EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the 16th column in a year-long series leading up to the 500th anniversary of the 16th-century Reformation on Oct. 31, 2017. As early as 1519, Martin Luther called for the gathering of a general council to reform the church, rebuffing the Roman church’s claim that only the pope could convene a valid council. A decade later, no council had been called. And in 1529 Thomas More, defending the Roman church, complained that Luther appealed to a general council merely … [Read more...]
Catholic renewal, reaction to reform
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the 15th column in a year-long series leading up to the 500th anniversary of the 16th-century Reformation on Oct. 31, 2017. In our fascination with the theological debates of the Reformation period, we often forget how much turned during this era on the mundane, political events that had very little direct connection with theological or spiritual matters. Take, for example, the Battle of Pamplona of May 20, 1521. The battle itself had nothing to do with religion … [Read more...]
Calvin & Calvinism
When Martin Luther pinned (or pasted) his 95 Theses on the church door in Wittenberg in 1517, John Calvin was only 8 years old. By the time Calvin published the first edition of his classic Institutes of the Christian Religion in 1536, Ulrich Zwingli—the Reformer of Zurich—had been dead for five years, having been cut down in battle against the city’s Catholic opponents in 1531. Multiple pathways for reform had been carved out across the European landscape before Calvin even entered … [Read more...]
John Calvin: A ministry of Word and Spirit
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the 13th column in a year-long series leading up to the 500th anniversary of the 16th-century Reformation on Oct. 31, 2017. By the spring of 1539, John Calvin had been twice-exiled. First, he had been forced to leave his beloved homeland, France. At one time, having fostered Christian humanism within its borders, this kingdom seemed ripe for receiving the Reformation ideas of men like Martin Luther in Germany or Ulrich Zwingli in Zurich. But in the early 1530s, … [Read more...]
Entertainment Review Silver Dollar City inspires wonder
BRANSON – Very little defines “wonder” better than the look on a 6-year-old’s face. With a fixed gaze and hands cupping her mouth, my daughter watched as a man balanced himself roughly 10 feet above the ground, standing on several stacked platforms that wobbled on top of a hollow cylinder rolling to and fro on a narrow table. After this man accomplished his feat of wonder, my daughter clapped and my 4-year-old son turned to my wife. Astonished, he asked her, “How did he do that?” This … [Read more...]
Do Baptists spring from Anabaptist seed?
At one Anabaptist museum in Austria, visitors can see the chains with which Anabaptist women were shackled to their homes. Without their husbands’ consent, these women had accepted the Anabaptist message and were baptized. Yet, in these instances, the women were allowed to live, since their husbands needed them to raise their children and tend to their homes. But they would do so in chains. These chains remind us of the intense persecution that the 16th-century Anabaptists suffered. … [Read more...]
‘Truth is immortal’
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the 11th column in a year-long series leading up to the 500th anniversary of the 16th-century Reformation on Oct. 31, 2017. * * * * Once called the “Simon Peter” of the early Anabaptist movement, Balthasar Hubmaier fled from the city of Zurich in secrecy and shame in 1526. In that city, where Reformer Ulrich Zwingli’s teachings held sway, Hubmaier faced imprisonment and torture before finally denying his belief that only those who have … [Read more...]
Live by the sword, die by the sword
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the tenth column in a year-long series leading up to the 500th anniversary of the 16th-century Reformation on Oct. 31, 2017. * * * * On July 13, 1524, preaching to various princes in the German city of Allstedt, Thomas Müntzer foretold the end of the ages. Müntzer interpreted for them the words of the Prophet Daniel as he described the dream of King Nebuchadnezzar (See Daniel 2): In this dream, King Nebuchadnezzar had seen a statue, with … [Read more...]
‘The articles wherefore John Frith died’
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the ninth column in a year-long series leading up to the 500th anniversary of the 16th-century Reformation on Oct. 31, 2017. * * * “Amongst all other chances lamentable, there hath been none a great time which seemed unto me more grevious, than the lamentable death and cruel handling of John Frith” – John Foxe, Book of Martyrs (aka, Acts and Monuments, 1570) Confined in London’s Newgate prison in the summer of 1533, a young English Reformer penned … [Read more...]
An affair of sausages, a Reformation untamed
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the eighth column in a year-long series leading up to the 500th anniversary of the 16th-century Reformation on Oct. 31, 2017. * * * * In early 1522, as Martin Luther lay hidden in central Germany’s Wartburg Castle, a Reformation was stirring nearly 330 miles to the southwest in Zurich, a city nestled along the northern fringe of the Swiss Alps. Meanwhile, in Luther’s own Wittenberg, matters were moving quickly towards chaos as his … [Read more...]
Luther: ‘I cannot, will not recant’
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the seventh column in a year-long series leading up to the 500th anniversary of the 16th-century Reformation on Oct. 31, 2017. * * * Martin Luther never planned to tear the medieval church apart. The division of western Christianity into its various denominations—Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Anglican, Baptist, Mennonite—wasn’t inevitable. Luther’s declaration that sinners are justified—made righteous in God’s sight—solely by faith in the … [Read more...]
Reformers urged learning of biblical languages
NASHVILLE (BP) -- Discussions among Southern Baptist seminary professors about the importance of the biblical languages is nothing new. In fact, it's simply the continuation of a conversation that began well before the Reformation era. Lively interest in the biblical languages -- that is, Greek and Hebrew -- was "in the air" when Martin Luther called for the reform of the church 500 years ago, noted Timothy George, dean of the Beeson Divinity School at Samford University in Birmingham, … [Read more...]
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