Luther Company: Remembering the Rest of the Reformers

Thomas Bilney, an early English Protestant martyr

On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther did something remarkably unrevolutionary: he posted a list of “theses,” a common practice in 16th-century academia. It notified the community of matters to be disputed in an academic debate.

Even the content of these theses was not, on its face, particularly controversial. The familiar thematic emphases of the Reformation — faith alone, by grace alone, through Christ alone, under the decisive authority of the Scriptures alone, to the glory of God alone — were yet to be fully articulated.

Nevertheless, in hindsight, we mark this moment as the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. The heart of its conviction comes in Luther’s first proposition:

When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said “Repent,” he intended that the entire life of believers should be repentance.

Luther was convinced that the Roman Church had departed from a biblical understanding of repentance. Instead of radical life-change, grounded in an embrace of the gospel’s promises, repentance was identified with penance — a performance of prescribed behaviors done to make amends for sin. Read More