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Should churches be celebrating Reformation Day, which is on Oct. 31?
I have a mixed reactions to celebrating Reformation Day. I'm disappointed that most Protestants and Catholics have no more idea of what the Reformation was about than they could explain the Theory of Relativity. This, no doubt, is because few churches today bother to teach about Reformation Day. Yet it is a significant historic event.
It was on Oct. 31, 1517 an Augustinian monk, Martin Luther nailed his 95 thesis to the church door in Wittenberg as an invitation to scholars in the church to debate those issues. What Martin Luther did was to shatter centuries of dogma and tradition that had hidden the Gospel from the world. Up until that time, the Gospel of grace had been overlaid with hundreds of years of accretion of human merit. Everywhere men and women, by their own strivings and their own pious endeavors, sought to save themselves by good works.
But it also was a day that unfortunately divided (which was not Luther's intent) the body of Christ, the church. So I am reluctant to consider it a day for celebration; although it is true it was a day in which the light of the Gospel became available to everyone and what was at stake was a dispute on how one is saved.
Unfortunately, some overzealous Protestants to this day err when they say Roman Catholicism teaches that one is justified or saved only by one's good works. Roman Catholicism has always taught that grace was necessary for one to come to a faith in God. This misunderstanding no doubt came about from a letter from Martin Luther to his friend Phillip Melanchthon in which he falsely attributed to the Catholic Church that most un-Catholic of doctrines regarding good works. Luther wrote that Roman Catholicism teaches that, Christ did not die for our sins, but each one should satisfy for them himself.
These words were a dreadful misrepresentation of Catholic doctrine. True, the Catholic Church always insisted upon good works, BUT she also made it very clear that without the merits of Christ applied to our souls we could never be saved.
Thus, the major debate back in the 16th. Century centered on the article of how is a person justified. To this day, this article of how one is justified continues as the focal point or the difference between our theologies.
This difference may be expressed in two formulas (where = means yields or results in):
Roman Catholic theology says: Faith (by grace) + Good Works = Justification
Protestant theology replies: Faith (by grace) = Justification + Good Works
All other differences between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism are mere trifles.
What is at stake here is the Gospel itself. We are not engaged in a controversy over whether to sprinkle, dip or immerse but of salvation itself. It is the most important question we have as Christians. It is the problem of the justice of God. God is just and we are not. David raised that question in antiquity when he asked, "If the Lord mark iniquities, who would stand?"
If God is not going to negotiate His justice, how then are we saved? This was the debate of the 16th. Century between Luther and Rome and which continues today between Catholicism and Protestantism. Does God wait until we become just before He declares us just, or does He declare us just in His sight before we are just? Luther's formula was simul iustus et pecator, translated as at the same time just and sinner. That is we are justified by the work of Christ yet we still sin.
Rome heard in this formula a legal fiction. It would be unworthy, they say, of God and make Him a liar to declare a person just before a person is indeed just. Roman Catholicism agrees that justification occurs when God declares one to be just, but He does not do so, according to Rome, until one is indeed just.
The Reformers countered that it is not a legal fiction, but a legal diction. It is a legal diction by the One who does the justifying. God declares one just on the basis of the real work (the life and the death) of Christ. One is justified by faith, and that little word by, is the means through which one is justified as Christ both lived and died for us.
Roman Catholicism has two instrumental causes of justification, baptism and penance. Protestantism has only one, faith that lays hold of the merit of Christ. The critical questions then are: Is justification infused through the Roman sacraments of baptism and penance? Or is justification imputed (transferred) to us by the righteousness of Christ? A righteousness that is not in the believer, but a righteousness that is for the believer. Is it justification by infusion or by imputation?
Protestant theology holds to the latter. Justification for Protestants means to have the perfect righteous of Jesus Christ, clothing them as a white robe, as their sins were ALL imputed to Christ at Calvary. And Christ's righteous life is imputed to them and thus made faultless to stand before the eyes of an all-holy God. Salvation for Protestants is by grace alone through Christ alone. It is unearned, undeserved and unmerited. It is received by a simple trust (faith) in Christ.
But someday I pray, when our differences in this doctrine are reconciled, we will be celebrating our unity on Reformation day.