Luther says that everything in the Lord’s Supper depends on faith. It is not enough to just have head knowledge of what the sacrament is about. And if a person doubts what happens in the sacrament he is saying that God is a “faithless liar.” He goes so far as to say that if you cannot believe in what God has promised in the sacrament you should pray for faith. This is where the concepts of “opus operatum” and “opus operantis” have meaning. It is not enough to merely “do” or complete the activity, it is imperative that the Lord’s Supper be done in faith. Without faith, the power of the sacrament is lost and the participant may actually lose faith through the false security of having done what is necessary. But the action alone is not
Award-winning journalist, Lee Strobel wrote The Case for Christ to retrace and enlarge his journey toward becoming a Christian. Strobel once atheist, and now Christian, shares how he began to look upon the Bible and God. As an atheist, Strobel lived the life of selfishness and only worried to please himself. When his wife began to go to church he wasn’t very pleased until after he saw the positive and attractive change in her. This is the start of his curiosity and investigation about Christianity. He wanted to understand what changed her like this. He wanted to relate with his wife so he decided to study about this and attend church services with her. Strobel began his journey and interviewed thirteen leading scholars who defended their views concerning the historical reliability of the New Testament. Strobel splits the case for Christ into three basic sections: Examining the Record, Analyzing Jesus, and Researching the Resurrection.
The book Discipleship was wriiten by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and was published in 1937. It was his fourth volume of sixteen and has also been published under the title The Cost of Discipleship. Bonhoeffer was a pastor in Germany that was alter arrested, imprisoned and executed by the Nazis.
"Is not such a soul most obedient to God in all things by this faith? ...What more complete fulfillment is there than obedience in all things? This obedience, however, is not rendered by works but by faith alone." (Luther page 13) In this passage Luther is explaining the inner man versus the outer man. He is showing that if you trust and believe in God then he will never steer you wrong but if you don't then, "what greater wickedness, what greater contempt of God is there than not believing his promise...but to make God a liar or to doubt that he is truthful? That is to ascribe truthfulness to one's self but lying and vanity in God?"
James Stuart and Martin Luther where definitively popular people considering the time period. They are known to be influential people among the community. In The Divine Rights of Kings, James Stuart explains how he thinks society should work and how he accepts the word of god. In Christian Freedom, Martin Luther also accepts the word of god and how he sees society. Both of the men have different backgrounds which makes them have different viewpoints.
Award-winning journalist, Lee Strobel wrote The Case for Christ to retrace and expand his journey toward becoming a Christian. Strobel once declared atheist, and now Christian, shares how he began to look upon the Bible and God. As an atheist, Strobel lived the life of selfishness and only worried to please himself. When his wife began to go to church he wasn’t very pleased until after he saw the positive and attractive change in her. This is the start of his curiosity and investigation about Christianity. To relate with his wife he decided to study about this and attend church services with her. Strobel interviewed thirteen leading scholars who defended their views concerning the historical reliability of the New Testament.
Jesus and the Disinherited begin the first chapter with the interpretation of Jesus. Dr. Thurman explained that Jesus was a poor Jew and was a minority in the midst of a dominate society. Dr. Thurman gives his analysis on how the world views Jesus. People around the world have their own interpretation of Jesus; yet, people have an orthodox view of him being fully God and fully man. In chapter one, the author references the nonviolent resistance approach, which is a tactic Dr. Martin Luther King Jr used in the civil rights movements. He interprets Jesus as a black man who lived his life as an outsider in the world. Jesus was the disinherited and oppressed like African Americans.
The social gospel was the biggest inspiration and influence for Civil Rights leader, John Lewis. Which is prevalent throughout the first two books, of the March trilogy, written by Andrew Aydin and John Lewis himself. The Bible made its mark on Lewis when he was young farm boy. Leading him to the social gospel which started him down the path of nonviolence, and longing not just for personal reform but for social reform. As the Civil Rights movements became bigger, and as the philosophy of which John Lewis taught spread, others were inspired by the social gospel.
The Adoration of the Lamb is Jan Van Eyck’s greatest accomplishments of a Renaissance painter. It was painted with oils in the third decade of the 15th century (Glover). This painting definitely has a lot going on in it. The painting is consisted of twelve panels where the outside panels can either be closed or open. There are many spiritual aspects in the painting; from the Holy family, Mary, Joseph, and Jesus; to Adam, Eve, and plenty of saints. The representation of these earthly and otherworldly figures shows the aspects of this world and the next. The lower middle piece physically reflects this with the horizon as the divider between the worlds. The saints and other peoples on the
The poem, “Gospel” by Philip Levine gives a vivid description of what the narrator sees around them. The narrator focuses their description on nature. They make many references to types of plants like lupine and thistles. Throughout the poem, nature can be seen as and abstract creature. Nature is giving and lively. The conflict in the poem is between the speaker and nature. The narrator tries to show how nature can give nice outdoor views and how the earth gives people a place to walk on while people give nothing back to nature. Levine’s speaker uses repetition and comparisons to show how nature is constantly pleading for the narrators attention yet they cannot offer anything to the relationship they have with nature. The poem slowly evolves
The Trial of God is a play that was written by Elie Wiesel. The play was first published in 1979. The play was set in a feudal European settlement where three travelling Jewish artistes put God on trial to answer for His quietness during a pogrom. It is a powerful drama with historical and especially post-Shoah concerns surrounding faith. While imprisoned in Auschwitz, Elie Wiesel witnessed a trial. It was not unusual for prisoners to witness trials, this one would be different and very unusual. It was unusual because of the defendant. God was on trial. God was tried for turning his back and ignoring the Jewish people in their ultimate hour of need. God was tried in absentia. I mean how you can put God on the witness stand is a question all in itself. There was one problem, no one was willing to take on the role of God's attorney. God was eventually found guilty. After the verdict was announced, the "court" prayed. How is that for an oxymoron? But this incident, which served as the inspiration for The Trial of God, is part of the long Jewish tradition of arguing with God.
