What Was the Reformation All About?

Introduction

“We are beggars. This is true.” These were the final words penned by Martin Luther on February 18, 1546, as he lay dying in his hometown of Eisleben. In that simple confession lies the heart of the Protestant Reformation—a movement that would shatter the unity of Western Christendom and reshape the religious, political, and cultural landscape of Europe and beyond. What began when an obscure German monk challenged church practices in 1517 became a religious revolution that fundamentally altered how millions understood salvation, authority, and their relationship with God. But to truly comprehend what the Reformation was about, we must look beyond the popular image of Luther nailing his theses to a church door and examine the complex web of theological, political, and social forces that converged in sixteenth-century Europe.

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The Protestant Reformation was one of the most transformative movements in world history. This short video explores how Protestantism emerged, how it reshaped Christianity, and how it influenced politics, society, and culture across Europe and beyond.

The World Before the Reformation

The late medieval Roman Catholic Church that existed before the Reformation was an institution of immense complexity and power. For centuries, the Church had become increasingly entangled in European political affairs, particularly through the office of the papacy. This political involvement, combined with growing wealth and power, gradually eroded the Church’s spiritual credibility. While most ordinary people still found spiritual comfort in the Church and maintained their loyalty to it, tensions were mounting.

Several critical events in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries set the stage for the coming upheaval. When the papacy relocated from Rome to Avignon, France, in 1309 and remained there until 1376, it shocked European Christians who had always viewed the pope as a universal spiritual authority rather than a French national figure. The subsequent Great Schism, which produced rival claimants to the papacy, further weakened papal authority and undermined confidence in ecclesiastical leadership.

The Black Death of 1347-1350, which killed between thirty and sixty percent of Europe’s population, profoundly disrupted European society and religious life. The catastrophe not only shook physical and political structures but also bred despair that began affecting faith itself. Monasteries maintained their wealth but lost half their members, and the horror of the plague fostered violent social upheavals and revolutionary movements that snapped the continuity of countless institutions.

Other significant changes were reshaping European culture. The rise of nationalism, exemplified by the Hundred Years’ War between England and France, enhanced national feeling and weakened the religious bonds that had unified Western Christianity. The Renaissance brought renewed interest in classical learning and the Greek language, which, combined with growing preference for vernacular languages over Latin, further eroded the common cultural and linguistic foundation of European Christendom. The invention of Gutenberg’s printing press around 1440 would prove essential to the Reformation’s success, enabling the distribution of literature on an unprecedented scale.

Perhaps most damaging was the visible corruption within the Church itself. The pope increasingly appeared as much an Italian prince as the head of the universal Church, while substantial Church endowments and growing corruption among both monastic and secular clergy undermined spiritual authority. The practice of selling indulgences—spiritual privileges that supposedly reduced time in purgatory—became a particularly egregious abuse that would trigger Luther’s initial protest.

The Spark: Luther and the Ninety-Five Theses

Martin Luther, born in Eisleben on November 10, 1486, entered an Augustinian monastery and later became a professor at the University of Wittenberg. Between 1513 and 1516, while studying the Psalms and Paul’s epistles to the Romans and Galatians, Luther underwent a profound theological transformation regarding salvation. He came to believe that the Church had perverted the gospel by entangling God’s gift of grace in a complex system of good works and indulgences.

On October 31, 1517—the eve of All Saints’ Day, a multi-day festival focused on Christian souls and purgatory—Luther allegedly posted his Ninety-Five Theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. While these theses primarily attacked the indulgence system and insisted that the pope had no authority over purgatory, they pointed to a deeper issue. Luther claimed that what distinguished him from earlier reformers was that he addressed the theological root of the problem rather than merely criticizing corruption: the Church’s perversion of the doctrines of redemption and grace.

The foundation of Luther’s position rested on two revolutionary principles that would become central to Protestant theology. First, sola scriptura—Scripture alone is authoritative in matters of faith and practice, not church tradition or papal decree. Second, sola fide—justification (being declared righteous before God) comes through faith alone, not through works or merit. As Luther later declared, his protest against indulgences was merely a symptom; the doctrine of justification was the underlying issue that would define the Reformation.

