October 16, 2024

What Was the Cause of the Protestant Reformation?

What Was the Cause of the Protestant Reformation?
7 Min Read

What was the matter with the Protestant Reformation? It might seem like a strange question. Some might say that there was nothing the matter with the Reformation, that it was the acme of spiritual recovery of biblical Christianity in church history and therefore was a sort of golden age of biblical faith. Others might say that the matter with the Reformation was that there was one at all, since it produced the largest schism in church history.

That’s not what I mean, however, when I ask about what was the matter with the Protestant Reformation. I’m not using the word matter in the normal way, which typically indicates that something is wrong. When we ask, “What’s the matter with you?” we are assuming that something is wrong or that we’re looking for fault. What I mean, by contrast, is this: What was the essence, the substance, or what is called in philosophy the material cause of the Protestant Reformation? Another way to ask it would be this: What was the chief issue that provoked such massive consequences as this split that occurred in the sixteenth century?

When historians consider the causes of the Protestant Reformation, they often use distinctions originally set forth by the philosopher Aristotle, and they distinguish between the formal cause and the material cause. The formal cause, the intellectual background to the issue, was a dispute over the seat of final authority that binds the Christian conscience. We’ll look at that under the heading of sola Scriptura. The material cause, however, the substantive issue that was the core point of dispute, was the doctrine of justification. The Protestant view of this matter is expressed in the shorthand of the Latin phrase sola fide.

This is the first of the Latin slogans of the Reformation known as the five solas. They are sola fide, justification is by faith alone; sola gratia, salvation is by grace alone; solus Christus, salvation is through Christ alone; sola Scriptura, the sole authority that binds the conscience of the Christian is the Bible alone; and then, finally, soli Deo gloria, to God alone belongs the glory.

Sola fide is shorthand for the central issue of the Reformation, the material cause, which was the question of justification. The Protestant Reformers set forth a doctrine that our justification is by faith and by faith alone without any mixture of good works or merit on our part.

To understand sola fide in its historical context, we have to understand something about the theological dispute based on the Roman Catholic understanding of justification. At the heart of this dispute was not a tangential debate over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin or a needless controversy over pedantic points of theology that only academics care about. Rather, this issue touched the very heart of the Christian faith because the question of justification is designed to answer this deeper question: How can an unjust person possibly survive the judgment of a just and holy God?

In our day, the doctrine of justification has been degraded in terms of its perceived importance. Historically, the differences among churches over how we obtain a right standing before God were considered significant; those differences have now been minimized as having no great weight. We’re living in a time of relativism, which says that there is no objective truth, and pluralism, which declares that there are many different approaches to truth and views of truth. Therefore, people assert, doctrinal issues should never divide us because what really counts are personal relationships, not doctrine. That notion is propounded even though the New Testament is replete with Apostolic concern about correct doctrine. Sadly, that’s not where the church is in this day and age, and sometimes we have to ask, Why?

Some people are in church Sunday after Sunday, are continually exposed to the preaching of the gospel, and are members of the church but have never really committed their lives to Christ. Such people, despite appearances, are under threat of the judgment of hell because they have not truly embraced the gospel of Christ. Those who reject the gospel of Christ stay in their sins and remain unjustified.

Think back to the Old Testament to David’s rhetorical question, “If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?” (Ps. 130:3). It’s rhetorical because the answer is obvious: no one. The promise of God that a day of judgment is coming—that all men will be brought into His courtroom and will be judged according to the bar of His perfect righteousness, and that those who are found wanting will be sent into the abyss of hell—is a doctrine that many in the church don’t believe anymore. If the church did believe it, it would preach it, and if it did believe it, justification would be just as much a theological issue today as it was in the sixteenth century.

If we are going to understand the upheaval that came about in the sixteenth century, we have to understand that the church at that time believed in the last judgment. The church at that time believed in the wrath of God. The church at that time believed in the justice of God. The church at that time believed in hell. That’s why the central question was, How can I be saved?

Faith and faith alone is the tool or instrument that links us to Christ and all that He has done for us and by which we are made just in the sight of God.

People nowadays often think of being saved in terms of relationships and dynamics in this world. We are saved from bad habits, addictions, social failure, psychological deficiency, broken relationships, and so on. We are so concerned about the relationships that we have in this world that we don’t even worry about the relationship that we have with a just and holy God. But the Christian faith ultimately is not the restoration of human relationships; the Christian faith at its root has to do with the repair of our relationship to God. At the center are these questions: How can a sinner escape the judgment of God? How can a sinner possibly be accepted in God’s judgment?

