Sunday, April 18, 2021

Luther Can't Recant, Charles Can't Excuse: Diet of Worms April 18, 1521

The Diet and the Emperor agreed about authority regarding Luther. How could one monk be right and all the other authorities be wrong? It was much more likely any error was with Luther. But to him, authority didn't matter since 'Scripture was unambiguous.' For him, Scripture was the authority, not himself, not the Church or its ministers, or the young bearded Emperor. Luther after all was willing to be taught what was correct if anyone in the Church could explain it better for him to understand. But in his mind, he knew they could not. For their part, they did not want to try to argue any of these points and understood that because of their political office they did not need to try. The Diet was presided by the Emperor and he had the last authority here, while the Pope in Rome had already made his decision.

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