.- This Sunday (31) was celebrated the Day of the Protestant Reformation. It is common, on this date, to remember the 95 theses of the monk Martin Luther in Wittenberg, but the movement has a before and a continuity after the action of Luther.
Trans World Radio asked Pastor and Professor João Paulo Gouvêa to explain the contribution of the main reformers to the movement that advocated significant changes in the liturgical form and religious life preached by the Roman Catholic Church. Check it out below.
- John Wycliffe
John Wycliffe (1328-1384)
The Protestant Reformation was not carried out in a one-day action, with rules laid down in a tableside meeting. “We speak of the Five Solas as if they were created suddenly. In fact, it was a process of many years,” he commented.
The first step was taken by a theologian named John Wycliffe (there is a world organization called by that name that works with the translation of the Bible into different languages and languages).
“He was the great forerunner of what would become the reform movement. At first, a rupture was not sought, but to change things, promote changes. This ended up happening much later.
Wycliffe was one of thes first to denounce priestly corruptions. It was also a precursor to ideas that Luther would later vehemently defend, such as salvation by faith,” added JP.
For today, the idea propagated by Wycliffe seems even obvious, but it is important to remember that he defended this thesis of salvation by faith in the fourteenth century, in the midst of the strong culture of the sale of indulgences (payment for spiritual forgiveness, a practice carried out by the Catholic Church before the Reformation). This theme resurfaced strongly later with Luther, almost two centuries later.
Martin Luther (1483-1546)
He was the main exponent of the Protestant Reformation. He envisioned the process detailed by the apostle Paul in Romans 1, of salvation by faith rather than works.
“It is interesting to note that he was so radical in this sense that he rejected the epistle of Santiago, which he called ‘the epistle of straw’ because he said that nothing could be used.
For him, James confronted Pauline theology on salvation by faith, since James says that ‘faith without works is dead’ (2:26),” said JP.
It should be noted, however, that the great focus of Luther’s debate with the Christian church at the time (Catholic) was in relation to indulgences and simony.
In short, the clergy of the time “performed” the forgiveness of sins through economic payments (indulgences) and the sale of favors and spiritual blessings, objects and spaces in heaven as something sacred (simony).
Types of things sold: Locks of hair that the church said were Jesus’; a sword which was claimed to be the one used by Peter in the act of arresting Jesus, etc.
Ulric Zwingli (1484-1531)
He was a contemporary of Luther and Philip Melanchthon. Zwingli had a great deal of friction with Luther at what we call the Marburg Colloquy. “They separated. There was a big difference in their understanding of the Supper regarding the ubiquity (being present in all places/elements) of Jesus in the Supper.
Luther rejects transubstantiation (transforming one substance into another. That is, wine into blood / blood into wine) and brings the idea of consubstantiation (Union of Christ and God present in the elements of the Supper). They differ a lot in this regard,” Gouvêa noted.
Although Zwingli did not bring about changes within the structure of the Catholic Church, he is important in this context because he brings up the discussion of priestly marriage.
For him, according to JP, this was the only way to control the sexual sins that were finally discovered by the clergy. “He even asked for this, which didn’t necessarily happen in the Catholic Church, but in the churches that appeared after the Reformation, it happened. This is a great contribution from Zwingli that is not known to many,” he added.
Philippe Melanchthon (1497-1560)
The surname Melanchthon, in German, means “black earth”. He was known and called Filipe Terra Preta. Some scholars believe that “just write” thinking, one of the five suns, was developed by Philip. “Later, Luther embraces and works with this idea in his theological development, but the one who begins the process of understanding that the scriptures are superior to tradition seems to have been Philip,” he said.
Philip was not ordained a priest like Luther. The view of it, adopted by many churches of the Reformed line and well received among the traditional ones, especially Baptists, is that of the universal priesthood of the believer.
“This thinking goes like this: It is not just one priest who has been anointed by the denomination/church, but all believers called and called priests. The person giving this thought and working in a theologically robust way was Melanchthon,” he commented.
His main contribution, therefore, was to show that all believers are saved, not just those anointed to the priestly office, they are priests of God.
John Calvin (1509-1564)
John Calvin was one of the leading names in the Protestant Reformation. He highlights the debate on predestination. “From this point of view, faith in Jesus is not a path to salvation, but Christ himself, as the second person of the Trinity, has already predestined some people to salvation. There is no path or process.
In this case, either we are saved or we are not saved. It was something even radical, but it laid the foundations for our contemporary thinking about salvation by the sole and exclusive will of God,” explained Gouvêa.
This thought is an unfolding of processes long before Calvin himself, already worked on in the 11th century, for example. One of the points is monergism and synergism. In the first, salvation is exclusively a divine act, while in the second aspect there is some human participation in this process, such as having faith.
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