Something about the Reformation may come as a surprise to many Protestants. The Roman Catholic Church, in the sixteenth century just as now, believed that justification is by faith, by grace, and by Christ. Three of the issues that are captured in the essence of Protestant thinking are sola fide, by faith alone; sola gratia, by grace alone; and solus Christus, through Christ alone. Because of these solas, many Protestants think that the Roman Catholic Church did not believe in justification by faith or in justification by grace or in justification by Christ—but that’s simply not true.

Very early, the church had to combat the heresy of Pelagius, an Irish monk who challenged Augustine of Hippo and taught that people can be saved without grace and that people can achieve lives of perfect righteousness without any assistance from God. According to Pelagius, people don’t need grace and they don’t need the help of Christ; he said that grace and Christ facilitate salvation—that is, they assist in the process—but that they’re not absolutely necessary because we have it in our own power to live lives of perfect righteousness.

We must understand that the Roman Catholic Church has roundly condemned Pelagianism, time and time again. The Roman Catholic Church emphatically does not believe that people can be saved by their own righteousness without any help from God. Rather, the Roman Catholic Church teaches that faith is a prerequisite and does three things for justification. First, faith is what Rome calls the initium—that is, the initiation or the beginning of justification. Second, faith is the fundamentum or the foundation of justification. Finally, faith is the radix or the root of justification. To say that the Roman Catholic Church doesn’t believe that faith is necessary for salvation is simply slanderous.

Further, the Roman Catholic Church has always taught that grace is necessary as a prerequisite for justification and that without the grace of God infused into the soul through the sacraments, we’d be without hope, having to try to earn our way into heaven on the ground and basis of our own righteousness and our own merit. Finally, the Roman Catholic Church affirms the necessity of the atonement of Christ and of the work of Christ to help us in our justification.

Rome believes that justification is by faith, by grace, and by Christ. But Rome does not believe that justification is by faith alone or by grace alone or by Christ alone. Rather, justification involves other elements. In the Roman Catholic view, faith plus works gives us justification; grace* plus* merit gives us justification; Christ plus our inherent righteousness gives us justification. The Reformers strenuously objected to these teachings, saying that our works do not count toward our justification, that we have no merit of our own of any kind that we bring before God. As the hymn writer Augustus Toplady wrote in “Rock of Ages,” “Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to thy cross I cling.”

According to the Roman Catholic Church, justification begins with baptism. Baptism is called the instrumental cause of justification. We earlier mentioned the distinctions that Aristotle made between different types of causes, and to illustrate these distinctions he talked about sculpting a statue. The material cause of the statue is the stone out of which the statue is made. The efficient cause is the sculptor. The instrumental cause is the chisel and the hammer, the tools that the sculptor uses. According to the Roman Catholic Church, the tool or instrument that God uses to bring justification to sinners is baptism. The person who is baptized receives an infusion of justifying grace, or the grace of the righteousness of Christ. That is, in baptism, something happens inwardly—the soul is infused with divine grace. If the person who is baptized cooperates with that infused or poured-in grace in baptism and assents to it, then he is in a state of justification.

In the Roman Catholic system, justification does not necessarily endure forever, however. A baptized and justified person will remain in the state of justification until or unless he commits a mortal sin. A mortal sin is so called because it kills the grace that is poured into the soul at baptism. The person who commits a mortal sin must then be justified again—but not through baptism. Justification is restored through the sacrament of penance. This sacrament is defined by the Roman Catholic Church as the second plank of justification for those who have made shipwreck of their souls. The first plank is baptism, and the second plank is penance.

According to the Roman Catholic Church, then, justification is acquired instrumentally through the sacraments. The Reformers responded that the instrumental cause of our justification is not baptism or penance; it is faith in Christ. Faith and faith alone is the tool or instrument that links us to Christ and all that He has done for us and by which we are made just in the sight of God.

Was the Reformation Necessary?
Previously published in Was the Reformation Necessary? by R.C. Sproul
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R.C. Sproul

Dr. R.C. Sproul was founder of Ligonier Ministries, first minister of preaching and teaching at Saint Andrew’s Chapel in Sanford, Fla., and first president of Reformation Bible College. He was author of more than one hundred books, including The Holiness of God.