4. Gospel, church and authority the theology(ies) of the. 5. Fools, fanatics and heretics the radical Reformation

Transcription

1 The Reformation Course reading material Prepared by Samuel Ellemor Monash University Clayton Christian Union TNT course 2017 Electronic version available at:

2 Topic Outline Introduction Part 1: The magisterial Reformation 1. Martin Luther and his world 2. Wittenberg 3. Geneva 4. Gospel, church and authority the theology(ies) of the Reformers Part 2: The other Reformations 5. Fools, fanatics and heretics the radical Reformation 6. Rome responds the Counter-Reformation Part 3: The legacy of the Reformation 7. The Reformation and the evangelical movement 8. Protestant catholicity learning from the past, looking to the future 2

3 Introduction Five hundred years ago a German Augustinian monk posted a set of theses to the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church, protesting abuses in the church. Though he could never have realised it at the time, the movement that he started would change the world forever. This course is a historical introduction to the Reformation, with a focus on its impact on theology and church life. Its aim is to be simple without being simplistic. One of the Reformation s key ideas was to recover the past, so that the past could speak to and challenge the present. The Reformers looked to the fathers of the Christian church, such as John Chrysostom and Augustine, for wisdom that they could apply to their own time. We can do the same with the Reformers themselves. 3

4 1. Martin Luther and his world The year was The most powerful man in the world was Suleiman the Magnificent, Ottoman Sultan and Caliph of Islam. The Ottoman armies had just captured the Hungarian city of Belgrade, and the whole of western Europe lay open before the Turkish forces. As Suleiman marched on Belgrade, Martin Luther was hiding in Wartburg Castle. He was a wanted man. Two months earlier, Luther had been summoned to the Diet of Worms by the Emperor, Charles V, to give an account of himself. At the Diet of Worms, Luther challenged Emperor, Pope and Church to the Emperor s very face. The results were predictable. Charles V confirmed Pope Leo X s excommunication of a few months earlier. Henceforth Luther was to be considered a dangerous heretic, whom no loyal subject of the emperor should fraternize with. Rather, anyone coming upon Luther was to seize him and escort him to the emperor under the tightest of security. Fortunately, the Elector Frederick the Wise (Luther s prince) was sympathetic to Luther s cause and was not going to be bossed around by an Italian pope and a Spanish emperor. It was under Frederick s auspices that Luther was whisked away from Worms, and kept in safety in Wartburg. While grateful for surviving, Luther was now stuck in a castle while the world he knew collapsed around him. Luther described his situation as his Patmos. Like the author of Revelation, he spent his exile productively translating the New Testament from Greek to German, and producing polemical works to further the cause of the Reformation. But it was also hard for he was now out of the main action, and bored. Martin Luther Between medieval and modern Luther lived at a time of great change. Thirty years before his birth, the Turks captured Constantinople, and the city that had been at the heart of the Christian world for over a millennium passed into Muslim hands. In the year of Luther s birth, on the other side of the world, Christopher Columbus discovered America. The Renaissance had brought a flourishing of art and culture, particularly in Italy - Michelangelo was a contemporary of Luther s. Learning was on the rise, and scholarship was calling into question much of the received wisdom of the medieval period. Critically, Gutenberg had recently invented the printing press, making the rapid and wide dissemination of ideas possible. It is not too much to say that the printing press made the modern world possible. No Reformation figure looms larger than Martin Luther. Luther was born in Saxony in 1483 to working class parents (his father was a miner, who managed to acquire his own mine). He received a good schooling. His father wanted him to become a lawyer, but it was not to be. Scared for his life while walking in a thunderstorm, Luther invoked the protection of St Anne (whom tradition said was Mary s mother), promising to become a monk if he survived. Luther s prayer was answered, and against the protests of his father he became a monk in the Augustinian order. The Order was named after the great church father, Augustine, who would play a critical role in shaping Luther s own thought. 4