In April 1518, Luther presented his case at the Heidelberg Disputation before his Augustinian order. There, in thesis twenty-eight, he articulated what may be the most beautiful line he ever wrote: “The love of God does not find, but creates, that which is pleasing to it.” This statement captured the essence of grace—that God loved humanity and sent Christ when they were His enemies, not because they deserved it.

Luther never intended to break with the Catholic Church, but confrontation with the papacy proved inevitable. By 1519, he was preaching that Christians are justified by an “alien righteousness” from outside themselves, “the righteousness of Christ by which he justifies through faith.” In 1521, Luther was excommunicated, and what had begun as an internal reform movement became a fracture in Western Christendom.

Ligonier.org: 5 Things You Should Know About Martin Luther

• Martin Luther read through the Psalms roughly every three weeks of his adult life. He read through the whole Bible two or three times every year, while also studying particular passages or books in depth. He especially loved the Psalms. He maintained a daily reading schedule that covered the entire Psalms in three weeks. Luther taught and lived Sola Scriptura.

• After he posted his Ninety-Five Theses on the church door, Luther also wrote a series of Twenty-Eight Theses for the Heidelberg Disputation. Heidelberg Thesis number 28 may very well be the most beautiful line Luther ever wrote: “The love of God does not find, but creates, that which is pleasing to it.” God loved us and sent Christ for us when we were His enemies. That’s grace.

• Luther, a former monk, married a former nun. A group of nuns escaped from the Nimbschen Convent and made their way to Wittenberg. Some returned to their families. Some married students or pastors at Wittenberg. One of them, Katrina Von Bora, married Martin Luther in 1525. Luther called her “Katie, my rib.” They were a formidable couple. While Luther advanced the Reformation tirelessly, she managed a busy household, large garden, a fish hatchery, and a small brewery.

• Martin Luther was almost as good a musician as he was a theologian. Luther loved music. He played the lute. He wrote his first hymn in 1524—which was more of a folk ballad than a hymn—titled “A New Song Shall Here Be Begun.” It runs twelve stanzas long and commemorates the martyrdom of two Augustinian friars in the Netherlands. They had followed Luther and converted and became preachers of the Reformation doctrines, committed to bring the gospel to their homeland. They were arrested and martyred. When the word reached Luther, he turned to music.

• Martin Luther died in his hometown. Martin Luther was born in Eisleben on November 10, 1486. He went to Wittenberg in 1511 to study and to teach. Wittenberg would become the town most associated with him. In January of 1546, a dispute erupted in Eisleben that threatened to bring down church and town. Luther, an old man and rather feeling his age, set out on the journey to his hometown. After a difficult trek, Luther arrived to a hero’s welcome, brokered peace among the opposing parties, preached a few times, and then fell ill. The sick bed became his death bed. He sketched out his final written words on a scrap of paper: “We are beggars. This is true.” Luther died on February 18, 1546. Like Katie, he was clinging to Christ at the last.

The Spread and Diversification of Reform

The Reformation movement diversified almost immediately, with other reform impulses arising independently across Europe. In Zürich, Huldrych Zwingli built a Christian theocracy where church and state united in God’s service. While Zwingli agreed with Luther on justification by faith, he differed significantly in his understanding of Christ’s presence in Holy Communion. Luther rejected Catholic transubstantiation but believed in Christ’s physical presence in the elements, while Zwingli claimed only a spiritual presence.

More radical reformers, called Anabaptists, insisted that baptism should be performed only on adults who had professed faith in Jesus, not on infants. Despite fierce persecution, they survived as Mennonites and Hutterites. Still others, known as Socinians, challenged the ancient doctrine of the Trinity.

John Calvin, a French lawyer who fled to Switzerland after his conversion, became another towering figure of the Reformation. In Basel in 1536, he published the first edition of his Institutes of the Christian Religion, the first systematic theological treatise of the new reform movement. Like Luther, Calvin taught justification by faith, but he found a more positive place for law within the Christian community and stressed the doctrine of predestination. In Geneva, Calvin experimented with his ideal of a disciplined community of the elect, and his tradition eventually merged with Zwingli’s into the Reformed tradition.

By mid-century, Lutheranism dominated northern Europe. Eastern Europe provided fertile ground for even more radical varieties of Protestantism because kings were weak, nobles were strong, and religious pluralism had long existed. Spain and Italy became centers of the Catholic Counter-Reformation, and Protestantism never gained a strong foothold in those regions.

