500 Years Ago Today, Western Civilization Was Changed FOREVER

Western Civilization in the 21st century is marked by religious pluralism, where people from all over the world have been able to come to various nations in Europe and North America to freely exercise their religious beliefs. That religious pluralism has also manifested within Christianity itself over the past five centuries.

While we living in the 21st century think nothing of this kind of pluralism, most of Western history has looked very different, politically and religiously. Politically, the notion of nation-states as we know it did not exist; there were only kingdoms and empires for most of the A.D. times.

Religiously, in Western Europe, where our American roots largely lie, there was also only one church, the Roman Catholic Church. At the end of the 2nd Century A.D., when communities of believers and their religious leaders came together to formally create the institution of the Church, the Roman Catholic Church took the leading role as the primary religious institution in Western Europe for the next 13 centuries.

Through the Dark Ages, the Roman Catholic Church had kept alive the light of the Gospel for those living in Western Europe. When the Roman Empire collapsed and the barbarians destroyed the last semblances of order, one of the few remaining institutions was the Church. That institution kept alive the truths of the Gospel, and created centers of learning that continue to exist today: universities.

For centuries, the Roman Catholic Church was the single most important institution in Western Europe. However, in that time the Church had become immensely corrupt, with leaders delving into false doctrines, and scamming the people out of their money to enrich the coffers of the Church.

In the 1400s, some Church clergy recognized the evils that plagued the Roman Catholic Church, and urged the need for the Church to take a close look at their actions, and amend their ways to come back to the truth of the Scriptures. One of the earliest reformers, a Czech clergyman named Jan Hus, was one of the earliest whistelblowers on the Church’s false doctrines and corruption.

He had argued for years that the Church needed to amend its ways, but in July of 1415, Hus was burned at the stake for opposing the Roman Church. However, others would follow in his footsteps later on, including one German monk who would change the course of history in Western Civilization forever: Martin Luther.

Luther was a clergy member of the Augustinian order, a strict sect of clergy members who lived a lifestyle completely devoted to God. In his time studying the Scripture, Luther came to question some of the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, and even his faith itself.

He did every ritual he could, delved deep into the Scripture searching for answers to his ultimate question: how can I, as a sinner, be made right in God’s eyes?

He came to focus on a particular passage, Romans 1:17.

For in it [The Gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “But the righteous man shall live by faith.”

As he meditated on this one particular verse, he came to loathe it, for how could anyone be righteous before God? No matter what Luther did, he never felt worthy; it seemed that nothing could get him to a place where, in his heart, he felt right with God.

Then, one day, something clicked. He realized that he simply could not justify himself before God, but that was not what he was supposed to do anyways. Man cannot justify himself before God, because we cannot save ourselves from our sinful nature.

Only God can save us, and he saves us through our faith. We are not justified by our works, by rituals and sacrifices and indulgences and Hail-Mary’s, but by having faith that God has paid the price, and accepting that free gift of salvation.

With that, he came to seriously question the Roman Catholic Church’s teachings on indulgences (payments made to the Church to either purchase time off of one’s own sentence, or another’s sentence, in a place called Purgatory; a sort of in-between place where the sins that are allegedly left unforgiven must be punished before a believer can go to heaven).

This teaching has no place in the Scripture, but the Roman Church adopted this belief and used it as if it were taught in the Scripture. But how could they get away with that? Because the Scripture was only written in Latin, and the populace could not read the Scripture for themselves.

However, thanks to the invention of the printing press in the mid-1400s, people in Western Europe were able to start reading more for themselves, as books could be produced much more quickly than they were previously, which was by hand.

On October 31, 1517, Luther took a total of 95 grievances, tilted the “Disputation on the Power of Indulgences,” and posted it to the church door in Wittenburg, Germany. The 95 theses were designed to stimulate academic debate, not the massive grassroots movement that ended up sweeping up the continent.

