Would Europe be better off, or worse, were it not for this man?

Would Europe be better off, or worse, were it not for this man?

Probably worse. The Catholic Church would have no motivation to spur counter reformation efforts, and Europe would essentially be stuck under the influence of the Catholics in their most corrupt and detrimental phase

his biggest influence was telling the bourgeois that they could get wealthy without feeling guilty or fearing going to hell.
It is impossible to think of the USA or modern Switzerland, Netherlands or England without Luther.

>Know that Marriage is an outward material thing like any other secular business.

>But the woman is free through the divine law and cannot be compelled to suppress her carnal desires. Therefore the man ought to concede her right and give up to somebody else the wife who is his only in outward appearance.

>Suppose I should counsel the wife of an impotent man, with his consent, to giver herself to another, say her husband’s brother, but to keep this marriage secret and to ascribe the children to the so-called putative father. The question is: Is such a women in a saved state? I answer, certainly

>I confess that I cannot forbid a person to marry several wives, for it does not contradict the Scripture. If a man wishes to marry more than one wife he should be asked whether he is satisfied in his conscience that he may do so in accordance with the word of God. In such a case the civil authority has nothing to do in the matter.

>Christ committed adultery first of all with the women at the well about whom St. John tell’s us. Was not everybody about Him saying: ‘Whatever has He been doing with her?’ Secondly, with Mary Magdalen, and thirdly with the women taken in adultery whom He dismissed so lightly. Thus even, Christ who was so righteous, must have been guilty of fornication before He died.

>I, Martin Luther, have during the rebellion slain al the peasants, for it was I who ordered them to be struck dead. All their blood is upon my head. But I put it all on our Lord God: for he commanded me to speak thus.

>To kill a peasant is not murder; it is helping to extinguish the conflagration. Let there be no half measures! Crush them! Cut their throats! Transfix them. Leave no stone unturned! To kill a peasant is to destroy a mad dog!

>Peasants are no better than straw. They will not hear the word and they are without sense; therefore they must be compelled to hear the crack of the whip and the whiz of bullets and it is only what they deserve.

Probably way fucking better. The Catholic Church wouldn't have degenerated into the weak political body that it is now and all of European civilization would have had the protection of a strong Church. If not for Luther, Christian Europe would have already converted the entire ummah, all of India, China and Japan by now.

>If I had to baptize a Jew, I would take him to the bridge of the Elbe, hang a stone round his neck and push him over with the words I baptize thee in the name of Abraham.

>Like the drivers of donkeys, who have to belabor the donkeys incessantly with rods and whips, or they will not obey, so must the ruler do with the people; they must drive, beat throttle, hang, burn, behead and torture, so as to make themselves feared and to keep the people in check.

>Moses is an executioner, a cruel lictor, a torturer a torturer who tears our flesh out with pincers and makes us suffer martyrdom . . . Whoever, in the name of Christ, terrifies and troubles consciences, is not the messenger of Christ, but of the devil . . . Let us therefore send Moses packing and for ever.

>It does not matter what people do; it only matters what they believe.

>If we allow them - the Commandments - any influence in our conscience, they become the cloak of all evil, heresies and blasphemies

>One should learn Philosophy only as one learns witchcraft, that is to destroy it; as one finds out about errors, in order to refute them

>It is more important to guard against good works than against sin.

>Reason is the Devil's handmaid and does nothing but blaspheme and dishonor all that God says or does.

>St. Augustine or St. Ambrosius cannot be compared with me.

>Then [Luther] was intelligent and took some steps forward justifying, and because he did this. And today Lutherans and Catholics, Protestants, all of us agree on the doctrine of justification. On this point, which is very important, he did not err. He made a medicine for the Church, but then this medicine consolidated into a state of things, into a state of a discipline, into a way of believing, into a way of doing, into a liturgical way and he wasn’t alone; there was Zwingli, there was Calvin, each one of them different, and behind them were who? Principals!

I like what he says about Jews

He was more fond of Muslims than Jews

>Martin Luther also took note of the similarities between Islam and Protestantism in the rejection of idols, although he noted Islam was much more drastic in its complete rejection of images. In On War against the Turk, Luther is actually less critical of the Turks than he is of the Pope, whom he calls an anti-Christ, or the Jews, whom he describes as "the Devil incarnate".[16] He urges his contemporaries to also see the good aspects in the Turks, and refers to some who were favourable to the Ottoman Empire, and "who actually want the Turk to come and rule, because they think that our German people are wild and uncivilized - indeed that they are half-devil and half-man".[17]

>Martin Luther's ambivalence also appears in one of his other comments, in which he said that "A smart Turk makes a better ruler than a dumb Christian".[15]

Luthor didn't create the currents or atmosphere that made the reformation possible. He rode a wave of popular discontentment that had been swelling for centuries.