5 Luther earned his doctorate in theology and began teaching at the newly established University of Wittenberg. There he might have remained, in relative obscurity, had it had not been for a Dominican friar by the name of Johann Tetzel, who came to the neighbouring territory in The Dominicans were founded by St Dominic in the thirteenth century to bring reform to the Church. Their special vocation was to preach the gospel, which is why they are called the Order of Preachers. The Order has produced some of the most brilliant minds of Christianity, including the greatest of Catholic theologians, Thomas Aquinas. Alas, it was not the gospel that Johann Tetzel was proclaiming in Germany in Tetzel was selling indulgences, which were said to reduce the time a person spent in purgatory. In short, he was selling the grace of God for money. To make matters worse, Tetzel had the full backing of the local bishop, Albert of Mainz, and Pope Leo X, who were sharing the proceeds between them. The Pope s share went to the building of St Peter s in Rome, and Albert used his share to repay the debt he incurred in buying his archbishopric. There is hardly a more egregious example of simony in all of Christian history. Luther could not remain silent while this charlatan was exploiting the poor people of Germany. So he did what a university professor would typically do to start a public discussion he wrote a set of theses and distributed them. Luther s 95 theses would take on an iconic status in western history. Today the theses make for rather dull reading, but in Luther s day they started a firestorm far beyond what Luther could ever have dreamed. What began as a protest against the abuse of indulgences grew into a dispute over the medieval sacramental system, the hierarchical church, and ultimately the gospel itself. Indulgences In Roman Catholic theology, an indulgence provides for the remission of the temporal punishment for sin (not the sin itself). It is closely tied to the doctrine of purgatory (the intermediate state between death and heaven). In Catholic theology, a believer who has received the gift of salvation still needs to undergo purification, for only the perfect can enter heaven. Any purification not completed in this life must be undertaken in purgatory. An indulgence reduces the amount of purification required in purgatory. In the official teaching of the Church (as formalised after Luther s time), a person must first confess their sin. They must then do a good work to demonstrate their contrition, which earns the indulgence. Tetzel s own teaching (salesmanship) of indulgences was less nuanced. Repentance was optional, and the indulgence could be also be applied for the benefit of one s deceased s relatives. The just shall live by faith Luther s protest against indulgences must be understood against the backdrop of Luther s own developing thought from his study of Scripture. Luther s key insight lay in his interpretation of what Paul meant by righteousness : For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: The righteous will live by faith. - Romans 1:17 Luther said I hated St Paul with all my heart when I read the righteousness of God is revealed in the Gospel. Luther had interpreted righteousness as referring to God s own holy and eternal law, by which he would judge the world. Who could live up to such a standard? How was this righteousness good news for humanity? 5

6 The breakthrough came when Luther realised that the righteousness Paul was talking about is the righteousness of Christ that is received as a gift by faith. He continued This passage from Paul became truly the gate to Paradise. Later I read Augustine s treatise Spirit and Letter, where I unexpectedly found the same interpretation of God s righteousness as the righteousness with which God clothes us by making us righteous. 1 This insight brought a whole paradigm shift. No longer was righteousness something one attained with God s help, but rather something that one receives as a free gift. What Luther had understood as a message of judgement now became a message of salvation. Once one accepts Luther s understanding of the gospel, indulgences, purgatory and indeed the whole ethical system of merit and reward that came to be assumed in the Middle Ages becomes unnecessary. Luther turned the Christian life on its head. A Christian does not do goods works to become righteous, but having received the righteousness of Christ is now free to love and do good works. There were many in Luther s day that advocated for the moral reform of the church. Luther went much further. He wanted to reform the theology of the church, in light of scripture and the gospel. The result was what we today know as the Reformation. 1 This is Luther s own account, given late in life. Admittedly, it is unlikely Luther actually had a single epiphany moment, as he suggests here. The elements of Luther s thought developed gradually from the early 1510 s. 6

7 2. Wittenberg After 10 months of exile in Wartburg, Luther returned to Wittenberg. What he found there caused him great alarm. People were taking his teachings seriously, but in the wrong ways! Luther had said that all Christians share in the priestly ministry, but he didn t mean that priests should stop wearing priestly garments and look like laypeople. Luther encouraged people to read the Bible for themselves. To his horror, some had done so and decided the commandment against idols meant they should smash up sacred images in the churches. And worst of all, some people were even saying that infants shouldn t be baptised, because baptism requires faith, and infants can t have faith. Luther had started a popular movement that had gotten out of control. People were rioting. The Mass was being desecrated. People were claiming to be prophets with new revelations from God. Frederick the Wise was watching with growing concern. Luther had been misinterpreted and misapplied. He now needed to rein in the fanatics (as he dubbed anyone more radical than himself) and get his reform program back on track. Philip Melanchthon Luther is hard for modern day Christians to understand. Was he a revolutionary who sought to turn the world upside down? Or was he a reactionary traditionalist, unable to see the light on matters like baptism and the Lord s Supper (which we ll consider in later topics). One thing is for sure. Luther s reform program struck at the very heart of medieval Catholicism, and it s little wonder the Pope excommunicated him in But he was nonetheless a man of the church, with a robust sacramental theology and a strongly communal sense of the Christian life. This put him at odds with those who took his slogans, but failed to appreciate his deeper theological commitments. In trouble with Rome One does not need to look far in Luther s early works to see why he got himself in trouble with Rome. His three primary works of 1520 contained plenty of material to justify his excommunication. In The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, he repudiates keys elements of Catholic teaching on the sacraments. In The Address to the Nobility of the German Nation, he attacks the supremacy of the Pope in both church and society. In a dramatic move, he abolishes the distinction between sacred and secular, teaching that the calling of a priest or monk is no more important than that of a prince, a cobbler or a peasant. In After Luther, the most important figure in the Lutheran Reformation was Luther s younger colleague and good friend, Philip Melanchthon. A brilliant intellectual, Melanchthon joined the faculty of the University of Wittenberg as Professor of Greek at the age of only 21. He was deeply learned in both the humanist scholarship of his own day and in the writings of the Church Fathers. Melanchthon took the ideas of Luther and presented them to the world in systematic form. Temperamentally, he was Luther s opposite. Whereas Luther was a brash and larger than the life figure, Melanchthon was a gentle man who sought consensus over controversy. His most famous work is his Loci Communes, the first systematic theology of the Reformation. He authored the Augsburg Confession, the basic confessional document of Lutheranism. 7

