There is a holiday every year that sends reformed hipsters into fits of delight. It is an excuse to pull out the German beer, potato salad, and sausage. It is no happy accident that what has become known as Reformation Day shares a day with All Hallows Eve, better known as Halloween. On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther, a German monk and teacher in Wittenburg, Germany, famously nailed his 95 Theses for debate to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenburg.
This wasn’t done on a whim. Luther had been preaching against the increasing corruption of the Church since he visited Rome in 1511. There he saw the lavish spending of Pope Leo X, the absurdity of relic worship, and the selling of pardons of sin or indulgences. There is a famous line attributed to one of these indulgence peddlers, Johann Tetzel, who was active in Germany around Luther’s congregation, “As soon as the coin in the coffer does ring, the soul from purgatory does spring.”
Luther was concerned for the spiritual wellness of the sheep that had been entrusted to his care. He wrote the 95 Theses as an outline of some of the issues that he saw. He posted them on the church door on October 31st because the next day is a high church holiday, All Saints Day, and many would be present. He wished to have open debate about these issues, and even spoke with regard to the papacy, blaming these missteps on ignorance. Number 50 of the 95 Theses says, “Christians are to be taught that if the Pope knew the exactions of the indulgence preachers, he would rather that the Basilica of St. Peter were burned to ashes than built up with the skin, flesh, and bones of his sheep.”
It should be made clear that Luther never intended to start a new division of Christianity. His heart was for the faithful unity of the church under the head of Christ. However, he realized that his first and most important allegiance must be to God not a pope, and that God’s word is the only infallible source of revelation about God. Also, Luther was not alone in his condemnation of these practices, but he was one of the first to take a stand against the most powerful man in all of Christendom and to speak truth to power.
While in hiding, Luther turned his attention to the translation of the Bible into the common tongue. The most widely used Bible during those days was the Latin Vulgate translated by Jerome in the late 4th century. The problem was that there were only a handful of people in each town that speak or read (much less understand) Latin. Luther believed that this was one of the root causes that enabled the Catholic church to wield so much power. He dedicated himself to translating the New Testament from Latin into German and completed the task in under 3 months!
Reform was in the air and sadly they were outbreaks of violence in the name of reform and to quench it. This saddened Luther and he did all that he could to promote peaceful reform amongst his followers until his death in 1546. Luther and his supporters were not the only ones to break away from the Catholic Church. In 1534, King Henry VIII declared his independence from the Pope and created the Church of England, naming himself as its spiritual and political leader. This was obviously for a much less theological reason as the church would not endorse the annulment of his marriage. Side note: The story of Sir Thomas More and his dedication to his faith in the face of King Henry VIII is the subject of one of my absolute favorite movies, A Man For All Seasons.
In Switzerland Ulrich Zwingli (Around 1522) and John Calvin (Around 1533), launched their own religious reform movements. In the Netherlands during the late 1520s, Menno Simons was a Catholic Priest that began preaching against the teachings and practices of the church. As a result, by the end of the 16th century, as much as one third of western Europe was no longer Catholic. The sad fact of the reformation was that all of these reformers lacked the strength to stand with other reformers despite some disagreement. The result was the fracturing of the church. Even the Catholic church had its own internal reformation cleaning up some of their more erroneous teachings and practices.
I struggle with this separation because I have the desire to see the body of Christ unified, but in another sense I know that the gospel of Jesus Christ has been preached farther and wider by this explosion of movements, teachings, and churches than it probably would have been if everyone was in agreement. For that I am thankful, and I hope that all who fall on the mercy of God for salvation found only in Jesus by grace through faith will unite in completing the work of the great commission to take this good news to the ends of the Earth. That is not only in closed countries in Africa or the Middle East but even just across the street to your neighbor.
So as those kids come around and ring your doorbell this week looking for some treats, use that as an opportunity to get to know your neighbors and hopefully start having some gospel conversations. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below or on any of our social media platforms like Twitter or Facebook.
Paradox Church 