October 31, 1517 - A New Beginning

OCTOBER 31, 1517 - A NEW BEGINNING 

I use Google Calendar all the time, on all my devices.  Most of the time it’s great, seamlessly interfacing across computer, phone and tablet.  However, one thing bothers me:  it annoyingly auto-populates with holidays I don’t care anything about, like April Fools Day, or St Patricks Day, or Thomas Jefferson’s Birthday (Why should I care? Even before generic “President’s Day, we never celebrated his birthday, didn’t and still don’t even get a day off for it.) and doesn’t auto-populate the really important days - like Groundhog Day, my wife’s birthday, our anniversary - or the first day of the rifle season for deer hunting.

And believe it or not, on today’s date, what do you think it auto-populates?  You guessed it - Halloween.  Seriously?  Halloween.  “All Hallows Eve,” celebrated by Satanists, witches and druids all over the world, harkening back to “Samhain,” the celebration of death.  Doesn’t even show “All Hallows” or All Saints’ Day on November 1.  I mean, if it’s gonna show “All Hallow’s EVE,” don’t you think it ought to show “All Hallow’s DAY as well?  I mean, it wouldn’t post Christmas EVE without posting Christmas DAY, right?  Or New Year’s EVE and not New Year’s DAY?

But no.  I think what it means to remind me of is that I need to be ready, because tonight will come an army of little candy-grubbing urchins to my door, most of whom don’t even have the courtesy to say, “Trick or Treat!” anymore.  And their costumes have really gotten gross.  Not scary, just gross.  The really scary ones are the ones who look like they are pretty close to college age.  I mean, isn’t there an age limit to this trick or treat nonsense?

But I digress…

What is really unfortunate is that Google missed the opportunity to post the celebration of one of the truly earth-shattering events in history.  As you may be aware, today marks exactly (give or take a few days) 505 years since the posting of Dr. Martin Luther’s 95 Theses on the door of the church connected with Wittenberg Castle in Germany.  And that event we consider to be the date of the beginning of a cultural and religious upheaval that we refer to as the Reformation - a turbulent period that marked a “new beginning” for the worship of God and for the spread of the gospel throughout the world.

So I would ask your indulgence (pun intended) as we reflect together on that event, and what it has meant for all of us.

A few years back, I read a remarkable book on Luther by Eric Metaxis, in which he debunks a number of the misconceptions surrounding Luther’s life, including how this event actually went down.

The picture we often have in our minds is of an angry Luther, defacing the church doors as he is defiantly pounding nails through a sheaf of paper containing a kind of manifesto for the Protestant Reformation.  We see him sort of throwing down the theological gauntlet in the face of Pope Leo X, saying “Bring it on, Pope.  Let’s duke it out!”

The reality, according to Metaxis, was far different.

In order to understand this event, a little background is in order.

In the summer of 1505, Martin Luther was a 22 year old law student at the University of Erfurt, when he happened to be traveling on foot near the village of Stotternheim during a severe thunderstorm.  Caught in the open, with lightning crashing all around, and fearing for his life, he cried out to St. Anne - patron saint of miners (Luther’s father was a miner) - and vowed, “Help me, St. Anne!  I will become a monk!”   

Realizing the serious nature of making a vow to God, he entered the Augustinian monastery just a few weeks later, abandoning his study of law, much to his father’s dismay.  And he determined to be as good a monk as possible and gave himself wholeheartedly to preparation for ordination.  Unusual for a monk of his day, he also devoted himself to studying the word of God, and would pore over it for hours, mainly seeking to understand how he - or anyone - could possibly gain approval from a holy and just God.  

Keenly aware of the vast chasm between himself and God, and fearing God’s wrath, Luther would spend hours in the confessional, confessing not only failures of deed, but of thought, word and motive.  He would leave the confessional, feeling that he had been forgiven of these things, only to remember another instance where he had held a resentful attitude toward another brother, or been grudging in getting up early for prayers.  So he would be again crushed with guilt.  What he longed for was a clear conscience before God, but he felt his sins created a yawning, impassable gulf between him and the Lord.

He wrote his experience: 

“My conscience would not give me certainty, but I always doubted and said, ‘You didn’t do that right.  You weren’t contrite enough.  You left that out of your confession.’  The more I tried to remedy an uncertain, weak and troubled conscience with human traditions, the more daily I found it more uncertain, weaker and more troubled.” 

According to Dr. Stephen Nichols, President of Reformation Bible College, Luther entered the monastery “Looking for peace and rest, [but] found instead strife and turmoil.  Luther tried white-knuckling his way to heaven.  Later he would say that if ever a monk could get to heaven by monkery, he would be that monk.”

