CHURCH: History and Today Jan. 20

Jason Friesen

CHURCH: History and Today • Sermon • Submitted 5 years ago

Reformation

Theology

History

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Looking at those who called for change in the Catholic Church before the official start of the Reformation.

Notes

Transcript

Handout

The Change Before the Change: Pre-Reformation Calls for Reform

Last week we took a look at some of the factors that led up to the Reformation, and we saw that there were lots of events and things that happened to make the people unhappy with how things were run. Today we want to take a look at some key people that started calling for change before Martin Luther.

There is something that I should ask before I go farther, something that I completely forgot to do last week.

Is everyone here familiar with the term “The Reformation”?

If we think about the church before the Reformation started, what comes to mind?

What was the Reformation?

There is something that I should ask before I go farther, something that I completely forgot to do last week.

Is everyone here familiar with the term “The Reformation”?

I will give a quick overview. The Reformation was a division in the church. Most people agree that it started with a man named Martin Luther who nailed a list of problems he had with the church and its teachings to a church door in Germany. It started in 1517 and completely changed the idea of church in Europe. In Europe, before the Reformation, there was mainly one Church, the Roman Catholic church, although there were a few divisions already. But after the Reformation many more church groups started showing up, including Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, Anabaptist, and more.

Pre-Reformation Efforts for Change

Efforts within the Church

Last week we talked quite a bit about the bad things that were happening in the world and in the church. But not everyone was trying to be bad! It’s just that the bad ones tend to get remembered more than the good ones. Lots of the Popes, bishops, cardinals and priests throughout the life of the church actually wanted it to be what God called it to be. Some popes worked hard to eliminate corruption within the clergy (the people employed by the church, such as cardinals, bishops, and priests) and there were also several major church Councils that came together to work on what to do. One of these councils was the 4th Lateran Council in 1215. One of the big decisions of this council was that every Cathedral must have a school. This is where the idea of public education for everyone started, and is also where we get the idea of universities.

Monasteries also played an important role in this area. This is where most scholarship came from, as priests studied the Bible, copied it, and wrote about it. Some monasteries were focused on specific areas of the Christian life. The Cluniac Monastic Order started in 910 A.D. with a strong emphasis on poverty and helping the poor. Another Order of Monks, the Cistercians, became known for their simplicity of life, getting away from worldly hindrances.

Intro

John Wycliffe

John Wycliffe was born in England and lived from 1328-1384 AD. During his lifetime there was a lot of suffering going on in England. This was during the 100 Years War between France and England, and then the Black Death also took place during his lifetime. Wycliffe studied at Oxford University, and he had strong ties to Oxford until he died. Wycliffe was a very good scholar, highly intelligent, and came to be known as “the jewel of Oxford.”

Different Views than the Church

John Wycliffe believed a few things that put him at odds with the theology of the church overall. Lots of the things he called for sound a lot like what Martin Luther and the other reformers said as well.

All authority comes from God. While technically the church as a whole would mostly agree with this, Wycliffe was stressing God’s authority vs. the Pope’s authority. See, if we go back a few hundred years, we find a pope that argued that all the power of the church needed to be given to the pope in Rome. The Pope was the supreme judge of all errors, and he answered ONLY to God. God gave authority to the pope to rule over all people, and then the pope transferred authority to others. We can see where things can go south quickly. If the pope answers only to God, he can do anything he wants and get away with it. If you confront him about it, you are basically saying that God’s earthly representative is doing wrong and that would be heresy. So you can imagine that some popes would take advantage of that absolute authority, and this is what Wycliffe was arguing against. He said that just because you are a pope, that does not make you infallible. You can still do wrong as the pope, and the church didn’t like that idea.

He also taught that you can also lose your Godly authority. He stated that any clerics (church leaders) who don’t obey God should forfeit their authority, even the pope! The head of the church is Christ, and the pope is supposed to act as the spiritual leader of the Church, and if he doesn’t, that makes him the antichrist! It’s hard to emphasize enough how backwards this thinking would have been during his time, but we can still see how this would put him at odds with the Catholic church.

