What if Luther had never lived? - 15 November 2011 |
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A friend asked me an intriguing question the other day: “Would the Reformation have happened if Calvin and Luther weren’t around? Would it have happened at a later date, or even at all?”
My first reaction is an obvious one: there are problems with trying to imagine historical counterfactuals. I think historians have a technical name for this difficulty, but I can’t remember what it is. The bottom line, though, is that everything is so interconnected that it makes little sense to imagine changing just one historical fact while keeping everything else the same.
However, the question is an interesting one, because it prompts us to think about what factors actually were instrumental in the Reformation. Clearly there was a growing frustration with the medieval Catholic church, both at street level and among theologians and Ministers. The pressure for change had been building for a long time before Luther as a result of many different factors, including the work of Wycliffe, the corruption of the papacy, the tyranny of indulgences, the rise of humanism and the growing awareness that the Bible didn’t actually say all the stuff the Church said it did. If Luther hadn’t lit the blue touch-paper, someone else eventually would have done.
Having said that, the Reformation could not have been kicked off by just anyone. There was a reason why Luther was the man who started the ball rolling, and why many others who shared Luther’s distaste for the medieval church had much less of an impact. It boils down to one thing: Courage.
Put simply, Luther changed the world because he had guts. He was not the only man to be shocked by the corruption among the clergy in early 16th-century Rome. He was, however, one of very few who resolved to put his life on the line do something about it. When he saw the oppression and manipulation of the poor under the Roman system of indulgences, he didn’t just shrug his shoulders and say, “Not my parish; not my problem.” He nailed his theses to the door and got to work.
Of course, he couldn’t have imagined what that late-night trip to Wittenberg would lead to, but that’s exactly the point. He just kept on going, relentlessly pursuing reform, not knowing where the road would go, simply because it was the right thing to do.
So I’m sure that in God’s providence there would have been a Reformation if Luther had never lived. But I’m equally sure it wouldn’t have “just happened”. It would have needed men willing to put their lives and livelihoods on the line. The truly great men – the men we remember – are those who fought for the faith: Athanasius, Edwards, Bonhoeffer, Calvin, and, of course, Luther. Such men are so few and far between that what we now call the Reformation could have been delayed for many years if history had never seen Luther. For men of courage are rare, and no one who lacked courage ever changed anything.
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Posted by Steve Jeffery · Topics: Minister's Blog