What happened at the Reformation?
Question 13004
The Reformation is one of the most consequential events in the history of the Christian church, and its effects continue to shape the theological, ecclesiastical, and cultural landscape of the Western world. Understanding what happened, why it happened, and what it achieved is essential for any believer who wants to understand how the church arrived at where it stands today.
The State of the Church Before the Reformation
By the early sixteenth century, the Western church under the Roman papacy had accumulated centuries of doctrinal accretion, institutional corruption, and spiritual compromise. The doctrine of salvation had been progressively buried under a system of works, merits, penances, and sacramental requirements that left ordinary believers in perpetual uncertainty about their standing before God. The Mass was understood as a re-sacrifice of Christ, offered by the priest on behalf of the living and the dead. Purgatory was taught as an intermediate state of suffering that could be shortened by the prayers, masses, and financial contributions of the faithful. The papacy claimed supreme authority over the church, over doctrine, and, in its more ambitious moments, over secular rulers as well.
The sale of indulgences brought the crisis to a head. An indulgence was a papal grant that remitted the temporal punishment due for sins, and by the early sixteenth century the system had degenerated into what amounted to a commercial transaction. Johann Tetzel, a Dominican friar, travelled through Germany selling indulgences with the slogan, popularly attributed to him, “As soon as a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs.” The proceeds were being used to fund the construction of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The theological corruption was inseparable from the financial exploitation, and both were felt most acutely by ordinary people who had been taught that their eternal destiny depended on a system they could not afford and did not understand.
Martin Luther and the Ninety-Five Theses
On 31 October 1517, Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk and professor of theology at the University of Wittenberg, posted his Ninety-Five Theses on the door of the Castle Church. The theses were written in Latin and addressed primarily to the academic community, challenging the theology and practice of indulgences. Luther did not set out to divide the church. He was a loyal Catholic who believed the papacy would welcome a correction once the abuses were exposed. He was wrong about that, but his initial intention was reform from within rather than separation.
What made Luther’s challenge different from earlier reform movements was the depth of its theological foundation. Luther had undergone a profound personal transformation through his study of Paul’s letter to the Romans. The phrase “the righteousness of God” in Romans 1:17 had initially terrified him, because he understood it as the standard by which God condemns sinners. Through sustained study, Luther came to understand it as the righteousness God gives to sinners through faith. Justification by faith alone, sola fide, became the article on which everything else stood or fell. If sinners are declared righteous before God by faith alone, apart from works, then the entire penitential system, the merits of the saints, the treasury of grace, purgatory, and the indulgence trade all collapsed at a single stroke.
The Five Solas
The Reformation crystallised around what came to be known as the Five Solas, the great affirmations that defined the Reformers’ position against Rome. Sola Scriptura, Scripture alone, meant that the Bible is the final authority for faith and practice, standing above popes, councils, and tradition. Sola Fide, faith alone, meant that justification is received through faith, not earned through works. Sola Gratia, grace alone, meant that salvation is entirely God’s gift, not the product of human merit. Solus Christus, Christ alone, meant that Jesus is the only mediator between God and humanity, rendering the intercession of saints, the priesthood of the Roman system, and the Marian dogmas unnecessary. Soli Deo Gloria, to God alone be the glory, meant that all praise for salvation belongs to God, not to human achievement, ecclesiastical institution, or religious performance.
These were not innovations. The Reformers understood themselves as recovering what the apostolic church had taught and what Rome had obscured. The appeal was always to Scripture, and the Reformers’ insistence on translating the Bible into the languages of ordinary people was driven by the conviction that believers should be able to read God’s Word for themselves rather than receiving it filtered through an institutional priesthood.
The Spread of the Reformation
The Reformation was not a single event but a movement that spread rapidly across Europe, taking different forms in different contexts. In Switzerland, Ulrich Zwingli led reform in Zurich from 1519, arriving at many of the same conclusions as Luther independently through his own study of Scripture. John Calvin, a generation younger, produced the most systematic theological treatment of Reformation theology in his Institutes of the Christian Religion and established Geneva as a centre of Reformed thought and practice. In England, the break with Rome under Henry VIII was initially political rather than theological, but genuine doctrinal reform followed under Edward VI and Elizabeth I, producing the Church of England as a Protestant institution. The Anabaptist movement, which insisted on believer’s baptism and the separation of church and state, represented a more radical stream of reform that the magisterial Reformers themselves often opposed and persecuted.
The Reformation’s impact extended far beyond theology. It transformed education, literacy, politics, economics, and the relationship between church and state across Europe. The principle that every believer has direct access to God through Christ, without the mediation of an institutional priesthood, carried implications that reshaped entire societies. The Bible in the vernacular produced a reading public. The priesthood of all believers challenged hierarchies that had endured for centuries.
What the Reformation Left Unfinished
The Reformation recovered the gospel, and that achievement cannot be overstated. It also left significant questions unresolved and introduced new problems. The fragmentation of Protestantism into competing confessions was a direct consequence of the Reformation’s own principles: if Scripture alone is the authority, and if believers can read Scripture for themselves, then disagreements about what Scripture teaches will inevitably arise. The Reformers disagreed among themselves on the Lord’s Supper, on baptism, on church government, and on the relationship between church and state. These disagreements produced divisions that persist to this day.
The Reformation also did not go far enough in certain respects from a Baptist and free church perspective. Luther and Calvin both retained infant baptism. Both maintained a close relationship between church and state. Both persecuted dissenters, including Anabaptists who advocated positions that later generations of Protestants would come to accept. The Baptist tradition, which emerged in the early seventeenth century, represents in many ways the completion of the Reformation’s logic: believer’s baptism, the autonomy of the local church, the separation of church and state, and the liberty of conscience in matters of faith.
So, now what?
The Reformation matters because the issues it addressed have not gone away. The question of whether sinners are justified by faith alone or by faith plus works remains the dividing line between the gospel and every system that distorts it. The question of whether Scripture stands above tradition and institutional authority remains the dividing line between churches that submit to God’s Word and churches that have effectively replaced it. Every generation of Christians faces the same challenge the Reformers faced: the pull of human tradition, the pressure to accommodate cultural expectations, and the temptation to soften the sharp edges of biblical truth in the name of unity or relevance. The Reformation’s legacy is not a set of historical facts to be memorised but a set of convictions to be held, defended, and lived.
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” Romans 1:16