8 his delightful little book, The Freedom of the Christian, he undermined the ethical system of reward and merit that served as the basis for social order in the Middle Ages. These ideas would play well with important segments of Luther s society. Many princes and nobles appreciated his attack on the political power of the papacy, his talk of freedom had great appeal with the peasants, and his insistence on the priority of scripture over tradition won appeal with humanist scholars. Marriage and family life Ironically, these groups approved of Luther s message without necessarily appreciating what he really meant. Luther s thought can be quite subtle, and many people simply missed his point. Law, gospel and freedom The most tragic misunderstanding came to a head in Luther spoke frequently about freedom, and many peasants made the mistake of assuming he was talking about political freedom. Freedom in the sixteenth century functioned as a political slogan in a similar way to what equality does today. But when Luther spoke about freedom, he was not speaking about political freedom. Fundamental to Protestant theology is the distinction between law and gospel. For Luther, the law establishes obligations, while the gospel contains the promises of God. Law is what we do for God, whereas the gospel is what God does for us. The human predicament is that we are slaves to our sinful natures, and are unable to keep the law. Freedom in this context means freedom from the bondage of the law. It is the freedom to love God, without needing to strive to please God to achieve salvation. Freedom is not something we achieve by selfactualization, but something we receive as a gift of grace. The peasants should be forgiven for missing Luther s point. He was a hugely popular figure, and his appeal lay in no small part because he spoke to the needs of his fellow Germans. Anyone who railed against the numerous taxes that the German speaking citizens of the Empire paid to Rome was bound to be popular with the masses. Luther had the common touch, and the common people thought he was on their side. In late 1524, the peasants revolted. The revolt was caused by the changing legal and economic situation in the Empire, which did not favour the peasants. When some peasants called upon Luther married Katharine von Bora on 13 June The former monk married a former nun! Luther s wedding plans started out rather unromantically. His friends were marrying, and he thought he might as well give a former nun a home. It wasn t the most auspicious of starts, but the match would prove a good one. Actually, Katharine was more than Luther s match. Strong willed and vivacious, Katharine proved she could keep the great Reformer in line. Marriage came to be a source of joy and comfort for the Luthers. The world might be against them, but their home life provided a refuge. The medieval church (and indeed the patristic church) valued celibacy and virginity above the married life. The Reformation changed that. Celibacy had no intrinsic holiness that marriage lacked. Some were indeed called to live the celibate life (as Jesus and Paul had), but that was the exception rather than the norm. Luther to arbitrate their dispute, he did so but took the side of the princes. There would be no support for social revolution from Luther. The response of the princes, once it came, was swift and brutal. In 1525, the peasant s revolt was crushed with Luther s approval. For Luther, the cause of the gospel should not be confused with the 8

