October is Reformation month, the last Sunday in October is Reformation Sunday, and October 31 is Reformation Day. In light of that, we are going to post a series of articles related to the Protestant Reformation.
Sovereignty of God and the Reformation
The Protestant Reformation was a significant event in church history, and as with all events, it didn’t “just happen.” If history is “His story” and God can declare the end from the beginning (Is. 46:10), then certainly, the Reformation occurred by the will of God at exactly the time He willed for it to happen.
The Reformation began on October 31, 1517 when Martin Luther famously nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg. The timing of the Reformation is interesting in many ways. One example is the invention of the printing press in the mid-1400s. With this invention, the writings of Luther could be mass produced—by the standards of the day—and disseminated far and wide. Without the printing press, handwritten copies of Luther’s writings would not go very far. Of course, many other factors—social and political—were also at play, allowing the Reformation to thrive.
Yet, none of the events leading up to the Reformation were mere coincidence: God sovereignly ordered all of these events. Because the sovereignty of God is central to the timing of the Reformation, it could be said that the prelude to the Reformation began far before 1517. Some view men like John Wycliffe (1324-1384), Jan Hus (1372-1415), and Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536; more on him later) as precursors of the Reformation.[1]
The Righteousness of God
Martin Luther, at the time, was unaware of the part he would play in church history. In fact, he didn’t even mean to spark the Protestant Reformation with his Ninety-Five Theses. In 1517, Martin Luther was just a young monk and Bible professor at the University in Wittenberg. Lecturing on the Book of Romans, he came across a phrase in Romans 1:17 that would eventually lead to the writing of the Ninety-Five Theses. That phrase is “the righteousness of God.”
Luther understood that phrase to mean God is righteous and deals righteously with punishing the unrighteous. Pondering night and day and studying Erasmus’ Greek New Testament, he realized that the last part of verse 17 says, “The righteous shall live by faith.” Making the connection between the last part of verse 17 and the first part (“the righteousness of God”), he understood the meaning: God, who is righteous, can also give righteousness to man, despite our sin-nature. We are given righteousness through faith in Christ, who lived a righteous life. We call this “imputed righteousness.”
We could further delve into the doctrine of imputation: Not only is Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us, but sin is imputed to Christ. Second Corinthians 5:21 says, “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
On discovering the meaning of Romans 1:17, Martin Luther said, “Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn… The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning, and whereas before the ‘justice of God’ had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweeter in greater love. This passage of Paul became to me a gate to heaven.”[2]
Why was the meaning of this verse so significant to Martin Luther? The Roman Catholic Church taught that works, in addition to faith, make one righteous. But, the meaning of Romans 1:17 is clear. Martin Luther said, “Works do not make one righteous. Righteousness creates good works.”[3]
Indulgences and the Ninety-Five Theses
It is along this line of thinking that Martin Luther nailed the Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg. The Catholic Church taught that there is a place called purgatory, which is basically a holding tank between death and heaven. In order to speed up the process of going to heaven for your loved ones (since they’re dead and you’re not), the Catholic Church implemented the teaching of indulgences, which is a donation of money or doing some spiritually good deed. Indulgences can shorten the time your loved ones spend in purgatory. There was a saying that “As soon as a coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.”
Martin Luther took issue with that teaching, and as a Bible professor, he wrote and nailed the Ninety-Five Theses to the door to start an academic debate over the teaching of indulgences. Number 27 of the Ninety-Five Theses states, “There is no divine authority for preaching that the soul flies out of purgatory as soon as the money clinks in the collecting box.”[4] Luther, in effect, was protesting the abuses of the Catholic Church. Hence, we get the term “Protestantism” from “protest.”
Papal Bull
While the Catholic Church hoped that Luther’s influence would quietly die down, it had the opposite effect and spread like wildfire. What started as an academic debate on the practice of indulgences grew into a movement that was impossible to ignore. The Catholic Church had to do something.
In June of 1520, People Leo X issued a papal bull against Luther. A “bull” is simply an edict or decree, and the bull issued against Luther was a decree condemning many of Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses. The bull began with the words “Exsurge Domine,” meaning “Arise, O Lord.” The bull begins with “Arise, O Lord, and judge Thy cause. A wild boar has invaded Thy vineyard.”[5]
The bull was distributed, and it eventually reached Luther in October, four months later. Upon receiving the bull, Luther had 60 days to repent; otherwise, he would be excommunicated. Rather than complying with the bull, Luther burned it outside the city walls with several hundred followers in tow. Luther’s defiance against the pope is hardly surprising. In November of 1520, he wrote, “Even Antichrist himself, if he should come, could think of nothing to add to the papacy’s wickedness.”[6] Hence, he referred to the papal bull as the bull of the Antichrist.
What happens next? Please read part 2 on the Diet of Worms and sola Scriptura.
Endnotes
[1] Christopher Catherwood, Church History (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2007), 91.
[2] Roland Bainton, Here I stand: A Life of Martin Luther (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1978), 48.
[3] Timothy Jones, Christian History Made Easy (Torrance, CA: Rose Publishing, 2009), 107.
[4] Catherwood, Church History, 97.
[5] Steven J. Lawson, “A Mighty Fortress is Our God: Luther as a Man of Conflict (1521),” in The Legacy of Luther, ed. R. C. Sproul and Stephen J. Nichols (Sanford, FL: Reformation Trust, 2016), 35.
[6] Lawson, “A Mighty Fortress is Our God: Luther as a Man of Conflict (1521),” 35.
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