28. Chapter 25: The Church Is Reformed in Germany and Scandinavia, 1520-1530

CHAPTER 25: The Church Is Reformed in Germany and Scandinavia, 1520-1530

1. The Reformation Is Also an In­fluence Outside the Church

You have now learned quite a bit about Luther and his life from the time he was born in Eisleben up to the time when he appeared be­fore the Diet of Worms in 1521. It was, as you must have noticed, a stormy life, marked by many a se­vere crisis in both his inner de­velopment and outer career. His was an unusually colorful life, thickly dotted with spectacular events of world historic signifi­cance. At the end of the Diet of Worms, Luther was easily the most notable figure on the European scene. The events we have observed so far, centering around Luther’s life, were, however, not the Reforma­tion. They were things that led up to and paved the way for the Ref­ormation.

What, then, was the Reforma­tion? It was first of all a reforma­tion of the Church.

What did that Reformation con­sist of? It consisted of changes for the better made in the Church. Every church teaches certain doc­trines, and has certain forms of government, of worship, and of life. The changes for the better had to do with every one of these various aspects of the Church. But it was not only a change in the Church. The Reformation brought about certain changes also outside the Church. The Church deals with what is most funda­mental in life. Men carry their re­ligious convictions with them and reflect them in every phase of life. Consequently, what was first of all a reformation in the Church, also wrought changes in the political, economic, social, and cultural life of the nations which accepted its principles. The result has been that right down to our own day there is a vast difference in almost every way between Catholic and Protes­tant nations.

2. The Time Was Ripe for Ref­ormation

If Paul could have revisited the earth around the year 1500, he would have been utterly amazed at what he saw and heard in Rome, the city to which he sent his great­est letter, and where he was a prisoner and suffered a martyr’s death. Peter, too, who according to a Romanist fable was the founder of the church in Rome and its first bishop or pope (ch. 12, sec. 1), and who was crucified there head down (ch. 4, sec. 4), would have been amazed. These two founders of the Church would not have been able to recognize the Church of the year 1500, so different had it become from the Church they had planted.

They would have looked at each other questioningly with lifted brow, and would have shaken their heads in dumb astonishment. They would have been very sad. But they would also have learned that for the past three hundred years and more there had been in many countries of western Europe great dissatisfaction with the con­dition of the Church (ch. 22, sec. 3, 4, 6, and 7); and that especially during the last one hundred years there had arisen all over western Europe a great clamor for a thoroughgoing reform of the Church. In response to this three general councils had been held (ch. 22, sec. 9), Erasmus had sharpened his pen (ch. 22, sec. 12), and the Brethren of the Common Life had founded their schools (ch. 22, sec. 11). They would furthermore have learned that so far all attempts at reform had either died out or had been smothered in blood and smoke (ch. 22, sec. 5, 6, and 7).

One thing they could not have learned, because it was still hidden from the eyes of men. That was that God at this very time was preparing a leader who in the as­tonishingly brief space of a few short years would dispel the dark­ness and usher in the great and blessed Reformation. That leader was Luther.

3. Luther Restores Christian Liberty

Luther’s character was made up of strangely contradictory traits. He was at the same time very radi­cal (inclined to change things) and very conservative (inclined to keep things as they were). Luther was the man who was to bring about a tremendous change in the Church; but he was very slow in discarding the old and substituting the new. At first he made only a few changes. In this he showed great wisdom and tact.

Luther’s followers were not al­ways as wise as he was. While he was in hiding in the Wartburg Cas­tle, some of his more important fol­lowers in Wittenberg were trying to make many and radical changes. This led to confusion, conflict, and disorder. As a result Luther left his hiding place, against the advice of his prince and protector, the elector Frederick the Wise; and in spite of the fact that he was under the sentence of death, he returned to Wittenberg. For eight successive days he preached, and thereby re­stored order.

