Martin Luther in Life and Death, Part 2: The Devil in Luther's Dreams

William Finck
ChrSat20150131-LutherLifeDeath02.mp3

The Devil in Luther's Dreams, Part 1

Last week, in the first installment of this series, which we shall re-title “Martin Luther in Life and Death”, we gave a background on the life of the Reformer, and the events which sent him on the course which he followed. To fully understand Martin Luther as well as this entire period of German history, we must understand the work of John Wycliffe, and the earlier and notable Czech reformer Jan Huss, who inspired the Hussite Wars in rebellion against the Roman Catholic Church in the opening quarter of the 15th century, a hundred years before Luther's own contentions with the church were published. Later, even Luther considered himself a Hussite. We shall present pertinent information about these men in the near future.

However now, in order to understand the pressing need for what is called the Reformation, we must understand what it was that men such as Luther sought to reform. His initial desires were not to break from the Roman Church, but to bring Church policies into line with Scripture. When he saw that was impossible, only then the Lutheran Church was formed. Last week, presenting a summary of Luther's life and some of the myths surrounding it which was written by John Tiffany, we saw the story of The Devil and Luther's Inkwell. Because Luther had written that he “threw his inkwell at the devil”, the myth arose that he was pestered at night by a demon and he had thrown his inkwell to chase it away. Yet it is more likely that Luther was describing the publication of his 95 Theses as the throwing of his inkwell at the devil, the devil being the Roman Church itself.

Druids and Early Christianity in Britain - Christogenea Europe, January 18th, 2015

William Finck
CHR-Euro-2015-01-18_SL.mp3

Sven's notes are found in his article The Druids and the Early British Church

The following notes represent the citations from various books quoted by William Finck during the audio presentation. The writings of Bede, Gildas and Nennius are found in the References section here at Christogenea.

From The Annals of Ireland translated from The Original Irish of The Four Masters by Owen Connellan in 1846, from a footnote on the Druids found on page 75:

About nine centuries before the Christian era, according to our ancient annalists, Tigearnmas, monarch of Ireland, of the race of Heremon, was the first who introduced Druidism and the worship of idols into Ireland; and it is stated, that while worshipping the idol Crom Cruach, the chief deity of the Irish Druids, along with a vast assemblage of his subjects at Magh Sleacht in Breifne, on the feast of Samhuin, (one of their deities, the day dedicated to whose rites was the same as the last day of October), he himself, with three-fourths of his people, were struck dead by lightning, as a punishment from heaven for his introduction of idolatry into the kingdom. Magh Sleachta signifies either the Plain of Adoration, or the Plain of Slaughter, and obtained its name from the Druidical rites performed there, or from the human sacrifices which the Pagan Irish offered up to the deities of Druidism, as the Canaanites offered up their’s to Moloch. In this place stood a famous temple of the Druids, with the great idol Crom Cruach surrounded by twelve minor idols, composed of pillar stones, and decorated with heads of gold....

Martin Luther in Life and Death, Part 1: Did Luther Change the World?

William Finck
ChrSat20150117-LutherLifeDeath01.mp3

Martin Luther: In Life and Death, Part 1: Did Luther Change the World?

Martin Luther's famous “95 Theses” were written in 1517 and are generally considered to be the catalyst for the Protestant Reformation, however there were certainly many related historical events and many martyrs of reform before Luther came along. Popularly the theses are more fully titled The Ninety-Five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences. My own translation of the original Latin title might be A Dispute Regarding the Proclamation of the Power of Indulgences (Disputatio pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum). However in spite of its title, besides the sale of indulgences the disputation also protests against many other clerical abuses. It especially mentions nepotism [favoring of family members by church superiors], simony [the purchase of offices within the church], usury [which had recently been allowed by Rome], and pluralism [agreement that other religions have legitimacy, which allows multiculturalism and leads to ecumenism – in Rome at the time, this primarily allowed for the legitimacy of Jews].

October 31st is called Reformation day, which is celebrated as a religious holiday in many places in Europe. Some sources state that on this day in 1521 Luther appeared before the Diet of Worms. That is not true. Other sources say that October 31st was the day in 1517 that Luther had nailed his 95 “theses” to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. Whether the original publication of his disputation with the Roman Catholic Church ever happened in precisely that manner is also arguable, and here we will see that and several other myths about Luther called into question. Whether or not the story is true, it has for five centuries been used as a powerful symbol representing the beginnings of the Protestant Reformation.

The Phoenicians - Christogenea Europe, November 30th, 2014

William Finck
CHR-Euro-2014-11-30.mp3

See the related material at Christogenea found under the title Identifying the Phoenicians.

From Herodotus, The Histories, 3.115:

“Of the extreme tracts of Europe towards the west I cannot speak with any certainty; for I do not allow that there is any river, to which the barbarians give the name of Eridanus, emptying itself into the northern sea, whence (as the tale goes) amber is procured; nor do I know of any islands called the Cassiterides (Tin Islands), whence the tin comes which we use. For in the first place the name Eridanus is manifestly not a barbarian word at all, but a Greek name, invented by some poet or other; and secondly, though I have taken vast pains, I have never been able to get an assurance from an eye-witness that there is any sea on the further side of Europe. Nevertheless, tin and amber do certainly come to us from the ends of the earth.”

We are going to offer George Rawlinson's comments upon this passage, after we read a paragraph from Strabo....

Martin Luther's Warning Against the Jews - October 19th, 2014

William Finck
CHR-Euro-2014-10-19.mp3

This sermon will be read again with a fuller critique on an upcoming segment of our presentation of Martin Luther on the Jews now underway on Christogenea Saturdays. Of course, we cannot agree with Luther's assertions that the Jews are Israelites, and we have already offered in-depth refutations of that in our Luther series and elsewhere here at Christogenea.

A Warning Against the Jews

by Martin Luther,February, 1546

Translated by Wikisource and released into the Public Domain

Since I have been around awhile and have preached to you and, [since], I may die soon and not be able to preach to you [any longer], I will bless you with this. I have prayed that you remain diligently in the Word, which your preacher and pastor are teaching you truly by the grace of God and making you accustomed to the prayer that God would protect you from all the wise and clever that despise the doctrine of the Gospel; for they often did much harm and yet might do much more.

Worse than these, you have the Jews yet in the land, who do great harm. We want to deal with them in a Christian manner now. Offer them the Christian faith that they would accept the Messiah, who is even their cousin and has been born of their flesh and blood; and is rightly Abraham’s Seed, of which they boast. Even so, I am concerned [that] Jewish blood may no longer become diluted and impure.