This year is the 509th anniversary of Martin Luther nailing his Ninety-five Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenburg—the event which has become considered the launch of the Protestant Reformation. But is that something worth celebrating? The word ‘catholic’ mean universal or complete. The Nicene Creed says “We believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.” The Protestant Reformation broke the visible unity of the catholic church. Why celebrate schism? In today’s polarised world, shouldn’t we be seeking unity instead?
I want to answer that question in an unusual way. The Protestant church did not separate from the catholic church. The Protestant church is the real catholic church.
When the Protestant Reformers protested against the corruptions of Rome, they were not inventing a new faith. They were protesting against the ways the church of their time had corrupted the true Christian faith. They were returning the church to its catholic root: “the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s saints” (Jude 3). A church is not truly catholic just because it has ancient architecture, formal liturgy, or a supposedly unbroken line of human bishops tracing back to Peter himself. A church is truly catholic when it holds fast to the apostolic gospel of Jesus Christ. How is this seen in the Protestant church?
The Written Word of God Has Authority Over the Church
The Protestant church is the real catholic church because we recognise the Bible’s final authority as the inspired word of God. The Bible has authority over the church.
The Roman Catholic Church also holds the Bible to be the inspired word of God. But they also believe that their church has authority to interpret the Bible, and that their tradition of interpretation is equally inspired by God. In practice, therefore, the church’s interpretation has authority over the text of Scripture.
That is not how Jesus treated the Bible. Jesus battled Satan by quoting the Bible (Matt 4:1–11). In Mark 7, he rebuked the Pharisees for creating traditions which disobeyed the written word of God. This is exactly what the Roman Catholic Church was doing in the 1500s, by, for example, selling indulgences, portraying Mary as co-redemptrix with Christ, teach that the saints as added to Christ’s merit, and commending participation in seven sacraments. They have thankfully repented of some of these heresies, but by no means all. The Roman Catholic Church continues to contradict the written word of God today.
The Protestant Reformers returned the church to the principle of sola scriptura (Scripture alone). This was a return to the historic catholic conviction of the early church. Augustine, Chrysostom, Athanasius, and Jerome consistently appealed to the Bible as the final, infallible rule of faith and practice. The church did not create the Bible. The Bible creates and rules over the church. To be catholic is to be bound to the prophetic and apostolic faith as recorded in Holy Scripture. Any so-called church that elevates human tradition and papal infallibility above the Bible loses status as a true church of God.
The Authority of the Bible Today
This is also a challenge for us today. Are we committed to reforming our beliefs according to the Bible? We face two kinds of challenges: secularity, and a new, resurgent spirituality. We’re used to scientific, naturalistic secularity which denigrates biblical supernaturalism. Theological liberalism reinterpreted Christianity and religion in general according to this kind of disenchanted naturalism. It taught that Jesus didn’t really perform miracles; he didn’t really rise from the dead. That kind of Jesus can’t save anyone. Theological liberalism’s legacy is hundreds of church buildings turned into pubs, clubs, restaurants, and even temples and mosques.
Contemporary secularity has progressed beyond science to expressive individualism, which demands affirmation of every prejudice and cancels everyone who disagrees. Frustration and fatigue with that kind of secularity has motivated a resurgent spirituality, that accepts the supernatural but is understandably wary of conflict caused by claims of unique supernatural authority. Both secularity and spirituality prejudice people against the Bible and its claim that “salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).
Every challenge to the faith is also an opportunity for reformation and testimony. We can speak in a non-aggressive way about the peace, wholeness, and harmony that the biblical Christ (the one and only Lord and God) brings to our lives. We can demonstrate in our churches and other fellowships how Christ unites people from different ethnicities and backgrounds—the biblical Christ makes us truly catholic. We both talk the talk and walk the walk.
Jesus Is the Incarnation of God’s Saving Grace
The Protestant church is the real catholic church because we affirm Jesus Christ, not the church, as the sole incarnation of God’s saving grace.
The Roman Catholic Church also believes that Jesus is God in the flesh. The problem is that they also believe the Holy Spirit uniquely operates in their church and uniquely blesses their sacraments such that their church is the only place you can access saving grace. Thus they basically treat the church as Christus continuatus—the continuation of the incarnation.
That is not the true catholic faith. John 1:14 says “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” And John 1:16 then goes on to say “from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace.”
We are all in danger of believing someone other than Jesus can save us. We invest church leaders with messianic expectations, then get disappointed when they let us down, as they inevitably will. If we live in an area with lots of good churches, we can ‘shop’ for the perfect church. The perfect church does not exist! Every church is full of sinners seeking to grow in godliness, even as they regularly repent and seek God’s forgiveness in Christ.
Justification Through Faith in Christ’s Once-for-all Sacrificial Death
Hebrews 9:26 says Christ “has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.” Verse 28 says “Christ [has]been offered once to bear the sins of many.” And 10:14 adds “by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.” When we understand that “God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood,” then we will be confident to “receive” Jesus’ sacrifice “by faith” (Rom 3:25).
Secularists mock faith as fantasy—as believing something we know cannot be true. The reality is the opposite—faith is confidence in what we know to be true. Jesus is the only way heaven, to glory, to God’s new creation. The Protestant doctrine of assurance, which Roman Catholics censure as heresy, but which is a birthright of those who have been made God’s children (Jn 1:12–13; Rom 5:9–11, 8:1–-16).
This is what it means to be justified by faith alone. It means to be confident that Jesus’ death and resurrection make us completely right with God. The Roman Catholic Church does not believe that. They believe that Jesus’ death and resurrection made it possible for us to be saved. But to actually be saved, we have to participate with God’s enabling grace to do good works. That is a natural way to think: that we have done something to deserve being right with God. Beware this incipient self-righteousness!
Jesus said “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Lk 5:31–32). The apostle Paul famously says in Ephesians 2:8–9, “It is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God; not by works, so that no one can boast.”
Reformation Sunday is a celebration of the true catholic church. We are not rebels against the true church, we stand in the great unbroken chain of people who believe the one true apostolic gospel—from the early church, through the faithful witnesses of the Middle Ages, to the Reformers, and down to us today.
