The Protestant Reformation: 1517-1648 by Father Al Jenkins
"131 Years, War, and the End of the Pope's Authority"

The Renaissance is thought to have ended in 1527 with the Sack of Rome by Charles V, HRE (Holy Roman Emperor). But, in Germany, the Reformation was 10 years old at this time.

The invention of the printing press in the mid-fifteenth century by Johannes Gutenberg  allowed trends and education to spread throughout Europe. This resulted in the Northern Renaissance (Europe outside of Italy). The Italian Renaissance was mainly interested with secular ideas. The Northern Renaissance with its “religious concerns” eventually led to the Protestant Reformation.

The Northerners wanted to deepen their Christian beliefs and understanding. In that day, producing books was expensive and was very strenuous labor. Monks were the main keepers of books, and they created books by copying them by hand. Even with the high price and the availability of copied books, Europeans were not well educated. Enter Gutenberg. Between 1452 and 1453 he printed with his movable printing machine approximately 200 bibles and spent a lot of money making his Bibles as ornate as the handwritten ones. And…he went broke. The printing press brought a new idea of education and literacy throughout Europe. It is one of the most important inventions in history. It is hard to imagine Reformation spreading without the printing press. For example, the Catholic sermons were given in Latin, and so was the Bible, thus many people never read it, and it didn't matter where you lived. But, thanks to the printing press the Bible was translated to the vernacular so more and more people read it, and this brought change...change which would lead to Reformation.

The greatest of the Northern humanists was Erasmus. He wrote In Praise of Folly, in which he satirizes and criticizes the "problems of the Church."  Unlike Luther, Erasmus wanted to reform the church, not abandon it.

The nineteenth century Scottish theologian William Cunningham called the Protestant Reformation "the greatest event, or series of events, that has occurred since the close of the canon of Scripture." It was, quite simply, a great work of the Spirit of God, a revival of biblical Christianity.

The Protestant Reformation was a movement in Europe that began with Martin Luther's activities in 1517 and ended with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. Many many people died in the religious/political conflicts. The movement began as an attempt to reform the Roman Catholic Church and led to the fracturing of Christianity. Many western Christians were troubled by what they saw as false doctrines and malpractices within the Roman Catholic Church, particularly involving the teaching and sale of indulgences. Another major contention was the practice of buying and selling church positions (simony) and the tremendous corruption found at the time within the Church's hierarchy. This corruption was systemic at the time, even reaching the position of the Pope.

The most important Protestant groups to emerge directly from the Reformation were the Lutherans, the Reformed or Calvinists, the Presbyterians, the Anabaptists, and the Anglicans. Subsequent Protestant denominations generally trace their roots back to the initial Reformation traditions. It also accelerated the Catholic or Counter Reformation within the Roman Catholic Church.

General Characteristics of the Reformation

Before an obscure monk named Martin Luther nailed ninety-five theses to the church door at Wittenburg on October 31, 1517, the Christian church had been living in spiritually dark times. The Bible had been kept from the common people. The Roman Catholic Church had largely perverted the gospel of God's grace by teaching that salvation comes from the hands of the priests through the administration of the sacraments in response to human works and  merit.

With the dawning of the Reformation these perversions of the gospel were exposed, and a renewal of biblical Christianity emerged.

With the rediscovery of the Bible in the sixteenth century (1500’s) came a reawakening to God's way of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. In fact, that little word alone provides a key to understanding the main themes of the Reformation. In Latin the word is sola and it was used in five phrases that capture the essence of Reformation theology.

The Five Reformation Themes

1. Sola Scriptura: Scripture Alone

The Reformers taught that the Scripture alone is the final authority for what we must believe and how we must live. This view sounds commonplace to us today, but it was radical in the sixteenth century. For centuries the Roman Catholic Church had asserted its authority over against that of the Bible. The authority of the Pope, tradition, and councils were all regarded as authorities along with the Bible. Against that view, the Reformers asserted sola Scriptura: the Bible, and the Bible alone, is our only infallible source of authority for faith and practice.

2. Sola Gratia: Grace Alone

How can a sinful man become right with a holy God? That is always the most important religious question. It was the question that plagued Luther's conscience and nearly drove him insane before he was converted. Rome had developed a very elaborate system in response to that question. Rome's answer involved human works and merit--a sinner must perform sufficiently well before God if he would receive the blessing of salvation.

But through the study of the Scriptures the Reformers rediscovered that salvation is the gracious gift of God. Man contributes nothing to it. It is only by the sheer, absolute grace of God. Bible words like election and predestination, which magnify the grace of God in salvation, were rediscovered, having been largely forgotten or drained of their meaning by the mainstream of medieval Roman Catholic teachers.

3. Sola Fide: Faith Alone

The Reformers taught that the means whereby a sinner is graciously justified before God is faith-not faith plus merit or faith plus works-but faith alone. Luther discovered that the Bible teaches that the sinner must place his trust in Jesus Christ in order to gain a right standing before God. Through faith alone the righteousness of Jesus Christ is imputed to the one who believes.

4. Solo Christo: Christ Alone

The Reformation rejected Rome's requirement that common church members put their faith implicitly in the church's teachings. Instead, they argued, Jesus Christ alone is the proper object of faith. He is to be trusted for salvation-not priests, popes, councils, and traditions.

5. Soli Deo Gloria: The Glory of God Alone

In one sense the Reformation can be seen as a rediscovery of God-a reawakening to the greatness and grandeur of the God of the Bible. It is God, not man, who belongs at the center of our thoughts and view of the world. And it is God's glory alone that is to occupy first place in our motivations and desires as His children. He created us and the world for Himself, and He redeemed us for Himself. Our purpose is to glorify Him.

The Conclusion of the Reformation

The Reformation led to a series of religious wars that culminated in the Thirty Years War. From 1618 to 1648 the Catholic Habsburgs and their allies fought against the Protestant princes of Germany, supported by Denmark and Sweden. The Habsburgs, who ruled Spain, Austria, the Spanish Netherlands and most of Germany and Italy, were the staunchest defenders of the Roman Church.

30 Years War (Political/Religious)– WORTH IT? During the war, Germany's population was reduced by 30% on average; in the territory of Brandenburg, the losses had amounted to half, while in some areas an estimated two thirds of the population died. Germany’s male population was reduced by almost half. The population of the Czech lands declined by a third. The Swedish armies alone destroyed 2,000 castles, 18,000 villages and 1,500 towns in Germany, one-third of all German towns.

The Reformation  came to a close when Catholic France allied herself, first in secret and later on the battlefields, with the Protestants against the Habsburgs. Political and national convictions again outweighed religious convictions in Europe. Following the Peace of Westphalia, the major denominations now lived in relative peace on the continent.

The main tenets of the Peace of Westphalia were:

All parties would now recognize the Peace of Augsburg of 1555, by which each prince would have the right to determine the religion of his own state, the options being Catholicism, Lutheranism, and now Calvinism.

Christians living in principalities where their denomination was not the established church were guaranteed the right to practice their faith in public during allotted hours and in private at their will.

The treaty also effectively ended the Pope's pan-European political power. Fully aware of the loss, Pope Innocent X declared the treaty "null, void, invalid, iniquitous, unjust, damnable, reprobate, inane, empty of meaning and effect for all times."

European sovereigns, Catholic and Protestant alike, ignored his verdict.

The sad part about this is the huge number of Christian men, women, and children who died for a Christian cause fighting each other.

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