07 IV. The Beginnings of the Reformation (1)

IV. The Beginnings of the Reformation (1) IV. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE REFORMATION ( 1 ) (Sermon Delivered Over WAPO , May 4, 1940) In our last address on church history, we discussed the Medieval Church, showing the fundamental doctrine behind the power and authority of the Pope to be based upon the primacy of Peter as the first Pope, a fact unsustained by the Scriptures. It was pointed out that the Pope in the Middle Ages assumed authority over the religious affairs, and extended his sovereignty over the political affairs of Europe as well. This week we shall addres sourselves to a study of the beginnings of the Reformation in Europe as well as some description of the forerunners of this great movement .

While the Papacy tightened its grip upon the church, and set itself against all reform of any kind, there arose some dissenting voices, who protested against the immorality among the clergy and spoke forth strongly against papal interference in political affairs. Earliest among these forerunners of the Reformation was John Wycliffe in England. Born in Yorkshire and educated in Oxford University, he became the greatest scholar of his day in England. Boldly he denounced the wealth and greed of certain high church dignitaries and taught that the church should be guided only by the Scriptures and not by the Pope and cardinals. Believing in the authority of the Bible, he trans , lated the Latin Vulgate with the help of Nicolas of Hereford into the vernacular English between 1382 and 1384 . He taught that the clergy had no function other than that of service and helping humanity and his doctrines rapidly spread throughout Eµg.Jand and the Continent in tract form. Excluded from Oxford in 1382 he retired to Lutt e rworth, where he died. Years after his death his enemies had his body dug from the ground and burned and his ashes scattered ·on a brook that flowed into Avon River. Wordsworth later celebrated this in his Ecclesiastical Sonnets · by symbolizing the spread of his doctrines to all the world as the waters of the ocean washed all the shores with his ashes .

John Huss, another great harbinger of Reformation, was a disciple of Wycliffe, who lived in Bohemia. A priest of the apostate church, he was appointed professor of philisophy at the University of Prague in the latter part of the 14th century. The teaching of Wycliffe fell into his hands and he readily accepted these views, fiercely denouncing in his fiery sermons the indulgences and the tyranny of the clergy of that period. For his boldness he was excommunicated from the church, which caused a wave of popular indignation in Bohemia. He was tried before the great Council of Constance as a heretic for denouncing the sale of the indulgences and the use of physical force by the Pope , and condemned to be burned at the stake. Although the Emperor Sigismund had promised him safe conduct to the council, he was burned because the emperor failed to keep his word. The third of the forerunners of the Reformation appears in the person of Girolamo Savonarola, a Dominican friar who lived in Florence, Italy. From 1481 to 1498 as the abbot of the Monastery of San Marco he greatly influenced the current of religious thought in Florence. An idealist, who loved purity and abhorred the immoral practices so common in that age in both clergy and laity, Savonarola became famous as a preacher, attracting thousands to the great cathedral where he denounced their sins. Unfortunately, at that time Alexander VI was pope in Rome, a diabolical character of the family of the Borgias whose life was as depraved as one could imagine. Alexander tried first to shut Savonarola’s mouth by granting him a cardinal’s hat and office. However, when he refused to be silenced, he was excommunicated. Even this failed to deter him in his preaching or destroy the faith of the populace in their hero. Finally the papal interdict was laid a gainst all Florence. Savonarola’s enemies triumphed over him, imprisoning him and condemning him to be burned at the stake. While differing in many ways from Wycliffe and Huss, the Italian monk had preached salvation apart from submission to the Roman hierarchy and the use of the Roman ritual. He had denied the authority of the Pope, and denounced corruption among church officials . For these things he was condemned as a heretic and burned in the great square before the cathedral where he had so eloquently preached .

None of these martyrs ·died ’in vain, for the1r example soon led others to think and consider the claims then made by the Roman church . Leo X was a great lover of art and as the Pope in the beginning of the 6th century desired very much to complete the buildiug of St. Peter’s Cathedral which his predeceuor, Julius II, had begun. In order to make it the most beautiful building in the world he exhausted the papal treasury, and need arose for additional funds to carry on this work. He resorted to means that had never been used before by either pope, in order to raise money. The means he chose was the sale of indulgences. Leo sent John Tetzel, a Dominican monk, into Germany preaching the sale of indulgences, or the forgiveness of sins in return for the payment of mo11ey. Here he met the opposition of Martin Luther and thus began the great Reformation movement.

