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1995, Journal of Law and Religion
This Article documents how and why the sixteenth-century Lutheran Reformation helped to build the modern public education system of the West. Rejecting the medieval tradition of church education primarily for and by the clergy, Martin Luther argued that all Christians need to be educated to be able to read the Bible on their own, to participate fully in the life of the church, state, and society, and to prepare for their distinct vocations. Lutheran Germany and Scandinavia thus set up public schools as "civic seminaries," in Philip Melanchthon's apt phrase, designed to offer general spiritual and civic education for all. In early modern Lutheran lands, the state replaced the church as the chief educator of the community, and free basic education with standard curricula was made compulsory for all children, boys and girls alike. The Article offers case studies of new German city and territorial laws on education on the books and in action, and it reflects on the enduring significance of this early experiment in education even in our day.
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2017, Law and Justice: A Christian Law Review
The Lutheran Reformation transformed not only theology and the church but law and the state as well. Beginning in the 1520s, Luther joined up with various jurists and political leaders to craft ambitious legal reforms of church, state, and society on the strength of the new Protestant theology. These legal reforms were defined and defended in hundreds of monographs, pamphlets, and sermons published by Luther and his many followers from the 1520s onward. They were refined and routinized in hundreds of new reformation ordinances promulgated by German polities that converted to the Lutheran cause. By the time of the Peace of Augsburg (1555)--the imperial law that temporarily settled the constitutional order of Germany--the Lutheran Reformation had brought fundamental changes to theology and law, to church and state, marriage and family, education and charity.
2017
D I C T I ONA R Y of LUTHER and the Lutheran Traditions
Matthias Flacius Illyricus is reputed to have been one of the most influential Croatian humanists and theologians of the 16 th century. Through his numerous works, he gave an efficient theological, philosophical, historical, linguistic and educational contribution to European cultural history. Besides a concise review of Flacius' life, the article discusses the truth as Flacius' starting point in his arguments and in life in general. Then it focuses on Flacius' spiritual/ theological struggle for the freedom of the church which contributed greatly to the defeat of the pro-Catholic politics of Emperor Charles V and the survival of the Lutheran tradition of the Reformation in the German countries.
2018
Christian apologetics is the defense of the Christian faith. It can take many forms: philosophical, polemical, scientific, and Scriptural along with others forms as well. It has existed since New Testament times and grew as a discipline in both the Patristic and Medieval periods of the Christian Church. When apologetics were done in early Lutheranism, polemics were often intertwined. In the days of the Reformation, it usually wasn’t enough to defeat your opponent with cool, reasoned logic; the conventions of that day often required you to swing at your opponent with a ‘brick bat’ as well. Lutheranism, from its inception has been an apologetically active Church. Martin Luther's speech at the Diet of Worms, The Augsburg Confession, it's Apology and the Smalcald Articles, Chemnitz's Examination of the Council of Trent and Chemnitz and Andreae’s Catalog of Testimonies defended the pure Gospel against the errors of Calvin, Islam, Judaism, Rome, various sectarians and superstition. As the Reformation progressed, Lutheranism continued to face various challenges. It persevered in responding to Roman Catholicism, Calvinism and fanatical groups such as the Anabaptists on one hand and non-Christian groups such as Judaism and Islam on the other. Luther himself responded to all of these, some to a lesser degree, others to a greater degree.
The question addressed in Part One is whether Martin Luther's Small Catechism was ever used as Luther intended, and the research considered Reformation era Germany and in North America. How the Catechism represents a tool to be used to address our post modern context is addressed in Part Two.
Recent literature has cited the importance of union with Christ in Calvin’s theology, however, little scholarly research is devoted to discovering the historical and theological factors contributing to the growth and integrity of this doctrine within Calvin’s theology, especially the relationship of this doctrine to Calvin’s doctrine of the duplex gratia (double grace) of salvation in justification and sanctification. This thesis will investigate John Calvin’s development and defense of his doctrine of union with Christ against the backdrop of the ‘antinomian’ question raised by Luther’s formulation of justification and good works. The first chapter addresses the historical context of the Lutheran-Catholic controversy over the place of good works in salvation and ensuing impasse with a view to understanding the theological context in which Calvin found himself. Calvin’s perception of the social context in Geneva preceding his exile in Strasbourg and the formative work accomplished—a commentary on Romans and revision of the Institutes—provide the immediate backdrop for his creative formulation of the duplex gratia grounded in union with Christ. Based on the importance Calvin accorded to Paul, especially the epistle to the Romans, chapter two traces Calvin’s development of union with Christ from the 1536 Institutes and the Strasbourg exile through his later commentaries to the final edition of the Institutes in 1559 as expansions on an initial Pauline theme. Finally, the integrity of Calvin’s doctrine of union with Christ and the success with which it responded to the Lutheran impasse is addressed through an investigation of three influential controversies Calvin engaged in: his debate with Pighius over free will, the Eucharistic controversies with Westphal and his response to Osiander in his 1559 Institutes. From the perspective of Calvin’s historical and theological environment early in his career, his doctrine union with Christ takes on a new shape as the doctrine necessary for allowing the ‘distinction without separation’ of justification and sanctification in salvation.