Wycliffe also believed that the Bible is authoritative, since it’s God’s Word. This was compared to the church’s view of tradition. Over time, the writings of previous theologians, teachers and popes became the authority everything was based against. And here again, we can see where it started well. At this point, there were 1300 years of scholars, teachers and theologians who had written about the meaning and application of Scripture in our lives. Many of these people were trying hard to be faithful to God’s word. So over time, their writings become the standard way of understanding the Bible. Also, if you disagree with them, you are disagreeing with one thousand three hundred years of Christians who were unified. So the question becomes: “What makes you think that YOU are right and ALL these other people are wrong?” But Wycliffe called people back to the Bible these people wrote about, instead of their writings.

Along with this, he believed that the Bible should be translated into the common language of the people. Up until this point, the Bible was basically only found in Latin, and only in the church. Copying Bibles was expensive and time-consuming, and Latin wasn’t exactly common language anymore, so only priests could even read it. And this is probably what Wycliffe is most famous for, he started translating the Bible into English.

The Bible is the final authority.

Criticized the Sacramental system. To start, let’s look at the sacramental system that the church held to at this time. ‘Sacrament’ comes from Latin for ‘sacred’ and Greek for ‘mystery.’ The general definition of ‘Sacrament’ is “a religious ritual believed to impart divine grace.” Basically, the church taught that sacraments are the ways in which grace is given to people. While there are other definitions, this is what Wycliffe was criticizing. The church believed that there were several main sacraments, and if you participated in them, then God’s grace was given to you. See, the church was the Agent of God’s grace, and all of God’s grace flowed through the church. So the only way to receive God’s grace was to partake in the sacraments.

What were some of the sacraments in the church?

What does the sacramental system

Baptism, confirmation, Eucharist (bread and wine of the Lord’s supper), penance, extreme unction (last rights, anointing and prayer by a priest performed before death).

Now we may have lots to discuss about these views, and we will go into more detail, another day! We will take a full class in a few weeks to go over the key agreements and disagreements between the Catholic church, the reformers, and the early Anabaptist leaders. But now back to John Wycliffe.

Heavy focus on Preaching the Word. Wycliffe was a strong advocate of preaching the Word of God. During the time of Wycliffe, preaching was basically non-existent. Liturgy and church traditions were most people’s only exposure to Scripture, and it was in a language they didn’t understand! Today, we have Scripture reading in church services, back then most of the time priests would read from a liturgical book, basically a pre-written sermon or spiel in Latin. That was the centre of the church service. Wycliffe thought that people should be a bit more focused on God’s word than on anything else. To quote, “Preaching the gospel exceeds prayer and sacraments infinitely more.”

With all of these views, the church responded to him. Wycliffe was put on trial and condemned. However, he wasn’t killed. He left Oxford, but died of natural causes. Wycliffe was a voice that found many listeners and many of his teachings helped build the foundation that the Reformation continued on.

Jan Hus

Jan Hus was a Bohemian man who lived from 1369-1415. Bohemia would have been comparative to present day Czech Republic. Hus was influenced by Wycliffe and his teaching. There was a strong connection between Bohemia and England, which helped Wycliffe’s views to gain some exposure outside of England. There was a lot of traffic between Oxford in England and the University in Prague, Bohemia. Hus agreed with Wycliffe on the major issues. He too stressed the authority of the Bible, not of tradition, and the importance of grace, not works. He taught that Christ was the head of the Church, rather than the pope.

The church didn’t really like Hus either. So they called a council, the Council of Constance in 1414. Hus agreed to go because he had some powerful friends who promised him safe conduct, and he was willing to try to end the conflict. At the Council, however, he was imprisoned and put on trial. The church authorities there brought up charges against Hus, about his teachings about the Bible. Some were true, some he didn’t think were true. He agreed to recant his teachings if they could show him from Scripture the he was wrong, and that he wouldn’t recant heresies that he hadn’t taught in the first place! They didn’t like that very much. He was charged with heresy and condemned to death, and burned at the stake.

