Denis diderot brief biography of martin luther

Martin Luther — is the central figure of the Protestant Reformation. Whilst he is primarily seen as a theologian, the philosophical interest and impact of his ideas is also significant, so that he arguably deserves to be ranked as highly within philosophy as other theologians in the Christian tradition, such as Augustine or Aquinas.

On closer inspection, however, it is clear that his position is more nuanced than that, and requires contextualisation: for his objection is only to reason put to certain theological ends, while his own thought is deeply steeped in the philosophical tradition, and contributed to it. Managing to escape capture under the protection of Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, and after a period of seclusion at Wartburg castle, Luther returned to Wittenberg, where he continued his teaching, writing and translating; married; and engaged with the complex and fraught swirl of forces unleashed by his work at various levels—in theology, in the Church, in politics, and in society at large.

While he had fathered the Reformation, as it has become known, he did not set out to divide the Christian Church, and the movement quickly took on a momentum that he could not control, but which still in certain fundamental ways bears the stamp of his thought. Luther was born on 10 November in Eisleben in the Holy Roman Empire, not into the peasantry as he liked to claim, but into a relatively prosperous mining family.

However, rather than continuing with his legal training, later in the same year Luther chose instead to enter the Augustinian monastery at Erfurt, much to the annoyance of his father—and as Luther explained it later, on the basis of a vow made in a violent thunder storm to St Anna the patron saint of miners , that this is what he would do if he was spared.

Whatever the truth in this story, in his own mind at least Luther seems to have understood his change of direction as a kind of conversion experience, and the entry into a new type of spiritual life. Monastic life made him aware of the theology of mysticism, which deeply shaped his further development.

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This anxiety and fear meant the Luther underwent what he termed Anfechtungen , spiritual trials or temptations, in particular with regard to the Augustinian teaching on predestination. Some commentators have speculated that these two difficult relationships with father figures are not unconnected for a classic but controversial study, see Erikson ; see also Roper 48— In Luther replaced Staupitz at the university in Wittenberg as professor of the Bible which was the common title for a chair in theology , a position he was to hold until his death.

In his early years at the Wittenberg chair, Luther exhaustively commented on the Psalms and the Pauline letters, in particular Romans and Galatians. Privately, he read mystical authors, like late medieval preacher John Tauler d. His marginal notes show the strong influence this reading had on his intellectual development Leppin,