Reformation Day

When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, “Repent” (Mt 4:17), he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.

These words, the first of Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences, were penned in October 1517, and mark the traditional beginning of what is now known as the “Protestant Reformation.” The Reformation, as well as Luther its main character, continue to divide the world’s two billion Christians. Who was this backwater Augustinian monk (“a drunken German” according to the amicable description of Luther’s nemesis, Pope Leo X), and who gave him the right to divide the church with a stroke of his pen? To adapt Nietzsche’s famous quote, ‘Who gave Luther the sponge to wipe away the doctrinal horizon and unchain the earth from its magisterial Sun?’

But that question betrays a misconception, one of many that we clarify in our Humanities’ discussions. In fact, it was never Luther’s intention to strike off on his own, the father of a new branch of Christendom. It is better to conceive of him as, by 1517, the most recent figure in a centuries-long line of Catholic voices who had grown disconcerted over the Church’s power, immorality, and doctrine—a lineage that boasts names such as William Langland, Dante, Petrarch, John Wycliffe, Jan Hus, Girolamo Savonarola, and many others (all of whom you should quiz your 9th–12th graders on during Learn-from-Home days!). Far from crying out as a lone voice in the wilderness, Luther joined a veritable chorus of contemporary prophets who called the Church back to her first love (Rev. 2:4). Luther’s Theses, read in their entirety, illustrate a sincere concern to purify, not to rend, the Christian Church. To the surprise of many readers, almost every word of the document displays a reverence for the Pope and a rather traditional view of the Catholic doctrines of purgatory.

However, as Luther’s doctrine continued to develop and sound more “reformed”—in 1519, for example, Luther argues that Popes and councils can make severe doctrinal errors, and signals his allegiance with the condemned heretic, Jan Hus—the rift between the papacy and the monk from Wittenberg worsened beyond repair. Luther was excommunicated in 1521, makes his famous stand at the Diet of Worms in the same year (“I cannot and will not recant. Here I stand. I can do no other!”), and thenceforth is fated to become the poster child of Protestantism. After Luther, the Protestant Reformation continued to flourish in Germany under the auspices of Philip Melanchthon, in France and Switzerland under Calvin and Zwingli, in England under Cranmer and Elizabeth I, and in the world over until the present day, when 830 million souls identify as Protestant.

There have been no shortage of attempts to mend this unhappy schism, both in the 16th century (google “The Regensburg Colloquy”) and in our own time (google “Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification”). And no wonder! Didn’t Paul excoriate the Corinthians so long ago over their lack of agreement—“Is Christ divided?!” (1 Cor. 1:13)? It was Christ’s last wish for the church that they should be united (John 17:21), shouldn’t it be ours? Such efforts indeed are noble. Nevertheless, most historians recognize that after the Council of Trent (1545–1563), at which opposition to the nascent Protestant movement was enshrined in official Catholic teaching, institutional reconciliation became nearly impossible. For both sides, too much was at stake to gloss over their deep differences in the name of superficial harmony.

Why do we study the Protestant Reformation at North Star? Would it be better to focus on areas of history that unite rather than divide us as Christians? I’d like to briefly recommend that—whatever side of the institutional divide you fall on, gentle reader—the people, writings, debates, and movements that comprise the Reformation still require our close attention.

First, an honest approach to the Reformation produces humility, rather than pride, in its students. Each Christian can look back on their team’s performance in these centuries and feel their fair share of chagrin. Protestants should healthily wince at the disturbing things Luther said about German Jews, or the capital persecution of heretics like Michael Servetus and of Protestant minorities like the Anabaptists. Acknowledging the failures of our heroes leads us to pursue better, more Christlike, dialogue with those with whom we disagree. Catholics who appreciate the fact that they can read their Bibles in the English language or take both the bread and the wine of the Eucharist have condemned dissenters to thank for these privileges, among them John Wycliffe and the followers of Jan Hus who pursued these changes in the face of Church opposition. Knowing that we have learned from each other in the past perhaps will make us more willing to do so in the present, substantial and important disagreements notwithstanding.

Second, as with any historical literature, reading Reformation sources acquaints us with understandings of the world and of God that are different from our own, and thereby help to correct presuppositions that we find to be natural, but which may actually be flawed. As C.S. Lewis famously put it in his essay On the Reading of Old Books, “People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes…. Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction.” To take only one example from the Early Modern Era, the Reformation had no shortage of zealous opinions on matters of doctrine. For instance, at the Marburg Colloquy of 1529, Luther and Zwingli could not accept each other due to their differing understandings of the Lord’s Supper. Reading this as modern people, we very naturally take this to be an overreaction. But to Lewis’s point, do we so naturally come to this conclusion because our age has taught us to underreact to doctrinal differences? Maybe no, maybe so—but to Lewis’s point, these are the questions that deep immersion in history compels us to ask.

Third, in any area of church history, we are blessed to have the writings of Christians smarter and godlier than ourselves. The Reformation is no exception. By plumbing the depths of the writings of Luther, Calvin, Cranmer, Vermigli, and others, we can strive closer to our constant goal of whole-hearted love for our Lord.

On one level, the Reformation deserves to be lamented. The 500-year fissure dividing Western Christians is only a necessary evil, not an ideal. Nevertheless, it also deserves to be celebrated. It is the story of a group of Christians who so believed that the gospel was “the power of God for salvation for all who believe” (Rom 1:17)—the only hope for a dying world—that they were willing to risk their lives and reputations for its recovery and promulgation. May we all follow their courageous example until we are finally united in praise before God’s throne.