Martin Luther
Martin Luther (1483–1546), an Augustinian priest and biblical scholar, was disgusted by what Chris- tianity had become in his day. Like many other humanists, his view of Christianity was much more in accordance with St. Paul’s and St. Augustine’s than with those of St. Thomas Aquinas. Human intentions are inspired either by God or by Satan: The former results in doing God’s work, the lat- ter in sin. People should not be able to escape the consequences of sin through penance or absolution; if they have sinned, they should suffer the conse- quences, which could be eternal damnation. In the spirit of Augustinian theology, Luther insisted on an intensely personal religion in which each person is answerable only to God, a religion that deempha- sized ritual and church hierarchy.
Traditionally, the Reformation is said to have begun on October 31, 1517, when Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses (challenges to church dogma and hierarchy) to the door of the cas- tle church in Wittenberg. Aside from the issues already mentioned, Luther was especially opposed to the Catholic church’s sale of indulgences, which allowed sinners to reduce the retribution for their sins by paying a fee to church officials. God alone, he preached, determined what was sinful and how sinfulness was to be treated. In Luther’s eyes, the church had drifted far from the teachings of Jesus and the Bible. Jesus had preached the glory of the simple life, devoid of luxury and privilege, but the church had come to value these things and to engage in too many formal rituals. For Luther, a major reason for the downfall of Catholicism was its assimilation of Aristotle’s philosophy.
