Justified Conflicts

Lutheran theologians held that war could never be holy. In Whether Soldiers, Too, Can Be Saved (1526), Martin Luther held that soldiering is a legitimate calling.

In On War Against the Turk (1529), he dropped the view that the Turks were God's scourge and urged Charles V and the Germans to resist them, but only in a defensive, secular war, never a crusade. In 1531 Lutheran princes formed the Schmalkaldic League against Charles V.