The Church Before the Storm

Today's Reading

By the early sixteenth century, the Western church was in crisis — though not everyone recognized it. On the surface, the institutional church was more powerful than ever. The pope wielded both spiritual and political authority across Europe. Cathedrals soared. Religious orders multiplied. The rhythms of Christian life — baptism, mass, confession, last rites — structured every human experience from cradle to grave.

But beneath the surface, serious problems had festered for centuries. The Bible was available only in Latin, a language most laypeople could not read. Preaching was often neglected in favor of ritual. The sale of indulgences — certificates promising the reduction of time in purgatory — had become a massive revenue stream for the church. In 1517, the Dominican friar Johann Tetzel was traveling through Germany with a sales pitch that would become infamous: "As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs."

Theology had become layered with centuries of scholastic commentary, much of it brilliant, but much of it obscuring the plain teaching of Scripture. The average Christian knew the rituals of the faith but had little access to its texts.

Biblical Connection

The psalmist had written: "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path" (Psalm 119:105). But by the late Middle Ages, that lamp was locked away. Paul had told Timothy to continue in "the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness" (2 Timothy 3:15–16). The Reformers would insist that these words applied not just to clergy but to every believer.

Going Deeper

The Reformation did not emerge from a vacuum. It was preceded by voices calling for reform — John Wycliffe in England, Jan Hus in Bohemia, the Waldensians in southern France. Each paid a heavy price. Hus was burned at the stake in 1415 after being promised safe conduct to the Council of Constance.

Robert Farrar Capon captures the intoxicating effect of what the Reformers rediscovered: "The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellar full of fifteen-hundred-year-old, two-hundred-proof grace" (Between Noon and Three, Part 2).

What they found in that cellar was not new. It was the original vintage — the gospel as Paul had preached it, as the apostles had taught it, as the Scriptures had always contained it. The Reformation began not with a new idea but with the recovery of an old one.