500 years ago, the world changed!
This date marked what would come to be called the Protestant Reformation — a titanic movement that upheaved it all. A Catholic monk named Martin Luther issued his challenges to Catholic doctrine, paving the way for a spiritual revolution that would affect millions of souls for generations to come.
A Theological Tsunami
The Protestant Reformation swept across Europe like a theological tsunami affecting every social, political, and religious institution in existence in the West. And its effects remain a part of western culture and permeate it 500 years later. In its wake a new world was created.
No other event in the then almost 1500-year history of Christianity had been so tumultuous. And like a tsunami, there was more than a single theological wave moving over Europe and crashing against the established Catholic Church. The Reformation consisted of several movements of renewal and reform, even though we usually think of them as one big thing we call the Reformation. It was profound and generated long-lasting consequences.
From its inception, advocates, critics, observers, theologians, and historians have called the Reformation many things, among them: a revolution, a religious hurricane, a heresy, an evolutionary process, and a score of other things. Metaphors, analogies, and depictions of it abound. In a sense, many of them are correct or overlap in their description. Few people in the last 500 years have denied the Reformation's significance and its lasting influence.
The Reformation was indeed, many things. It was social. It was political. It was economic. It was cultural. But fundamentally and at its core, it was theological.
The Beginnings
Just as a tsunami begins its powerful surge starting far out at sea and miles from the unsuspecting landmass it approaches, so too did the Reformation begin years before Luther's posting of the infamous "95 Theses." There long had been growing swells of discontent within Christianity in the West.
The world of medieval Catholic (Latin) Christianity, out of which the Reformation arose, was multifaceted with strengths and weaknesses. In the experiences and views of the Reformers, the latter outweighed the former. For them, Catholicism and Christianity in the West had become an impersonal and ecclesiastical bureaucracy that favored the hierarchy that controlled it at the spiritual and financial expense of the laity...
The Impact of the Reformation
Corresponding to the revitalized centrality of the Gospel in Christian faith and practice was belief in the right of every individual to interpret the biblical text and the Christian faith rather than have it presented from a centralized authority. Luther's radical idea of the "priesthood of all believers" emphasized the ability, the right, and the legitimacy of individuals to engage in intimate knowledge of, communication with, and relationship with God. This had spiritual and social consequences.
Spiritually and theologically it meant that the individual Christian had the power and responsibility to nurture their own spiritual lives. This built on the earlier Renaissance shift in the understanding of humanity and individual responsibility to God as men and women created by God in His image.
One consequence of this shift in the understanding of humans and their relationship with God was a change in the medieval concept of spiritual vocation whereby those who entered the priesthood or a monastery or convent were thought to be more important spiritually than others.
Luther's emphasis on the priesthood of all believers meant that there was to be no dichotomy between the spiritual world and the world of daily life. The work of the farmer, baker, shipwright, seamstress, carpenter, or teacher had equal significance to the cleric, monk, or nun...
Five Key Doctrines
The theology of the Reformation crystallized around five central doctrines. In the nearly 1500 years since the New Testament era and founding of the Church, much had occurred in the development of the doctrine and practices of the church — some of it biblical and some of it not biblical. Out of the morass of medieval theology, spiritual practices, and ecclesiastical power, the Reformers sought to reaffirm the central theological ideas and "to contend for the faith that was delivered to the saints once for all" (Jude 3, HCSB).
In so doing, they emphasized five beliefs that were at the core of the Reformation. Called "solas" from the Latin word for "alone," these biblical ideas permeated the Reformation. A systematized formal list of these five ideas did not arise until after the Reformation but each of the ideas was present during it and some of the ideas such as Sola Gratia and Sola Fide were utilized together by the Reformers:
1. Sola Scriptura
This phrase means "Scripture alone," and was an idea and emphasis that was quickly applied. With respect to salvation, the Bible provides the content of salvation. The Bible was understood to be the final authority in matters of doctrine and practice rather than Cardinals, Councils, or the Church. It means also that Scripture interprets Scripture.
A central idea of the Reformation was the belief that the Bible was capable of being understood by all Christian believers and that every believer has the right to interpret the Bible for himself or herself and to have every interpretation taken seriously — a very democratic idea.
2. Sola Gratia
This phrase means "grace alone" and emphasized the biblical view that salvation is solely by grace — it is the means of salvation. Salvation does not come through works or because of the spirituality of other Christians who acquired extra grace or excess grace through their works.
This latter idea was part of the idea of a "treasury of merit" that accumulated in heaven because of the holiness of saints and from which people on earth could draw through the purchase of indulgences that would then benefit them or their living and deceased loved ones. It was the selling of such indulgences by papacy (in part to fund the building of St. Peter's basilica in Rome) that was the tipping point for Luther.
3. Sola Fide
This phrase means "faith alone" and reiterated a central teaching in the New Testament, especially the book of Romans. The appropriation of salvation comes through faith alone. Coupled with Sola Gratia, it affirmed that salvation comes as an act and gift of God to individuals solely because of their faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross. Nothing is or can be added to such faith to gain eternal life.
Sola Fide and Sola Gratia are affirmations of Paul's words in Ephesians 2:8-9: "For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God's gift-not from works, so that no one can boast."
4. Solus Christus
"Christ alone" offers access to God the Father based upon His substitutionary death on the cross. Christ alone is the basis of a person's salvation. Jesus Christ is the sole mediator between God and humans. Paul declared in 1 Timothy 2:5-6: "For there is one God and one mediator between God and humanity, Christ Jesus, Himself human, who gave Himself — a ransom for all, a testimony at the proper time" (HCSB). The Reformers affirmed this wholeheartedly.
5. Soli Deo Gloria
A phrase meaning "glory to God alone." With respect to salvation, glory to God alone is the reason a person strives to live a life pleasing to God.
With this phrase, the Reformers meant that all of life and every aspect of life was meant to bring glory to God. As noted above, such an idea broadened the Medieval Church's concept of vocation (vocatio) such that there was no spiritual distinction between clergy and laity.
The five doctrines noted above formed the core of Reformation theology, a theology that enabled every person to directly enter into a personal relationship with God through the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ on the Cross...
A Comprehensive Worldview
The significance of the Reformation rests not only in what it accomplished theologically, but in what it accomplished in the broader western culture as well. It provided a biblical framework for many of the ideas of the next 500 years, enabling Christians to develop a comprehensive worldview.
Whether one looks at science, education, economics, art, political philosophy or music, there is the imprint of the Protestant Reformation. Because the Bible was being read and interpreted in a new way the biblical text was understood to be foundational to every discipline and every area of life...
The theological tsunami of the Protestant Reformation changed the world. What began in the hearts of individual women and men 500 years ago was soon applied with their hands as they literally carried the Gospel of Jesus Christ around the globe and applied it to daily life. It was theological at its core, with ideological ramifications affecting every area of culture and society...
Conclusion
The Protestant reformers were bold. They challenged more than a thousand years of history and tradition. They believed the Bible and the truths contained in it, and they demonstrated daily the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the truths of the Bible to change lives and history.
The Protestant Reformers gave us a legacy, and they challenge us to believe and act daily upon the truths we read in the Bible and to apply those truths in every area of our lives — private and public. Ideas have consequences!