82. Ecclesia Reformata, Semper Reformanda

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the podcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf. This is episode 82, Ecclesia Reformata, Semper Reformanda. It was the last few hours of October 31st, 1520, All Hallows' Eve in 1517, when Martin Luther hurried past the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, where exactly three years earlier he had posted his 95 Theses, a collection of nearly 100 sentences targeting the Roman Catholic practice of selling indulgences, which ignited a revolution that would reshape the religious landscape of Europe and beyond.

The word indulgence itself comes from the Latin word meaning permit, creating a spiritual get-out-of-jail-free card that the church could issue to the paying masses. For the right price, an indulgence could be purchased from the church, guaranteeing a shorter stay in purgatory, where loved ones were believed to be suffering under the weight of their sins and being purified in the sort of halfway house between heaven and earth.

The church argued that this was possible since there were some extraordinary saints somewhere who had earned a surplus of merit that exceeded what was needed for them to get into heaven. That merit was then deposited into a treasury and it could be applied to the account of ordinary men.

According to papal doctrine, the church alone had the keys to this storehouse of righteous merit and with a simple transaction, a few coins and a coffer, the church could apply that merit to the saint, to the account of the sinner, shortening their stay in purgatory.

Now, Luther, as he penned his 95 Theses, we must remember, by 1517, he wasn't entirely against the practice of selling indulgences, but he would eventually get there. His primary grievance, though, in that year was about the abuse of the practice, especially considering that the money was being used to build more and more elaborate cathedrals in the city of Rome, while many of the men and the women of his own church were starving back home.

Luther questioned this practice, saying, why doesn't the Pope empty the halls of purgatory himself by pure Christian love and with his own money, rather than burdening the pockets of destitute believers?

Now, the primary objection that Luther would eventually get to is this idea of assurance. What can we put our hope in? Is it in our righteousness? Is it in the merit of a saint or is it in the gospel?

And some of these ideas started percolating seven years before when Luther traveled to Rome. It was seven years before the hammer and the nail clanked against the castle church in Wittenberg, challenging the practice that Luther traveled to the holy city in order to gain his own assurance for his own salvation.

And what he witnessed there and experienced nauseated him, further convincing him that no hope and assurance could ever be found in the papal halls of Rome. While there, he witnessed the debauchery of the Pope in the Vatican hierarchy, which deeply troubled him.

The extravagance, the moral decay, the unbridled indulgence that he saw in the heart of the Catholic Church shook him to the core. And it was in sharp contrast to the piety and devotion that he had expected to encounter in a place that was called the holy city.

While he was there, one of the most unsettling experiences in the city was his encounter with the Scala Sancta, or the holy stairs, believed to be the very steps that Jesus had climbed to face Pontius Pilate.

Now apparently they had been brought to the city of Rome by Helena, which is Constantine's mother, but pilgrims nonetheless were encouraged to come to the city and to ascend these steps on their knees as an act of penance with the promise that doing so would absolve them of their sins and keep the dead from pining away in purgatory or something like that.

Luther observed this practice and he actually participated in it with a heavy heart, gaining none of the assurance that he was looking for. And troubled by what he saw as a distortion of the true nature of repentance and biblical forgiveness, he went home worried and thinking.

Now before we get back to the events in Wittenberg, Luther also was confronted with the widespread veneration of relics in the city of Rome. The city was filled with these sort of sacred artifacts from fragments of the cross to the bones of saints.

Even breast milk from the Virgin Mary was supposedly held within certain churches in certain places in the city. Pilgrims came from all over to view and even touch these relics, believing that they held supernatural power to forgive sin.

Luther even sarcastically notes for us that the city was filled with enough wood from the splinters of the cross of Jesus to build the entire Ark of Noah. This practice so deeply troubled Luther because it seemed to reduce faith to these mere trifle objects and rituals rather than a genuine relationship with God.

If you could just touch this item, then you could be saved or you could be healed. That takes away from the biblical view of authentic faith and salvation, and it gives a false assurance that would hurl men and women headlong into hell.

When Luther got back to Wittenberg, Germany, he also started seeing this practice being abused by a man named Johann Tetzel who was proliferating the selling of indulgences. He was infamous in his distribution of these indulgences by taking them to the streets almost like a 16th century drug dealer.

His marketing pitch was actually cleverly stated. He said, as soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs. Tetzel would even dramatize the voices of dead loved ones crying out in pain and anguish begging their living relatives to just pay the money to end their suffering by purchasing one of these papal permits.