2019, Celio Secondo Curione as a reformed pedagogue
2002, Caritas et Reformatio: Essays in Honor of Carter Lindberg, ed. David M. Whitford
This essay, dedicated to Professor Lindberg in admiration and appreciation, introduces one such Lutheran jurist, Johannes Eisermann (ca. 1485-1558). Eisermann, a former student of Philipp Melanchthon, was the founding law professor of the new Evangelical University of Marburg and counselor to one of the strongest Lutheran princes of the day, Landgrave Philipp of Hesse. He took the new evangelical theology to heart and sought to translate it into new legal terms, both statutory and theoretical. Particularly important was Eisermann's work on the origin, nature, and purpose of a Christian commonwealth, which was first published in 1533. This was one of the first detailed statements of evangelical legal and political theory, and it anticipated many of the more famous political formulations of Protestant writers in the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Reformation and mission are not unconnected concepts. According to Luther, every single person, being a helpless sinner in the eyes of God, needs to hear God’s word as law and gospel. The church’s mission finds its source, content, and strength in the missio Dei, God’s mission to save the lost. The Christian church’s mission on earth is to preach and lend credibility to its proclamation through Christians’ witness of a new life of evangelical freedom. Church doctrine and real-life practice of one’s Christian identity converge on the mission field, that is, in Christians’ daily life of witness as they fulfil their human callings in the new freedom of evangelical faith.
The Jewish Decalogue has not only been depicted in the Qur'an of the Middle Ages, but also was transmitted into the early modern era. The teaching of the Decalogue was one of the major biblical sources the 16th century reformist people adopted to defend their new religious movement against the Medieval Catholic tradition. In particular, when Martin Luther led a new protestant church, he wrote a clear commentary of the new faith in the form of two catechisms in 1529. The Small Catechism was for training of children. The Large Catechism was an institutional manual for pastors or teachers. The German reformer independently applied the Exodus version (20:17) of the Decalogue in the Large Catechism. Then, how did Luther use the Decalogue in the light of his reformation campaign? How has his metaphorical discourse been revealed on the Decalogue? This paper explores the textual genre and historical context of the Reformation teaching in unveiling Luther's religio-political intention over the authority and power of the traditional papacy.
The Jewish Decalogue has not only been depicted in the Qur’an of the Middle Ages (Surah Anaam [6: 151-153] and Surah Isra [17: 23-39]), but also was transmitted into the early modern era. The teaching of the Decalogue was one of the major biblical sources the 16th century reformist people adopted to defend their new religious movement against the Medieval Catholic tradition. In particular, when Martin Luther led a new protestant church, he wrote a clear summary of the new faith in the form of two catechisms in 1529. The Small Catechism was for training of children. The Large Catechism was an institutional manual for pastors or teachers. The German reformer independently applied the Exodus version (20:17) of the Decalogue in the Large Catechism. Then, how did Luther use the Decalogue in the light of his reformation campaign? How has his metaphorical discourse been revealed on the Decalogue? This paper explores the textual genre and historical context of the Reformation teaching in unveiling Luther’s religio-political intention over the authority and power of the traditional papacy.