9 Luther s dark side Luther s biggest scandal, in the eyes of his contemporaries, was his support of Philip of Hesse s second marriage. Philip was an important, if problematic, supporter of the Reformation. Philip didn t find his first wife sexually attractive, and wanted to marry a woman who was younger and prettier. Luther was adamant - divorce was not an option, for it would be adulterous. Luther initially also said no to bigamy, but political considerations meant the Reformers (including Martin Bucer and Melanchthon), came to the view that it was a pragmatic compromise worth making to keep Philip on board. So they agreed bigamy was acceptable on one condition that it be kept secret. One wonders how they could have been so naïve. History, however, judges Luther s greatest sin to be his treatment of the Jews. Papists, Turks, sacramentarians (Zwingli and his Reformed supporters), radicals (Anabaptists) and Jews were all on the receiving end of nasty insults by Luther. But it is his words against the Jews that make for the most harrowing reading in light of later history. Luther calls for nothing less than a pogrom (the forced removal of Jews from their homes). In Luther s view (and in this he is sadly typical of his day), Jews who refused to convert to Christianity were socially disruptive and had no place in a Christian society. Luther s words are inexcusable. But in light of the Holocaust, they are also tragic. Luther did not cause the Holocaust, but in the hands of the Third Reich his words would be put to devastatingly effective use. political causes, however worthy. God had anointed the magistrates to rule, and it was not the place of a minister of the gospel to ferment rebellion. Luther s conservatism was both religious and pragmatic. From a religious perspective, Luther s position was an outworking of his reading of Romans 13. From a pragmatic perspective, Luther and the Reformation needed the civil magistrates. If it wasn t for Frederick the Wise and the other princes of the German states, Luther would have been dead and his movement along with him. Lutheran confessionalism In 1525, Luther was protected within Electoral Saxony, but no princes had declared for the Reformation. Between 1525 and 1530, a number of German princes openly joined the Protestant cause. In 1530, the Emperor Charles V called a Diet at Augsburg to deal with the two most pressing issues of the day the threat from the Turks and the religious upheavals caused by the Reformation. The Emperor demanded that the Lutheran party explain their position. This they did in the Augsburg Confession, which was written by Philip Melanchthon and signed by the Protestant princes. The Confession sets out Lutheran teaching in light of Scripture, the councils of the early church and the church fathers. It is a well crafted document, and the Lutherans hoped it could form the basis for the renewal of the church and reunion with Rome. This was not to be, but it would become the basic doctrinal statement of the Lutheran churches. Lutheranism would take hold in northern Germany and Scandinavia. However, the influence of Luther was not confined to those churches that took his name. All the mainstream Reformers looked to Luther, and the Protestant churches in Switzerland, the Netherlands, France, Poland, England and Scotland all took Luther s teaching as their starting point. Lutheranism is distinguished from the Reformed churches (the other main branch of Protestantism) in its understanding of the sacraments, in particular the Lord s Supper. The disputes over the Lord s Supper would prove to be the most acrimonious and the most damaging to Protestant unity in the sixteenth century. But that is a story we will take up in the next topic. 9

10 3. Geneva Basel In 1516, Erasmus of Rotterdam published the first edition of his Greek New Testament in Basel. It marked the beginning of a new era. Scholars now had access to the New Testament in its original language. Traditions and methods of reading the Bible that had ossified over many centuries were now challenged, as the Humanism original Greek text enabled fresh readings of the Bible. Alongside the Greek text was Erasmus new Latin translation, which he hoped would replace the Latin Vulgate text that had been used (in various forms) by the western Church since Jerome first completed the translation back in the late fourth century. Erasmus was Europe s leading scholar and humanist, and his work would prove critical for the Reformation. He himself never joined the Reformation cause, and he and Luther had a very public falling out over the questions of human free will and the perspicuity of Scripture (whether Scripture is clear and self interpreting). Erasmus vision of Christianity was that of simple, austere, non-dogmatic religion that provided spiritual comfort and a moral guide for society. It was very different to Luther s vision of Christianity, with its emphasis on human sinfulness and divine grace. Erasmus was not a proto-reformer, but rather a proto-enlightenment thinker. Nonetheless, all the Reformers save Luther looked to Erasmus with much admiration, and his methods of textual interpretation provided a model for the Reformers to follow. Outside Germany, what we now call the Reformation began as a movement of humanist scholars and thinkers, seeking the moral reform of the church along lines that Erasmus would have approved of. Zurich Erasmus Humanism was a scholarly and intellectual movement. It can be summarised by the slogan ad fontes, or back to the sources. It started as a movement to recover classical Greek and Roman learning, by recovering classical texts and studying them in their own language. While it was not a religious movement, humanism had a lot of congruity with classic Christianity. Humanism encouraged the study of the Bible and the church fathers directly, in their own languages. By seeking to let the past speak for itself, the humanists opened up a powerful challenge to the received wisdom of their day. One of the most enthusiastic readers of Erasmus Greek New Testament was a Swiss priest by the name of Ulrich Zwingli. Zwingli moved to Zurich in 1518, and began preaching through Matthew and then Acts. The church Zwingli saw in Acts looked very different to the church of his own day. Simultaneously with, and largely independently of Luther, Zwingli set about reforming the Zurich church along the lines of what he saw in the book of Acts. If historians date the start of the Lutheran Reformation from Luther s posting of the 95 theses, they date the start of the Swiss Reformation 10

