Martin Luther was born on 10 November 1483 in Eisleben, in the central German county of Mansfeld, and was baptized on 11 November, after the popular saint, St Martin. It was the wish of his father that Martin should take up the legal profession, and so after completing his schooling he began the study of law at the University of Erfurt, but it was given up abruptly after only a few weeks and Luther entered the Augustinian monastery of Erfurt as the fulfillment of a vow. Once he was caught up in a heavy summer thunderstorm and in total fear and agony over impending death he promised God that if he was saved, he would become a monk. Even in the monastery, the fear of a terrible, judging God and ways to satisfy him were troubling him. But he took the monastic practices seriously at the same time questioning radically their relevance to establish the right relationship with God.

He was ordained priest in 1507 and continued to study theology which he completed with a doctorate in 1512, and was appointed Professor of Scripture at the newly founded University of Wittenberg, a post he held for the next 33 years. In the University, Luther began to study and teach Scripture and it was during the initial years of teaching that Luther came to his groundbreaking theological understanding about God, Jesus Christ, and the Church. When exactly this took place is still debated. The Indulgence Controversy was only the external occasion for Luther to make known publicly his theological discovery. Luther came to a new understanding of the justice of God as the unmerited grace of God accepted in faith that guarantees human beings their salvation and not their works.

When the sale of “Peter’s Indulgence” began in Germany, on 22 January 1517 by Johannes Tetzel, a Dominican friar, Luther came out strongly against it saying that the people are fleeing the penalties of sin and not sin itself. He presented his objections in detail to his bishop in his now famous “Ninety-five Theses.” They soon became public and it led to the collapse of the entire Indulgence preaching. The traditional date given for this is October 31, 1517 which is kept as the beginning of the Reformation.

This action of publicly challenging a practice of the Church and thus taking on the entire authority structure of the Church, based on his religious convictions drawn from Scripture made Luther eventually the founder of Protestantism. He was convinced of his call to reform the Church in line with the Gospel and to reject everything that stood in the way of this reform. With prophetic zeal and extreme polemic, Luther now went about his mission, making use of the newly available print media, the podium of the University and the pulpit of the Church. Luther now found his gracious God in whom human beings should unconditionally trust in order to be saved and not burden themselves with unnecessary activism like buying of Indulgences.

Luther enunciated his own views on the Church in his “Reform Writings” of 1520. The writings of Luther spread like wild fire and in June 1520 Pope Leo X, in his Bull Exsurge Domine, threatened him with excommunication unless he recanted his heretical views within sixty days. Luther refused and made an appeal to Pope Leo X to reform the Church in line with the Gospel. As no answer came from Rome and the time fixed for recantation had elapsed, Luther made the final break by publicly burning the Papal Bull together with a copy of the Canon Law on 10 December 1520 in the University premises. The official excommunication of Luther followed on 3 January, 1521.

Facing all opposition from ecclesiastical and political authorities with the help of supportive princes of Germany, Luther became the undisputed leader of the Reformation in Germany, and the founder of the Lutheran Church. The “Augsburg Confession” (Confessio Augustana) of 1530 formulated the Lutheran faith as distinguished from Roman Catholicism and Calvinism. But this led to religious wars in Europe which finally ended in 1555 at the Peace of Augsburg allowing rulers to choose either Lutheranism or Roman Catholicism as the official confession of their state (cuius regio, eius religio). Calvinism was officially allowed only after the Peace of Westphalia of 1648.