In 1507, he was ordained to the priesthood, and in 1508, von Staupitz, first dean of the newly founded University of Wittenberg, sent for Luther, to teach theology.[25][26]
He received a bachelor's degree in Biblical studies on 9 March 1508, and another bachelor's degree in the Sentences by Peter Lombard in 1509.[27]
On 19 October 1512, he was awarded his Doctor of Theology and, on 21 October 1512, was received into the senate of the theological faculty of the University of Wittenberg,[28] having succeeded Staupitz as chair of theology.[29] He spent the rest of his career in this position at the University of Wittenberg.
He was made provincial vicar of Saxony and Thuringia by his religious order in 1515. This meant he was to visit and oversee each of eleven monasteries in his province.[30]
Start of the Reformation History of Protestantism and In 1516, Johann Tetzel, a Dominican friar and papal Luther's theses are engraved into the door of All Saints' Church,
Wittenberg. The Latin inscription above informs the reader that the original door was destroyed by a fire, and that in 1857, King
Frederick William IV of Prussia ordered a replacement be made. commissioner for indulgences, was sent to Germany by the Roman Catholic Church to sell indulgences to raise money to rebuild St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.[31] Roman Catholic theology stated that faith alone, whether fiduciary or dogmatic, cannot justify man;[32] justification rather depends only on such faith as is active in charity and good works (fides caritate formata).[33] The benefits of good works could be obtained by donating money to the church.
On 31 October 1517, Luther wrote to his bishop, Albert of Mainz, protesting the sale of indulgences. He enclosed in his letter a copy of his "Disputation of Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences", which came to be known as the Ninety-five Theses. Hans Hillerbrand writes that Luther had no intention of confronting the church, but saw his disputation as a scholarly objection to church practices, and the tone of the writing is accordingly "searching, rather than doctrinaire."[34] Hillerbrand writes that there is nevertheless an undercurrent of challenge in several of the theses, particularly in Thesis 86, which asks: "Why does the pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the basilica of St. Peter with the money of poor believers rather than with his own money?"[34]
Luther objected to a saying attributed to Johann Tetzel that "As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory (also attested as 'into heaven') springs."[35] He insisted that, since forgiveness was God's alone to grant, those who claimed that indulgences absolved buyers from all punishments and granted them salvation were in error.
Christians, he said, must not slacken in following Christ on account of such false assurances.
The sale of indulgences shown in A Question to a Mintmaker, woodcut by Jörg Breu the Elder of Augsburg, ca. 1530.
However, this oft-quoted saying of Tetzel was by no means representative of contemporary Catholic teaching on indulgences, but rather a reflection of his capacity to exaggerate.
Yet if Tetzel overstated the matter in regard to indulgences for the dead, his teaching on indulgences for the living was in line with Catholic dogma of the time.[36]
According to one account, Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the door of All Saints' Church in Wittenberg on 31 October 1517. Scholars Walter Krämer, Götz Trenkler, Gerhard Ritter, and Gerhard Prause contend that the story of the posting on the door, even though it has settled as one of the pillars of history, has little foundation in truth.[37][38][39] The story is based on comments made by Philipp Melanchthon, though it is thought that he was not in Wittenberg at the time.[40]
The Latin Theses were printed in several location in Germany in 1517. In January 1518 friends of Luther translated the Ninety-five Theses from Latin into German.[41]
CHAPTER 1. MAIN ARTICLE Within two weeks, copies of the theses had spread throughout Germany; within two months, they had spread throughout Europe.
Luther's writings circulated widely, reaching France, England, and Italy as early as 1519. Students thronged to Wittenberg to hear Luther speak. He published a short commentary on Galatians and his Work on the Psalms.
This early part of Luther's career was one of his most creative and productive.[42] Three of his best-known works were published in 1520: To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, and On the Freedom of a Christian.
Justification by faith alone Main article: Sola fide From 1510 to 1520, Luther lectured on the Psalms, "Luther at Erfurt", which depicts Martin Luther discovering the doctrine of sola fide. Painting by Joseph Noel Paton, 1861. the books of Hebrews, Romans, and Galatians. As he studied these portions of the Bible, he came to view the use of terms such as penance and righteousness by the Catholic Church in new ways. He became convinced that the church was corrupt in its ways and had lost sight of what he saw as several of the central truths of Christianity. The most important for Luther was the doctrine of justification – God's act of declaring a sinner righteous – by faith alone through God's grace. He began to teach that salvation or redemption is a gift of God's grace, attainable only through faith in Jesus as the Messiah.[43] "This one and firm rock, which we call the doctrine of justification," he wrote, "is the chief article of the whole Christian doctrine, which comprehends the understanding of all godliness."[44]
Luther came to understand justification as entirely the work of God. This teaching by Luther was clearly expressed in his 1525 publication On the Bondage of the Will, which was written in response to On Free Will by Desiderius Erasmus (1524). Luther based his position on predestination on St. Paul's epistle to the Ephesians
2:8–10. Against the teaching of his day that the righteous acts of believers are performed in cooperation with God, Luther wrote that Christians receive such righteousness entirely from outside themselves; that righteousness not only comes from Christ but actually is the righteousness of Christ, imputed to Christians (rather than infused into them) through faith.[45] "That is why faith alone makes someone just and fulfills the law," he wrote. "Faith is that which brings the Holy Spirit through the merits of Christ."[46] Faith, for Luther, was a gift from God; the experience of being justified by faith was "as though I had been born again." His entry into Paradise, no less, was a discovery about "the righteousness of God" – a discovery that "the just person" of whom the Bible speaks (as in Romans 1:17) lives by faith.[47] He explained his concept of "justification" in the Smalcald Articles:
The first and chief article is this: Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, died for our sins and was raised again for our justification (Romans
3:24–25). He alone is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29), and God has laid on Him the iniquity of us all
(Isaiah 53:6). All have sinned and are justified freely, without their own works and merits, by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, in His blood (Romans 3:23–
25). This is necessary to believe. This cannot be otherwise acquired or grasped by any work, law or merit. Therefore, it is clear and certain that this faith alone justifies us ... Nothing of this article can be yielded or surrendered, even though heaven and earth and everything else falls (Mark 13:31).[48]
Luther's rediscovery of "Christ and His salvation" was the first of two points that became the foundation for the Reformation. His railing against the sale of indulgences was based on it.[49]
Breach with the papacy Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz and Magdeburg did not reply to Luther's letter containing the Ninety-five Theses.
He had the theses checked for heresy and in December 1517 forwarded them to Rome.[50] He needed the revenue from the indulgences to pay offa papal dispensation for