If it wasn't Luthor it probably would have been someone else. The Catholic Church was unreasonably brittle and the impetus for change was growing.

I find reading Luther to be very refreshing. He's blunt, doesn't hide his true feelings, isn't shy about vulgarity, and likes to think "out loud." His table talks are really fun to read. His theologia crucis is one of the greatest contributions to Christian thought, and I wish Protestants hadn't by and large abandoned it.

Good point.

He really makes you think

Is is why Germany is so turkaboo?

Wow I had no idea about all this.

Luther was literally a monk who struiggle constalty with guilt and lust, and finally said, Fuck this shit, I'll be a stripper, and said works didn't matter just faith, and then sneaked a nun out of a convent and married her.

This, every time one of these threads pops up. The reformation (meaning the period of course) made Luther, as much as Luther made the reformation. Let's not forget Huss or Calvin, among others.

>It does not matter what people do; it only matters what they believe.

Don't forget that both in Greek and Latin, "belief" and "faith" are synonymous, the same word. Sola Fide could be just as properly rendered, "belief alone".

Francis will die soon, and he will be banished away like Alexander VI.

The Cardinals love Francis

>In 2014, addressing a question raised on the family, he argued that church doctrine can change over time, and "doesn't depend on the spirit of time but can develop over time." "Saying that the doctrine will never change is a restrictive view of things," Marx later clarified at a Vatican press conference. "The core of the Catholic Church remains the Gospel, but have we discovered everything? This is what I doubt."[12]

>We have to respect the decisions of people. We have to respect also, as I said in the first synod on the family — some were shocked, but I think it’s normal — you cannot say that a relationship between a man and a man, and they are faithful, [that] that is nothing, that has no worth,

>He said it was up to the state “to make regulations for homosexuals so they have equal rights or nearly equal . . . but marriage is another point,” adding that the state “has to regulate these partnerships and to bring them into a just position, and we as church cannot be against it

>The history of homosexuals in our societies is very bad because we’ve done a lot to marginalize [them],” he said, adding that as a Church and as a society “we’ve also to say ‘sorry, sorry.’

Gotta love this guy too, the Pope's right-hand man, and a very close friend of Benedict

>In April 2012, the election of a young gay man who was living in a registered same-sex partnership to a pastoral council in Vienna was vetoed by the parish priest. After meeting with the couple, Schönborn reinstated him. He later advised in a homily that priests must apply a pastoral approach that is "neither rigorist nor lax" in counselling Catholics who "don't live according to [God's] master plan".[38]

>Luther doesn't exist
>John Calvin becomes the primary reformer
>monarchies abolished errywhere
>science progresses faster
>everybody becomes more productive
>everybody becomes rich as fuck
>fun would be punishable by death
Yeah things would be better.

Isnt it the complete opposite? If catholics were allowed to continue then you could just bribe a priest to get into heaven.

Luther you didn't even have to do that, just faith it. And if your whole business is considered "usury" by the Catholic Church, this is a lot cheaper.

>ursury
Love this meme. A landlord is allowed to make a profit by letting other people use his property, why are we not allowed to make a profit by letting other people use our money?

I wish the Cathars weren't killed off. I find them fascinating.

Luther isnt directly responsible, but Calvinism made christianity go from "blessed are the poor for they will inherit the kingdom of heaven", to being wealthy being a proof that you were blessed by God and chosen by God.

Id advice you to google "Weber Protestant work ethic" and "prosperity gospel" the second is very common nowadays with pentecostals.

Catholics never saw poverty as absolutely bad because it helped you to save yourself, most religious orders did vows of poverty.

Bull fucking revisionist shit

Luther was insane but everything that happened was a result of Catholic corruption and deviation from their duties. Luther was a fervent supporter of the Church until he got to Rome and saw just how lavish, decadent and unchristian the upper echelon live their lives.

A tired fallacy by Max Weber. Applies maybe to the Scrooby congregation and other fringe groups, but not representative of the mainstream of Calvinism.

The only reason the myth has persisted is that very few Calvinists survived the Wars of Religion, so they can't really stick up for themselves or correct the record.