11 from a group of (supposedly twelve) influential friends eating sausage in Zurich on the first Sunday of Lent in Zwingli was present at this feast in which sausage was illicitly consumed (in defiance of the Church s fasting requirements), but he himself passed the sausage by. Nonetheless, when the sausage eating incident became public, Zwingli rose to the defence of his friends and preached that it was unnecessary to obey the Church when it required the faithful to fast from eating meat during Lent. The New Testament, after all, has no such law. Whilst a protest against fasting rules might seem insignificant, it was a harbinger of things to come. Next in line was clerical celibacy. Neither issue was a gospel issue, in the way that justification by faith was. However, when the Swiss Reformers combined Luther s teaching on the gospel with their own desire to bring practical reform to the church along NT lines, the result was a reformation more thoroughgoing than Luther s Reformation in Germany. Strasbourg The elder statesman of the Reformed churchmen was Martin Bucer, who pastored the church in Strasbourg. In 1518, Bucer heard Luther s address at the Heidelberg disputation (see next topic) and was impressed. He was a Dominican, but resigned his orders in 1521 and took up a pastoral post in Wissembourg. In 1522, he was excommunicated by his bishop for his teachings, and fled to Strasbourg. Bucer made Strasbourg the leading city of the Protestant world, and many people of evangelical commitment fled to Strasbourg for refuge. Among the most important visitors to Strasbourg was a young man by the name of John Calvin. Bucer was the most irenic of the Reformers, and he was constantly seeking to bring the warring Protestant factions together. He was also the Reformer most optimistic about reunion with Rome, and in his search for unity he proved he could be incredibly elastic with theological language (to the frustration of Calvin and Melanchthon). He was sympathetic to the Anabaptists, with their emphasis on holiness. The love of God was a key theme of his writings. He was first and foremost a pastor, and his insistence on church discipline as a mark of the true church become an important part of the Reformed understanding of the church. He would end his days in England, as a professor at Cambridge. John Calvin It was Geneva, however, not Strasbourg, that was destined to become the capital of the Reformed world and that because of one man, John Calvin. Calvin was born and raised in France, and was to the end of his days a proud Frenchman. 2 His father sent him to the University of Paris (the Sorbonne) to study theology, but father then had a falling out with the church authorities and decided the law was a better profession for his son. At university, Calvin became a consummate humanist and scholar. His first book was a work on the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca, published in Calvin s conversion to the evangelical cause is shrouded in mystery. His was an intellectual conversion, during which he went through a period of deep inner turmoil. Calvin moved in intellectual circles sympathetic to the Lutheran Reformation, and 2 Though he did receive the citizenship of Geneva late in life. 11

12 Calvin certainly read Luther. He became convinced, based on his study of Scripture, that the Catholic Church of his day was ridden with idolatry and that it promoted the false worship of God. Calvin had no doubt that the Lord had called him to be a prophet, to proclaim the light of Christ to a world lost in darkness, in which ignorance reigned and the true Word of God was hidden. In 1533, Calvin left Paris after a little incident with the Sorbonne. The Sorbonne had for centuries seen itself as the guardian of Catholic orthodoxy (better even than the Pope), a role it would continue to claim into the seventeenth century. In 1533, the University s new rector, Nicholas Cop, delivered a lecture that sounded much too Lutheran for the University s theological faculty. Cop was a physician, and so not expected to have the depth of theological sophistication the lecture displayed. Someone had evidently ghost-written the text, and historians to this day debate whether it was Calvin. What we do know is that Calvin quickly left Paris after this incident, as the recriminations began. Calvin would wander around France for the next year or so, without completely breaking with the Church. Then in late 1534 he left France, and except for a brief interlude, he would never return. France had initially been a relatively safe place for evangelically minded people. Francis I was an enlightened monarch, and his wife Marguerite an evangelical herself. But in 1534, proponents of change went too far, and posted placards all across Paris attacking the Mass. The king feared sedition, and his response was swift. Hundreds of suspects were rounded up, books were burned, and a number of executions carried out. Calvin fled for his life. Geneva Calvin initially found refuge in Basle. By this time he had completed the first edition of what would become his most famous work, his Institutes of the Christian Religion. Though the work would grow and change significantly over its six editions, its fundamental purpose of providing a sound guide to the whole of Scripture would remain. After Basle, Calvin made what was supposed to be a passing stop at Geneva. Instead, he was press ganged by his fellow Frenchman, the hot-headed Guillaume Farel, into taking on a teaching role in the city. Calvin s first stay was rather short lived, as Calvin and Farel had a falling out with the city magistrates over who should be in control of church discipline (this would be a recurring theme). Calvin and Farel left Geneva after only two years, and Calvin made his way to Strasbourg. Reformed Christianity and Predestination Broadly speaking, most Protestants who are not Lutheran would be described by historians as belonging to the reformed branch of Protestantism. The continental Reformed (e.g. Dutch Reformed) and Presbyterians are direct heirs of the Reformed churches of the sixteenth century. The Church of England under Archbishop Thomas Cranmer became Reformed, and the Anglican 39 Articles are reformed in theology. Today, when people speak of reformed churches, they tend to mean those churches that have a particular view of grace and predestination. This is not wrong. However, we should not think of predestination as a reformed distinctive. Not only Luther and the Lutherans, but many of the leading Roman Catholic thinkers across the centuries have held to a strong view of divine sovereignty and predestination. Protestants and Catholics are both heirs of Augustine. Thomas Aquinas taught that men are ordained to eternal life through the providence of God and that one s response of faith to the gospel is itself caused and moved by the grace of the Holy Spirit. Not all Catholics agree with Thomas, just as not all Protestants agree with the Calvin. The debates over predestination would become a major preoccupation in the seventeenth century. These debates over predestination were debates within Protestantism and Catholicism, not between them. 12