After Luther posted the grievances, locals got a hold of them, printed them out, and sent them all over Germany. The Roman Catholic Church came under fire when the people read Luther’s grievances.

Luther himself would eventually go before the Pope to defend his arguments for reform, but the Church councils rejected his concerns and ended up excommunicating him. Nonetheless, he continued to argue against the un-Biblical practices of the Church with a sharp tongue and a vigorous pen.

When Luther died in 1546, the movement continued in spite of his passing. Other Reformers, like John Calvin, took the torch to fight for the Scriptures, for sound doctrine, and for the adherence to five main principles of the Reformation. The five solas, as they have been dubbed are as follows:

Sola Scriptura: Scripture alone is to be our final authority in theological matters. Everything that believers need to live the Christian life has been imparted to us in the collection of divinely-inspired writings we know as the Bible. Those words are from God Himself, and are to be the final authority in all things, not a church council or a tradition or a Papal decree.

Sola Fide: Believers are saved by their faith in God, and not by works. Our works cannot save us from damnation, and cannot justify us before God. We as lowly sinners have nothing to offer God that will make us any more justifiable in His eyes. Only by having faith in the sacrifice of his Son can we stand just before God, as our faith in the sacrifice made by Jesus Christ on the cross, paying the penalty for our sins, can we stand faultless before God on judgment day.

Sola Gratia: It is because of God’s grace alone that we can be saved, a free gift that He imparts to sinners of this world. It is not by our works that we can receive grace; it is a free gift from God himself. We do not deserve it because of anything that we do. It is solely because of God’s sovereignty and his loving nature that he bestows his grace on the believing. As Ephesians 2:8 states:

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

Solus Christus: Only Jesus Christ himself can justify us because of His sacrifice. It is not by praying to dead believers or to Jesus’ earthly mother Mary that we can somehow become worthy in God’s eyes. Only the Son can save. As Acts 4:12 states:

And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.

Soli Deo Gloria: All glory and honor goes to God alone. He is above all things created on this world, and He created all things for His glory. No person or institution is worthy of honor and glory as God himself is, and all things are to be done unto Him. As Isaiah 42:8 states:

“I am the Lord, that is My name;
I will not give My glory to another,
Nor My praise to graven images.”

Additionally, Isaiah 43: 21 states:

“The people whom I formed for Myself
Will declare My praise.”

These five principles are so important because they emphasize that God and his sovereignty is over all things, and that it is not about us, but about Him.

Even 500 years later, it is just as important to remember what the Reformers were doing: fighting against corruption and false doctrine in the Church. Their call for reform unfortunately met stiff and eventually bloody resistance from the powers-that-be, and it took nearly a century and a half to finally end the bloodshed between Protestant and Roman Catholic nations.

While the fight is no longer manifesting itself in wars between nations, there will always be a spiritual battle for Christian believers, to always adhere to sound doctrine (1 Timothy 1:3-4, 6:3-5, Titus 1:9, Hebrews 13:9, and many other passages) and to reject the falsities from those who would lead astray the people of God.

Even still, some notions regarding indulgences still pervade Christendom today. Back in 2013, Pope Francis stated that those who followed the World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro that summer would receive an indulgence for time off of a purgatory sentence.

Despite the fact that the Scripture does not support that doctrine, it is still a part of Roman Catholic theology.

It is not by anything that any person does on this earth that can obtain salvation and forgiveness of sins, but by the grace of God, and having faith in the sacrifice that the Son made to pay the penalty for our sins. Even 500 years later, the topic is still around, and believers who sincerely want to stay true to the Scripture must fight for sound doctrine at all times.

Or else, we get massive amounts of heresy that runs rampant in many parts of the world (like the prosperity gospel, for example).

The Reformation continues, from 1517 to the present day, and will continue for the rest of Church history, in Western Civilization, and throughout the entire world.

Acts 16:30-31: and after he [the jailer] brought them out, he said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” They said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.”

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