Church History in Plain Language (Plain Language Series)

by Bruce L. Shelley

the papacy had departed from the simple faith and practice of Christ and his disciples. “Christ is truth,” he wrote, “the pope is the principle of falsehood. Christ lived in poverty, the pope labors for worldly magnificence. Christ refused temporal dominion, the pope seeks it.”

Christ alone, said Wyclif, is the head of the church. The papal institution is “full of poison.” It is Antichrist itself, the man of sin who exalts himself above God. Let judgment fall!

From Oxford, as from Assissi two centuries before, Wyclif sent out “poor priests” into the byways and village greens, sometime even to churches, to win the souls of the neglected. Clad in russet robes of undressed wool, without sandals, purse, or scrip, a long staff in their hand, dependent for food and shelter on the good will of their neighbors, Wyclif ’s “poor priests” soon became a power in the land. Their enemies dubbed them Lollards, meaning “mumblers.” They carried a few pages of the reformer’s Bible and his tracts and sermons as they went throughout the countryside preaching the Word of God. One panic-stricken observer claimed that “every second man” he met was a Lollard.

If the Church of Rome was to be reformed from within, it had ample opportunities in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. But by the end of the fifteenth century, the dreams of Marsilius of Padua had vanished, the leaders of reform by church councils were frustrated and repudiated, and the revolts of Wyclif and Hus were crushed. The value of the period lies in the demonstration it gives that reform of the papal church from within was impossible.

What is Protestantism? The best description is still that of Ernst Troeltsch, who early in the twentieth century called Protestantism a “modification of Catholicism” in which Catholic problems remain, but different solutions are given. The four questions that Protestantism answered in a new way are: (1) How is a person saved? (2) Where does religious authority lie? (3) What is the church? And (4) what is the essence of Christian living?

In the midst of saying his first Mass, said Luther, “I was utterly stupefied and terrorstricken. I thought to myself, ‘Who am I that I should lift up mine eyes or raise my hands to the divine majesty? For I am dust and ashes and full of sin, and I am speaking to the living, eternal and true God.’” No amount of penance, no soothing advice from his superiors could still Luther’s conviction that he was a miserable, doomed sinner. Although his confessor counseled him to love God, Luther one day burst out, “I do not love God! I hate him!”

Luther saw it clearly now. Man is saved only by his faith in the merit of Christ’s sacrifice. The cross alone can remove man’s sin and save him from the grasp of the devil. Luther had come to his famous doctrine of justification by faith alone. He saw how sharply it clashed with the Roman church’s doctrine of justification by faith and good works—the demonstration of faith through virtuous acts, acceptance of church dogma, and participation in church ritual.

If salvation comes through faith in Christ alone, the intercession of priests is superfluous. Faith formed and nurtured by the Word of God, written and preached, requires no monks, no masses, no prayers to the saints. The mediation of the Church of Rome crumbles into insignificance.

All too often, zealous preachers of indulgences made them appear to be a sort of magic—as though a good deed, especially a contribution, automatically got its reward, regardless of the condition of the doer’s soul. Sorrow for sin was completely and conveniently overlooked. That troubled Luther deeply.

To Luther, Tetzel’s preaching was bad theology if not worse. He promptly drew up 95 propositions (or theses) for theological debate and on 31 October 1517, following university custom, he posted them on the Castle Church door at Wittenberg. Among other things, they argued that indulgences cannot remove guilt, do not apply to purgatory, and are harmful because they induce a false sense of security in the donor. That was the spark that ignited the Reformation.

During an 18-day debate in 1519 with theologian John Eck at Leipzig, Luther blurted out: “A council may sometimes err. Neither the church nor the pope can establish articles of faith. These must come from Scripture.” Thus, Luther had moved from his first conviction—that salvation was by faith in Christ alone to a second: that the Scriptures, not popes or councils, are the standard for Christian faith and behavior.

In his The Babylonian Captivity of the Church Luther made clear how justification by faith reshaped his doctrine of the church. He argued that Rome’s sacramental system held Christians “captive.” He attacked the papacy for depriving the individual Christian of his freedom to approach God directly by faith, without the mediation of priests, and he set forth his own views of the sacraments. To be valid, he said, a sacrament had to be instituted by Christ and be exclusively Christian. By these tests Luther could find no justification for five of the Roman Catholic sacraments. He retained only Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and he placed even these within a community of believing Christians, rather than in the hands of an exclusive priesthood.

