• Luther maintained that salvation was by faith alone (sola fide) without reference to good works, alms, penance, or the Church's sacraments. Luther maintained that the sacraments were a "means of grace," meaning that while grace was imparted through the Sacraments, the credit for the action belonged to God and not to the individual.[7]
• He had also challenged the authority of the Church by maintaining that all doctrines and dogmata of the Church not found in Scripture should be discarded
To protect the authority of the Pope and the Church, as well as to maintain the doctrine of indulgences, ecclesiastical officials convinced Charles V that Luther was a threat and persuaded him to authorize his condemnation by the Holy Roman Empire. Luther escaped arrest and remained in seclusion at Wartburg castle for several months where he continued to write and translate the New
Testament into German.
Despite the agreement that he could return home safely, it was privately understood that Luther would soon be arrested and punished. To protect him from this fate, Prince
Frederick seized him on his way home and hid him in Wartburg Castle. It was during his time in Wartburg that Luther began his German translation of the Bible. Martin
Luther's powerful testimony of faith at the Diet of Worms in 1521 made an indelible impression upon the mind of George, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach, who turned his eyes to the new faith earlier than any other German prince or any other member of the House of Hohenzollern. Moreover, Luther entered into correspondence with him, discussing with him the most important problems of faith. The edict was temporarily suspended at the Diet of Speyer 1526 but then reinstated in 1529.
When Luther eventually emerged from the Wartburg, the emperor, distracted with other matters, did not press for Luther's arrest. Ultimately, because of rising public support for Luther among the German people and the protection of certain German princes, the Edict of Worms was never enforced in Germany. However, in the Low Countries (comprising modern-day Belgium,
Luxembourg, and the Netherlands), the Edict was initially enforced against Luther's most active supporters. This could be done because these countries were under the direct reign of Emperor Charles V and his appointed regent,
Margaret of Austria, Duchess of Savoy (and Charles's aunt).
In December 1521, Jacob Probst, prior of the Augustinian monastery in Antwerp, was the first Luthersupporting cleric to be arrested and prosecuted under the terms of the Worms Edict. In February 1522, Probst was compelled to make public recantation and repudiation of Luther's teachings. Later that year, additional arrests were made among the Augustinians in Antwerp.
Two monks, Johann Esch and Heinrich Voes, refused to recant; on 1 July 1523, they were burned at the stake in [1] Schaff, Philip (2015). History of the Christian Church.
Arkrose Press. p. 145. ISBN 1346209650.
[2] Oberman, Heiko, Luther: Man Between God and the Devil, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006, ISBN Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985–93, 1:460.
ChristianityToday.com.
"Life of Luther (Luther by Martin [6] Noll, Mark A. (2000) [1997]. Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity. Grand Rapids, MI:
Baker Academic. p. 160. ISBN 978-0-8010-1159-7.
[7] Graebner, Augustus Lawrence.
"Outlines of Doctrinal Theology". Saint Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House. p. 161. Archived from the original on 21 January
2012. Retrieved 15 February 2012.
[8] Brecht, Martin. Martin Luther. tr. James L. Schaaf, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985–93, 2:102ff.
• Diet of Worms on In Our Time at the BBC. (listen now) • Luther's Statement at Worms from Bartleby • The Diet of Worms by Charles Beard Chapter IX of Luther and the Reformation in Germany 1896
The Radical Reformation was the response to what was believed to be the corruption in both the Roman Catholic Church and the expanding Magisterial Protestant movement led by Martin Luther and many others. Beginning in Germany and Switzerland in the 16th century, the Radical Reformation gave birth to many radical Protestant groups throughout Europe. The term covers both radical reformers like Thomas Müntzer, Andreas Karlstadt, groups like the Zwickau prophets and Anabaptist groups like the Hutterites and Mennonites.
