Don't remember any of these barbs and insults from Luther's Small Catechism, which Lutherans like my self must study in order to take our first communion and to become full members of our church, sort of like a bar mitzvah but without the kosher food.
Am quite happy identifying as a christian of the Lutheran brand even though my particular flavor, Missouri Lutheran Synod, more conservative than other brothers and sisters by not ordaining women or countenancing same sex marriages. This manner of following the teachings of Jesus started by Martin Luther has existed for nearly 600 years, making it time tested and thus resistant to passing fades or fancies or cults like the Heaven's Gate folks who castrated themselves and committed suicide while waiting for aliens following a comet to rapture them to heaven.
My Jesus celebrates and encourages life and weeps over mass suicides and other senseless deaths.
Have read some studies of Luther's works, enough to realize his writings show traces of antisemitism and misogyny but never dreamed he spent so much time insulting those who disagreed with him. I like him better already.
Perhaps we can forgive for for his bombast by realizing in confronting the Catholic hierarchy he started a century of war, which certainly came as a negative consequence of promoting the idea that humans can read the Gospels on their own.
[Those of you afflicted with the stereotype of Lutherans as lugubrious bores will have to confront, as we all do eventually, the irrefutable fact that the Intertoobz are a place of wonder and delight.
You are the prostitute of heretics!
You people are more stupid than a block of wood.
Since you are such vulgar blockheads that you think such lewd and stupid gossip will harm me or bring you honor, you are the real Hanswursts - blockheads, boors, and dunderheads.
Keep clicking through. They get better.
Martin Luther, O.B.
Original Blogger.
Although, I will grant you that it would have been tougher to nail a laptop to the cathedral door.]
Read more: Where It All Began - Esquire http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/martin-luther-no-time-for-your-foolishness-011513#ixzz2I9jTMNlT
Judge not Luther unless you want to get judged, for he did live and write as a product of his times:
[I, a Lutheran myself, neither approve of nor condone Luther's insults as appropriate for modern theological discourse, nor most modern discourse for that matter. Luther was a product of his time. Some of his insults are inexcusable; a few are so crass as to make me reluctant to put them on this site (e.g. those to do with whoredom). However, when one reads his works, it becomes clear that these insults, a common rhetorical device in the polemical literature of the sixteenth century, were spoken in hopes of defending the pure faith against impure doctrine and guiding the church of his day back into the faith of the Church.
As I have followed commentaries about this website, I have noticed people using these quotes to condemn Lutheranism. It should be known that the Lutheran tradition does not accept most of Luther's works as doctrine, though it does embrace much of his theology. Only three documents written by the reformer are explicitly part of the Lutheran doctrine, compiled in the Book of Concord, and only one of these documents is universally accepted among Lutherans, namely Luther's Small Catechism. Moreover, Lutherans explicitly reject some of the reformer's ideas. For example, Luther's anti-Semitic writings have been rejected by most in the Lutheran tradition, and we continually seek forgiveness and reconciliation with our Jewish brothers and sisters for what Luther said and the effects it had on the world.
To imagine that modern Lutheranism is the sum total of Martin Luther's output is to misconstrue the Lutheran tradition, which was composed of many more voices even in its infancy. Of course, to imagine Luther's crass words are the sum total of the reformer is to misconstrue Luther, for he had many beautiful thoughts as well. As Martin would say, he wassimul justus et peccator.]
http://ergofabulous.org/luther/insults-explained.php
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