The devil did not want to serve, He was envy of our creation. The Devil is not trying to conquer God ( as that would be stupid) but conquer US!
Wisdom 2:24
Revised Standard Version (RSV)
24 but through the devil’s envy death entered the world, and those who belong to his party experience it.
Jeremiah 2:20
New American Standard Bible (NASB)
20 “For long ago [a]I broke your yoke And tore off your bonds; But you said, ‘I will not serve!’ For on every high hill And under every green tree You have lain down as a harlot.
Isaiah 14:12-14
New American Standard Bible (NASB)
12 “How you have fallen from heaven, O [a]star of the morning, son of the dawn! You have been cut down to the earth, You who have weakened the nations! 13 “But you said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God, And I will sit on the mount of assembly In the recesses of the north. 14 ‘I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’
Martin Luther, Mr. 95 theses. A man who set to reform the Church, but ended up changing history and the Church of God.
One must find it interesting from the Church's side, that the Counter Reformation gave way not to great effects in Europe, but it sprawled Catholicism to Egypt, India and to the wider globe.
Some of the great Saints came from the Counter Reformation: St. Ignatius of Loyola and St. Francis of Xavier, St. Theresa of Alva and St. John of the Cross.
What escapes most people, is that Luther wasn't alone in wanting to reform the Church. Much in the way of Vatican II, these things didn't just happen. There was dialogue and movements for decades upon decades before Luther wrote his 95 theses.
In fact, Luther considered himself a part of this dialogue which inspired him to do such a thing as write the 95 theses.
The answer of the Pope by censuring 41 of Luther's 95 in the papal bull Exsurge Domine (Arise O Lord), and the threat of excommunication caused the old monk to respond and his followers to respond even more zealously.
Also, much misconstrued is that being excommunicated is not being condemned to hell. Condemning one to hell is not a Catholic practice, but warning one to the potential of being damned is certainly a practice. Excommunication, however, is setting one outside the Church. In Catholicism, all can be redeemed, no one is condemned to hell, repentence is always welcomed. As an aside, which is very important for those who criticize the Church on modern questions of morality to understand that there is always opportunity for redemption.
When the 95 theses was written, Luther was very happy to consider himself as a member of the Church. It could be benefitial to hear a bit more on the council of Trent by Fr. Robert Barron of ''Word on Fire.'' Coucil of Trent of course is the council which answered Luther's movement and propositions.
Today, Lutherans and Catholics are close in theology- Of course, not as close as the Eastern Orthodox and the Catholic Church. In fact, only the Anglicans are the protestants who have the closest reltionship to Roman Catholicism. But to any effect, the religions in most regards are still very similiar. In fact, seems as though I have recently read that dialogue between the two have really been rather fruitful in the most recent of times.
Essentially, what Martin Luther did was to simplify the religion and scaled the religion back from any honor to any saint or Mary. do Catholcis worship Saints or Mary?
Just logically, it seems to make sense to make the religion more Christ-centric. Catholics would say that Jesus would want us to honor His Mother, just as He would have by following the commandment of honoring thy mother and father, and although there are no commandments to honor the dead and the saints, this follows the jewish faith and is biblical as in Revelation 5:8, where John depicts the
saints in heaven offering our prayers to God under the form of "golden
bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints."
But anyway, that is the school grade depiction of Lutheranism. There are more interesting, more full assets to Lutheran's theology which are a deeper reflection into what Jesus dying on the cross means and of which can be used to support his doctrines of Sola Fide and Sola Gratia. There is more to Luther than Romans 3 : 28 which is the foundational verse of Sola Fide.
Essentially, Luther has a very dour view of human nature. He famously or infamously spent hours in the confessional. Not so much because he sinned so much, but because he felt himself so unworthy to live up to God's call and God's Will. This view and experience certainly affected his theology as a theologian.
He celebrated when in Romans 3, he read into the passage that he was saved by faith, and not works. This relieved his sorrowful soul.
This idea of faith alone is more understood when one understands the major divide amongst Catholics and Luther, Protestants on the idea of grace.
In Catholicism, there are two types of grace, actual grace and sanctifying grace.
Sanctifying grace is grace which makes one soul pure, ready for Heaven. Actual grace is the grace we feel which helps us in our faith and our trials. Actual grace is God's interventions. The grace we usually speak of when we say that God pushed me in the right direction.
In Lutheranism and Protestantism, all is finished by the work of grace on the cross. Once one repents or accepts God in their heart, they are justified by faith. Lutheranism and many structured protestants hold to baptism, other protestant churches such as the Baptist and born-again Evangelicals do not.
Luther compared human nature to cow dung, and God's grace covered the foul nature of humanity with his grace as snow would cover cow dung on a field. This is how Luther described the working of grace from the cross.
Below, you will see two charts which clarifies even more clearly Luther's theology. For Luther there are two rhealms (I believe this is derived from St. Augustine's the City of God and City of Man), one of God, the Divine, and one of Man, the natural or physical.