In his third pamphlet published in 1520, The Freedom of a Christian Man, Luther set forth in conciliatory but firm tones his views on Christian behavior and salvation. This is probably the best introduction available to his central ideas. He did not discourage good works but argued that the inner spiritual freedom that comes from the certainty found in faith leads to the performance of good works—by all true Christians. “Good works do not make a man good,” he said, “but a good man does good works.”

meeting at Worms to give an account of his writings. Before the assembly Luther once again insisted that only biblical authority would sway him. “My conscience is captive to the Word of God,” he told the court. “I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither honest nor safe. Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen.” Charles V was not impressed. He declared Luther an outlaw. “This devil in the habit of a monk,” his pronouncement said, “has brought together ancient errors into one stinking puddle, and has invented new ones.”

Luther also revised the Latin liturgy and translated it into German. The laity received the Communion in bread and wine, as the Hussites had demanded a century earlier. And the whole emphasis in worship changed from the celebration of the sacrificial Mass to the preaching and teaching of God’s Word.

Luther’s greatest contribution to history, however, was not political. It was religious. He took four basic Catholic concerns and offered invigorating new answers. To the question how is a person saved, Luther replied: not by works but by faith alone. To the question where does religious authority lie, he answered: not in the visible institution called the Roman church but in the Word of God found in the Bible. To the question—what is the church?—he responded: the whole community of Christian believers, since all are priests before God. And to the question—what is the essence of Christian living?—he replied: serving God in any useful calling, whether ordained or lay. To this day any classical description of Protestantism must echo those central truths.

Actually, the Anabaptists rejected all thoughts of “rebaptism” because they never considered the ceremonial sprinkling they received in infancy as valid baptism. They much preferred “Baptists” as a designation. To most of them, however, the fundamental issue was not baptism. It was the nature of the church and its relation to civil governments.

As a result, little groups of Anabaptist believers gathered about their Bibles. They discovered a different world in the pages of the New Testament. They found no state-church alliance, no Christendom. Instead they discovered that the apostolic churches were companies of committed believers, communities of men and women who had freely and personally chosen to follow Jesus. And for the sixteenth century, that was a revolutionary idea.

Anabaptists wanted to change all that. Their goal was the “restitution” of apostolic Christianity, a return to churches of true believers. In the early church, they said, men and women who had experienced personal spiritual regeneration were the only fit subjects for baptism. The apostolic churches knew nothing of the practice of baptizing infants. That tradition was simply a convenient device for perpetuating Christendom, nominal but spiritually impotent Christian society. The true church, the radicals insisted, is always a community of saints, dedicated disciples, in a wicked world.

They steadfastly refused to be a part of worldly power including bearing arms, holding political office, and taking oaths. In the sixteenth century that sort of talk was inflammatory.

In one important respect Zwingli followed the Bible even more stringently than did Luther. The Wittenberger would allow whatever the Bible did not prohibit; Zwingli rejected whatever the Bible did not prescribe. For this reason the reformation in Zurich tended to strip away more traditional symbols of the Roman church: candles, statues, music, and pictures. Later, in England, men called this spirit “Puritanism.”

In Zurich’s city-state, as in the rest of the Christian world, every newborn child was baptized and considered a member of the church. As a result, church and society were identical. The church was simply everybody’s church. In the New Testament, however, the church was a fellowship of the few, a company of true believers committed to live and die for their Lord. That is the kind of church Grebel and Manz wanted in Zurich, a church free from the state, composed of true disciples. The baptism of believers was merely the most striking feature of this new kind of church. Zwingli, however, would have no part of this revolution. He needed the support of the city fathers.

Grebel, Manz, and their followers had counted the cost. That is why shortly after the baptism the little company withdrew from Zurich to the nearby village of Zollikon. Here, late in January, the first Anabaptist congregation, the first free church (free of state ties) in modern times, was born.

During the Reformation years, between four and five thousand Anabaptists were executed by fire, water, and sword. To us the Anabaptists seem to have made a simple demand: a person’s right to his own beliefs. But in the sixteenth century the heretics seemed to be destroying the very fabric of society. That is why the voice of conscience was so often silenced by martyrdom.

Just as Luther’s central doctrine was justification by faith, so Calvin’s was the sovereignty of God. Both reformers had an overwhelming sense of the majesty of God, but Luther’s served to point up the miracle of forgiveness, while Calvin’s gave the assurance of the impregnability of God’s purpose.

