Context

I feel this post is going to need a bit of preface. First, here's the original post by Lalaith.

Now for the preface. Quotes are fun things; I like them. However, I can make any person say anything if I just take snippets of what they said and make them into quotes. If you do that, the Bible even says, "There is no God." Of course, the previous part of that is, "The fool says in his heart." Context is extremely important - especially when you're going back in history far enough that you're in a different era and in a different country. Words don't always mean to us what they meant to people back then or to people on the other side of the world.

I'll bet that if I went through Untwisting and took out little snippets of what they've said, I could make up some very funny and insane sounding things (and they could do the same to me). And it would be extremely annoying, if not, downright insulting to do that to them. Now, understand that I'm not trying to say that Lalaith is purposefully taking things out of context to fit her ends. However, if you take things without a context, without looking at a context, you run the very high risk of misrepresenting - and it doesn't seem like she worried about that at all. If she did do research on the quotes, she didn't bother posting anything about it.

Onward, to the actual post. Reading the quotes, I don't really know what Luther was talking about when he said them, and honestly, I don't feel that it's my job to go find out. I do know that Luther engaged in debate - both verbal and written - that when he was told to recant, his reply was that if they could convince him by Scripture and sound reasoning, then he would. So, obviously, either he grew up from his former position, or those quotes should not be taken at face value.

I also know that Luther was known for his hot-headedness, and it would not at all surprise me if he later regretted some of the things that he said in the heat of the moment. Perhaps, not for what he meant, but how he said it. There are also things that I think he took for granted that people would just understand. For instance, the comment about the Pope. Obviously, the Pope couldn't have been the Devil because the Devil is a spirit, not a man. I think Luther understood that that very basic fact and probably could have phrased his words better, but he was not the kind of person to beat about the bush when what he wanted to get across was the that Pope was doing the will of the Devil. Why say with ten words what you can say with five?

I don't know if people weren't as picky back then about using just the right word or if he just only cared about answering the people who were going to put a little effort into understanding what he was saying. Either way, all of those quotes seem to be geared toward specific people, people who have a background, or who are in the middle of a conversation or something. Like, if I were telling my mom a story, I would tell it differently than if I were telling someone I don't know as well. My mom and I know each other really well. I know that if I say something that other people might take a bad way, she knows me well enough to know how I ACTUALLY meant it.

Lastly, though I believe Luther did a lot of good in his life and was very much used of God, he was a man. He had to have said SOME things that were wrong. There is nothing wrong with reason. If that really is what he was trying to say (though I don't believe it), then he was wrong. God gave us the capacity for reasoning and the capacity for faith - the two are not supposed to be parted and there is nothing in the Bible that would indicate that they should. The Apostle Paul REASONED in the synagogues habitually. And that should answer the Ignatius quote as well.