To understand Lutheranism, we have to go back to the man who created this all, Martin Luther. Martin Luther was born November 10th 1483 in Eisleben, County of Mansfeld, Holy Roman Empire (this would be considered Eastern Germany today,) His father, Hans, was a successful miner and smelter, and his mother was named Magarete. When he was 22, he was struck by a bolt of lightning on his way back to the University of Erfhurt, where he studied at the time and graduated with a masters in philosophy, where he vowed to Saint Anna (among other things, Saint Anna is the patron saint of soldiers and a protector from storms, for context. She is also said to be the patron saint of miners) that if she saved his life, he would become a monk. When he did survive, he entered St.Augustine's Monastery on July 17th 1505, 15 days after the incident.
Luther would go on to describe his time at the monastery as one where he "lost touch with Christ the Savior and Comforter, and made of him the jailer and hangman of my poor soul." Before he joined the monastery, he was deeply insecure about his salvation, and he called these insecurities anfecungen (translated to afflictions in English.) These insecurities continued throughout his time at St.Augustine's, and in April of 1507 he was ordained by Jerome Schultz in Erfurt Cathedral in Erfurt, central Germany. He transferred again in 1511, this time in Wittenberg where he was awarded his Doctor of Theology and became the chair of theology. This is also where he began teaching theology.
As I mentioned before, Luther had deep anxieties about his salvation. To combat this, when he was at the monastery he completely devoted himself to the life of a monk. He would spend long hours in confession, prayer, and often fasted. This went on to the point where he would confess every single sin he had committed in confession, even once spending six hours there. His mentor, Johann Von Staupitz, urged him to "love God" and let everything else go to just focus on following God. This would lay the first seeds for Sola Fide, meaning justification for faith alone.
His teachings at the University of Wittenberg also laid the seeds for Sola Fide. In the Book of Romans, Paul mentions the concept of righteousness several times. Martin Luther, around this time, had become suspicious of the Catholic church, viewing it as corrupt and out of touch with God. Around 1516, in his lectures about Romans he taught that salvation was a gift of God that was only obtainable by believing him to be our Lord and Savior. He wrote that "this one and firm rock, which we call the doctrine of justification, is the chief article of the whole Christian doctrine, which comprehends the understanding of all godliness." His view of salvation was outside of the norm of what was normally believed at the time, he also believed that our righteousness comes from God himself and that righteousness is actually God himself, instead of righteousness coming from mere cooperation with God. He explains more about this in the Smalcald Articles "The first and chief article is this: Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, died for our sins and was raised again for our justification (Romans 3:24–25). He alone is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29), and God has laid on Him the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:6). All have sinned and are justified freely, without their own works and merits, by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, in His blood (Romans 3:23–25). This is necessary to believe. This cannot be otherwise acquired or grasped by any work, law or merit. Therefore, it is clear and certain that this faith alone justifies us ... Nothing of this article can be yielded or surrendered, even though heaven and earth and everything else falls (Mark 13:31)."
To first understand Luther's Ninety-Five Theses, we must consider the context in which it falls in. We must first define what indulgences were in the practice of the Roman Catholic Church at the time. Indulgences were part of the Economy of Salvation, and is described as "a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain prescribed conditions through the action of the Church which, as the minister of redemption, dispenses and applies with authority the treasury of the satisfactions of Christ and all of the saints" (via the catchecism of the Roman Catholic Church.) They were meant to reduce the severity of the punishment one had to pay for their sins, and this punishment was often satisfied by repeated prayer or good works. Students of his were actually claiming that they didn't need to repent for their sins in order to be forgiven after recieving indulgences by Johann Tetzel, who gave them away in exchange for money. Luther obviously disagreed with the whole notion, and thus he wrote his Ninety-Five Theses.
On Halloween 1517, it is believed that he stapled his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the All Saints Church (although, whether this had actually happened or not is a mystery.) He also sent this to Albrecht von Brandenburg, imploring him to end the selling of indulgences. However, this was interpreted to be an attack on papal authority and led to his excommunication in 1521, which was also prompted by him refusing to recant his statements unless they had scriptural arguments proving him wrong. In December 1520, he publicly burned an edict issued by the Pope, threatening him with excommunication, that he had recieved just two months back. In this edict, the Pope warned that if Luther didn't retract 41 of his theses, then he would be excommunicated. After the public burnings, he was excommunicated on January 3rd 1521, and this excommunication is still not lifted to this day.
Here is a link to the Ninety-Five Theses in question
As you can guess, this Ninety-Five Theses had a huge impact on society. He was asking these hard hitting questions that probably weren't really being asked back then. His beliefs that scripture should be the sole source of religious authority and that salvation should be reached by faith alone are the main tenets of Protestantism, this is what really drives them apart from Catholicism. One of the most thought provoking questions was, why should we have to buy our way into heaven? People eventually realized that, hey, we can have our own direct relationships with God. We can ask him for forgiveness ourselves, instead of having to go to confession or buying our way into forgiveness. They could finally think for themselves. After he was excommuncicated, he translated the bible from Latin to German cont later The freedoms awarded by the Protestant Reformation that was set into place with Ninety-Five Theses has drastically affected society in a way that we would not be recognizable without it. More about the Protestant Reformation here.
Going into the actual beliefs of Lutheranism, the natural place to start is the Augsburg Confession. The Augsburg Confession is the most esteemed confessional document in the Lutheran denomination that is meant to clarify the beliefs of the Evangelical moment at the time. Lutherans, at the time preferred to be known as 'Evangelicans', were being accused of being heretics. On June 25th 1530, the Augsburg Confession, composed by Philipp Melanchthon since Luther had been outcasted and labeled a heretic by the imperial leadership, was presented in the Holy Roman Empire to an assembly of political leaders otherwise known as the Diet of Augsburg. Here is an excerpt from Article I " Our Churches, with common consent, do teach that the decree of the Council of Nicaea concerning the Unity of the Divine Essence and concerning the Three Persons, is true and to be believed without any doubting; 2 that is to say, there is one Divine Essence which is called and which is God: eternal, without body, without parts, of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, the Maker and Preserver of all things, visible and invisible; and 3 yet there are three Persons, of the same essence and power, who also are coeternal, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. And the term “person” 4 they use as the Fathers have used it, to signify, not a part or quality in another, but that which subsists of itself." And here is Article IV, of Justification, "Also they teach that men cannot be justified before God by their own strength, merits, or works, but are freely justified for 2 Christ’s sake, through faith, when they believe that they are received into favor, and that their sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake, who, by His death, has made satisfaction for our sins. 3 This faith God imputes for righteousness in His sight. Rom. 3 and 4."
Here is the full version of the Ausgsburg Confessions , which will give you important information about what the Lutheran churches believe. However, not every denomination believes the same things...
The Missouri Synod is the largest Luthern denomination in the US, and is conservative on scriptural issues. finish later