As with many highly influential figures, Martin Luther is often dealt with as a beginning rather than as an end or part of a continuum.  In this case, the 16th century Lutheran Reformation is such an important event in subsequent Western religious, social, and intellectual history that it often seems like the most appropriate way to address the topic.  And Luther’s own excommunication from the Roman Church and the violent subsequent conflicts between Catholics and Lutherans / Protestants seems to reinforce that approach.

 

Within the Lutheran Church, Luther is the authority or source that all suggested developments must reconcile with.  Whether the issue is modern liberal theology, liturgical change, or ecclesiastical government, everything ultimately seem to have to answer the question of what Luther has to say that would inform that topic.

 

There is a much smaller amount of scholarship that has occupied itself with Luther’s late medieval context.  What were the influences upon him, his family, his education, his teachers, his colleagues, etc.  And this is a very important approach and one that is generally quite interesting

 

 

Luther Seal or Luther Rose