Just before he was burned at the stake, he was asked again to confess to save his own life. He responded like this:

“God is my witness that the things charged against me I never preached. In the same truth of the Gospel which I have written, taught, and preached, drawing upon the sayings and positions of the holy doctors, I am ready to die today.”

Let’s keep in mind that this is also when the Renaissance is taking place.

However, we need to mention what happened after Hus’ death. His followers continued to grow in number over the next few years, and united a large number of people in Bohemia. The king of Bohemia and the Pope tried to stamp them out by declaring a crusade against them! But the Hussites, as they were called, had developed their own military and completely demolished this crusade. This happened four more times! Finally the catholic church agreed to make negotiations. The Hussites officially rejoined the rest of the European church, but were allowed to keep several of their key aspects of theology and worship.

When we look at what John Wycliffe and Jan Hus were saying, how do we respond to it? What do we agree about with them? Is there anything we don’t agree with?

Both John Wycliffe and Jan Hus had followings after their deaths, the Hussites followed Hus and the Lollards followed Wycliffe. There were some Hussites who left the Catholic church and started their own church, in Bohemia and nearby Moravia. The Lollards became known for their Biblical preaching and had a massive influence on the people of England.

Erasmus

As we keep going we get closer and closer to the official start of the Reformation. Now we meet a man named Erasmus. Erasmus lived from 1466-1536. He was ordained as a monk in 1492 and was a strong and very good biblical scholar. We should keep in mind that he lived during the Renaissance, which meant that people were becoming interested in classical learning and going back to the biblical sources of Greek and Hebrew. This had a strong impact on Erasmus, who studied language and Scripture closely.

Widely considered to be his greatest work, he compiled a new Greek New Testament. He went through the early Greek manuscripts, and from this came an accurate Greek edition of the NT. This is incredibly important, because over time, there had been changes made to the Latin Bible that was used by the church, to support its changing theology and teachings. A word here, a phrase there, enough so that the church could find support for questionable practices. We mentioned this a little bit last week. So now, Erasmus had a Greek NT that completely exposed the changes made in the Latin.

This guy was sort of the instigator of the Reformation. He didn’t officially start it, but he had a huge influence on Martin Luther. Erasmus’ Greek NT was read by Luther and became the “New Testament for the Reformation.” He also became very popular as a scholar and critic of the church at the time. He criticized the pope for his wealth and status, compared to the Apostle Peter’s life and example among many other things, and these opinions became widely popular among others caught up in the Renaissance movement.

We should realize however that whatever Erasmus said or advocated, it was still within the realm of the church. He knew that the church had gone off track, so he wanted to make the changes needed to get back on track. Erasmus wanted to REFORM the church, he did not want to BREAK with the church. To use an analogy, he wanted to renovate rather than build an entirely new building. Many of the things he called for were very close to what Luther taught, and they were actually allies for quite a while.

“Erasmus laid the egg that Luther hatched.”

Conclusion

We’ve seen that even several hundred years prior to Martin Luther, there were those who called for change.

When we look at at these calls for change, they met with some success and many agreed with them, but that success was limited. Why do you think that these calls for change didn't work? Why was it that even though some of them had a similar message to Martin Luther, they weren’t effective on the same level as during the Reformation?

We’ve seen that even several hundred years prior to Martin Luther, there were those who called for change. And while they had some listeners, their message wasn’t widespread on the level that happened with Luther. A major reason for this is that the early reforms had to do with the actions involved and not the internal state of people. We can see this in the earlier popes, and in the monasteries. They would make new rules about poverty or charity, prayer and meditation, but these were all things people did rather than things people were. Last week we also talked about how the fullness of time had not yet come before Luther, and that the Holy Spirit was working among people and knew what should happen when.

Do we see any similarities with stories from the Bible in these accounts?

The Prophets

John the Baptist

Mark 7:1–13 ESV

Now when the Pharisees gathered to him, with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. (For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands properly, holding to the tradition of the elders, and when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions that they observe, such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches.) And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, “ ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.” And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ But you say, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, “Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban” ’ (that is, given to God)— then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do.”

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