2017, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion
The Lutheran reformation transformed not only theology and the church but law and the state as well. Beginning in the 1520s, Luther joined up with various jurists and political leaders to craft ambitious legal reforms of church, state, and society on the strength of Luther’s new theology. These legal reforms were defined and defended in hundreds of monographs, pamphlets, and sermons published by Lutheran writers from the 1520s to 1550s. They were refined and routinized in hundreds of new reformation ordinances promulgated by German cities, duchies, and territories that converted to the Lutheran cause. By the time of the Peace of Augsburg (1555) -- the imperial law that temporarily settled the constitutional order of Germany--the Lutheran Reformation had brought fundamental changes to theology and law, to church and state, marriage and family, education and charity. Critics of the day, and a steady stream of theologians and historians ever since, have seen this legal phase of the Reformation as a corruption of Luther’s original message of Christian freedom from the strictures of human laws and traditions. But Luther ultimately realized that he needed the law to stabilize and enforce the new Protestant teachings. Radical theological reforms had made possible fundamental legal reforms. Fundamental legal reforms, in turn, would make palpable radical theological reforms. In the course of the 1530s onwards, the Lutheran Reformation became in its essence both a theological and a legal reform movement. It struck new balances between law and Gospel, rule and equity, order and faith, structure and spirit.
2007, Cambridge History of Christianity
A synthesis of the historical context and examination of the distinctive elements of the theology and liturgy of Reformed Christianity in a broad European context in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
In the generations following the Lutheran Reformation, numerous service books and liturgical manuals conforming to the new “evangelical” faith were printed throughout Germany: Lucas Lossius’s Psalmodia (Nuremberg, 1553), Johannes Keuchenthal’s Kirchengesenge lateinisch und deutsch (Wittenberg, 1573), and Franz Eler’s Cantica sacra (Hamburg, 1588), among others. Most were large, encyclopedic volumes in Latin that contained liturgical chant for the entire year. Besides assisting cantors and choirs in singing the liturgy, however, service books were educational documents designed to complement the curriculum of the Latin schools, whose students and teachers sang church services daily. Extensive rubrics and marginalia explained the theological significance of chant texts, while additional paraliturgical music—usually German or Latin paraphrases of liturgical texts, often in parts—complemented the core plainchant of the liturgy. In accordance with Martin Luther’s retention of Latin for educational purposes (articulated in the Deutsche Messe, 1526), service books mobilized the liturgy itself in honing children’s skills in Latin, music, and theology. These books shed much light on the pedagogical role of the early Protestant liturgy vis-à-vis the humanistic curriculum of the Latin school. In this regard, the paraliturgical items shall receive particular attention as the clearest intersection points of liturgy, learning, and music, and are situated in contemporary traditions of pedagogical paraphrase literature (including Georg Major’s Latin paraphrase of Luther’s catechism and George Buchanan’s versifications of the Psalter). On the material level, I liken such additions to the miscellaneous vernacular devotional material appended to Catholic service books and breviaries—a comparison that reveals similar organizational strategies in Catholic and Protestant liturgical works.
2015, A Companion to the Reformation in Central Europe
In: A Companion to the Reformation in Central Europe [Brill's Companions to the Christian Tradition 61], Leiden / Boston, 2015, 153-161.
2013
Early Lutheran educational reforms carried out the educational vision of Martin Luther and were consistent with his thought. Humanistic concerns deeply influenced Melanchthon's educational reforms in lands allied with Wittenberg. Melanchthon's humanism was faithful to Luther's thought. Luther, like Melanchthon, reconciled Northern Renaissance Humanism and his evangelical theology. Luther's and Melanchthon's humanism was consistent with their theology insofar as they worked from a framework that distinguished between two kinds of righteousness. Melanchthon and Luther could uphold humanistic commitments as long as they did not encroach upon the doctrine of justiflcation.
This lecture examines three Protestant paradigms: the Reformation Paradigm of Luther and Calvin; the Renewal Paradigm of the Pietists and the Wesleys; and the Evangelical Paradigm of today. By the year 1700, Protestant Christianity had developed significantly new practices and understandings of the Christian faith that focused upon Christian renewal, conversion, new birth, and the coming millennial kingdom. These new practices and understandings were a dramatic departure from the original Reformation convictions of Martin Luther and John Calvin some one hundred and fifty years earlier. Evangelical Christianity today is the contemporary expression of the Pietist Renewal Paradigm. Most Evangelicals are unaware that their Christian experience and piety are far removed from Reformation Protestant beginnings of Luther and Calvin. Evangelicals would do well to recover their lost heritage.
2003
Irish protestantism has always been in a minority, but a minority which has decisively shaped Irish religious and political identities. This article traces the development of Irish protestantism, including the Church of Ireland, the Presbyterian church and the dissenting churches, from the Reformation up to the late twentieth century.