In England, the Reformation’s roots were both political and religious. Henry VIII, enraged by Pope Clement VII’s refusal to annul his marriage, repudiated papal authority and established the Anglican Church in 1534 with the king as supreme head. This reorganization permitted religious change, including the preparation of an English liturgy in the Book of Common Prayer. In Scotland, John Knox, greatly influenced by Calvin during his time spent in Geneva, led the establishment of Presbyterianism.

Crossway.org: Why Are There So Many Protestant Churches?

Martin Luther had no intention of dividing the church. He believed that what he was teaching was obvious from the Bible and he expected everyone, including the pope, to accept it. Unfortunately, his hopes were to be disappointed. Some people thought that Luther did not go far enough in his criticisms and wanted a more radical break with the past than he thought was necessary. Others had different priorities. In Switzerland, for example, the Reformers of Zurich and Geneva went further than Luther in their objections to the traditional understanding of the sacraments as means by which God gave grace to human beings. In particular, they did not believe that baptism made a person Christian, nor did they accept that the body and blood of Christ were present in the bread and wine that were consecrated and shared in holy communion. There were attempts made to overcome these differences, but they failed, and so different churches emerged. In England, the state tried to impose a compromise form of worship, but many people objected to that, and created independent congregations that we now call “denominations”.

The Theological Heart of the Reformation

The Protestant Reformation ultimately centered on one crucial doctrinal question: how sinners might be forgiven and accepted by God. Historian Philip Schaff identified justification by faith alone as “the proper soul, the polar star and center” of Luther’s life and the essential principle of the Reformation. This doctrine fundamentally changed how Protestants understood the sacraments and Christian worship.

The concept of sola scriptura served as the formal or knowledge principle of the Reformation—the foundation for determining what must be believed. Article Six of the Church of England’s Thirty-Nine Articles expressed this principle clearly: “Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation; so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man.” This commitment inspired widespread growth in biblical literacy, mastery of Hebrew and Greek, and early forms of textual criticism.

Political and Social Dimensions

The Reformation did not occur in a vacuum, and its political dimensions were as significant as its theological ones. Church and state were fully intertwined in sixteenth-century Europe, and civil magistrates played central roles in the Reformation’s success or failure. The delicate relationship between the papacy and Holy Roman Emperor explains how Luther’s local prince, Frederick the Wise, who was one of the emperor’s electors, could protect Luther during the crucial early years.

Luther directly appealed to political authorities in works like An Open Letter to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation Concerning the Reform of the Christian Estate. Similar political support proved essential for the Reformation’s progress in Switzerland, the Netherlands, and England, while its absence largely explains the movement’s failure in France.

The Reformation’s insistence that Scripture be translated into common languages aligned with emerging concepts of the nation-state. In Protestant lands, clergy became citizens of their respective kingdoms rather than subjects of an international ecclesiastical empire. Vernacular Bibles often served as primary vehicles for spreading unifying national languages, representing an important early step toward popular culture and mass media. Remarkably, approximately two million copies of Luther’s writings were published in German during his lifetime.

The Catholic Response

The Roman Catholic Church responded with what became known as the Counter-Reformation. While the Church corrected certain abuses—explicitly condemning the selling of church offices—it defended and codified as dogma most of the doctrinal points Luther had challenged.

The Council of Trent, held from 1545 to 1563, proclaimed that the institutional Church possessed and distributed the treasury of merit acquired by saints, upheld indulgences, codified purgatory doctrine, and condemned justification by faith alone. The Council defended veneration of relics and images and declared the apocryphal books canonical—books disputed by Protestant theologians. This Catholic response would form Roman Catholicism’s primary identity until the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s.

The Lasting Impact

The Protestant Reformation produced profound and enduring changes. Most immediately, it created the existence of different Christian churches in the same regions, eventually leading to the modern denominational landscape and new understandings of religious liberty. The translation of Scripture into common languages meant that rather than a single Latin Bible, vernacular Bibles became fixtures of European and eventually American Christianity.

The Reformation promoted education, founding schools and universities, including the Academy of Geneva, the University of Edinburgh, and Leiden University. Literacy improved dramatically, and clerical education was transformed as ministers were expected to master Hebrew, Greek, and biblical studies.

