The Reformation divisions

Program / Course 11: Church, Sacraments, and Authority / Lesson 8.3

What you will learn

• Outline the main events of the Reformation from 1517 to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.
• Describe the major issues in dispute: justification, authority, sacraments and the church.
• Distinguish Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican and Radical Reformation movements and the Catholic response.
• Explain how each tradition has told the story, and where historians agree.

The big idea

The Reformation began in 1517 as a call to reform the Western church and became a division that created new churches. Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, John Calvin and others challenged Roman teaching on grace, authority and the sacraments. Catholics responded with condemnation and, at the Council of Trent, with reform and definition. The divisions had religious, political and social causes, and led to wars. Catholics regard the Reformation as a tragic break from the church. Protestants regard it as a recovery of the gospel. Both agree it changed Christianity.

Key terms

Indulgence

In Catholic teaching, the remission of temporal punishment due to sin that has already been forgiven, granted by the church. The sale of indulgences was the immediate target of Luther’s protest.

Justification

The act by which a sinner is made right with God. The Reformers taught justification by faith alone, and Trent defended a different account.

Magisterial Reformation

The Reformation movements that worked with magistrates and kept infant baptism and a church order: Lutheran, Reformed and Anglican.

Radical Reformation

Movements such as the Anabaptists that rejected infant baptism, state churches and some other structures.

Counter-Reformation (Catholic Reformation)

The Catholic renewal and response after 1517, including the Council of Trent and new religious orders such as the Jesuits.

Cuius regio, eius religio

A Latin principle meaning whose realm, his religion. In the Peace of Augsburg of 1555, rulers in the Holy Roman Empire chose the religion, Catholic or Lutheran, of their territory.

Excommunication

Formal exclusion from the sacraments and communion of the church.

Background

By 1500 many people in Western Europe wanted reform of the church. Complaints focused on clergy who neglected their duties, on the sale of church offices, on the wealth of bishops and on practices around indulgences. Humanist scholars such as Erasmus called for a return to Scripture and the fathers. The printing press spread ideas quickly. Earlier reformers, such as John Wyclif and Jan Hus, had been condemned. Many in the church agreed that reform was needed.

The Reformation was not only a religious event. Princes saw opportunities to increase their independence from Rome and the emperor. Peasants sought relief from burdens, and cities developed their own religious councils. Historians therefore describe it as the result of many causes. They also agree that theology, and not only politics, was at its center: people were deeply concerned about salvation, and honest people disagreed about what Scripture taught.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: Luther and the Lutheran movement

On 31 October 1517, Luther, a monk and professor at Wittenberg, circulated ninety-five theses on indulgences. The theses spread widely. Luther’s study of Paul led him to teach justification by faith alone, and in 1519 he questioned the authority of popes and councils. In 1520 Pope Leo X condemned his teachings in the bull Exsurge Domine, and Luther was excommunicated in January 1521. At the Diet of Worms in April 1521, he refused to recant, and the emperor outlawed him. Protected by Elector Frederick of Saxony, he translated the New Testament into German.

The Lutheran movement spread through Germany and Scandinavia. The Augsburg Confession of 1530, written by Philip Melanchthon, set out its beliefs and sought to show continuity with the ancient church. Catholic theologians rejected key points. Efforts at reconciliation at Augsburg and Regensburg failed, partly because of disagreement on authority and the Mass.

Step 2: Zwingli, Calvin and the Reformed churches

Ulrich Zwingli led the Reformation in Zurich from 1519, preaching through the Gospels and removing images and the Mass. He and Luther differed on the Lord’s Supper at Marburg in 1529. After Zwingli died in battle in 1531, Heinrich Bullinger led Zurich. John Calvin, a French exile, came to Geneva, where he wrote the Institutes of the Christian Religion (first edition 1536) and shaped a church order with pastors, teachers, elders and deacons. The Reformed movement spread to Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, Scotland, Hungary and elsewhere.

Reformed and Lutheran Protestants agreed on justification by faith and the authority of Scripture, but differed on the Lord’s Supper, church order and the use of images. Efforts at union were made, but remained limited. The two groups’ relations were often tense until the twentieth century.

Step 3: England, the Radicals and the Catholic response

In England, the break with Rome began in 1534 when Henry VIII, who sought an annulment of his marriage that the pope would not grant, was declared head of the Church of England by the Act of Supremacy. Doctrine changed under Edward VI, reversed under Mary I and settled under Elizabeth I in 1559 with a compromise that retained bishops and a liturgy in English. The Anglican position combined Catholic order and Protestant doctrine in a way that Anglicans continue to debate.

The Radical Reformers, including the Anabaptists, held that the church should be a community of believers, separate from the state, and baptized adults. They were persecuted by Catholics and Protestants alike. Catholics responded in 1545 to 1563 with the Council of Trent, which defined teaching on Scripture and tradition, justification, the sacraments and the Mass, and reformed the training of clergy. New orders such as the Jesuits, founded by Ignatius of Loyola, led renewal and missions.

