgences which was backed by the Pope propelled Luther into writing the 95 Theses. Luther initially wrote the 95 Theses to raise a scholarly debate on the doctrine. (Johnston, A, 1996 Ch.1). It was not in fact, initially intended to have such a large scale reform but rather bring to question the practices within the Church. The real name of the Theses: The Power and Efficacy on the Selling of indulgences highlighted a central idea that the Bible and not the Pope was the religious authority and that salvation could be sought from faith alone (History.com 2009). Although unintentional, the Theses sparked the Protestant Reformation raising debates on all sides of the Scriptures (Melanchthon, P., 1845 p.