Can one man change history? Martin Luther? Hitler?
October is the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s posting of his 95 theses on the door of the Wittenberg church. Or so the story goes. It might even be true, but there is no need to be overly dramatic. The church door served as a kind of community bulletin board.
An angry man
Luther was an angry, troubled man, who brought not just the church, but the medieval world, to the threshold of the modern. In 2000, Life magazine ranked Martin Luther third among the one hundred most important figures of the millennium (Kolb, p 1). I don’t think many people pay that much attention to Luther any more, but he was a big deal.
What I can’t figure out is the relationship between Luther’s life and the transformation he wrought, brought, heralded, or led. Or perhaps it was time for these changes to happen anyway, and Luther just happened to be there. In any case, the transformation of the world that began in Luther’s era made our world possible.
