If you own a Bible in your own language, it is a direct result of the Protestant Reformation, and the key figure God used to ignite that worldwide movement of returning to the Bible was Martin Luther: a German monk and professor of theology at the University of Wittenberg.

I grew up attending a Lutheran school until eighth grade. During my time there, I learned a lot about Luther, including studying his catechism. Years later, when I put my faith in Jesus and was born again, I started attending a Calvary Chapel church; and over the years, I have grown in appreciation for Martin Luther and the pivotal role he played in God’s work in the world.

The last day of October is celebrated around the world as Reformation Day, because it was on October 31, 1517, that Martin Luther set into motion the movement now known as the Reformation, by mailing a letter. Yes, you read that right: on the eve of All Saints Day (Halloween = “All Hallows Eve”), Luther mailed, not nailed, a letter.^{1 2}

The letter was addressed to the Archbishop of Mainz,³ and Luther sent it because he wanted to alert the archbishop that plenary indulgences were being sold in the archbishop’s name by a man named John Tetzel. Tetzel had been sent from Rome the year before to sell these certificates promising the release of a soul from purgatory in exchange for their purchase, as a fundraising campaign for the building of St. Peter’s Basilica. Luther assumed the archbishop was unaware that this was going on, and that upon receiving his letter, the archbishop would tell Tetzel to cease and desist. That, however, is not what happened.

As a result of the archbishop’s inaction, Luther, as a professor, decided to organize a scholarly debate on the topic of indulgences: whether they were actually effective in procuring the release of a soul from purgatory. To this end, he wrote up what are now known as the 95 Theses, which he titled: A Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences. This paper, which was posted on the door of the All Saints Church in Wittenberg, was an invitation to a scholarly debate, but in it Luther challenged both the selling of indulgences and the doctrine of purgatory as unscriptural. By doing this, Luther was challenging the Roman Catholic Church’s teaching and authority, and insisting that the Bible, not the church, should be the ultimate arbiter of what constitutes correct doctrine.

The posting of the 95 Theses is considered the spark which ignited the Protestant Reformation: a movement which sought to reform the church by shedding man-made traditions and returning to the faith which had been handed to us by God in the Holy Scriptures.

Today, there are nearly 1 billion Protestant Christians in the world.⁴ In the “majority world,” including Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Muslim world⁵, Protestant Christianity is growing faster than any other religious movement by conversion.⁶

Before Luther, there were others who sought to reform the church and bring the Bible to the people. John Wycliffe (1331-1384) published the first English translation of the Bible. Jan Hus (1369-1415) taught the Bible to the common people in Prague. Peter Waldo (1140-1218) commissioned a translation of the New Testament into the local vernacular of southern France. Each of these people were persecuted for trying to put the Scriptures into the hands of the common people.

Over a century before Luther, Hus had protested the sale of plenary indulgences, pointing out that the idea that God’s favor or blessings could be earned in any way, runs contrary to the message of the gospel and the testimony of the Scriptures, and the concept of purgatory is in conflict with the biblical teaching of the sufficiency of Christ’s atonement on the cross.

Martin Luther had long struggled with feelings of condemnation and inadequacy, until his own reading of the Scriptures led him to an epiphany when he read Habakkuk 2:4: “Behold, as for the proud one, His soul is not right within him; But the righteous will live by his faith.” This led Luther to the other places in the Bible where this phrase is repeated: Romans 1:17; Galatians 3:11, and Hebrews 10:38 – where the message is clear: It is not by our own works that we are justified before God, but it is God who justifies us sinners as a gift of His grace, and we receive that justification by faith. After all, the Bible explains, this is how Abraham, the father of our faith, became righteous: he believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness (Genesis 15:6; Romans 4:3, 22). We receive God’s righteousness, which he has provided for us in Christ, in the same way.

Luther became convinced that everyone needed to be able to read the Scriptures for themselves, and he took it upon himself to translate the Bible into German, a translation that is still in use to this day. Soon the Bible was translated into other languages, including English, as the Reformation spread.