The one of God is spiritual. It is what makes men saintly when they are spiritually aware of Jesus and God's Will. Man understands God's Will by following the Gospels.
The one of Man is natural, temporal and finite. It is one where the law is so man can set boundaries and thus are imprisoned. Because there is imprisonment, there is sin, as sin keeps man away from God and are slaves onto themselves. They are captive in nature and to their own nature. Only God's sanctifying grace can come down and save man from this nature. Which would be why God came down as man, to bring Himself into the realm of man, into sin, to destroy the imprisonment and nature of sin.
So being, according to Luther, Man is both always a saint and a sinner at the same time, never less or more of the other. One can not be holier than another Christian. This is the essence of Luther, and how he came to understand the work on the cross and the nature of man.
Here I must ask. Is this actually biblical? The word holy means ''to separate.'' So something 'holy' means it is separate, unique. So for Luther only Divine things can be holy, not natural things. Did God not tell Moses to be careful, that Moses was standing on 'Holy' ground, and ground of course being a natural place of natural sediment and soil. We have another example in the burning bush.
Moving on, here is the dichotemy of God and nature in a diagram.
Whatever you think of this dichotomy, there are apparently claims made which say that Lutherans have a theology which is best. I suspect this is said in protestant circles without Catholic consideration.
No matter what you may think of the theology as best, or whatever you think of the ideas in his theology at all.
The practicality of the theology is extremely weak.
I believe Luther himself wouldn't like what has transpired in the church which carries his teachings. It is of course his own fault. If we are always saints and sinners, then to him that means we have nothing to work towards which alleviates works, as he perceives is the intent of Romans 3: 28.
But yet! Luther has kept all the traditions of the saints who were before the reformation. If we are all saints and sinners, and can not become more holy, then how does he justify keeping saints of his time?
But even more, this dichotomy makes for great confusion. I have come to this realisation by listening to a Lutheran theologian who couldn't answer some of the most basic questions.
Such as, ''Do we need to go to Church.''
He says this is a hard question! He says he would suspect that grace from God would motivate us to want to go to Church, but if it is required for salvation, he didn't really say for sure. To me, I could hear in his voice, technically you are not saved by going to church, but if people didn't go to church, why do we need priest and ministers and buildings to start with. So it is in the interest of the church to promote going to church to keep the faith going. As you see, this is a pickle for the practicality of the faith, going to church doesn't help anything, and doesn't hurt anything. Eventually, people will figure this out, and in today's world, choose to tend to more practical or more entertaining things.
And that actually brings another dimension to Luther's theology. Free Will. The only free will we possess is before we have faith and are justified. After we cling to the Lord's Word, our free will is affected. He has eliminated free will, because everything we do in God's graces is not works, but God's grace working in us. That is, one doesn't go to mass by choice, but the grace we receive has guided us to church, thereby not from our will and not freely.
In Luther's writing ''On the Bondage of the Will,'' Luther describes humans as a horse, and if God is the rider, He leads us to salvation, if the devil rides us, damnation.
Which I don't think is ultimately the best metaphor for Luther, because the horse is cooperating, and Luther does not believe in any type of human cooperation in salvation. It is all God.
But the idea is imprisonment, bondage, and in this bondage we are incapable of working on our own rescue, our own salvation. Thus, we have no will in our destination, thus no free will.
So being, one does not do anything for God, but God does it all for us. Once one has faith in God and can claim justification, the grace from the work on the cross brings you into doing God's work, which one can assert takes away free will. By being saved, we are losing a piece of our free will.
Which contradicts the angels, who are in heaven, the good ones anyway, but they have free will. If they did not have free will, Lucifer would never have freely gone against God. Of course, in today's Lutheranism, it is debatable if angels exist. Aside from the debate on the existence of angels, the angels are in play to many Lutherans still, and they are a case where they are in the graces of God and still have free will, yet it is propositioned that man is saved in a way where free will doesn't really exist after the fact.
So my two greatest inference is that Luther's theology is not the best, it is a travesty!
1) The saint / sinner dichotomy leaves for no easy answer for what the Religion thus teaches about morality and activity.
2) We are saved not only by faith, we are saved only by the works of God, we are not in control of our actions which I find very much wayward and untrue.
Maybe if one cares to, they can listen to the link below, and discover the complications in answering the simplest questions of this Great theology which only took 400 years for modernity to increasingly complicate things.
Scholars, Catholic scholars mostly, like to say, ''Luther took one pope away and made millions.''
Possibly no greater example of modernity causing great disorder in Lutheranism exists in Scandinavia. In Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, Lutheranism is the state religion (Well, no longer in Sweden). Each have freedom of religion but through their monarchies still sponsor the state religion of their Lutheran Church. In the case of same-sex marriage, it took an act of the parliament to claim the right for same-sex couples to marry in the churches. So the authority has become the state. What would Luther think? He took away the pope, and people of his persuasion are using civil authorities to determine church matters.
Okay, so not the best case, a drastically radical case of modernism causing disorder in the Lutheran Church in 400 years.