>fucking luther how dare he speak out against us and cause everyone to agree with him
>if he didn't criticize us then we'd be so amazing
I mean I don't even give a fuck but what's with these threads
it's hardly his fault the organization was full retard

Also it's not really Luther's fault. People were trying to speak out for centuries. It had to be someone, eventually. By all accounts, Luther didn't even intend to start a reformation in the first place, just wanted the Church to clarify some shit.

He was very much a product of the Church. We use "Catholic guilt" as a joke these days, but no one had mastered Catholic guilt as much as Luther had.

there are dozens of millions of calvinists, American Baptists are calvinists for example.

This x 10

Just be glad it was luther and not someone like Thomas Muntzer or John of Lieden.

>there are dozens of millions of calvinists
There aren't though.

In all of North America there are maybe half a million who are actually Calvinists (belong to a church that actually confesses one of the Reformed confessions). By comparison, there are about a million Calvinists in Nigeria. Fucking Nigeria.

Also, the American Baptists are very explicitly non-Calvinist. They're fucking Free Will Baptists. You may be thinking of the SBC, but even then, you'd be wrong. They have a sizeable "Calvinistic" faction but they stand in many ways outside of Calvinist theology. They've been having debates about doctrines that had already been settled in Calvinist circles for centuries.

You could be referring specifically to Reformed Baptists, but they are so incredibly few in number that you've probably never heard of them. And even those are decidedly un-Calvinist in their ecclesiology, sacramentology, and views regarding sanctification (which is most pertinent to Weber's proposition).

Or you may be referring to any of the offshoots or descendents of the Reformed tradition, including Arminians, Amyraldians, Socinians, Methodists, (some) Baptists, etc. But it would be insane to consider these Calvinist as many explicitly reject the same.

Weber thought he saw something in Protestant theology that sanctified capitalism and encouraged adherents to examine themselves to see whether they were materially blessed as an indication that they were spiritually blessed. It was a sociological guess based on a general trend in western thought at the time, but one which is equally attributable to certain Catholic traditions at the same time. It was an excellent guess, and very creative, but one which doesn't fit the actual data. He basically saw an economic and sociological difference between certain traditionally Catholic societies and certain Protestant ones, and decided it must be theological, regardless of what their theologians actually said.

(cont'd)

At best you can single out the Protestant (both Lutheran and Calvinist) doctrine of vocation, which opposes the apotheosis of monasticism as a uniquely holy calling, and other vocations as unholy. In the Protestant view, there is nothing "lesser" in being a craftsman or a scholar, than in being a monk. This sort of view can make way for a Christian capitalist society, but Weber says more than this.

>Reason is the Devil's handmaid and does nothing but blaspheme and dishonor all that God says or does.
At least he got this right.

Baptist theology is pretty much in accord with Calvinism, and ultimately drew mostly from it. All the English Dissenters who have surviving branches in America were Calvinists, save Methodists and Quakers.

>Luthor
Why didn't superman stop him?

I think, if it had not been Luther, it could just as easily been another person years later and we'd have the same net effect. The Catholic church was so rife with corruption, it was only a matter of time before insurrection.

The greedy German Princes and the Jewish Usurers would have found another way to attack the Church, yes. And the timing for northern and Jewish treachery was perfect, as the Church was preoccupied with defending Christendom against the forces of Islam and Turkism.

better the catholic church would have collapsed under its own bloat and man would have been free of the tyranny of faith

Say that did happen, wouldn't the forces of Islam just role right through then? Or wouldn't Christianity be replaced by the hyper-superstitions of paganism?

protestant work ethic is a lie perpetrated by heathens to justify their sins

everyone in the situation was greedy, man. the church hoarded wealth it was granted on false pretense, that people had to pay the church for better trips to heaven. the people who came up with that process should have done millions of somersaults in fields of dicks, because somersaults include more commitment than cartwheels.

you say that like its a bad thing pagans invented natural philosophy and debate and islam invented modern science

Quite right, the wealth of Protestant countries is really the result of intensive usury over many centuries. Of course this eventually caused them to be ruled by Jews and other sociopathic capitalist elements.

selling trips to heaven is not a sociopathic capitalist action?

Usury doesn't create wealth.

You mean the proto-Christian wise men of Greece? Also 'modern science' would not exist without the contributions of Christian Europe.

>Islam created modern science
Medieval Persians* contributed greatly to the creation of modern science.