God's Story: A Student Guide to Church History (8 page)

From a bird’s-eye view, historians typic-ally differentiate between the “Continental Reformation”—meaning the collective refor-mations that took place on the European Continent proper—and the English and Scottish Reformations. While Martin Luther is considered to be the one who actually started the Reformation in 1517, he was simply the right person at the right time, the missing component in the engine.

Thus, it should be emphasized that many reformers took up the mantle of preaching, writing, and calling for reform of the Roman Catholic Church. Even still, a survey of church history would be incomplete without some attention to two champions of the Christian faith: Martin Luther and John Calvin.

Luther was born on 10 November 1483 in Eisleben, Germany. After attending various Latin schools, he enrolled at the University of Erfurt in 1501 at the age of 19. He received his master’s degree four years later and entered law school. However, in 1505 as he was travelling to university, a thunderstorm stopped him in his tracks. Fearing for his life, he vowed that if he were spared, he would commit himself to the service of God. He immediately became an Augustinian monk.

As a monk, Luther sought to break free from a sense of inner despair and the fear of God’s wrath. He confessed his sin—down to the nitty, gritty details—to his overseer, Johann Von Staupitz. Still nothing seemed to work. In 1508, Staupitz sent him to teach moral philosophy at the newly-founded University of Wittenberg. Three years later, in 1511, he became a professor of biblical theology, a position he held until his death.

One day, while studying the book of Romans, he came to see that his righteous standing and justification before God didn’t come through performing good works, but as a gift received by
faith alone
. In other words, our righteousness has been earned by Another, Jesus Christ! On October 13, 1517, Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses (statements of faith) to the church door in Wittenberg, which was a customary practice at that time.

Luther taught that justification came by faith
alone
, apart from works. He also decried the sale of indulgences by the Roman Catholic Church to raise money for St. Peter’s, even debating the popular Catholic theologian Johann Eck in 1519 over this very issue! Moreover, Luther affirmed the authority of Scripture over the pope, over the teaching of the church, and over church tradition—what we call, the doctrine of
Sola Scriptura
.

Within the next few days after Luther posted his Ninety-five Theses, his supporters removed them, translated them from Latin into German, and then copied, printed, and distributed them all over Germany! Before long, Luther emerged as a leader of the Reformation movement that was spreading across Europe.

In 1521, the Church asked him to appear at the Diet (which means “assembly”) of Worms—in Worms, Germany—so that he would recant his writings. Refusing to do so, they declared Luther an outlaw. On his departure from Worms, he was captured by friendlies for protection at the command of the Prince of Saxony and taken to Wartburg Castle. There, he translated the Bible into his native language, German.

Luther married a former nun, Catherine von Bora, and established a model for the Christian family. He wrote many books, including his famous
The Bondage of the Will
(1525), which attacked some of Erasmus’ teaching on original sin and salvation. God saved sinners, Luther argued, by grace alone, through the work of Christ alone, received by faith alone, and all to the glory of God alone!

Even though Luther eventually parted ways with another Reformer, Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531)—over the nature of the Lord’s Supper—he continued to write and preach the gospel until his death in 1546. Today, we see his legacy in his books, sermons, confessions (like the Augsburg Confession of 1530), and in the well-known hymn, “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.”

Calvin is arguably the greatest and most significant theologian in church history. Not only did his ideas shape more people, movements, and cultures than anybody else of his day, they
directly
shaped them more than anybody else for at least the next one hundred years.

Born in 1509 in France, Calvin was known for his efforts of reform in Geneva, Switzerland. Originally a lawyer, Calvin broke with the Roman Catholic Church around 1530 and three years later was forced to leave Paris because of his Protestant convictions. He fled to Basel, Switzerland, where he wrote the first edition of what would become his most famous and influential work,
The Institutes of the Christian Religion
, in 1536.

Passing through Geneva later that year, he was persuaded by William Farel (1489-1565) to stay to help organize and continue the Reformation there. Calvin reluctantly agreed and so began a long ministry—interspersed by a brief period of exile to Strasbourg—in Geneva. He desired to see a faithful ministry of the Bible, the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and church discipline carried out in the city. At times, the church and state were so interrelated that it was difficult to distinguish the two, especially when it came to suppressing heresy or moral corruption.

Calvin has been criticized for his role in the death of a man named Servetus, an anti-Trinitarian campaigner who was charged for heresy and burned at the stake in 1553. However, the decision didn’t rest upon Calvin, but upon a council of twenty-five people. Calvin didn’t want Servetus to die, but to repent and recant! Moreover, by that point, the Roman Catholic Church had already set a price on Servetus’ head. Even when Servetus was sentenced to die, Calvin tried to move that he be executed by the less-painful method of beheading.

In addition to his many books and biblical commentaries, Calvin wrote five major Latin editions of his
Institutes
, one French edition, and supervised the writing of three other French editions. His final Latin edition of 1559 is five times the length of his first edition in 1536 and has become the standard edition from which most modern translations and references are made.

