Crumbs from the Table

The Protestant Reformation began in the German university town of Wittenberg with a young Christian academic and monk by the name of Martin Luther.  Martin Luther's journey to faith had not been easy; it can be described as "search for a merciful God". Originally training to be a lawyer, he was caught in a thunderstorm and, fearing for his life, vowed to become a monk. In due course he took the vows to become a monk, was ordained as a priest, and from 1508 worked as a lecturer in Holy Scripture at the recently founded Wittenberg university. Despite Luther's intense commitment, he felt he could never do enough and was left without assurance of God's mercy. However, as Luther taught his way through Psalms and then Romans, his search for assurance of forgiveness led him to rediscover the truth of salvation in Christ as a gift given by God and received by mere faith. This new evangelical faith was at odds with his experience of church, which offered an endless cycle o...

Halloween aside, today, 31 October, is Reformation Day.  This date commemorates the day when, in 1517, on the eve of All Saints Day, a young monk and theology lecturer, Martin Luther, according to the custom of the time, nailed 95 theses to the Cathedral door at Wittenberg, inviting debate.  The content of the 95 theses was, in some ways, not that subversive. For example, it begins by saying that repentance is not just about going to confession and performing the acts of penitence prescribed by the priest, but about heartfelt contrition and a life of repentance. However, Luther's actions in 1517 set in motion debate that eventually led, in 1521, to him and others being excluded from the Roman Catholic church and becoming a separate gospel church (German: Evangelisch ). Luther's "brand" of Reformation involved only minimal change to the outward appearance of churches, and focused on the internal message of the gospel, in particular the good news of justification by fai...