On October 31, 1517 (the Eve of All Saints Day), Martin Luther famously nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. Though he couldn’t have known at the time the rift he would cause within the Church, Martin Luther, rightly, had major concerns with regard to the public sale of indulgences (which were pardons to release a deceased individual from the punishment of purgatory in exchange for money). Luther was a well-studied Catholic monk and theologian who realized that these practices did not align with Scripture. By publicly nailing these 95 statements to the church door, Luther intended to engage in an academic debate. The movable type printing press had also recently been invented, so with the timing of a public disagreement with the Church’s practices plus the widespread propagation of Luther’s theses, a movement was spurred that we know today as the Protestant Reformation. Prior to the Reformation, scripture was only available in Latin, and very few–save the academic elite–were able to read and understand Latin. Additionally, every church service was performed in Latin, so the vast majority of people could not even understand the preaching. 

At Lux, we look at Reformation Day as a means to celebrate Christ as our means of salvation by grace through faith and public access to the Scripture. We celebrate that the Reformation helped lead the Church back to what had been lost. The Reformation did not create something new but recovered something old. Our hope in celebrating Reformation Day is to be a part of bringing about unity in the Church as we celebrate this freedom in Christ together.