In 1510, Luther was sent on a representative mission to Rome, walking the entire way.  As an ardent devotee of the Church, the prospect of seeing this holiest of Christian cities thrilled him.  Following his arrival, however, he discovered firsthand how corrupt and irreverent the Church had become.  He observed how the priests would ramble through Masses as quickly as possible, competing to see who could say the most Masses in a day.  Church leaders, contrary to Church decrees, kept women or visited prostitutes.  Priests and leaders looked down on laymen, viewing them as ignorant vermin to be used rather than shepherded.  Political shenanigans abounded, and the Bible was virtually ignored.  The common people couldn’t read it, and the educated ones cared more for the writings of Aristotle and the Scholastics than bothering to study the Bible itself.

Thoroughly discouraged, Luther returned to Germany. Having now been appointed as head of the theological faculty at the University of Wittenberg, he continued to search the scriptures for an explanation for his own Anfechtungen, struggles that included bouts with deep depression.  His struggle was between man and a holy God, which is a struggle man of himself can never win.

Of that period, he later wrote:

“Though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt that I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience.  I could not believe that he was placated by my satisfaction.  I did not love…yes, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners, and secretly, if not blasphemously certainly murmuring greatly, I was angry with God…Thus I raged with a fierce and troubled conscience.  Nevertheless I beat importunately upon St. Paul at that place [referring to Paul’s Epistle to the Romans 1:17] most ardently desiring to know what St. Paul wanted.”

Several years passed as Luther continued his struggle, and one day early in 1517, as he wrestled with the meaning of that passage - “The righteous shall live by faith.” - he said:

“At last, by the mercy of God, meditating day and night, I gave heed to the context of the words, namely, ‘In it the righteousness of God is revealed,’ as it is written, ‘He who through faith is righteous shall live.’  There I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives by a gift of God, namely, by faith…Here I felt I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates….and I extolled my sweetest word with a love as great as the hatred with which I had before hated the word, ‘righteousness of God.’  Thus that place in Paul was for me truly the gate to paradise.”

That realization - that “aha” moment dramatically changed Martin Luther, and the course of his life, and the course of world history.

Later that year, a man showed up in the environs around Wittenberg by the name of Johannes Tetzel.  Tetzel was on a joint mission from Rome and from Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz to raise money both for the building of St. Peter’s in Rome and for Albrecht’s bishopric.  The means by which he would raise money for these projects was through the selling of indulgences.  Indulgences were legal papers offered for sale, authorized by the Pope, by which an individual - or someone he designated, usually a deceased family member - could be absolved of a certain amount or degree of his sins, and thus speed his or their way to heaven.  It worked great!  Hearing his little jingle, “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs,” people would ante up with money they could otherwise have used for the care of their living families, knowing they had done a good deed for the church and for the departed.  Listen to this pitch:

“Listen now, God and St. Peter call you.  Consider the salvation of your souls and those of your loved one departed.  You priest, you noble, you merchant, you virgin, you matron, you youth, you old man, enter now into your church, which is the Church of St. Peter. Visit the most holy cross erected before you and ever imploring you.  Have you considered that you are lashed in a furious tempest amid the temptations and dangers of the world, and that you do not know whether you can reach the haven, not of your mortal body, but of your immortal soul?  Consider that all who are contrite and have confessed and made contribution will receive complete remission of all their sins.  Listen to the voices of your dear dead relatives and friends, beseeching you and saying, “Pity us, pity us.  We are dire torment from which you can redeem us for a pittance.”  Do you not wish to?  Open your ears. Hear the father saying to his son, the mother to her daughter, “We bore you, nourished you, brought you up, left you our fortunes, and you are so cruel and hard that now you are not willing for so little to set us free. Will you let us lie here in flames?  Will you delay our promised glory?”

Wow!  How could you turn down such an appeal from none less than an emissary of the Pope? Why would you?  It was win-win for everyone.

Except for the fact that this idea is pure fiction emanating from Leo X’s inflated notions of his own authority.  It was pure manipulation for the sake of raising funds, cloaked in pious-sounding jargon, and Luther saw right through it.

Deeply concerned about this state of affairs, but still confident that neither the Pope nor Archbishop had any idea what was happening, Luther wrote, and on October 31, 1517 posted, a very humble letter to Archbishop Albrecht, letting him know that Tetzel - and others - were peddling these indulgences in his name.  Assuming the archbishop would be at least concerned, and hopefully shocked, he included 95 numbered statements - theses - showing why selling indulgences misrepresented both the Savior and His Church, which of course included Archbishop Albrecht.