This crass commercialization of salvation deeply troubled Martin Luther as it struck at the very heart of his understanding of the Christian gospel and he could no longer remain silent as he watched it and as he saw the masses being misled and exploited by such an elaborate scheme.

By 1517, even while Luther's theology was still developing, he had come to an understanding that salvation could not depend upon our good works. Not even to the slightest degree, salvation as Augustine and as the scriptures and Romans had taught him was a gift from God purifying the sinner entirely by grace through faith and motivating a real and a living faith in the one who is justified.

The thought that anyone could work their way into heaven was thoroughly preposterous to Luther much less that some saint had an excess of available merit somewhere to share with anyone else. He understood that all of us had fallen short of the glory of God, none of us had any available merit or righteousness to earn our way to heaven and that challenge is what caused him to pen the 95 theses that he nailed upon the door on October the 31st of 1517 and the timing of that was actually quite striking because that was All Hallows Eve.

It was the day when the church would celebrate all of the saints whose lives contributed to the treasury of merit. So by nailing the document to the door on that day, Luther was not only questioning the validity of the practice but he was unwittingly provoking the full fury and the power of Rome to be weaponized against him which would kick off the Protestant Reformation.

Luther's bold act of nailing these theses to that door was not just an act of defiance but it was truly a call for discussion. Luther was a scholar and a theologian, he was a professor at the University of Wittenberg at that time and he wished to engage in a theological debate about the sale of indulgences, inviting scholars to challenge his ideas and to debate with him but instead of that his actions actually sparked a firestorm that he could not have foreseen.

The printing press you'll remember at that time was a very recent invention played a crucial role in spreading Luther's doctrines and ideas far and wide. Copies of his theses and his books and his hymns were distributed across Europe fueling a growing movement of dissent among the people.

Now the 95 theses did mark the beginning of a seismic shift in the religious landscape. Luther's call for a return to the actual teachings of Christianity as he saw it was gaining traction among the masses who were disenchanted with the corruption of the Roman Church.

And in the years that followed, his writings and his teaching continued to challenge the established order. He emphasized the Bible as the ultimate authority, making it accessible to the common people by translating it from the original languages into the common language of the German people.

His doctrine of justification by faith alone was a critique of the papal authority and it ignited a theological revolution that would eventually lead to the rise of various Protestant denominations. As Luther's influence continued to grow, the church became increasingly threatened in 1521 where he was excommunicated by Pope Leo X for his heretical views.

But excommunication did not deter Luther, it only fueled his determination even further. He stood before the formidable Diet of Worms and famously declared, Here I stand, I can do no other, refusing to recant his beliefs.

This moment of courage and conviction turned him into an iconic figure of resistance. Now as we wrap up today, it's clear that Martin Luther was more than just a mere reformer. He was a trailblazer who challenged the status quo, reshaping the religious landscape of Europe.

Yes, his actions paved the way for the Protestant Reformation, leading to the rise of various Protestant denominations and changing the course of the Western world. Today, 506 years later, we stand on the shoulders of men like Martin Luther, who took a bold stand for the truth of the word of God.

Without Luther, there would be no Calvin. Without Calvin, there would be no Dutch or Scottish Reformation. Without these movements, there would be no Puritans. Without the Puritans, there would be no Protestant Church.

And without the Protestant Church, could there ever have been a thing that we know today as America? A few swings of the hammer on that day in 1517 broke the world, and we praise God that it did. The legacy of Martin Luther lives on as a testimony to the power of conviction, faith, and sola scriptura, and the courage to look into the scriptures and to simply say what the word of God says.

Ecclesia Reformata Semper Reformanda. Today, as we live in a similar time of heresy and spiritual decline, let us remember that the Protestant Reformation is not over. While Luther, Calvin, Knox, and others did much to reform the church, there's always a need for reformation in every generation.

That's why one of the mottos of the Reformation was the Latin phrase Ecclesia Reformata Semper Reformanda, which simply translates to the church reformed, always reforming. The timeless creed of that reminds us that the work of reformation is never done.

Luther's hammer strikes across the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, but it also echoes into every generation that follows as a clarion call for Christ's true church to stand up for the word of God.

And we are ever summoned to continue that pursuit of purity in religion, to challenge complacency and heresy, and to strive for a more biblically and faithful church. As Luther's courage ignited a movement that reshaped the world, let us today remember to embrace that same fiery spirit as we work to reform, renew, and revive the decrepit church in our time.

The echoes of Luther's hammer still resonate, and we must stand boldly, unwavering in our convictions, ever zealous for the truth of God. Amen. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of the podcast.

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