Step by step many important changes were introduced. The pa­pacy was rejected. The distinction between clergy and laity (ch. 7, sec. 2) was discarded. Said Luther: "All believers are priests. There are only two and not seven sacra­ments. The sacraments are not in­dispensable to salvation." Thus Luther rang the death knell of what is the very heart of the Roman system. He broke the yoke of Rome under which believers had groaned for centuries, and estab­lished Christian liberty. For us who have never been under the yoke of Rome it is impossible to realize what this meant for the Christians of Luther’s day. Pray­ing to the saints and to Mary was done away with, as were also the worship of images, the veneration of relics, pilgrimages, religious processions, holy water, outward asceticism, monasticism, prayers for the dead, and belief in purga­tory (ch. 7, sec. 2).

While Luther changed many things, his conservative nature led him to adopt the principle that everything in the old church that is not directly forbidden in the Bible should be retained. For ex­ample, the side altars and the images were removed, but the Lutheran Church kept the main altar with candles and picture of Christ. The Roman Catholic Church teaches that the Lord’s Supper is a sacrifice, and that to offer a sacri­fice a priest is required. It teaches that when the priest pronounces the sacramental words, the bread and wine are miraculously changed into the actual body and blood of Christ. This is called the doctrine of transubstantiation (a change in substance). The priests alone are allowed to partake of the wine, for fear the laity might spill some of it and shed Christ’s precious blood anew. The laity is allowed to re­ceive only the bread, in the form of a wafer called the host, which is placed upon the tongue by the priest.

Luther denied the sacrificial character of the Lord’s Supper. He denied that every time the Supper is celebrated Christ is offered anew upon a thousand altars as a sacrifice flee. He taught that Christ was offered once for all as a sacrifice upon the cross. There was there­fore no place in the Church for priests. Since Luther’s day Protes­tant churches have had ministers of the Word, rather than priests; and at the Lord’s Supper all mem­bers partake of both the bread and the wine.

Although Luther denied that the bread is changed into the body of Christ, he nevertheless taught that Christ’s body is present in the Lord’s Supper because, said he, since Christ’s ascension, His body, like His Godhead, is present every­where.

4. Luther Develops a Form of Church Government

Luther was not greatly con­cerned about the form of church organization or government. The form of government which he did adopt was not first of all based upon the teachings of Scripture, but was developed to meet the con­ditions within the Church at that time.

Luther introduced a system of church visitors. When these visi­tors inspected the various churches it became evident to everybody that there was an urgent need for ref­ormation. The Roman clergy had shamefully neglected their duties. Both people and priests were al­most unbelievably ignorant of re­ligious truth. Most priests were totally unable to preach. They could only mumble masses. As a result of church inspection by the visitors, a set of Regulations was drawn up for the guidance of church life. The Lutheran Church does not have bishops. It has officers who are called superintendents. They exercise somewhat the same func­tions as bishops. The most characteristic feature of Lutheran church government is the place it gives to the State. Luther to a great extent adopted the principle that the State should be above the Church. He did that largely under the influence of cir­cumstances. His own personal safety he owed, humanly speaking, entirely to the protection of his prince, the Elector of Saxony. Like­wise it was possible for the Protes­tant Church to exist only in those German lands which were ruled by princes who had accepted Protes­tantism. Due to this circumstance Luther gave these Protestant princes a great deal of authority in the affairs of the Church. For a short time Luther hoped that there would arise in Germany a national Protestant Church embracing all the German people. That hope, however, was never realized. Some German lands remained Roman Catholic. Even the Protestant Church in Germany was divided into a number of territorial churches. In the end there were as many Protestant territorial churches in Germany as there were territories ruled over by Protestant princes.

5. Luther Provides the People with Materials for Study and Wor­ship

While Luther was in hiding in the Wartburg for ten months—from May 4, 1521, to March 3, 1522 — he did not spend his time in idleness. He translated the Bible into the German language, the language of his people. In the Roman Catholic Church the Bible was studied only by the church leaders and scholars. Luther held that every man has the right and the duty to read and study the Bible for himself. By his transla­tion of the Bible into German, Luther made that possible for his countrymen. In the church services the Latin language was replaced by the German. This meant that public worship from then on was con­ducted in the language the people could understand.