At the same time, he sent a copy of the theses to a trusted friend, Johannes Lang, and some others.  A printer in Nuremberg by the name of Christopher Scheurl had the opportunity to read these 95 “theses,” and without Luther’s knowledge or permission, took it upon himself to print them for circulation in Nuremberg. (Remember, the printing press had been relatively recently invented, making Scheurl something like the Julian Assange of his day.)  Others reprinted them, so that within two weeks they were all over Germany.  In short order, Luther came from relative obscurity to being something of a celebrity, as his message resonated with people of all walks of life, who had known something was amiss with the Church.  Now they sensed they had a champion who understood their concerns and would represent them courageously.

Albrecht on the other hand, not knowing how to respond to Luther’s letter and theses, consulted with some of his  local academicians, who basically shrugged and suggested he forward Luther’s letter and theses sent on to Pope Leo, which he did.  And that is when the “excrement hit the propeller.”  

Without going into greater detail, it must be said that Luther continued to remain humble and conciliatory, strongly believing in the holiness and reasonableness of the Pope, and eagerly trying to help him see the need for reforms.  But it all came down to the authority of the enterprise that the Church had become, even while Luther gained nearly overnight popularity and support in Germany and beyond.  People disconnected from him picked up his cause as their own, and likewise sought the reform of the church.  His courage served to encourage others.

Eventually, when it became evident that Luther’s teaching on the subject was stirring up a hornet’s nest of German resistance to the authority of the Church, the Pope excommunicated Luther.  Luther in response excommunicated the Pope, believing he had as much or more authority to excommunicate a Pope who would not support the Bible, as the Pope had to excommunicate a rogue monk.  This of course led theologians to take sides - and even heads of state, as in the case of Henry VIII of England.  And so the Reformation of the Church began…

But what of that notorious castle door in Wittenberg?  The reality is that the church door was where local notices were posted, and likely a couple of weeks into November, Luther posted - not sure he used nails, could’ve been super glue - his 95 Theses as an invitation to a debate with Tetzel and his own academic colleagues over the validity what Tetzel was peddling.  That debate did not occur for some months, and when it did, it occurred primarily in printed form, Tetzel coming up with his own Theses to counter Luther’s, and Luther countering Tetzel’s counters, and so on.

Meanwhile, the spread of Luther’s theses throughout Germany brought the issue of “how people are saved” to the front of everyone’s thinking.  Previously accepted notions of salvation by satisfying the church through good works, gave way to the biblical teaching of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone, for the glory of God alone, by the authority of the inspired Scriptures alone.  These became known as the five “solas” of the Reformation:  Sola Gratia, Sola Fide, Solus Christus, Soli Deo Gloria and Sola Scriptura.

So, what of it?  Besides being a nasty chapter in Church relations, what came of all this?  Luther’s concerns had been expressed similarly by John Hus a century before.  For suggesting that the people needed to read scripture for themselves, he was burned at the stake.  For similar reasons, John Wycliffe’s bones had been dug up, burned and thrown in the river some 50 years after his death.  Yet these reformers set the stage from which Luther inadvertently launched sweeping changes, including the translation of the Bible into German and English.  The availability of the printing press made their work available to all men, not just the clergy.  By reading it, everyday men and women began to rely on its teaching firsthand to give them access to God.  So here are a couple of things for which we can all be thankful, Protestant and Catholic alike:

1. The Bible in the language of the people, printed and available.  Every time you open your Bible, have a quiet time or hear someone read the Bible in your language, you owe a debt of gratitude to Martin Luther and other Reformers, many of whom gave their lives for the notion of having the Bible in the common language.  
2. The recovery of the gospel, which had been obscured by “scholastic” commentary and for all practical purposes, lost.  With the availability of the Bible, people who had previously never read the words, “For by grace you are saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,” now discovered the wonderful truth that we celebrate every Lord’s Day - the truth that, “for our sake He made Him to be sin, Who knew no sin, that in Him we might become the righteousness of God,”  and “by works of the Law shall no one be saved.”                                                          
3. Luther’s great statement to that effect, Simul Justus et Peccatore - at the same time justified and a sinner - conveys the biblical position on this.  Prior to this, the church had for many years confused means and ends.  Good works are taught in scripture as vital, but as the product of salvation, not the means to it.  The Reformers thankfully recovered this.
4. Through both Reformation and Counter-Reformation, Christ’s church was over time  reformed, excesses purged, doctrines clarified - for the glory of God and the spread of the good news of the gospel.

So when the urchins arrive at your door tonight, turn out the lights, go hide and read your Bible.