The central concern of Calvin’s theology is union with Christ, taken root and displayed in a life of godliness (or
pietas,
in Latin). Grace displayed in the saving work of Jesus Christ, then, is central in Calvin’s theology. Calvin also argued for what has been called the “third use” of God’s law. If one use is to restrain sin and another to convict the sinner of his sin, then the third use of God’s law points us to that which pleases God. According to Calvin, God’s laws reflect his holiness and the more one studies and attains the knowledge of God, the more he will attain the knowledge of self.

Calvin also developed other areas of biblical theology, such as the doctrine of the person and work of the Holy Spirit, the “spiritual presence” of Christ in the Lord’s Supper, the role of biblical elders, and the importance of seeing Scripture through the lens of a series of relationships between God and his people—called “covenants”—from Old to New Testament.

Reformed Theology
may be summarized by ten statements of faith, which were affirmed in response to and in opposition to Roman Catholic theology.
¹
Virtually all Protestant Churches (even today) accept the first five, often referred to as the “Five Solas.” These five are:

1. Sola Scriptura
   – The Bible alone is the only source of authority for faith, doctrine, and Christian living.
   
2. Sola Fide
   – We are justified, declared “righteous” before God by faith alone, and not by works.
   
3. Sola Gratia
   – We are saved by God’s grace alone, shown in the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ and applied by the Holy Spirit.
   
4. Solus Christus
   – There is salvation in no one else but Jesus Christ, the only Mediator between God and man.
   
5. Soli Deo Gloria
   – All glory and honor is due to God alone and to no other.
   

In addition to the
Five Solas
, Reformed theology also affirms what has been referred to as the “Five Points of Calvinism” or TULIP, which is an acronym for:

1. Total Depravity
   – Man, because of his sinful nature, is born into this world dead in sin, enslaved to its services, and inclined toward evil continually.
   
2. Unconditional Election
   – God’s sovereign choice of his people from before the foundation of the world is not dependent upon man’s decision or will, but upon God’s free grace.
   
3. Limited Atonement
   – Christ came to purposefully and intentionally die for God’s elect, his people.
   
4. Irresistible Grace
   – God, by his Spirit, effectually calls, regenerates, and saves sinners by grace alone.
   
5. Perseverance of the Saints
   – Once a person is saved, he or she will always be saved; true salvation cannot be lost.
   

TULIP is often mistakenly attributed to John Calvin. To be sure, they are drawn from Calvin’s theology (and before him, from the Bible!), but it was the Dutch Reformed Church at the Synod of Dordt that arranged these five points in 1618-1619 in opposition to Jacobus Arminius’ (1560-1609) “five points.” All ten articles of faith—the Five Solas and TULIP—present an ordered expression of biblical theology. They also present a decidedly God-centered view of the world rather than a man-centered view of the world.

It would be nice to say that everything was settled after the Reformers split from the Roman Catholic Church, but that is far from the truth. Years of deadly battles, wars, and reforms shaped the political and religious landscape not only in Europe, but also around the world. The Roman Catholic Church responded to the “heresies” of the Protestants in the Council of Trent (1545-1563) while the Protestant Church began to splinter into various groups, denominations, and movements.

One of these movements, called the Radical Reformation, formed a paradoxical identity of being both pacifist
and
militaristic, depending on which branch of it you came across. Its leaders, people like Menno Simons (and his followers, the Mennonites) and Thomas Müntzer seemed to capture both of these extremes. One of the better-known branches of the Radical Reformation was the Anabaptists, who (as their name suggests) required members to be baptized
again
—as they were all, at that point, baptized as infants—and became heavily persecuted for their “radical” differences from the Roman Catholic Church.

By 1600, many of the major theological and church-related shifts of the Reformation had taken place. Courses were, for the most part, set and the world would never be the same. This can be seen from the rise of Reformed churches, Lutheran churches, Anglican churches, and a variety of Anabaptist and Radical Reformation movements. All of these would, together, be categorized under the umbrella term, “Protestant.” But, for our intents and purposes in this overview, we need to back up and consider the impact of the Reformation in England and Scotland.

1. According to the Reformers, how are we (as
   sinners) accepted by a holy God? Where does
   our righteousness come from?
   
2. What does
   sola Scriptura
   mean? Why is the
   issue of authority so crucial when it comes to
   solving problems in the church today?
   
3. Where did the “five points of Calvin” come
   from? What do you think most people think
   of Calvin today?
   
4. All of the Protestant denominations stem, in
   their present form, from the Reformation.
   What are some commonalities between all (or
   most) Protestant denominations?
   

1
For an overview of Reformed Theology, see Brian Cosby,
Rebels Rescued: A Student’s Guide to Reformed Theology
(Ross-Shire, Scotland: Christian Focus Publications, 2012).

M
any biology classes use an organic compound called formaldehyde to preserve specimens—frogs, worms, and larger animals—for dissection. The worst part about formaldehyde is its pungent odor (one that’s hard to forget!). After examining the parts of a frog one day in my biology class, I carried its irritating scent with me all day! Friends avoided me, girls avoided me (which was rather typical), and I wanted to avoid me too! All I could think about that day was trying to get rid of the lingering scent.