2018, Heikki Pihlajamäki, Markus Dubber & Mark Godfrey, eds., The Oxford Handbook of European Legal History
The sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation revolutionized not only theology and the church, but also law and the state. This northern European reform movement, though divided into Lutheran, Anabaptist, Anglican, and Calvinist branches, collectively broke the international rule of the medieval Catholic Church and its canon law, and permanently splintered Western Christendom into competing nations and regions. The Reformation also triggered a massive shift of power, property, and prerogative from the church to the state. Protestant states now assumed jurisdiction over numerous subjects and persons previously governed by the medieval church, and they gave new legal form to Protestant teachings. But these new Protestant laws also drew heavily on the medieval ius commune as well as on earlier biblical and Roman jurisprudence. This chapter analyses the new legal syntheses that emerged in Protestant lands, with attention to the new laws of church-state relations, religious and civil freedom, marriage and family law, education law, social welfare law, and accompanying changes in legal and political philosophy.
2017
On the 31st October 1517 Martin Luther published his Ninety-Five Theses in which he criticised the sale of indulgences by the Roman Catholic Church. This date is considered the beginning of the Reformation. While the Protestant Reformers are widely praised for the rediscovery of the biblical gospel, they have come under fire regarding their views on mission. There are church historians and missiologists who argue that the Protestant Reformers were not interested in mission and, in fact, ignored the mission mandate which Christ had given to his Church. However, a closer study of Luther, Calvin, Bucer, and Melanchthon, shows that the critics miss both the Reformers’ commitment to practical mission work and their missiological contributions. The critics seem to overlook the fact that cities, such as Geneva and Wittenberg, in which the Reformers lived, studied and taught, served as hubs of a huge missionary enterprise. Thousands of preachers went out from these centres of the Reformation to spread the gospel all over Europe. Leading Scandinavian theologians, such as Mikael Agricola, Olaus Petri, or Hans Tausen, had all studied under Luther and Melanchthon in Wittenberg before they began their reform work in their home countries. Furthermore, with their re-discovery of the gospel of justification by faith alone, their emphasis on the personal character of faith in Christ, their radical re-interpretation of the priesthood, their recognition of God’s authorship of mission, their reminder that the witness to the gospel takes place in the midst of a spiritual battle, and their insistence that the Bible has to be available in common languages, the Protestant Reformers laid down important principles for the mission work of the church which are still valid today.
This essay asks the question, is it useful to approach the Reformation as a phase in a linear chronology, a movement away from the Middle Ages? On the example of Matthias Flacius Illyricus and the formation of Lutheran identity in the third quarter of the sixteenth century, I argue that Protestants had a vested interest in the continuity of their beliefs with medieval thought and culture. The familiar idea of a medieval-Reformation rupture is largely an invention of the nineteenth century. The research of recent decades, which I survey, has shown the limitations of this idea. I conclude with a proposal for seeing cultural change within multiple, overlapping chronologies.
2014, The Legal Teachings of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations, ed. Wim Dekock
This Article analyzes the transformation of Western legal philosophy in the sixteenth-century Lutheran Reformation, with a focus on the legal thought of theologian Martin Luther, moral philosopher Philip Melanchthon, and legal theorist Johann Oldendorp. Starting with Luther's two kingdoms theory, Melanchton developed an intricate theory of natural law based not only on the law written on the hearts of all persons, but also on the law rewritten in the Decalogue, whose two tables provided the founding principles of religious law and civil law respectively. Building on both Luther and Melanchthon, Oldendorp developed an original theory of equity and equitable law making and law enforcement as part of a broader biblical-based theory of natural law. Together these writers, laid the foundations for a new legal, political, and social theory which dominated Lutheran Germany and Scandinavia for the next three centuries.
The article discusses how the authors of sixteenth-century Polish Catholic and Evangelical catechisms perceived and analysed the notion of " the Church ". Following the Tridentine programme, the Catholic authors present their Church as unified under the Pope's authority and the only inheritor of the works of the Apostles. The veracity of its teaching is testified to with God's unnatural interventions – miracles. Protestant theologians teach about " the visible and outward Church " , which exists whenever the pure Word of God is preached and where sacraments are administered in accordance with the Holy Writ. Alongside the Visible Church, there exists " the invisible and inward Church " that unites all those following Christ, who is the one and only head of the Church.