Step 4: The central disagreements

Four issues stood at the center. The first was justification. Luther and Calvin taught that sinners are declared righteous by God through faith alone, on account of Christ, and Trent taught that justification involves a real inner renewal in which faith works through love. In 1999 the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church signed a Joint Declaration saying that the condemnations of the sixteenth century do not apply to the teaching of the two churches as now presented. Some Lutherans and Catholics think differences still remain.

The second was authority: Scripture alone against Scripture and tradition with the magisterium. The third concerned the sacraments: the number, the Mass as a sacrifice, and the real presence. The fourth concerned the church and the papacy: the Reformers rejected papal supremacy and the Roman hierarchy as essential to the church. Eastern Orthodox Christians observed this from the outside: the Patriarch Jeremias II of Constantinople corresponded with Lutheran theologians in Tübingen between 1573 and 1581 and respectfully disagreed with them on several points.

Step 5: Wars and settlements

Religious conflict became armed conflict. The Peace of Augsburg in 1555 allowed Lutheran and Catholic rulers to choose their territory’s religion, but not the Reformed. In France, the wars of religion killed thousands, including the massacre of Protestants on St. Bartholomew’s Day in 1572. The Thirty Years’ War (1618 to 1648) devastated Germany, and the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 added Reformed churches to the settlement and weakened the principle of imposed religion.

The violence is an uncomfortable part of the story for all traditions, since each side persecuted others at times. Catholics burned Protestants, and Protestants executed Catholics and Anabaptists. Modern churches of all traditions have expressed regret for it. Over time, toleration and religious freedom came to be seen as values of their own, although the path was slow.

1. What did Luther first ask for in 1517, and how did the issue grow?
2. On which points did Lutherans and Reformed agree, and on which did they differ?
3. How did Trent answer the Reformers?
4. What non-religious factors contributed to the Reformation?
5. How does each tradition tell the story of 1517, and what does it emphasize?
6. What can be learned from the wars of religion?

Examples

Different perspectives

Catholic

Catholics have traditionally seen the Reformation as a rebellion that broke the unity of the church and reduced its sacramental life. Since Vatican II, Catholic teaching describes Protestants as separated brothers and sisters, and acknowledges that blame lay on both sides. Catholic historians also recognize real abuses in the late medieval church.

Orthodox

Orthodox Christians regard the Reformation as a development within Western Christianity that arose from the Western church’s earlier changes, such as papal power and scholastic theology. They hold that the Reformers rightly objected to abuses but responded in ways that departed from the early church, as Jeremias II argued.

Protestant

Protestants see the Reformation as the recovery of the gospel of grace and the authority of Scripture. They acknowledge the divisions it caused and the violence, and many are troubled by further fragmentation. Anglican, Lutheran and Reformed churches differ on how much continuity with the medieval church they claim.

Scholarly view

Historians now emphasize the diversity of the reforming movements and that the late medieval church was both in need of reform and spiritually vital. They debate the relative weight of religious and political causes. Most reject both the old Protestant picture of a corrupt church and the old Catholic picture of a simple revolt.

Why it matters

The Reformation shaped the present map of Christianity in the West, and its disputes underlie most of the topics in this course. Understanding it as a complex event, with real theological differences and real political forces, makes it possible to describe it without caricature. It also gives context for present efforts at reconciliation.

Common misunderstandings

Knowledge check

Think it through

1. What might have happened if reform had been achieved within the existing church?
2. How should later Christians speak of the wrongs done by their own tradition?
3. In what ways did political events shape religious outcomes?
4. Why might the same events be told differently by Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant historians?

Independent assignment

The Reformation in three accounts

In your notebook, summarize the Reformation in about 200 words as a Catholic, a Lutheran or Reformed Protestant and an Orthodox historian might tell it, using at least one primary source for each (for example Trent, the Augsburg Confession, Calvin’s Institutes or the correspondence of Jeremias II). Then write 250 to 350 words identifying the facts all three would accept and the interpretations on which they differ. Keep the work in your notebook.

Further study

• Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will Luther’s argument with Erasmus on the will, a central text of the Reformation.
• John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion Read the opening of Book 1 and the preface addressed to the king of France.
• Council of Trent (1545-1563), Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent Read the decree on justification.
• Philip Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, vol. 3: The Creeds of the Evangelical Protestant Churches Read the Augsburg Confession and the Thirty-Nine Articles.
• Justo L. Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity Read the chapters on the Reformation for a general history.
• Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine (5 volumes) A scholarly study of the development of doctrine in the Reformation era.
• Romans 3:28 A person is justified by faith apart from works of the law.
• James 2:24 A person is justified by works and not by faith alone.