Marin Luther, regardless of his intentions, is one of the most controversial men in all of Christian history. The growth of Martin Luther and essentially the whole Protestant Revolution begins by Luther walking in a storm and getting struck by lightning. At this time, he prays out to the saints in hopes that he will be saved; he promises them that if they save him, he will stop everything a become a monk. Luther is saved and does just that, he quit studying law and took his vows, and he began studying the bible as a monk. While studying the bible, Luther comes across a line in Romans 1:17 stating, “For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’” Luther’s interpretation of this is that no amount of pilgrimages, relics, or good deeds will save someone, what will save that person is his or her faith. At the same time that Luther comes to this conclusion, indulgences are being sold. An indulgence is a ticket to heaven which cleanses a person of all sins. A person pays for this certificate, which typically cost half a year’s earnings, and this will shorten the time in purgatory before going to heaven. The idea of what happened after death terrified some people so this gave those people a false sense of comfort.
He did this because he felt that he would never earn his eternal salvation otherwise. He didn't feel that all of the prayer, studying and sacraments were enough and felt that he would never be able to satisfy such a judgmental God. After entering the religious life he later became a monk and entered the Augustinian monastery at Erfurt in July of 1505. While there, Luther became a well-known theologian and Biblical scholar. Luther took his religious vocation very seriously. This led him into a severe crisis in dealing with his religion. He wondered, "is it possible to reconcile the demands of God's law with mankind's inability to live up to that law?" Luther then turned to the New Testament book of Romans for answers. He realized that everyone is burdened by sin because it happens as a result of our weaknesses. He concluded that man could never earn his salvation by leading a blameless life or by performing Holy acts. Instead, man's salvation was a divine gift from God resulting from faith in Jesus, especially the saving power of His death and resurrection. This was known as the protestant doctrine of "justification by faith alone." The fact that Luther believed this led him into his first confrontation. The leader of the Catholic Church, Pope Leo X, was trying to raise money in order to build St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. In order to do this, the Pope offered the sale of indulgences, which were donations of money that would give
Martin Luther, born in 1483, grew up in a devout Roman Catholic household, where the church stood at the center of his world. However, he suffered at the hand of his parents’ harsh criticism. His father had emerged from the feudal system into the new middle class as a successful Coppersmith. His desire was for his son to also climb the social ladder. To assist with his son’s success, Luther’s father was a fierce judge of the character of his son, and often punished him severely for his failures. From these experiences, Luther developed a low self-esteem and fear of failure, which encroached on every aspect of his life, including his theology.
In the 1950’s the melodrama genre came to age and there is no better example than Douglas Sirk’s All that Heaven Allows. The melodrama followed some basic characteristics which can be identified in the film. First and foremost the narrative of the melodrama focused on the family. All that Heaven Allows follows the narrative of the typical melodrama but at the same time also challenges the social conventions. While Sirk follows many of the key themes he does so in a more detached fashion. The protagonist Cary is bound to her community by her social class. Change was occurring in society and the melodrama displayed people’s restraint to this. In All that Heaven Allows Sirk began his focus on the female and her desires in contrast to the more conservative male focused melodrama. As with the melodrama the legibility of the story, displayed through the plot, is simple and easy to follow. “Our engagement with the story depends on our understanding of the pattern of change and stability, cause and effect, time and space” (Bordwell and Thompson, 2008). The linear time flow of the film allows for it’s simple understanding. This is added to by the expressiveness of the melodrama, where everything is brought into the open and nothing is left unsaid. The expressiveness of the melodrama is also represented in the highly expressive mise-en-scene. Sirks use of colour, the human figure, camera work, lighting and music allow him to portray suppressed meaning and significance.
First, it is important to understand Martin Luther’s main issues with the Catholic Church and their practices. The majority of his grievances were summed up in his Ninety-five Theses. One of his main points was to question the authority of the Church. He writes “The pope has neither the will nor the power to remit any penalties except those which he has imposed on his own authority…The pope has no power to remit any guilt” (194). Luther stated the pope shouldn’t have the ability to remove any shame or infraction a Christian has committed unless it is through God’s will. Luther instead emphasized that justification by faith alone allowed for sin or guilt to be removed by God by acknowledging the sacrifice of Christ. The pope instead did not do the work of God but just worked for God which changed how the pope should be viewed in the public eye. Luther went after many different aspects of the papacy if the pope to express how he saw how the Church failed to express his ideal Christian message, especially regarding indulgences. He argued that any Christian leader saying that Indulgences given by the pope saved you from sin was were completely wrong and all Christians deserved to be removed from sin without Indulgences written by the pope.1He disregarded indulgences since he thought were better ways to remove sin instead of paying money to get out of purgatory. Luther believed that money should not play a part in the path of Christian salvation since vile people could buy