Blog

I’ll admit that the thought taking on this endeavor was extremely daunting. Where and how do I begin? How does someone with virtually no theological background begin to layout and expound such an enormous and heavy subject matter as this. After much prayerful though and deliberation, I chose to begin by writing about the Protestant Reformation and the subsequent reaction of the church in Rome.

Note: If I wrote the following in the 16^th century, I would be labeled a heretic, excommunicated and possibly worse.

To understand how and why the Reformation happened, we need to look at what the Church and what Europe was like in the century or two prior to Martin Luther and the posting of his Ninety-Five Theses on October 31, 1517.

Imagine this being the latter days of Medievalism. The Roman church had been in decline, caught up in decades of corruption and scandals. Many people within the church would admit the desperate need for reform. Luther witnessed this during his pilgrimage to Rome while still an Augustine monk in 1510. I will not elaborate on the problems within the Roman church at that time. These issues have been documented in the many sources of church history. The other thing Luther objected to was Rome’s practice of selling indulgences in order to reduce or eliminate the time one spent in purgatory.  

But the primary reason for the Reformation was about to materialize.

Post tenebras lux. After darkness, light. For centuries Europe had been in the grip of spiritual darkness. The light of the gospel had been clouded by human traditions and churchly powers and authorities. The Bible was not available in the common people’s language. All church liturgy was in Latin. Except for the earliest known manuscripts of Greek and Aramaic, there were the Latin copies available only to the high ranking clergy and elite universities. But that slowly began to change.   

Men considered among the Pre-Reformers began to translate the Bible into their native languages. Against intense persecution from their country’s kings and leaders and the Roman church, they began the arduous task of transcribing and teaching Holy Scripture. John Wycliffe (1330-1384) and later William Tyndale (1494-1536) into English; John Hus (1372-1415) into Czech; Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531) into Swiss and French; and later Martin Luther (1483-1546) into German. This was the way the Reformers began to distinguish the church teachings that were leading people astray spiritually from the more edifying teachings of the Bible.  

Then sometime around 1450, one of the watershed moments of human history occurred. Johannes Gutenberg developed the mechanical movable type that vastly improved the speed and efficiency of his printing press. The printing revolution had begun. Although the printing, distributing and owning of a printed bible was strictly forbidden by the church in Rome, the bible became more and more available to people of all regions of Europe. A flood gate of biblical revelation began to occur. 

Martin Luther never intended to be the driving force of the Reformation. He had joined the Augustinian order in 1505, twelve years before he wrote and posted his Ninety-Fife Theses. In the monastery, the monks were taught the way to salvation was difficult but not impossible. They were reminded that purgatory existed for those not quite good enough for heaven. But if one followed the teachings of the church and took advantage of the many means of grace, one could have a reasonable expectation that a merciful God would be satisfied. Luther wondered, how perfect do you have to be to get to heaven?

So Luther began the most rigorous pursuit of the order’s discipline he could muster. But he struggled right from the start. In his pursuit to earn and accumulate as much saving merit as possible, he was constantly burdened with the overwhelming feeling of not being able to meet the demands of a righteous God. He became very distraught and inconsolable. One biographer had called him a neurotic monk. His pilgrimage to Rome in 1510 did not help. Luther became more unsettled and his days of monastery life became numbered.

Two years later, at the urging of one of his mentors, he found himself in Wittenburg, Germany receiving a doctorate in theology at a newly formed university. Shortly thereafter Luther began to study and teach the Bible. In the Bible, he would discover the answers his soul had longed for.

It was in the study of Paul’s book to the Romans that Martin Luther began to discover the biblical doctrine of justification that would become the material principle of the Protestant Reformation; that salvation is of grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone. That we are saved from God’s wrath through believing in the work of Jesus Christ alone. Luther was beginning to understand the difference between what he had been taught at the monastery and what he learned while studying the Scriptures on his own. He would later write, ‘the Doctrine of Justification is the article on which the church stands or falls’.

This whole Reformation movement and the development of its key Doctrines did not happen overnight either for Luther or his fellow Reformers. Through the persistent study of Holy Scriptures they rediscovered the biblical truths written and taught by the Apostles and the early church Fathers. Once the Doctrine of Justification was uncovered, these five major points came to the forefront as a result of this revelation.                                                                                                                         Sola Scriptura (Scripture alone): The Bible alone is our highest authority.            Sola Fide (faith alone)” We are saved through faith alone in Jesus Christ.              Sola Gratia (grace alone): We are saved by the grace of God alone.                       Solas Christus (Christ alone): Jesus Christ alone is our Lord, Savior and King.        Soli Deo Gloria (to the glory of God alone): We live for the glory of God alone.    

As we will see, the Roman Church took exception, directly or indirectly, to the word alone.              

I will discuss each of them in future articles.

 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and we are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,”  Romans 3:23-24

Note: Please read my article on “Doctrine of Justification-Rome” for a continuation of this subject.   JCav

Note: For more about Martin Luther and The Reformation, I refer you to following.

The Legacy of Luther; Reformation Trust Publishing

Rescuing the Gospel; Irwin Lutzer