13 In Strasbourg, Calvin hoped to lead a life of quiet study, but Martin Bucer had other ideas. Calvin was apprenticed under Bucer, who planned to train the young Calvin (he was then 30) and send him back to Geneva. Calvin s three years in Strasbourg were his golden years. At this time, his friends found him the love of his life, Idelette, who was a widower of an Anabaptist. In 1541, Calvin returned to Geneva. Geneva would present many thorns for Calvin to bear, not least the politicking with the city council. Thousands of French refugees made their home in Geneva, which did not necessarily please the local population. The locals did not like being bossed around by the wealthier and (in their eyes) moralistic French. Calvin was never really at home, but he made himself indispensible to the city nonetheless. He lived a rigorous life of preaching, teaching and writing. Though based in Geneva, Calvin ensured he had a significant role on the world stage. He kept up a steady correspondence with Melanchthon, Bucer and Bullinger (Zwingli s successor in Zurich). He debated the leading Catholics of his day, including Cardinal Sadoleto. His biggest sin was his complicity in the execution of Michel Servetus (we ll look at this in the next topic), which has done plenty of damage to his reputation. He is best known at a popular level for his teaching on predestination, but his thought covers the whole spectrum of Christian theology. Calvin was the most important theologian of the Reformation, and his influence on Protestantism is huge. Few in the history of the church can match him for breadth and depth as an exegete of Scripture. His two biggest heroes from the early church were John Chrysostom, the early church s greatest preacher, and Augustine, its greatest theologian. But for all his admiration for those who had gone before him, he forged his own way. Scripture was his only sure guide, and even the giants of the past must be subject to its judgement. Table troubles the parting of ways No account of the Reformation would be complete without a discussion of the disputes over the Lord s Supper. It is a sad irony that the meal that is supposed to express the unity of Christians (1 Cor 10:17) became a point of such bitter and unedifying controversy. The disputes are theologically and philosophically complicated, and it doesn t help that the protagonists often talked past each other. The key text was Jesus words of institution at the Last Supper: This is my body, which is given for you. The Catholic Church had (and has) a clearly defined doctrine of the Eucharist, in which the bread and wine change from bread and wine at the moment of consecration, and become the very body and blood of Christ (the doctrine of transubstantiation). Luther, following the early reformers John Wycliffe and John Hus, rejected this view. But he did so for reasons that seem rather counterintuitive to our modern sensibilities. Luther s issue with the Catholic Church s teaching was not that Christ is physically present in the elements of the Eucharist, but that the Church defined the mystery in terms of Aristotelian metaphysics. Luther maintained, on a strictly literal reading of Jesus words, that Christ is truly, physically present in the bread and wine (though in his view the bread and wine remain bread and wine, contrary to the Catholic view). Zwingli thought this nonsense. To a humanist like Zwingli, it was obvious Jesus was speaking metaphorically. For Zwingli, the Lord s Supper is a memorial meal, a reminder for the congregation of the work that Christ has accomplished. Luther, in turn, thought Zwingli had spiritualised away the 13