2012, Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Matthias Flacius Illyricus, Labin/Croatia, 2010
2017, Sixteenth Century Journal
Europe faces an uncertain future at the very time we are commemorating 500 years since the beginning of the Reformation. This article argues that the Reformation can be an inspiration for the churches of Europe as an example of a flawed, but serious attempt to provide a new vision of communal life, by facing a number of challenges faced by early modern Europe, challenges that have distinct echoes to the challenges faced by Europeans today.
2013, Hungarian Historical Review 2 (2013:1) 3-34
The spatial framework of this study is the strip of towns lying in the region that used to be known as Upper Hungary (today Slovakia), communities that in the sixteenth century had German speaking minorities. At the time in question, there were numerous events and historical texts in which one can discern the use of a new ecclesiastical language. These sources are given voice with the help of philological methods, for instance intertextual analysis. A letter written by Bartholomeus Francfordinus Pannonius in 1522 constitutes the first example of church language reform in Hungary, though his words exemplify more the linguistic tendencies of Humanism than of the Reformation. A letter written by Mary of Habsburg in 1523 demonstrates the queen’s interest in and understanding of religious reformation, but also her desire to maintain her distance as sovereign. According to the views revealed during the inquest against alleged heretics in Sopron in 1524, traditional Franciscan criticism of the Church had intermingled with ideas deriving from Lutheran thought. At the time of the mining town revolt (1525), miners used (for instance) Saint Paul’s apostolic greeting (Romans 1:7) as a sign of difference and usually included them in the introductory section of letters to their comrades. As the sources make evident, the apostolic greeting served as a form of identification within the Evangelical Movement. These textual analyses illustrate the significant impact of the Reformation in Hungary in the period before the Battle of Mohács (1526).
The collection is divided into six parts. The first offers two brief personal notes on Jim Estes the teacher and scholar; Andrew Colin Gown draws upon his memories to provide us with a student’s perspective on Estes as a teacher while James K. McConica recalls and describes Jim’s involvement in the Collected Works of Erasmus in English project. After these brief personal notes, the volume switches gear and proceeds with a number of scholarly contributions touching on the Reformation (mostly Protestant, but in some cases also Catholic) and four of its major figures – Erasmus, Luther, Melanchthon, and Brenz, the four principal subjects in Estes’s own scholarship. Contents: Introduction, Konrad Eisenbichler I. James M. Estes, Teacher and Scholar “A Student’s Recollection,” Andrew Colin Gow “James M. Estes and the Collected Works of Erasmus,” James McConica II. Friendship and Collaboration “Brenz and Melanchthon – Friends from Youth,” Heinz Sheible “Face-to-Face Meetings between Philip Melanchthon and Johannes Brenz: Differentiated Consensus in the Reformation,” Timothy J. Wengert “Erasmus of Rotterdam in Print: The Question of Reputation (1514-1521),” Valentina Sebastiani “‘For What Has Erasmus to Do with Money?’ Desiderius Erasmus, a Paragonic Fund-Raiser,” Susan C. Karant-Nunn “Wolfgang Capito and Erasmus: The Rapprochement of 1535,” Erika Rummel III. Reforming the People and the Church “Erasmian Reform and Education in the Dutchy of Jülich-Berg,” Nicole Kuropka “The History of Johannes Brenz’s Territorial Church: An Overview of the Organization of the Württemberg Church,” Hermann Ehmer “Reorganizing the Pastorate: Innovations and Challenges in the French Reformed Churches,” Raymond A. Mentzer “The Label of Erasmus, the Doctrine of Luther,” Silvana Seidel Menchi “Johann Herolt and Thomas Stapleton: Two Northern Influences on Preaching in the Diocese of Novara,” Thomas Deutscher IV. The Polemics of the Reformation “Too Little, Too Late: The Erasmus-Luther Debate,” Scott H. Hendrix “‘Things I Never Said or Thought’? Erasmus’ Exegetical Contribution to the Early Eucharistic Controversy,” Amy Nelson Burnett “The ‘Three Kingdoms’ of Simon Musaeus: A Wittenberg Student Processes Luther’s Thought,” Robert Kolb V. Catholic Opponents of Erasmus and Luther “Erasmus’ Controversy with Agostino Steuco,” Charles E. Fantazzi “Slow and Cautious: The Origins of Printed Polemics by Paris Theologians Against Luther and Lutheranism (1519-1523),” Mark Crane “The Attitudes of the Jesuits Toward Erasmus,” Paul F. Grendler VI. The Search for Religious Peace “Religion in the Religious Peace Agreements of the Early Modern Period: Comparative Case Studies,” Irene Dingel
2018, Sententiae 37:1 (2018) 087-109
