Martin Luther Saved Analysis

How Can I be Saved? The question that many based their lives around and tried to find a constant answer to. Although there is no clear concise answer, Martin Luther, a German priest, believed the answer lay in the Bible and in the hands of God (Eriks). He thought predestination was the correct way of thinking. This is contradictory towards what Desiderius Erasmus, a Renaissance scholar, thought. He thought that free will was the answer, and that how a person acted and lived their life would decide if they would end up in heaven or hell. He thought that the church was the one way a person could be saved(Eriks). Both Erasmus and Luther had many followers but very different views on how a person could be saved.

Desiderius Erasmus was a Renaissance
Predestination is the belief that everything that will happen is already decided by god or fate and can not be changed no matter what a person does (Bennett). He wanted others to focus on the Bible and what it was teaching, and not what the church. For example, the church offered things called indulgences which was basically ‘grace’ a person was paying for so they could show God and the church that they were truly regretful of the sins they had made. Luther strongly disagreed with this and thought the church should not be selling some type of redemption to the people of the church (Cheah). He wrote the 95 Thesis to start a discussion about how the church could stop corruption (and things like indulgences), but instead of just sparking a discussion he sparked a very intense argument. He posted his 95 Thesis on the doors of the church and many people saw it and agreed with him. He had a group of followers that were in his time called Lutherans, but later became known as Protestants (Saari 210). Luther thought forgiveness of sins had to be just between God and that specific individual (Saari 208). He thought any free will a person might have would be overridden by sin