14 Lord s Supper, and basically denied the Incarnation (for it is in the Lord s Supper that the Christian receives the incarnate Lord). Prince Philip of Hesse called the key reformers to a Colloquy at Marburg in 1529 to resolve the dispute. Though they could agree on most things, Zwingli and Luther could reach no consensus on the Lord s Supper. To his death in 1546, Luther was adamant and uncompromising. Pray that God will open your eyes he snorted. His parting words capture the gravity with which he saw the matter: We are not of one mind We commend you to the judgement of God. The second generation Reformers sought to heal the wounds. Calvin spent much of his life distancing himself from Zwingli (not always fairly), and he and Melanchthon tried to find a suitable formula that all sides could agree on, without success. Martin Bucer thought the whole dispute a massive misunderstanding, which is surely a misunderstanding on his part. Bullinger, Zwingli s successor in Zurich, held Zwingli s line. Theologically, Calvin s view is probably the most significant. For Calvin, Christ is really (but spiritually, not physically) present in the Lord s Supper. The sacrament is truly a means of grace, and not merely a memorial. Calvin s biographer, Bruce Gordon, writes that for Calvin the bread and wine are not mere symbols: they raise the heart and spirit of the believer to a true knowledge of God. We may look at the disputes over the Lord s Supper with some bemusement today. But behind the disputes lay commitments to matters of great importance to a concern for the proper method of interpreting Scripture, to the nature of Christ and the incarnation, and to the way God encounters his people. These were issues that lay at the heart of the Reformation, and indeed lie at the heart of Christian theology. That the Reformers failed to agree does present a problem for those seeking to defend the internal coherence of Protestantism (as thoughtful Catholics point out); that they thought these matters important is a testimony to their fidelity to Scripture and to the great tradition of the Christian church. 14

15 4. Gospel, church and authority The theology(ies) of the Reformers This year is the 500 th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, and it is being commemorated by many people for many things. The Reformation was one of the most significant religious, political and social events in the whole of western history. However, it is in the area of theology that the Reformers themselves would want us to judge them for their sole desire was to reform the church s doctrine and practice in light of Scripture and the gospel. Theologians of the Cross In 1518, Luther was still an Augustinian monk in good standing with the Catholic Church. The events of 1517 had made him a theologian of some fame and repute. The Augustinians held a disputation (academic discussion) in Heidelberg in 1518, and Luther was asked to present a set of theses to explain his teachings. Luther s theses dealt with what would become the key themes of his life s work human sinfulness and divine grace, the creative love of God and the futility of works of the law to make one right with God. He then contrasts two types of theologians the theologian of glory and the theologian of the cross. The theologian of glory is the theologian who thinks that we can find God by our reason and wisdom. The theologian of the cross, on the other hand, is the theologian who sees God revealed in suffering and the cross. The first theologian believes in a man-made God, the latter in God as he really is. Unlike all the other major Reformers, Luther s mindset is essentially medieval. Luther s argument is part of an ongoing discussion within late medieval theology about the role of reason in understanding God. But Luther is also making a critical point about the nature of Christianity. Christians believe in a crucified God! The cross is the last place we would expect to find God, and yet that is where Scripture says he is ultimately revealed. Jaroslav Pelikan captures the paradox well: the Christ in whom God was revealed was Christ crucified, about whom it was anything but obvious that he was the revealed God. God is mysterious and unfathomable by the human mind. This is the starting point of Luther s theology. Natural man looks at the cross and sees a crucified criminal. Only with the testimony of Scripture and the eyes of faith does one see the Triune God at work, reconciling humanity to himself. Luther s theology of the cross does for the intellect what justification by faith does for morality. We can no more know God by our intellectual efforts than we can make ourselves righteous by our moral striving. The God who has spoken The Reformers were convinced that God has spoken definitively in Jesus Christ. This is the basis for the two key doctrines of the Reformation sola fide (justification by faith alone) and sola scriptura (scripture alone). Both are based on a belief in the creative power of God s spoken word, through which one knows God and is brought into his family. 15

