Mar­tin Luther - PBS Doc­u­men­tary - Part 1 of 2

• pub­lished: 19 May 2014
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Mar­tin Luther - PBS Doc­u­men­tary - Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 of 2: at http://​youtu.​be/​zK3iRNWUths Mar­tin Luther OSA (Ger­man: [ˈmaɐ̯tiːn ˈlʊtɐ] 10 Novem­ber 1483 -- 18 Febru­ary 1546) was a Ger­man monk, Catholic priest, pro­fes­sor of the­ol­o­gy and sem­i­nal fig­ure of the 16th-cen­tu­ry move­ment in Chris­tian­i­ty known later as the Protes­tant Re­for­ma­tion. He strong­ly dis­put­ed the claim that free­dom from God's pun­ish­ment for sin could be pur­chased with mon­e­tary val­ues. He con­front­ed in­dul­gence sales­man Jo­hann Tet­zel, a Do­mini­can friar, with his Nine­ty-Five The­ses in 1517. His re­fusal to re­tract all of his writ­ings at the de­mand of Pope Leo X in 1520 and the Holy Roman Em­per­or Charles V at the Diet of Worms in 1521 re­sult­ed in his ex­com­mu­ni­ca­tion by the Pope and con­dem­na­tion as an out­law by the Em­per­or. Luther taught that sal­va­tion and sub­se­quent­ly eter­ni­ty in heav­en is not earned by good deeds but is re­ceived only as a free gift of God's grace through faith in Jesus Christ as re­deemer from sin and sub­se­quent­ly eter­ni­ty in Hell.​His the­ol­o­gy chal­lenged the au­thor­i­ty of the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church by teach­ing that the Bible is the only source of di­vine­ly re­vealed knowl­edge from God and op­posed sac­er­do­tal­ism by con­sid­er­ing all bap­tized Chris­tians to be a holy priest­hood. Those who iden­ti­fy with these, and all of Luther's wider teach­ings, are called Luther­ans even though Luther in­sist­ed on Chris­tian as the only ac­cept­able name for in­di­vid­u­als who pro­fessed Christ. His trans­la­tion of the Bible into the ver­nac­u­lar (in­stead of Latin) made it more ac­ces­si­ble, which had a tremen­dous im­pact on the church and on Ger­man cul­ture. It fos­tered the de­vel­op­ment of a stan­dard ver­sion of the Ger­man lan­guage, added sev­er­al prin­ci­ples to the art of trans­la­tion, and in­flu­enced the writ­ing of an En­glish trans­la­tion, the Tyn­dale Bible. His hymns in­flu­enced the de­vel­op­ment of singing in church­es.[6] His mar­riage to Katha­ri­na von Bora set a model for the prac­tice of cler­i­cal mar­riage, al­low­ing Protes­tant priests to marry. In two of his later works, Luther ex­pressed an­tag­o­nis­tic views to­ward Jews, writ­ing that Jew­ish syn­a­gogues and homes should be de­stroyed, their money con­fis­cat­ed, and lib­er­ty cur­tailed. These state­ments and their in­flu­ence on an­ti-Semitism have con­tribut­ed to his con­tro­ver­sial sta­tus.[8] Mar­tin Luther died in 1546, still con­vinced of his Re­for­ma­tion the­ol­o­gy, and with his de­cree of ex­com­mu­ni­ca­tion by Pope Leo X still ef­fec­tive. On his deathbed, Luther was asked, 'Are you ready to die trust­ing in your Lord Jesus Christ and to con­fess the doc­trine which you have taught in his name?'. He an­swered, 'Yes' be­fore tak­ing his final breath.