Luther was born in Eisleben, Saxony, and entere d the priesthood as an Augustinian monk. He waa transferred to the new university established at Wittenberg, as a professor. While there he made a visit to Rome to perform an especially meritorious penance of climbing the 28 steps of the Sancta Scala. However, after some thought and study he came to the conclusion that outward penance would not avail as a means of salvation before God. Returning to the university he lectured on Romans, Galatians, and the Psalms and already had formed his ideas with regard to the indulgences when Tetzel appeared in Germany. Immediately he began to oppose such teaching as contrary to the Bible and proclaimed Bible teachings on the forgiveness of sins. On October 31, 1517, he nailed his famous 95 theses, or objections to the indulgences on the door of the Schloss-Kirche in Wittenberg, and invited any one who desired to discuss these issues to a public disputation. At first the Pope paid little heed to the discussions in Germany, but later awakening to its importance summoned Luther to appear before the Diet at Augsburg. For his oppos ition to the indulgences he was excommunicated in 1520. In order to carry out this order the Pope appealed to the Diet of the Empire to support the excommunication, and thus Luther was summoned before the Diet of Worms. When ask ed to reconsider and retract his opposition, he answered, "’Since your serene majesty and your high mightiness require from me a clear, simple, and precise answer, I will give you one and it is this: I cannot submit my faith either to the Pope or the councils, because it is as clear as the day that they have frequently erred and contradicted each other. Unless, therefore, I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by the clearest reasoning, unless I am persuaded by means of the passages which I have quoted and unless they thus render my conscience bound by the word of God-I cannot and will not retract; for it is unsafe for a Christian to speak against his conscience. Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." Such fearlessness is what has made Luther one of the greatest characters in human history. After such a bold declaration Luther retired, taken by some friends to a place of safe keeping, and for more than a year worked to translate the Bible from the Latin into the vernacular of the German people. This did more than any other thing to foster the cause of the Reformation and to encourage the return to the authority of the Bible. Certainly at the beginning Luther did not intend to begin a separate religious organization, but only to bring reformation within the J 5 church of that period . However, it did result in the separation, and the formation of the Church, called by Luther’s name. In 1530 this church accepted the Augsburg Confession of Faith aa their creed, thus beginning the long line of Protestant creeds formulated down through the centuries to the present. The fundamental article of the creed was that of justification by faith only, a doctrine by the way, unknown to the Scriptures. However, other doctrines taught which are commonly held by other religious groups and contrary to the New Testament teachings are; that the church has different branches, with each religious denomination as a separate branch, that the Ten Commandments are binding upon us today, that the mode of baptism is nonessential, baptism takes the place of circumcision, thus letting in the practice of infant baptism . This church, the outgrowth of Martin Luther’s work, is the prevailing religion in parts of Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and other European countries. For Luther’s great work in presenting the Bible to the common people, but as a believer in New T e stament Christianity I can only regard him as a great man, and his teachings as acceptable only wherein they conform completely to the New Testament. Wherever Luther fails to follow the New Testament he is an improper guide and as a follow er of Christ I cannot accept his teachings. This may be said of all these reformers or any other teacher or preacher. Their words are of worth only when they "speak where the Scriptures speak ."

Another noted reformer was Ulrich Zwingli, who lived in Switzerland about the time of Luther and before the day of John Calvin. Born in Windhaus, he received his education in the Universities of Base and Berne and came under the influence of a teacher who impressed upon him the authority of the Scriptures and the worthlessness of the indulgences as a means of forgiving sins. Later coming to Zurich he espoused the cause of the Reformation, differing from Luther in that he accepted the Bible and believed in and followed it absolutely without any deviation from its teachings. He denied the sacrificial character of the mass, the saving power in good works alone, the value of saints as intercessors, the binding of monastic vows, and advocated marriage among the clergy. Instead of believing that the bread and the wine of the Lord"s Supper became the actual body and blood of Christ, he saw the Lord’s Supper as a memorial feast, with the bread and fruit of the vine as simple symbols. This caused the break between Luther and Zwingli since Luther held to virtually the old view.

