Chapter V: The Reformation and Protestantism

“Well, that explains,” you say, “just one denomination, but where did all the others come from?” We shall try to show you the connection between the Roman Catholic Church and many of the other denominations. For a period of seven hundred years, the Roman Catholics held sway over a vast majority of people who called themselves Christians. I believe that all down through the ages there were some folk who rebelled against the Roman “Pope”; and I am of the opinion, although I could not prove it, that in every generation there were some faithful Christians not always numerous and prominent enough to win recognition in history, but who were nevertheless contending for and obeying the truth. Be that as it may, we know that the Roman Catholic Church dominated most of the religious world for many centuries—until finally the Roman Catholics and the Greek Catholics divided in the twelfth century A.D. Then those two held the reins until there came the period in history which is known as the Great Reformation.

I have great respect for such men as Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, John Locke, John Calvin, and John Wesley. [I don’t know why so many of them were named John, I have often wondered.] Even though a great deal of harm has been done in the name of these men, we must recognize them as having done some noble work.

Take Martin Luther, for instance, who found a Bible while he was a student in a convent, and studied it diligently. He became convinced that the sale of indulgences was sinful and endeavored to reform the Roman Catholic Church on this point. As a consequence of this effort he was excommunicated. Naturally, he started an independent movement. His purpose was to get back to the Bible and throw off all human authority, taking the Bible as his only guide. If he and all of his followers had been true to this noble ideal, there would be no Lutheran Church on the earth today. They would have become Christians and Christians only.

I am convinced that Martin Luther did not intend to start a denomination. He pleaded with the people not to wear his name, but rather to call themselves Christians. He had strong convictions, and was willing to suffer for the sake of them. But, friends, Martin Luther had become well saturated with error before he began to study the Bible for himself. He could hardly have been expected to discover all the truth immediately.

He knew that the Roman Catholics were wrong on indulgences, but they were also wrong on a great many other points which he did not discover. If he and his followers had continued to study the Bible and to make reformations as the need for them was discovered, then they would have kept getting back closer and closer to the original plan. This they did not do. Instead they made the tragic error of formulating a creed or confession of faith. This they probably did with good intentions, hoping thereby to protect their followers against the snares of Roman Catholicism and other errors, but they defeated their purpose. It was not long until the creed began to be recognized as authoritative—if not as equal to the Bible at least as a subordinate authority. Naturally the creed was erroneous and ambiguous. It was written by uninspired men and by men blinded and prejudiced by Roman Catholicism. The creed makers were wearing the colored glasses of Roman Catholicism. They who had had Romanism drilled into them from infancy could not instantly and entirely disabuse themselves of it. In some cases they retained Roman error; in other cases they were driven into opposite extremes.

Naturally, after a generation or so, they acquired members who were in the movement not because of conviction, but because of convenience, or because their parents were. This condition, with the deadening effect of a creed—of a human creed—made progress back to the Bible very difficult, if not impossible. Each step of reformation called for a revision of the creed, and creeds are hard to revise. People become attached to them; they come to think more of them than they think of the Bible itself, if they aren’t very careful. They develop a patriotic attitude toward the creed which is very difficult to overcome. Consequently, we have the Lutheran Church with us today.

This appraisal of Luther’s work will fit, in a general way, the work of other reformers. They made similar errors. If they had maintained the scientific attitude—which means to test every point, investigate to see if you are right and change when you’re wrong, prove all things and hold fast to that which is good—then they would have kept getting back closer to God. But when their movements became crystallized, when they became satisfied with their _status quo_, and had acquired a number of members who were without conviction, then they not only ceased getting back closer to God but they began to drift away from Him. As a consequence, many of the denominations today resemble their mother, the Roman Catholic Church, more than they did in the beginning.

And so, my friends, we have before us a brief outline of how denominations got started. The Roman Catholic Church is the result of centuries of drifting away from the New Testament pattern. Since it reached the zenith of its power, many other denominations have resulted from unsuccessful and incomplete efforts to reform the Catholics or some other existing group. In most cases the movement of the reformers, because of indifference and a lack of conviction in their ranks, eventually lost ground. In every instance, consciously or unconsciously, something besides the Bible has been accepted as authority. Errors, which the Protestant churches, willingly or unwillingly, inherited from the Catholics have been handed down from generation to generation even to the present. Thus, many unscriptural practices and doctrines of the denominations are traceable to the church at Rome with its preposterous claim of infallibility. Many members of denominations do not realize that much of what they get from their parents and preachers and which they fancy to be of Biblical origin, has, in fact, descended from Rome and can claim no higher authority.