16 i. Justification by faith The heart of the Reformation is Luther s doctrine of justification by faith alone. All the other magisterial Reformers held to this doctrine, and it was the point at which they defined themselves over against the Catholic Church. Protestants see justification as an event in which the believer receives the righteousness of Christ. To use the technical language, Christ s righteousness is imputed to the believer. Luther in The Freedom of the Christian uses marriage as an analogy. A poor woman who marries a rich husband herself becomes rich on account of the riches of her husband, for all he has becomes hers. In a similar way, the justified sinner is united to Christ and receives all that he has. The dominant analogy (following Paul), however, was that of the law court. God is the judge who declares the believer to be righteous, and God s spoken word brings about the reality that God has spoken. Whereas Catholics see justification as a process involving substantive change in the believer, Protestants see justification as a change in relationship status. This is why Luther could say that a Christian is simultaneously righteous and a sinner righteous on account on the righteousness of Christ, yet still a sinner because the Holy Spirit s work of sanctification is not complete in their life. ii. Scripture, tradition and the church The other great limb of Reformation theology is the doctrine of sola scriptura - that Scripture alone is the supreme authority in the church. The Reformation was a dispute over the relationship between Scripture, tradition and the institutional church. Orthodox Christianity has always believed that the faith was delivered once for all to the saints (Jude 3). Irenaeus (late second century) spoke of the apostles leaving the church with a deposit of faith, like a rich man depositing money in a bank. Thomas Aquinas could declare that theology is nothing more and nothing less than the exposition of Scripture. The Reformers were not against tradition. They frequently appealed to the fathers and councils of the early church, and even to the medieval 16 Music and the Reformation Martin Luther had a great love of music, so much so that he called music the handmaiden of theology. Luther made congregational singing an integral part of church services, and his many hymns formed the basis of Protestant hymnography in Germany. Not all the Reformers had such a high view of music. Zwingli was a talented musician himself, but he refused to allow instrumental music in church lest people be swayed by their emotions at the expense of their intellects. Thankfully, such austere rationalism did not become the norm in the Reformed world, and the Reformed too used music to good effect. However, it should be no surprise that the ultimate expression of the Reformation s musical heritage is found in the works of a Lutheran, Johann Sebastian Bach ( ). To say that Bach was a genius is true, but that would not capture the heart of the man or his significance as a musician. His music is simultaneously sombre and extravagant, expressing both anguish and deep joy. To a degree unrivalled by any other composer, his music captures the whole drama of redemption history, from suffering and sin to the joy of the resurrection. Bach exemplifies Protestant catholicity at its best. He was a staunch Lutheran, who understood and celebrated his own confessional identity. But he never lost sight of the universality of the church, and his works draw deeply on the whole of the Christian tradition.

17 scholars. However, tradition was not a separate source of revelation, apart from Scripture. Tradition was a guide to interpreting Scripture, but not an independent source of authority. Sola scriptura is not really aimed at tradition, but at the teaching office of the Roman Catholic Church. Within medieval Catholicism, there were many competing and often mutually incompatible traditions. If this became a problem for the Church, one could always have recourse to the papacy, who would decide which tradition was right. It was this teaching office that the Reformers rejected. Scripture, not the papacy, was the standard by which doctrine must be tested. Sola scriptura asserts that the apostolic testimony contained in Scripture sits in judgement over the institutional church. It is based on the recognition that only in Scripture do we have access to the words of Jesus and the voice of the apostles. Worship right and wrong The church exists to worship God. For the Reformers, the preeminent acts of the church s worship are the proclamation of the Word and the celebration of the sacraments, for it is here that God meets his people. Indeed, the church is defined by its worship. For Calvin, wherever the gospel is truly preached and the sacraments duly administered, there is the church of God. For the Catholic Church, the church s central act of worship is the Eucharist. The Reformers agreed that the Lord s Supper is central to the church s worship, but they insisted that the sacraments must be tied to the proclamation of the gospel, or they become empty symbols. The converse is also true for the Reformers. Preaching without the sacraments is a form of gnosticism, for it denies our need as humans for visible and tangible signs of the gospel. God is revealed in the man Jesus, and in a similar way the gospel is revealed in the waters of baptism, and in the bread and wine of the Lord s Supper. Perhaps the most important insight of the Reformers on worship both for their own day and for our own is that worship is a matter of God s initiative. Luther s critique of the Mass was that the Roman church had turned it from a proclamation of what God had done (gospel) into a sacrifice that merited reward (law). No longer were the sacraments signs of God s promise, but something one does for God. This however, was a denial of Christianity and a return to a pagan way of thinking about God s grace. The sacraments are not means by which one wins God s approval, but means by which Christ blesses the believer and incorporates them into his body, the church. The sacraments, for Calvin, are the gospel enacted and applied to the believer. True theology and true worship go together. This is why theology mattered. True theology is concerned with the knowledge of God s saving actions in Jesus Christ. Without such knowledge, there can be no true worship of the Triune God. The reform of the church s theology must inevitably lead to the reform of its worship. The great slogan of the Reformation was Sola Deo Gloria - to God alone be all glory. God is glorified when people worship him in spirit and in truth. This should not be understood individualistically, but is the calling of the whole church. Only in the church does the new humanity, formed in the image of Christ, truly worship and glorify God. 17