Who was Martin Luther?
Martin Luther (1483–1546) was a German monk, theologian, and professor whose Ninety-Five Theses (1517) challenging Catholic Church practices sparked the Protestant Reformation. His doctrines of salvation by faith alone and the authority of Scripture alone, combined with his German Bible translation, permanently divided Western Christianity and reshaped European civilization.
Martin Luther was the most consequential religious figure since the apostles — the man whose protest against Church corruption shattered the unity of Western Christianity and launched the Protestant Reformation. Born in 1483 in Eisleben, Saxony, he was the son of a copper mine owner who wanted his son to become a lawyer.
Luther's path to theology was dramatic. Caught in a terrifying thunderstorm in 1505, he vowed to become a monk if he survived. He entered the Augustinian order and became a brilliant but tormented theologian, consumed by the question of how a sinful human being could ever be righteous before a just God. His breakthrough came through studying Paul's Epistle to the Romans — he concluded that salvation came through faith alone (sola fide), not through good works, sacraments, or papal authority.
The immediate trigger for the Reformation was the sale of indulgences — the Dominican friar Johann Tetzel was selling certificates that purportedly released souls from purgatory, with the proceeds funding the construction of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Luther's Ninety-Five Theses, posted on October 31, 1517, challenged this practice and the theological assumptions behind it. Thanks to the printing press, the Theses spread across Germany within weeks.
When the Church demanded he recant, Luther refused. At the Diet of Worms in 1521, standing before Emperor Charles V, he declared: 'Here I stand, I can do no other.' Protected by the Elector of Saxony, he spent the following years translating the Bible into German (a masterwork that shaped the German language) and developing his theology. He married a former nun, Katharina von Bora, establishing the model of the Protestant clergy family.
Luther's legacy is deeply complex. He championed individual conscience, Biblical literacy, and the critique of institutional authority. But he also endorsed the violent suppression of peasant revolts and wrote viciously anti-Jewish pamphlets. His revolution was both liberating and destructive — the wars of religion that followed killed millions. Yet his insistence that individuals could read and interpret Scripture for themselves was a profound step toward modern individualism and freedom of conscience.