If Luther’s ultimate text was “the just shall live by faith,” Calvin’s was, “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Calvin saw the old doctrine of predestination—taught by Paul, Augustine, and Luther—as a source of religious devotion. More than a problem of the mind, Calvin considered divine election to eternal life the deepest source of confidence, humility, and moral power.

The consequence of faith to Calvin—far more than to Luther—is strenuous effort to introduce the kingdom of God on earth. Though no longer judged by the law of God, the true Christian finds in the law the divine pattern for moral character. Man is not justified by works, yet no justified man is without works. No one can be a true Christian without aspiring to holiness in his life. This rigorous pursuit of moral righteousness was one of the primary features of Calvinism. It made character a fundamental test of genuine religious life and explains Calvinism’s dynamic, social activism. God calls the elect for his purpose!

Martin Luther emerged from his spiritual struggle convinced that the human will is enslaved, that man cannot save himself. God, and God alone, must deliver him. Loyola came out of his struggle believing that both God and Satan are external to man, and man has the power to choose between them. By the disciplined use of his imagination man can strengthen his will so as to choose God and his ways.

Ignatius intended a path to spiritual perfection: rigorous examination of conscience, penance, and a resolute amnesia about guilt once the spiritual pilgrim confronted God’s forgiveness. The Exercises became the basis of every Jesuit’s spirituality. Later popes also prescribed them for candidates for ordination, and Catholic retreats applied them to lay groups.

Luther, Calvin, and Grebel stressed salvation by grace alone; the council emphasized grace and human cooperation with God to avoid, in Loyola’s terms, “the poison that destroys freedom.” “Pray as though everything depended on God alone;” Ignatius advised, “but act as though it depended on you alone whether you will be saved.”

The problem arose because missionaries must always decide what heathenism is. Is it mankind stumbling in uncertain quest of the true God? Or is it humanity organized in hardened resistance to the gospel? Should the Christian ambassador seek the good in heathen religions and use this as a foundation for building a Christian community? Or should he suppress— destroy if necessary—all forms of heathen religion in order to plant the true faith? We can call one approach the policy of adaptation and the other the policy of conquest.

how does the gospel relate to culture? The church is often in danger of identifying the gospel with some cultural form in which the faith has found a home. And thus missionaries failed to adapt to the ways of another people. They felt constrained to insist upon the expression of the faith in only one way.

The Crusades were the convulsive attempt of Christian Europe to batter down the barriers of Islam by military force. The long struggle in Spain and Portugal to drive out the Moors—as the Muslims were called there—created an especially militant attitude toward the unbelieving outsider. Conquest and evangelization slowly intertwined; few minds recognized a difference.

After tracing the coast of Cuba, which he thought was southern China, Columbus set sail for Spain. In spite of an oath of secrecy, the magic word “gold” leaked out in the homeland and the most violent gold rush in history was underway.

Within fifty years of the first sighting of San Salvador, the Spaniards had plundered and conquered the New World from California to the tip of South America. The work of these courageous and brutal conquerors planted the word conquistadores in our vocabularies. By 1521 Hernando Cortes, equipped with horses, armor, and gunpowder, had destroyed the great Aztec empire in Mexico, and by 1533 Francisco Pizarro had treacherously murdered Atahualpa, the monarch of the Incas, and brought the once mighty empire to its knees.

To avoid rivalry between Portugal and Spain, the pope drew a line on the map from the North Pole to the South, just west of the Azores. All to the west of the line, he said, belonged to Spain; all to the east belonged to Portugal. That boundary explains why Brazil is a Portuguese-speaking country today and the rest of Latin America is Spanish.

Given Spain’s history of passionate devotion to Mother Church, developed over centuries of conflict with the Muslim infidel, the violent expeditions of the Spanish adventurers are understandable. They assumed the character of holy crusades, the same fanaticism, the same nobility, the same superstition.

The Portuguese faced a problem, however, that the Spanish never encountered in the Americas. They met highly developed civilizations and ancient religions far stronger than those of the Incas and Aztecs. These had a significant impact on the way many Christian missionaries approached Asian peoples. In India, Japan, and China the policy of conversions by conquest was modified, and in some cases abandoned, in favor of the policy of adaptation. Jesuits, in particular, asked which Japanese, Chinese, or Indian customs were merely social or civil and which were incompatible with Christian baptism.

The conflict between the policy of adaptation and the policy of conquest did not end with the seventeenth century. It is raging today, only conquest is usually in terms of economic control rather than political. But the age of global expansion was special in one sense. In opening up huge areas of the earth’s surface to the Christian message it displayed some of the most innovative and creative missionary leaders found in any age.

