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I enjoy a good Halloween, but I couldn't pass up celebrating the 500th anniversary of the start of the Reformation. I've learned a great deal about the figures involved through this article series, Here We Stand, and at church. From these I got an idea, and this will be the third in a series of paintings for my local church.
Not many know it, but Martin Luther had a fursona. :D He's commonly depicted with (or symbolized as) a swan, and this is mainly due to a man named Jan Hus, a forerunner of the Reformation. Hus (literally "Hus" = "goose") prophesied, while being burned at the stake by the church, that "You may roast the goose, but a hundred years from now a swan will arise whose singing you will not be able to silence." 102 years later, Luther nailed the 95 Theses to the door. He believed that he was the swan that Hus spoke of.
The Theses were not a declaration of war, but an invitation to debate. Luther did not intend to rebel against the church or splinter off of it, but to reform it, because he had discovered the liberating effect of the Gospel found in the Word: justification by faith alone, not by works. He would have never gotten this from the church at the time, since all the sermons were in Latin, the common people didn't have the Bible in their language, and the "works" prescribed by the church of his time, and the sale of indulgences, were diametrically opposed to this Gospel. So Luther read, preached, built his life on, and spread the word of God to as many people as possible, translating it into his vernacular German. The swan is being formed out of the rock to illustrate Luther's respect for church tradition insofar as it respects the Word, and out of the mud to illustrate the importance of an individual's belief in the Word, and ultimately, the swan will stand on the Word alone.
(Original description was much longer and a slog to read. If you still want to read it, it's here on Weasyl: https://www.weasyl.com/~hexadoodle/.....61959/reformed
(This picture also had comments disabled out of nerves, but they're enabled now. Hi!)
Not many know it, but Martin Luther had a fursona. :D He's commonly depicted with (or symbolized as) a swan, and this is mainly due to a man named Jan Hus, a forerunner of the Reformation. Hus (literally "Hus" = "goose") prophesied, while being burned at the stake by the church, that "You may roast the goose, but a hundred years from now a swan will arise whose singing you will not be able to silence." 102 years later, Luther nailed the 95 Theses to the door. He believed that he was the swan that Hus spoke of.
The Theses were not a declaration of war, but an invitation to debate. Luther did not intend to rebel against the church or splinter off of it, but to reform it, because he had discovered the liberating effect of the Gospel found in the Word: justification by faith alone, not by works. He would have never gotten this from the church at the time, since all the sermons were in Latin, the common people didn't have the Bible in their language, and the "works" prescribed by the church of his time, and the sale of indulgences, were diametrically opposed to this Gospel. So Luther read, preached, built his life on, and spread the word of God to as many people as possible, translating it into his vernacular German. The swan is being formed out of the rock to illustrate Luther's respect for church tradition insofar as it respects the Word, and out of the mud to illustrate the importance of an individual's belief in the Word, and ultimately, the swan will stand on the Word alone.
(Original description was much longer and a slog to read. If you still want to read it, it's here on Weasyl: https://www.weasyl.com/~hexadoodle/.....61959/reformed
(This picture also had comments disabled out of nerves, but they're enabled now. Hi!)
Category Artwork (Digital) / All
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 2040 x 1320px
File Size 2.27 MB
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