In this article, a comparison is drawn between the hermeneutical strategies of the radical and magisterial branches of the Reformation. The author detects the peculiarities of the hermeneutical principles and ways of understanding the biblical text which were offered by Menno Simons, a recognized Anabaptist leader, and compares these principles and ways with their counterparts practiced by Luther and other figures of the classical Reformation. Although the radical reformers did not create a holistic theology, their interpretative strategy is quite significant for understanding the phenomenon of the “Protestant hermeneutics.” Menno Simons’ interpretative system is rarely mentioned in the contemporary historical/philosophical and theological discussions. The author of this article argues that such omission is caused by the domination of one-dimensional stereotypes: the overwhelming majority of the researchers who speak about the Protestant hermeneutics tend to present this area as narrowed and somewhat impoverished as they reduce it to the hermeneutics of Luther and Calvin. The article demonstrates that Menno Simons developed an applied interpretative strategy borrowed from some examples found in the Gospels. This hermeneutical system was founded upon the theocentric idea of personal Revelation and living Presence and thus inevitably led to: (1) “the Bible interprets itself” principle; (2) the search for “the clear meaning of the Scripture” – something that could be different from the original meaning. An interpretative model developed as the result was based on: (a) a holistic approach, (b) applied hermeneutics, (c) corporate hermeneutics, (d) hermeneutics of obedience. Thus it is possible to speak about an independent approach that has an important place in the history of the Protestant hermeneutics.
The Reformation shaped the practices of churches, missions and schools for the next five hundred years. It was through Lutheran churches and schools that the influence of the Reformation was brought to remote regions, including the first linguistic work in the Indigenous languages of South Australia and the Northern Territory. This paper explores the influence of Martin Luther and the Lutheran Reformation on the linguistic practices of the missionaries in Central Australia who undertook the first Bible translations into Australian Aboriginal languages.
2017, temp – tidsskrift for historie
The first signs of Luther’s Reformation appeared in Hungary in 1521/22. The Diets of 1523 and 1525 each dedicated an article to the sanctioning of the new heresy. Language barriers constituted a major obstacle in the spreading of the ideas in Hungary also. The first reformers were without exception German natives or German speakers, and people living in a German speaking environment. Before 1526, four centres of the Reformation were formed in Hungary: Sopron, Buda (with the royal court), mining towns in Northern Hungary and royal free cities in the Northeast region. Moving from the western to the eastern part of the country the signs of the Reformation became more sparse and originate in a later period. Until 1526 the teachings of the Reformation only spread in an urban, German speaking environment. According to the works of the Hungarian speaking reformer Matthias Dévai, the Hungarian ethnic group was clearly only receptive to the theological interpretation of the 1526 defeat at Mohács, namely the critique of the veneration of saints. Patron saints, relics, saint kings, and even Mary the Patrona Hungariae failed against the Turks. The state ideology and symbolic representation based on them wavered. Thus the questioning of the cult of saints gives a theological answer to the political and military situation of the country and its identity crisis. The veneration of saints was the most frequent, most important issue in the heretic investigation files originating from this period.
Justice, civil morality and criminal law reforms were transformative and well documented principles in the Reformation. Efforts to export these behavioural and relational norms were fundamental to the 16th century socio-political education movement. Along with all other Protestant reformation neighbourhoods, Lutherans promoted universal literacy and developed a good public school system. Reformers rejected the sacrament of penance and its underlying rationale for extracting confessions through physical torture of defendants. They emphasized instead, the importance of transforming leadership, strengthening civic morality, and rehabilitating convicted offenders. These academic, cultural and theological imperatives continue to impact reformers 500 years later.
2018, Jurnal teologic, Vol. 17/1
The public display of Martin Luther's 95 theses on the door of the Wittenberg castle chapel, in his sincere desire to reform the Church in which he was a member and serving, namely the Roman Catholic Church, was thus a reason to create serious implications in the theological, socio-political, and even economic sphere within the society of that time. The implications of displaying the theses were not limited to Germany, but they crossed the borders of the empire to neighboring countries as well. Thus, the Lutheran ideas came to Transylvania through the books of merchants as well as of students returned from studies in some university centers of Europe. The one to whom the merit of placing Lutheran ideas in a work that revolutionized the Saxon Catholic environment was the scholar Johannes Honterus, who was rightly considered to have been a Lord's evangelist in the Transylvanian lands.