Puritanism provided for Christians of every generation a model of the Christian faith as a decisive commitment to Jesus Christ and how that life of the soul expresses itself in the public arena, in a nation governed by the truths of the Bible.

In more recent centuries Christians have renewed from time to time the Puritan experience of the soul, a type of piety arising from the purely gracious work of God in the heart of the believer. But no later Christian movement has had the vision or the opportunity to apply the law of God to the life of a nation.

The first Puritans had little confidence in traditional religion. Their plans for a new England arose from a deep conviction that spiritual conversion was crucial to Christianity. This rebirth separated the Puritan from the mass of mankind and endowed him with the privileges and the duties of the elect of God. The church may prepare a man for this experience, and, after it, the church may guide him, but the heart of the experience, the reception of the grace of God, is beyond the church’s control.

In its emphasis upon the interior life of the saint, Puritanism was a taproot of later evangelical Christianity with its born-again message. In its stress upon a disciplined “nation under God” and his laws, it contributed significantly to the national character of the American people.

As long as Elizabeth lived she allowed these Puritan dogs to bark so long as they did not bite. The queen’s tolerant policy permitted them to complain about prayers from a book, and special clothing for ministers, and the sign of the cross during baptisms—just about any practice that looked like Roman Catholicism—but she would not hear of their control of the Church. She allowed them to lecture for hours on the importance of preaching and the biblical office of elder, but she made sure the Church of England remained firmly in the hands of bishops,

Like the Geneva Bible, The Book of Martyrs was a product of the English exile during the reign of Bloody Mary. Foxe marshalled account after account of the suffering of faithful Protestants who dared to die—if need be—for the triumph of God’s kingdom. According to Foxe, this trail of martyrs led to the shores of England and to the reign of Mary. The conclusion seemed clear: God had a special place for the English people in his worldwide plan of redemption. The influence of The Book of Martyrs proved enormous. Generation after generation of Englishmen saw history, and read their Bibles, through Foxe’s eyes. Aside from the Bible, his book probably did more to shape the mind of Englishmen than any other single volume. Less than half a century after Foxe’s death, Puritans carried his work and his philosophy of history—along with their English Bibles—across the Atlantic, into the American wilderness. Thanks to their study of the Bible and their reading of The Book of Martyrs, Puritans came to think of themselves as God’s new Israel.

The key to the Puritan view of the Bible and of themselves lies in their understanding of that fundamental biblical concept called “covenant.” The Puritans, like the ancient Hebrews, believed that “spiritual contracts” existed between God and men. The most fundamental was the covenant of grace. This was the “spiritual contract” by which true Christians were bound to God. While they believed that God sovereignly elected men to salvation, they also held that anyone by personal faith in Jesus Christ could be added to the covenanted company. By grace believers became God’s people and he their God.

bond” obligated the saint to walk in all of God’s ways made known in his Word. But, on the other hand, it opened the Scriptures as a deeply felt source of spiritual and emotional strength, a fountain of that rugged determination for which the Puritan became famous. To live within the covenant of grace was to live within the light of the Word and according to the plan of Almighty God.

Some in the Puritan movement, however, grew impatient for change in the Church. Shortly after the Hampton Court Conference little groups of believers began to meet for worship as they felt the Bible taught them—not according to bishops and prayer books. They were determined to obey God even if their nation’s leaders were not. We call this movement Separatism because the groups were intent upon leaving the Church of England.

The pastor of the flock, a Cambridge graduate, John Smyth, studied his Greek New Testament with unusual care and discovered that the practice of baptizing babies never appeared in its pages. If babies were not included in the covenant of grace—only mature believers in Jesus Christ—then shouldn’t churches be constituted by confession of faith rather than ties of covenants? Smyth and forty members of the Amsterdam congregation answered, “yes,” and were baptized upon the profession of their personal faith in Jesus Christ. Thus, the first English Baptist church was born. The year was 1609.

The Parliamentarians, clearly a majority, were agreed on the broad Puritan principles but were divided over the form of the church. On the one hand were Presbyterians; on the other were Independents (or Congregationalists). United in their hatred of Archbishop Laud, the Parliamentarians succeeded in bringing him to trial and seeing him beheaded. When Charles tried to punish the leaders of this opposition, civil war erupted. The Royalist members of Parliament left London to join the forces defending the king. So Parliament was free at last to institute the reform of the Church the Puritans had always wanted. It called to Westminster scores of Puritan theologians and assigned to them the creation of a new form of worship and a new form of church government for the Church of England.