Thomas Aquinas And Martin Luther's Contribution To The Spread Of Christianity

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Recommended: Effect of the Protestant Reformation on the Roman Catholic Church

Christianity
Delia Wilson
HIS/276CA
July 3, 2017 Hadley Ajana Christianity was a big movement across Europe. It started off small but quickly grew recognition for how the faith was presented. Christianity was an important part of history. People fought over their beliefs and even died because they believed in them so much. Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther contributed a lot to the spread of Christianity. Thomas Aquinas’s beliefs were easier for the church to understand and allow because it still focused on God and the Bible to be true. He didn’t go against it’s teachings, he just made people understand that theology and philosophy could go hand in hand. Martin Luther went to the opposite side of the argument. He did not agree with …show more content…

Christianity was a big religion at this time in the form of Catholic religion. According to “Middle Ages Religion”, “Christianity began among a small number of Jews (about 120, see Acts 1:15). Christianity was seen as a threat to the Roman Empire as Christians refused to worship the Roman gods or the Emperor. This resulted in the persecution of the early Christians, many of whom were killed and thus became martyrs to the Christian religion” (). When Christianity started to spread, the Romans hated it. Christians only believed in one God, while Romans worship multiple gods like the Greeks. When Constantine came along, the persecution of Christians stopped and Christianity was the new religion for the Romans. Every ruler after Constantine, kept the same faith going. As Rome accepted the Christian faith, it quickly spread throughout Europe even as far as Spain (“History of Christianity in Europe”, 2017). At this time, in Israel the rise of Muhammad started gaining popularity …show more content…

He endured harsh condition because he was afraid of the wrath of God. Eventually, he left being a monk and looked-for consolation elsewhere. HE plunged into his readings. He read what we know now as the “Reformation Texts” where his eyes were drawn to the word faith not righteous. What he gathered from it that the righteous shall live by faith. He had to take his doctorate in the Bible and became a professor of Wittenberg University. As he taught Romans and Psalm versus he started to see a new way. According to “Martin Luther”, “"At last meditating day and night, by the mercy of God, I ... began to understand that the righteousness of God is that through which the righteous live by a gift of God, namely by faith… Here I felt as if I were entirely born again and had entered paradise itself through the gates that had been flung open” (2017). People started understanding how Martin Luther saw it. That the church was not an institution that was defined by the apostolic succession, but that it was a community that of those who have been given faith. Salvation did not come from the sacraments of faith. Humility was not a virtue that it earned grace but that it is a necessary response to the gift of grace. Faith now became the trusting of God’s words and the merits of Christ versus assenting to the church’s teachings (“Martin Luther”, 2017). In 1517, Luther was objecting against Johann Tetzel. He was selling pamphlets with scriptures on it to people

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