In many Protestant churches, the last Sunday in October is observed as Reformation Sunday. This date is chosen because it was on October 31, 1517, that Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenburg, Germany.
Here’s a brief bit of background: Over the centuries, the Catholic Church developed the practice of granting “indulgences” to provide absolution to sinners. By Luther’s day, this practice had become increasingly corrupt with an indulgence understood as a special consideration that could be bought and sold. Indulgence-selling had been banned in Germany, but the practice continued unabated. In 1517, a friar named Johann Tetzel began to sell indulgences in Germany to raise funds to renovate St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
Committed to the idea that salvation could be reached through faith and by divine grace only, Luther vigorously objected to the practice of selling indulgences. And so it was that the document he nailed to the church door in Wittenburg bore the title of “Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences.” The 95 theses themselves were a list of questions and propositions on which Luther was planning to lecture in the coming weeks. In many ways, the document was really nothing more than a syllabus for an academic class.
But in his historical context, Luther’s theses propounding two central beliefs - that the Bible is the central religious authority and that humans may reach salvation only by their faith and not by their deeds – were enough to spark the Protestant Reformation.
Tensions between Catholics and Protestants soon boiled over into persecution and outright warfare lasting throughout the sixteenth and into the seventeenth centuries. Theologically speaking – once they had rejected the structure and authority of the Catholic Church – the Protestants were left with the problem of what kind of alternatives should be provided.
And so it is that we find in the Foundations section of the Presbyterian Book or Order, a paragraph titled, “The Notes of the Reformed Church.” The opening of this section reads as follows: “Where Christ is, there is the true Church. Since the earliest days of the Reformation, Reformed Christians have marked the presence of the true Church wherever –
the Word of God is truly preached and heard,
the Sacraments are rightly administered, and
ecclesiastical discipline is uprightly ministered.
In our Post next week, we will consider each of these items in more detail. In the meantime, I hope we can celebrate Reformation Sunday, not with a sense of animosity toward others, but with a feeling of joy for what God continues to reveal to us through the power and love of the Holy Spirit.
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