"The force of reason could no farther go." But, if he "could divide ahair 'twixt north and north-west side," he never consented to "change hands and still dispute." He was earnest and sincere, and concealed a large fund of solid sense under the familiar forms of scholastic logomachy. He pursued the refinements of eristic disputation so far as to render it impossible to proceed farther in. His logical perspicacity and dialectical subtlety earned for him the designation of the Invincible and the This second breakthrough did not happen till much later, probably in the period 1518-19.Occam, William of the last of the great scholars in the succession of mediaeval scholasticism, and assuredly one of the most acute, was the notable precursor of John Wickliffe, John Huss, and Martin Luther. ![]() (what fully developed Protestant theology would call "regeneration" and "sanctification").Luther's second great breakthrough was when he came to understand faith as essentially personal trust in Christ rather than assent to the Church's teachings, and the 'righteousness of God' as God's imputation of Christ's righteousness to the believer's account, changing the believer's legal status before God but not the believer's heart (justification in the sense in which Evangelical theology uses the term). This was the first of Luther's two great spiritual breakthroughs, and it occurred around 1513. He had also, by this time, rejected the neo-Pelagian teachings of William and Ockham and Gabriel Biel about salvation, and followed Staupitz in becoming a disciple of Augustine of Hippo from now to the end of his life, Luther was to be a whole-hearted believer in Augustine's doctrine of the sovereign grace of God who chooses helpless sinners for salvation by His unmerited mercy. He violently opposed the way that the schoolmen had blended Christianity with the philosophy of Aristotle. "As Luther grew in understanding, he had come to detest scholasticism as a betrayal of the biblical message. This doctrine, his Augustinian understanding of the bondage of the will along with his conviction that the Bible should be the basis of religious life and available to all, became the theological foundation of Protestantism. A sensitive soul, he struggled mightily with a guilty conscience and an intense fear of God and hell until he realized the doctrine of "justification by faith" while studying the book of Romans. His parents intended him for a law career, but he became a monk and a theology professor instead. Martin Luther was born in 1483 into a strict German Catholic family. As long as he is persuaded that he can make even the smallest contribution to his salvation, he remains self-confident and does not utterly despair of himself, and so is not humbled before God." (Martin Luther) ![]() But a man cannot be thoroughly humbled till he realizes that his salvation is utterly beyond his own powers, counsels, efforts, will and works, and depends, absolutely on the will, counsel, pleasure and works of Another - God alone. "God has surely promised His grace to the humbled, that is, to those who mourn over and despair of themselves.
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