2.12. RADICAL REFORMATION In parts of Germany, Switzerland and Austria, a majority sympathized with the Radical Reformation despite intense persecution.[1] Although the surviving proportion of the European population that rebelled against Catholic,
Lutheran and Zwinglian churches was small, Radical Reformers wrote profusely and the literature on the Radical Reformation is disproportionately large, partly as a result of the proliferation of the Radical Reformation teachings in the United States.[2]
Unlike the Catholics and the more Magisterial Lutheran and Reformed (Zwinglian and Calvinist) Protestant movements, some of the Radical Reformation abandoned the idea that the "Church visible" was distinct from the "Church invisible."[3] Thus, the Church only consisted of the tiny community of believers, who accepted Jesus Christ and demonstrated this by adult baptism, called
"believer's baptism".
While the magisterial reformers wanted to substitute their own learned elite for the learned elite of the Catholic Church, the radical Protestant groups rejected the authority of the institutional "church" organization, almost entirely, as being unbiblical.
As the search for original Christianity was carried further, it was claimed that the tension between the church and the Roman Empire in the first centuries of Christianity was normative, that the church is not to be allied with government sacralism, that a true church is always subject to be persecuted, and that the conversion of Constantine I was therefore the Great Apostasy that marked a deviation from pure
Non-Anabaptist Radical reformers Though most of the Radical Reformers were Anabaptist, some did not identify themselves with the mainstream Anabaptist tradition. Thomas Müntzer was involved in the German Peasants' War. Andreas Karlstadt disagreed theologically with Huldrych Zwingli and Martin Luther, teaching nonviolence and refusing to baptize infants while not rebaptizing adult believers.[5] Kaspar
Schwenkfeld and Sebastian Franck were influenced by German mysticism and spiritualism.
Early forms of Anabaptism Some early forms of the Radical Reformation were millenarian, focusing on the imminent end of the world.
This was particularly notable in the rule of John of Leiden over the city of Münster in 1535, which was ultimately crushed by the combined forces of the Catholic Bishop of Münster and the Lutheran Landgrave of Hesse. After the Munster rebellion, the small group of the Batenburgers continued to adhere to militant Anabaptist beliefs. Nonviolent Anabaptist groups also had millenarian beliefs.
The early Anabaptists believed that their reformation must purify not only theology but also the actual lives of Christians, especially their political and social relationships.[6] Therefore, the church should not be supported by the state, neither by tithes and taxes, nor by the use of the sword; Christianity was a matter of individual conviction, which could not be forced on anyone, but rather required a personal decision for it.[6]
Many groups were influenced by biblicism (like the Swiss Brethren), spiritualism (like the South German Anabaptists) and mainly absolute pacifism (like the Swiss
Brethren, the Hutterites and the Mennonites from Northern Germany and the Netherlands). The Hutterites also practiced community of goods. In the beginning most of them were strongly missionary.
Later forms of Anabaptism Later forms of Anabaptism were much smaller, and focused on the formation of small, separatist communities.
Among the many varieties to develop were Mennonites, Amish, and Hutterites. Typical among the new leaders of the later Anabaptist movement, and certainly the most influential of them, was Menno Simons (1496–1561), a Dutch Catholic priest who early in 1536 decided to join the Anabaptists.[7]
Simons had no use for the violence advocated and practiced by the Münster movement, which seemed to him to pervert the very heart of Christianity.[7] Thus, Mennonite pacifism is not merely a peripheral characteristic of the movement, but rather belongs to the very essence of Menno's understanding of the gospel; this is one of the reasons that it has been a constant characteristic of all
Mennonite bodies through the centuries.[7] In addition to the Anabaptists, other Radical Reformation movements have been identified. Notably, George
Huntston Williams, the great categorizer of the Radical Reformation, considered early forms of Unitarianism (such as that of the Socinians, and exemplified by Michael
Servetus as well as the Polish Brethren), and other trends that disregarded the Nicene christology still accepted by most Christians, as part of the Radical Reformation. With Michael Servetus (1511–1553) and Faustus
Socinus (1539–1604) anti-Trinitarianism came to the foreground.[8] • Religious Society of Friends, a later group influenced by the Radical Reformation