Martin Luther called people back to a belief that the Scriptures are perspicuous (clear), and can be understood by those who read them. He called us back to a belief in the inspiration and sufficiency of Scripture: that it is the ultimate rule of faith, by which we are to measure both doctrine and our lives.

In April 1521, Luther was brought before Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms, at which Luther was commanded to recant his teachings. Luther refused to do so, famously stating:

“Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Holy Scriptures or by evident reason – for I can believe neither pope nor councils alone, as it is clear that they have erred repeatedly and contradicted themselves – I consider myself convicted by the testimony of Holy Scripture, which is my basis; my conscience is captive to the Word of God. Thus I cannot and will not recant.”⁷

This October, as we celebrate Reformation Day, may we take the opportunity to open the Bible and read it for ourselves, and may we embrace and celebrate the message of the gospel: that Jesus Christ came to save sinners, and that we are justified freely by his grace as we trust in him by faith.

_Notes

_{¹ Marshall, Peter. 1517: Martin Luther and the Invention of the Reformation. OUP Oxford. 2017.}

_{² Little, Becky. “Martin Luther Might Not Have Nailed His 95 Theses to the Church Door.” History.com. A&E Television Networks, October 31, 2017.}

_{³ “Luther’s Letter to the Archbishop of Mainz (1517).” Historyguide.org, 2002.}

_{⁴ “Global Christianity: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Christian Population.” PewResearchCenter. Accessed December 2011.}

_{⁵ Miller, Duane A., and Patrick Johnstone. Believers in Christ from a Muslim Background: A Global Census II (2015): 2–19. academia.edu}

_{⁶ Melton, J. Gordon (22 October 2005). Encyclopedia of Protestantism. Infobase Publishing. ISBN 9780816069835 – via Google Books.}

_{⁷ “Here I Stand: Martin Luther’s Reformation at 500.” Abilene Christian University Special Collections, March 11, 2019.}

As the Church prepares to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Reformation on October 31, 2017, there is much to celebrate. Truly the Reformation has been an impetus for glorious eternal good. Yet, it may be helpful to understand the Reformation through Jewish eyes. I am unable to speak universally for my people, but I am likely able to offer an uncommon perspective as a Jew, a follower of Jesus and a Calvary Chapel pastor for more than 25 years.

Suffice it to say that Luther is a poster child for a purified Christianity, which is generally a good thing for all humanity, Jew and Gentile.

Nevertheless, you won’t see that poster hung in many Jewish homes. And that poster may even be offensive to a history savvy Jew. In a 2008 article by Magda Teter, published in Modern Jewish History, the author provides a scholarly snapshot of this tension:

“In the early stages of his break with Rome, Martin Luther seemed to make a stark break with prevalent attitudes about Jews. In a treatise written in 1523, he depicted the Jews as models of common sense: ‘If I had been a Jew and seen such oafs and numbskulls governing and teaching the Christian faith,’ he wrote, ‘I would have rather become a sow than a Christian.’ By using gentle persuasion, Luther argued the reformers might convince the Jews to accept conversion to a purified Christianity. But in the 1540s, Luther shifted to harsh attacks on the Jews, resorting to common late-medieval stereotypes. In fact, in his later career, his vision of how the Jews should be treated greatly exceeded in hostility anything ever proposed by the Roman Church, including a call to destroy synagogues and Jewish homes, to confiscate Jewish writings, to prohibit rabbis from teaching, to prohibit Jewish usury, and, eventually, to expel them. This violated both customary law and Roman church policy, which in principle protected the Jews’ right to practice Judaism in peace. True, not every reformer was as immoderate as Luther. But none of the major reformers produced a significantly new theological position vis-a-vis the Jews. They all held to the ancient doctrine that the Jews willfully and wickedly refused to accept the truth of the Gospels, even though the Church had demonstrated it to them.