Zwingli’s great successor was John Calvin, who came to Basel from France, where he prepared his famous Institutes of the Christian Religion. He believed very strongly in the legal rigid theocracy as represented by the law of Moses, rather than in the liberty of the gospel. Beginning with the absolute perfection of God and our absolute dependence upon His will he built up a system of theology with the divine decree at its center. The five points of his system are: predestination; total hereditary depravity, or that all persons are born totally lost in sin because of Adam’s transgression; particular election, or that the number of the saved is so fixed by divine decree that it cannot be increased or diminished and particular individuals are elected either to salvation or damnation without any action on their own part. Irresistible grace and the everlasting perseverance of the elect so that they cannot be lost are likewise parts of the system. While Calvin founded no particular denomination, his system has profoundly influenced the thought of the Protestant world. He influenced John Knox and therefore, was directly responsible for the founding in Scotland, of the church which gets it’s name from the Greek presbiteros, which defines the rule of elders or presbyters. In our country Calvinism was first planted by the New England Puritans when they settled in Plymouth in 1620. At the present time many Protestant groups that once held to the entire system of Calvinism have repudiated either some parts or the whole of it. To anyone reading the scnptures carefully there 1s no justification for the idea of God predestinating certain individuals to hell and certain to heaven regardless of what they did. Christ would have thus died in vain and the invitation to the "whosoever will to come" would have been meaningless . (Matthew 11:28-30; Revelation 22:17. )

John Calvin was greatly interested in the political situation of his day in Switzerland. Through the pulpit he helped to reform the life in Switzerland and became the guiding spirit in a sort of theocracy at Geneva where he lived until his death in 1564. Calvin’s doctrines were taken by John Knox to Scotland and resulted in the establishment of this particular church in that country .

Born in Scotland and educated in the University of Glasgow, John Knox was ordained a priest of the apostate church in 1530. However, after studying the church fathers he openly professed to be a Protestant in 1543, and thus was degraded from the priesthood. Through the influence of some noblemen, he was able to occupy the pulpit at St. Andrew’s and sow the seeds of the Reformation in Scotland. The French captured him and sentence him to two years as a galley slave, after which he returned to England and assisted in the English Reformation. When Bloody Mary ascended the throne in England he fled to the Continent and at Geneva helped in translating the famous Geneva version of the English Bible. He later was able to return to his native Scotland and there lived until his death preaching the doctrines of Calvinism.

It was upo·n his return from Geneva in 1555 that he stirred the nobles in Scotland to form the first covenant to defend the Protestant faith and three years afterward the religion of the apostate church was disestablished there. The first creed was written by Knox based upon the writings of Calvin . This church became the established church of Scotfand in 1592 after much controversy over the form of church government, whether episcopal or congregational. The creed now regarded as Standard among nearly all of these folk is the Westminster Confession of Faith, formulated by the Westminster Assembly, which met in London in July of 1643 and continued its sessions for six years, meeting for 163 times. The name of this denomination 1s not derived from any man’s name, nor does it describe any set of doctrines. It is rather descriptive of the form of church government. It is the anglicizing of a Greek noun-presbuteros, which means elder, therefore, signifies a church governed by elders, in the literal meaning of the term. They hold in general the Calvinistic teachings, also practicing three forms of baptism, the sprinkling of babies, conversion by the direct influence of the Holy Spirit, our obligation to keep the Ten Commandments today and that it is not necessary to observe the Lord’s Supper each first day of the week-all teachings out of harmony with New Testament practice and precept. These facts which we have briefly presented are offered as a first lesson in the Reformation Movement and should enable you to better understand the religious conditions as they exist, as well as the reason for their existence. Throughout this course of study let us never lose sight of our aim to compare these teachings and doctrines of men with the New Testament and note similarities and differences. The New Testament is the divine pattern, and in order to be acceptable to the Lord we should follow its teachings .