Desiring God Ministries has a wonderful series to help us celebrate the 500 year birthday of the Reformation. You can look for the series by the title Here We Stand on the Desiring God website. It features short, daily readings/audio of key reformers. You may consider reading them or listening to them with your children and they will provide stimulating conversation for your family.
The year 2017 marks 500 years since Martin Luther nailed his 95 thesis to the church doors in Wittenberg. Historians mark this as the birth of the what has since been known and celebrated as the Protestant Reformation, and rightfully so. However, let me make the case that 1517 wasn't really the year of the reformation as we know it and celebrate it today. Perhaps that designation more appropriately applies to the year 1519? If this were the case then reformed churches everywhere have to keep the champagne on ice for two more years! This insinuates that reformed churches would be celebrating the 500 year birthday (or maybe it is the 498th birthday) with champagne. Not very likely.
Going back some 100 years prior to Martin Luther the likes of Jan Hus and John Wycliffe started to question the place of authority that the Catholic church was occupying. Rome had been in a state of decline and in effort to restore it's glory it targeted the rebuilding of St. Peter's basilica along with other general projects. The massive undertaking would be expensive and to fund the rebuilding the church sold indulgences. One of the catchy phrases that summarize the churches advertising slogan was "when the coin in the coffer rings a soul from purgatory springs." If Johan Tetzel were alive today he would no doubt have lucrative marketing deals from the likes of Coke or Pepsi or any other major business that relies on slick advertising. Tetzel wasn't selling cola, however, he was selling a notion to people who were censored from Scripture that it was possible to spring a loved one from the trappings of a fictitious purgatory. Just think about how much ignorance and oppression was necessary to keep this fortune 500 company (Catholic Church) afloat.
Jan Hus and John Wycliffe began studying the Scriptures and eventually saw for themselves an alarming discrepancy between what Scripture taught and what the Catholic church practiced. The tyranny was so severe that to question the church was to be guilty of heresy of the highest order. Of course we see so clearly now what the reformers were beginning to suspect: that there was a war surrounding whose authority would govern society: the Bible or the Pope. Unfortunately at the time it was the CEO, I mean, the Pope. Profits were good, bottom lines were being met, how dare anyone mess with that kind of success? Thankfully, Hus did. Wycliffe did. Hus would be stripped naked with a dunce cap on his head which read "arch-heretic," led past a pile of his own books burning and chained to a stake where he was given the opportunity to recant. Hus said "My Lord Jesus Christ was bound with a harder chain than this one for my sake, so why should I be ashamed of this rusty chain?...What I taught with my lips I will now seal with my blood." Hus, a loyal disciple of John Wycliffe, was burned alive by the Catholic church. His crime? Preaching the Bible.
However, Hus is linked to Luther in an important way. As Hus was enduring the most extreme bully tactic aimed at silencing him (death), he managed to utter these prophetic words before his final breath: "you may roast the goose, but a hundred years from now a swan will arise whose singing you will not be able to silence." That was the year 1415. If 1517 was the date Luther took hammer and nail to the church door in Wittenberg, Hus was a prophet as well as a preacher and politician.
This is all by way of introduction. It is important to gain a sense of how strong the church was at the time and how bent on tyranny it really was. We must gain an appreciation for not only the difficulty of confronting the church but also the need to do so.
This brings us to October 31, 1517 when Luther merged basic construction with theology. Hammer, nail, and ninety five thesis aimed at questioning the authority of the Catholic church, particularly in its practice of indulgences. Michael Reeves had this to say about this event that we associate as the birthplace of the reformation:
"the theses were in Latin, the language of academia, and it was quite usual to post notices on the church door. The theses, then, were not a dramatic, popular protest, but a summons to an academic disputation. And, if the ninety five theses were meant to be a Reformation manifesto, they were a pretty poor effort: they contain not a mention of justification by faith alone, the authority of the Bible, or, indeed, any core Reformation thought. This was because Luther had not yet had his Reformation insight. As such, the theses did not question the relics and indulgences as such, only their misuse." (Michael Reeves, The Unquenchable Flame).
Did you hear that? The core theological convictions that we now associate with the Reformation were not even formed in Luther at the time he nailed the theses to the door in Wittenberg. In doing so, Luther essentially sent an email to the faculty to kick the tires of something that he felt needed some discussion. He was not really attempting to bring about a Reformation. Check out what Reeves went on to say about this event:
"The theses were an attack on the mistreatment of indulgences from a monk who still worked within the thought-world of medieval Roman Catholicism. The theses affirmed the existence of purgatory and sought to defend the pope and indulgences from the bad name abuse would give them. In the ninety five theses, Luther was being a good Catholic."
This is incredible. The real reason the theses had long-lasting staying power is because Luther went on to develop an entirely different understanding of Christianity. Most likely, the ninety five theses event was a small storm that likely would have blown over to be forgotten forevermore if there was not a part two to sustain a movement. In Luther's words, he describes a chain reaction of events that ultimately led to the reformation when he said "God led me into this business against my will and knowledge."
Johan Tetzel and later, Johan Eck (an assortment of Johan's) came in to debate Luther. Tetzel was initially outspoken about having Luther burned as a heretic. Eck was more skillful in debating Luther. His interrogations boiled down to the issue of authority: who has the final say: the Bible or the Pope? When this question was posed to Luther and when Luther was accused of being a Hussite (a disciple of the martyr, Jan Hus) he was horrified in the association. It was only after the break in the debate that Luther revisited Hus' position and realized that he he indeed agreed much more with Hus than with Rome.
This concludes Part 1. Check out Part 2 of 2 to understand how Luther's confrontation of the authority of the Papacy gave way to biblical Christianity.
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