The upheaval caused by the early Reformation also had negative practical consequences for the Jews. In the charged atmosphere that resulted, expulsions and persecutions became, if anything, more frequent in German lands. In the papal states and northern Italy, the upheaval of the Reformation also contributed to greater repression of the Jews. In the previous century and a half, popes, princes, and urban governments in Italy had tended to adopt a pragmatic attitude to the Jews, protecting their presence for the sake of the tax revenue they contributed. But in the 1550s, prompted by the various anxieties of the Reformation period, popes Julius III and Paul IV decreed several severe measures aimed at bringing about Jewish conversions. Three measures from this period did have far-reaching consequences: the requirement that Jews sell all real estate to Christians, the forced ghettoization of the Italian Jews, and the censorship of Hebrew books.

Yet in the long run, the Reformation set off processes with unanticipated consequences that improved the conditions of Jewish life. There was a shift in popular attitudes from one that had been promoted by the friars, a fearful, otherworldly perspective, to a more this-worldly, confident point of view. Jews lost much of their fantastic, demonic image in Christian eyes and assumed a more instrumental, utilitarian one. Partly, this change had roots in humanistic scholarship and Protestant Bible-reading. Given the Protestant encouragement of lay Bible reading, it is not surprising that Luther and many of the early reformers worked to promote Hebrew studies. Christian Hebraists became familiar with rabbinic exegesis, particularly through the commentaries of Rashi, Abraham ibn Ezra, and David Kimchi. Contact with Jewish interpretations eroded negative attitudes to the Jewish ‘carnal’ reading of the Bible. This does not mean that Christian Hebraists looked upon Jews favorably. They often continued to loathe the Jews. But new possibilities for evaluating Judaism emerged.

A truly momentous change resulted from the wide dissemination of the Hebrew Bible itself, whether in Hebrew, Latin, or the vernacular. Before the Reformation, the Bible had been read mainly by a tiny minority of educated, Latin-trained clerics. With the advent of vernacular translations in print, with increasing numbers of educated lay people, and with the strong encouragement of lay Bible-reading by reformers, a radically different relationship developed between lay Christians and the Scripture of the Jews.”¹

It is at this stage of the historical development that I can offer my perspective to the Luther conundrum.

As a Jewish follower of Yeshua, I don’t view Luther as an anti-Semitic bastard, nor do I venerate him as a near perfect hero of the faith. I greatly appreciate his remarkable conviction, courage, and in many respects, tremendous theological clarity. Yet, what I’m most grateful for is his influence hinted by Teter as follows, “…The strong encouragement of lay Bible-reading by reformers, a radically different relationship developed between lay Christians and the Scripture of the Jews.”² Not only did the encouragement of lay Bible-reading change the relationship between Christians and the Jewish Scriptures, but from my perspective, it changed the relationship between Jews and biblically literate followers of Jesus.

This is wonderfully evidenced in the Calvary Chapel movement with a rich history of Bible teaching and Bible learning. As a movement, we reject the replacement theology that asserts that the Church has replaced Israel and recognizes God’s on going promises to the Jewish people (Romans 9-11). Paul was sure to remind the primarily Gentile Roman church of their spiritual debt to the Jews. The Gentiles are a glorious branch, but the Jews are the root (Romans 11). This biblical perspective, that Luther undoubtedly (but perhaps unintentionally) helped to facilitate and encourage, fostered a genuine love by Bible reading Christians for Jews and the nation state of Israel.

So although I have no Luther posters displayed in my office, I do greatly appreciate his efforts, am exceptionally grateful for the Reformation and presently give a tip of the yarmulke in respect.

¹ “Early Modern Jewish History Overview”
² Ibid.

Does God work in patterns? If He works miraculously in one area, does that mean He will do the same thing in another? Sometimes we hear of a person who has done extraordinary things for the Lord. Inspired, it’s natural to wish we’d been there or look for a way of replicating their work. We can’t go back in time; we can’t go around imitating other people’s achievements, but we can celebrate what happened.

One such event was Martin Luther’s 95 thesis he attached to the church door in Wittemberg, Germany, but 17 years after that event, a similar action was executed in the name of reforming the church that became known as “the Affair of the Placards” or “posters” in old French. The consequences were not as positive as Luther’s move. But for the kingdom of France, it was equally decisive. The Affair of the Placards provided an example of how God may do one thing in one place, but that does not guarantee He’ll do the same in another. He is after all, God.

