Response Paper: Luther (2006)
The 2003 film Luther depicts the founder of Lutheranism, Martin Luther, as one of the first individuals to radically and successfully offer a competing doctrine to that of Roman Catholicism. Luther is seen as a sincere man who becomes a monk out of faith and for no other reason, in contrast to many other religious men of the period. Luther breaks with the Catholic Church because of his horror at the selling of indulgences. As the text makes clear, Luther was not necessarily opposed to the selling of indulgences per se; what he was vehemently against was the manner in which they were being sold. At the time, the Pope was desperate to raise money and had signed an order effectively pardoning the buyer from all sin, as well as all of the buyer’s friends or relatives, living or dead. The purchase was supposed to be valid, even if the buyer did not submit to the holy sacraments of confession, penance, and repentance.
Luther was outraged by this because, he felt, this effectively rendered the need for confession invalid and reduced faith to a mere transaction. When Luther nailed his 95 Theses on the door of the church, he...
He wished, rather, for Catholicism to return to what he considered its true origins. The Luther of the film, in contrast, is an individualistic firebrand who is disgusted with the selling of indulgences in general. It is easy to see why the film made this choice, given that even many Catholics today would find the manner in which indulgences were viewed by the pre-Reformation church to be off-putting. Indulgences were a way for people to work around what could be a very lengthy sentence of fasting and prayer for sin, and being cut off from the church was a serious matter in an era in which the church was so important in politics and society.
Also, back in Luther’s day, purgatory was seen as a real, physical place from which sinners needed to be released. Luther’s eventual opposition to theological concepts not found in the Bible was another reason for his rebellion. The film does not have the time to dramatize such subtle theological differences, however, which would have been extremely important to Catholics of that era. Luther in the film is portrayed as having a kind of fully-fledged theology,…
