Wednesday, February 21, 2018

David on Luther, Calvin, and the Reformation







Luther, Calvin, and the Reformation (David Jones)



The Reformation, also known as the Protestant Reformation, was the religious revolution that took place in the Western church during the 16th century, between c1517 – c1648. The Reformation began as an attempt to reform the Roman Catholic Church and their practices of spreading false doctrine and open abuse of their power. This outcry against their corrupt practices led to the formation of Protestantism and its major branches, which include Lutheranism, Calvinism, Anglicanism, Methodism, and the Baptists.
                The Reformation began on October 31st, 1517, when a rebellious Augustinian monk named Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of his church after becoming disillusioned by the rampant open corruption of the Roman Church. The Ninety-Five Theses protested the pope’s sale of reprieves from penance, or indulgences. Indulgences were monetary donations to the church in exchange for a written promise from the Pope to reduce a sinner’s time in purgatory. Luther claimed that Bible alone held God’s truth and that the pope had no authority over purgatory, leading to his excommunicating in 1521.
                The foundation of Protestant Reformation lies in the Biblical principles that are taught by Lutheran and other Reformed branches called the Five Solaes. The earliest Solaes, which formed the basis of Lutheranism, advocated that scripture alone is the true word of God (sola scriptura), that faith alone is the only means of salvation, not good works (sola fide), and that salvation comes by divine grace or unmerited favor, not as something merited by the sinner (sola gratia). The spread of Lutheranism’s influence was rapid and by the mid-16th-century, it became the primary belief of northern Europe.
                The second most important figure in the Reformation was John Calvin. He fled to Switzerland where he wrote the “Institutes of the Christion Religion”, which viciously attacked the theological teachings of institutions that Calvin considered unethical, but also described different practices of Christianity, inspiring the ideas that would later become Calvinism. Another important figure residing in Switzerland was John Knox. Influenced by John Calvin, his work led to the establishment of Presbyterianism, a form of Protestant Church government in which the church is administered locally by the minister with a group of elected elders of equal rank. In England, Henry VIII, angry at Pope Clement VII for refusing to grant him an annulment of his marriage, established the Anglican Church, which permitted the beginning of religious change in the country. He declared that he was the ultimate authority in matters relating to the church. The Reformation was not a peaceful movement. There were decades of rebellions and open warfare, decimating nearly 40% of the German population as a result. The Reformation ended with Thirty Years War in 1648.

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