Luther also did a great deal for, tolerance of the people he labored tirelessly for the establishment of schools everywhere. In order that the children might become thor­oughly grounded in evangelical doctrine, Luther wrote his Shorter Catechism. It was only a very small book; yet it is one of the great Re­former’s most important works. Luther’s Shorter Catechism is the doctrinal dish on which generation after generation of Lutheran chil­dren were reared. The new Church also needed a new hymn book. One of the most remarkable things about this very extraordinary man Luther is that in the midst of his terrific combat with Rome and when he was already forty years old, he blossomed forth as a poet and wrote many of the hymns for the new hymn book. A large num­ber of Luther’s hymns have no great poetic beauty. But he wrote one hymn that will live forever. That is "Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott," known to us as "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God." A well loved Christmas song believed to have been written by Luther for his own children is "So Arm in der Krippe." The English title is "Away in a Manger."

Along with many other things, Luther retained the idea that there is only one true visible Church. He did not think of himself and his followers as having left the Church. The Romanists were the ones who had departed from the New Testament Church. Luther did not feel that he had established a new church. All that he had done was to reform the Church that had become deformed.

LUTHER TRANSLATES THE BIBLE INTO GERMAN
Schoenfeld Collection from Three Lions
While in the Wartburg Luther worked on a translation of the New Testament, which was published in 1522. Ten years later he completed his German translation of the entire Bible.

It was considered desirable that the Lutheran Church should pre­sent to the world an official state­ment in which it declared its faith. Such a statement was drawn up, and handed in to the Diet of Augs­burg in 1530. This statement of the Lutheran has faith become known as the Augsbur Con ession. It was the first confession or creed to be formulated since the ancient Church formulated the Christian faith in the creeds of the Ecumeni­cal Councils (ch. 6, sec. 1). The Medieval Church had not produced a single creed. The Augsburg Confession did not replace the creeds of the an­cient Church. The Lutheran Church believed wholeheartedly in the doctrines of the ancient Church as formulated in the Apostles’ Creed (ch. 3, sec 6), and in the Creeds of Nicaea (ch. 3, sec. 9) and Chalcedon (ch. 6, sec. 4). The Augsburg Confession was based upon and included them, but at the same time it enlarged upon and ex­panded them. The Lutheran Church now stood alongside and over against the Roman Church as a reformation of the same, with its own doctrine and creed, its own form of organiza­tion and government, and its own form of worship, all in the lan­guage of its people.

6. Luther Has Many Helpers

Luther soon had many helpers. His closest friend and most helpful co-worker was Philip Melanch­thon. In 1518, at the extremely youthful age of twenty-one, he had become a professor of Greek in Wittenberg University. He was therefore associated with the Ref­ormation movement practically from the beginning. While Luther was in the Wartburg, Melanchthon published the first systematic pres­entation of Luther’s ideas under the title of Loci Communes. He was the most learned man of his day, and was called the Preceptor of Germany.

Another friend and valuable as­sistant was Spalatin, the private secretary of the Elector of Saxony. Surprisingly, in spite of Prince Frederick’s high regard and friend­ship for Luther, the prince and Luther never met. Spalatin acted as intermediary between the two. On June 13, 1525, Luther re­ceived a very special helper. For on that day he married Catherine von Bora. She had been a nun. Luther had been a monk-priest. On becoming a monk or a nun a person must take the vow not to marry. For more than three hun­dred years it had been one of the greatest laws in the Roman Church that a priest must not marry. This practice among priests of refrain­ing from marrying is known as celibacy of the clergy. When Luther married, many priests, monks, and nuns followed his example; thus another big step was taken in the Reformation movement away from Rome.

LUTHER TEACHING HIS CHILDREN REFORMATION HYMNS

Luther continued to live in the Black Cloister, and the monastery became a parsonage. It was his home to the end of his life.

7. The Church in the Scandinavian Countries Is Reformed In various ways and under vary­ing circumstances the Church in the course of the sixteenth century was reformed also in the Scandi­navian countries of Denmark, Nor­way, and Sweden. In these coun­tries the Church adopted the Lutheran type of Reformation. The victory of the Reformation in Denmark and especially in Swe­den was going to be of decisive importance in the wars of religion which followed the Reformation.