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October 29, 2017 |
| Deformation And Reformation | ||
On this coming Tuesday (October 31st, 2017) it will have been 500 years since Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg Castle church. There had been others before him but he is credited with beginning what is called the Protestant Reformation. The only things that really made him different, though, were his tenacity, he was a prolific writer, and the churches attempt to kill him failed.
As I prepared this lesson I read an author who claimed that Luther was guided by the Holy Spirit. That's a very bold claim for a man to make. What man knows the mind of God? Ignoring that, I think it's worth asking the question, what evidence is there that the reformation was guided by the Holy Spirit? What are the fruits of that tree?
If we look back at past efforts by a people to reform themselves, the track record isn't good. Nehemiah brought the people back to the Torah. They wept for the sins of their fathers and repented of their own sins. Yet, as soon as Nehemiah left them they began to fall apart. They were never able to return to their best years.
Ultimately they would go through civil strife and wars. In time they realized that God was punishing them for breaking his laws. By Jesus' time this had become strict adherence to laws and with that, the loss of faith, love, mercy, and justice. Isaiah speaks of them this way:
For it is: Do this, do that, a rule for this, a rule for that; a little here, a little there.
If we look at Jesus trying to reform Judaism, we know they resisted reformation and killed him. Ultimately the Jews would drive the Christians out and continue on as they were.
Jesus disciples, now apostles, continued to teach the truth but they would see many heretical sects split off from the true faith. Revelation 2:6 mentions the Nicolaitans by name.
Ultimately one sect, coming from the church of Rome, would prevail over all the others. As it became more and more evil, groups would split off from it and try to reform themselves without success.
This is where the story of Martin Luther begins, almost 500 years before he was born, in 1058 AD. The Greek half of the Catholic Church strongly disagreed with many of the things the Roman half had done. Some of these were theological but many others were just efforts to gain more control - politics. This created the greatest schism (split) there had been in the Catholic Church.
The Greek half became the Orthodox Churches. They made small reforms but retained much from the Catholic Church.
For the 500 years before that the Catholic Church had been all powerful. It raised up kings and took them back down. It waged wars and became wealthy. It stomped on anyone who taught differently than it believed, knocking them back in line or killing them. In 1058 it was unthinkable that it could be split in half, but it was.
This began a period where the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) peaked in its power and began the slide into incompetence and corruption that created many enemies and weakened the RCC. Small groups split off from the RCC, like the Waldenses in 1170. They were excommunicated and persecuted but the RCC was unable to destroy them. By the time Martin Luther would pound that nail into the door in 1517, it was possible for some people to teach against the RCC and live to see another day.
Before we continue on though, the pattern must be seen in all that has been covered so far. Attempts at reformation never manage to get all the way back and then the deformations begin to accumulate again. Satan plays the game very well. People, for their part, lack the understanding and faith to go all the way back. They often also act out of wrong motives.
Luther's original intent was to reform the Roman Catholic Church from the inside. He didn't hate the church at first. He only wanted the church to fix some practices and beliefs related to indulgences, the "get out of Purgatory free" cards. The earliest reformers were like that. They protested what the church was doing and tried to reform it and thus it was named the Protestant Reformation. They wanted to reform; not create a new church.
After the RCC kicked Luther out of the church (excommunicated him) and tried to kill him he turned against the church and eventually setup his own church, now called the Lutheran church.
As a consequence though the doors were thrown wide open. Many false teachers also started their own churches. This diagram tries to show the splits that produced the different churches we know today.
The chart also tries to show how far away their teachings are from those of the RCC, with the RCC being at the bottom of the chart. This also parallels the division between the magisterial and radical reformers.
"While the magisterial reformers wanted to substitute their own learned elite for the learned elite of the Catholic Church, the radical Protestant groups rejected the authority of the institutional "church" organization, almost entirely, as being unbiblical."2
The chart also shows, as time went on, most churches moved toward the top of the chart, further from the RCC.
The reformers identified five solas in their writings, five statements using the Latin word for "only" or "alone." These came to define Protestantism.
These were not listed together until the 20th century3 but they were all mentioned by the reformers. They were used as an indictment of the RCC mostly and less as a guide for themselves. The many splits in the chart above attest to the fact that each reformer was guided by his own vision of a new church.
Some splits could be expected based on different understandings of unclear Bible passages, but instead we see major doctrinal divisions. The reformers did get together at one point to see if they could agree on the foundations for a single doctrine and were not able to.
Luther had not intended to leave the RCC and he was still very attached to it theologically. For example, he rejected the RCC belief in transubstantiation (that the communion wafer becomes the literal body of Jesus) but he couldn't go as far as the other reformers who said the wafer is only symbolic. So, he created the idea of consubstantiation, that the presence of Jesus is in the wafer in some unclear way.
Luther would also claim that the books of James and Revelation offered no value to Christians. He also said Moses is no concern of Christians. In effect he was changing the scriptures that would be the basis for Sola Scriptura, making it "only the scriptures I like and agree with."
Calvin can't be said to have adhered to Sola Scriptura. Calvinism is full of his own ideas.
As a whole the reformers threw out most of the RCC holy days, but kept a few, though there was no Sola Scriptura reason to do so. Luther would adjust Sola Scriptura by saying, what the Bible doesn't disallow is allowed, which means a personal interpretation will be used for what is not allowed.
Throughout the history of God's people there has been a series of cycles of deformation and then reformation. The deformations come in the form of dangerous and even wrong teachings and practices that become traditions and then become law and the focus of the church. These slowly infiltrate the churches. A point comes, though, when enough people recognize how far the church has slipped away and reformation is necessary.
However God's poeple often get ahead of God in this and they are human with human weaknesses. Satan also brings in his people. Thus each reformation contains the seeds that will spawn the next reformation.
So it was with the Protestant Reformation and therefore it never returned to the state of the original churches or the five Solas. Therefore we know there will need to be another reformation and 500 years have past since the last one.
Sometimes God's people think they are doing wonderfully, but in fact they are far from God. In cases like that God needs to step in. Are we near that time?
1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Protestantbranches.svg
2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_Reformation
3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_solae