The Reformation had been spreading roots behind the scenes for some time.

Thanks to the work of Jacques Lefevre d’Etaples, an aged professor at the Sorbonne, of whom Erasmus spoke fondly, he led his students to look to the Scriptures for inspiration and worked hard to make them understood by the people in their language. He released a French New Testament one year after Luther’s German text and commentaries on the Gospels and Epistles in the following years.

The Sorbonne reacted violently to Lefevre d’Etaple’s translation, burning it in the streets for fear it would propagate Luther’s ideas in France. He continued his work and poured into the lives of men like Guillaume Farel, who became one of the more outspoken and active evangelists of that time. He preached to all who would listen, traveling all over the Eastern half of the kingdom, and often found himself in trouble with both civil and ecclesiastical authorities.

Another important person to consider in the Affair of the Placards is Francis I, King of France.

Francis was a strong leader, centralizing his power and bringing in the influences of the Italian renaissance. He hoped to attain peace in his kingdom that his rival in Germany, Charles V, hadn’t with the Lutherans. According to historian Patrick Cabanel, Francis I may have even entertained the idea of reformation without making any formal adherence. In fact, he called up Lefevre d’Etaples to be the preceptor of his children in 1526.

The king of France was a souverain by divine right, meaning God, not the Pope gave him the right to rule his people. He was a Catholic monarch and protector of the Church, though he held no particular affection for the Medici Pope Leo X during Martin Luther’s day. In fact, John Calvin’s aim at writing his Institutes of the Christian Religion were to win over the king.

By October 1534, the world was different than in October 31,1517. Martin Luther just published his entire translation of the Bible in German; Ulrich Zwingli had already died on the battlefield, and this was the year Henry VIII would declare himself the head of the Church of England. Maybe these political changes inspired Antoine Marcourt, a pastor from Neufchatel and Guillaume Farel, to draft a new text, a sort of 95 thesis of their own. Judging from their writing, they hoped to start a revolution. They wouldn’t just tack up this message on the door of Notre Dame in Paris; they had much bigger plans.

“True arguments against the horrible, great and unbearable abuses of the papal mass, invented directly against the Lord’s Supper, the only Mediator, and only Savior, Jesus Christ.” (personal translation of a modern version by Marianne Carbonnier-Bukard). This is how they began their four thesis that they hammered out in the most violent terms, including Scripture references. Marcourt attacked the doctrine of transubstantiation as a dangerous heresy, an absurdly difficult word to pronounce, and a trap from hell to all who take the Lord’s Supper.

Once they finished drafting their work, they printed it out and recruited a small “army” of passionate French Protestant militants.

On the night of the October 17-18,1534, the band of evangelists posted Marcourt’s handiwork everywhere they could in Paris, Blois, Tours, Orléans and Rouen, including the king’s bedroom door, and according to some sources, even in his pocket. As expected, they were able to get Francis’ attention but certainly not the way they hoped. For the king, this was a breach in security; this was an attack on the mother church he was called to protect; this was an affront to his God-given authority, and this was high treason. Thus, in the course of one night, a king who was open to Protestantism, if for no other reason than to better his German rival or to please his sister Marguerite, who favored the new Lutheran doctrines, became a bitter enemy of the Reformation. Francis then took action that would eventually plunge his country into a series of religious wars, costing countless lives and is considered even today as one of the worst testimonies to Christianity in France.

This was a hard blow, but we cannot separate men from their time and judge them by our own standards.

Farel and Marcourt acted thoughtfully and prayerfully with the intention of bringing the Gospel to the highest courts of France. And all was not lost. John Calvin escaped to Geneva, and persuaded to stay by Guillaume Farel, developed one of the more successful theocratic societies over the following years.

What do we do with the Affair of the Placards?

At the least, may it be a reminder that what works for someone in one country doesn’t always work for another. In the end, we are called not to look so much for what “works,” but look to the One who is working in us and calls us to follow Him. He is the Lord of the Harvest.