Joel J. Miller here says Luther bears the blame for everything from religious factionalism to individualism and moral relativism, as if Protestantism's "dangerous idea" had no basis in the Bible itself. (Why John Wycliffe and Jan Hus get a pass is anyone's guess.)
Against this the antitheses of the Sermon on the Mount immediately leap to mind, but so do the moral critiques of the prophets against Israel and Judah. In fact, Matthew's Jesus displays a moral vision so redolent of the critical spirit which animates the prophets that it is inconceivable to imagine his oeuvre as collected in the gospels apart from it.
But Protestants continue to try, which is the real problem with Protestantism, not to say Christianity generally. Today's Protestants prefer to emphasize the Pauline compromises, like living at peace with all men, rather than taking seriously the Jesus they claim to worship, the one who upset the tables of the moneychangers and came to set the earth of fire. Today's Protestants don't seem to be simply ignorant of the teaching of Jesus as Paul seems unaware of it. Protestants today generally pretend the Jesus of the gospels doesn't even exist. And the reason for that is that he represents a threat to the status quo of their church in the world.
The value of Luther's rediscovery of the Scriptures is that this opened the discussion anew about why there is such a difference between what the Scriptures teach and what we mistakenly imagine to be God's kingdom.
The more things change the more they stay the same. Catholics didn't like it then, and now Protestants don't. It's a family tradition.