The Reformation doctrine of the priesthood of all believers led to what philosopher Charles Taylor called “the affirmation of Ordinary life”—the revolutionary outlook that secular work, including mundane domestic duties, could be as pleasing to God as religious or clerical works. This sentiment profoundly influenced Western concepts of vocation and work.

New hymns were written in various languages, with enduring works like Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” continuing to be sung in churches today. Luther, who once said, “Next to theology, I accord music the highest place and the greatest honor,” even inspired future generations of musicians, including the great Lutheran composer Johann Sebastian Bach.

LOGOS Church History: What Is the Protestant Reformation? Everything You Need to Know

The Protestant Reformation marked an explosive turning point in church history, as it recovered and proclaimed the gospel of saving grace. Its message was that God justifies men in his sight by faith alone. To be saved, a person must place their trust only in what Christ has done for them.

This quickly brought the Reformers into conflict with the leadership of the Catholic Church. As a result, Protestants also argued for the primacy of the Word of God contained in the holy Scriptures, above both church tradition and ecclesiastical authorities.

This wide-ranging movement transformed the church as well as ordinary life for men and women across Europe. Beyond the pulpit, important changes and new perspectives arose in liturgy, law, the arts, and education. The Reformation created major lines of division within the church, laid the foundation for modern denominations, and set the stage for our contemporary socio-political world order with sovereign nations, civil liberties, and international law.

Eventually, the Reformation changed the world.

The Reformation’s Multiple Afterlives

Scholars have long debated the Reformation’s broader cultural significance. Some claim it shaped major features of Western culture, including freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, individual dignity, and political democracy. Others argue that the Reformation and resulting divisions in Christianity are responsible for harsh capitalist economies where individualism is overrated and community values underrated.

Arizona State University Library / After 500 Years: The Afterlife of the Reformation, 16th to 21st Century

The Protestant Reformation is on the one hand alleged to have shaped major features of Western culture, including freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, the dignity of the individual, and political democracy. On the other hand, scholars have claimed that the Reformation and the resulting divisions in Western Christianity are responsible for a secular society based on a harsh capitalist economy in which community values are underrated and individualism is overrated. These remain matters of deep concern to modern Americans. Did the Reformation produce or influence them? Historians will continue to debate these questions because the relationship between cause and effect is hard to prove over a period of five centuries.

There can be no doubt, however, that the Reformation has many afterlives. Above all, it has resulted in the creation of many different Protestant faiths and churches around the world. Today, Protestantism is expanding in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, while continuing to have a strong presence in Europe and North America. Soon, Europeans and people of European descent will no longer form the majority of Protestants. This raises the question of what types of connections, if any, can be identified between the origins of a religious movement and the various manifestations of this religious movement as it adapts to different cultures over the course of five centuries.

However, there can be no doubt that in terms of identity, these connections are strong. The many events, websites, activities, and books generated by the five hundredth anniversary of the Protestant Reformation certainly prove that this event continues to have an important place both as part of the scholarly enterprise as well as in the popular imagination.

Max Weber‘s famous theory connected Calvinist predestination doctrine to the “Protestant work ethic” and modern capitalism’s development, suggesting that believers used worldly success to confirm their salvation. While historians have thoroughly debunked this theory, it remains a powerful idea. The relationship between cause and effect over five centuries remains difficult to prove, and historians continue debating these questions.

What cannot be doubted is that the Reformation has had many afterlives. It resulted in creating numerous Protestant faiths and churches worldwide. Today, Protestantism is expanding rapidly in Africa, Asia, and Latin America while maintaining a strong presence in Europe and North America. Soon, Europeans and people of European descent will no longer form the majority of Protestants, raising fascinating questions about connections between a religious movement’s origins and its manifestations as it adapts to different cultures over five centuries.

Conclusion

The Protestant Reformation was ultimately about recovering what its adherents believed was the authentic gospel of Jesus Christ—that God justifies sinners by grace through faith alone, based on the authority of Scripture alone. This seemingly simple theological claim had revolutionary implications, challenging not only church practices but the entire medieval system of religious authority, political power, and social organization.

The movement that began with Luther’s challenge to indulgences became a comprehensive transformation of European Christianity and culture. It created new churches, new theologies, new forms of worship, and new ways of understanding human dignity and vocation. It promoted biblical literacy, vernacular translations, education, and national consciousness. It sparked wars, persecution, and division, but also fostered religious pluralism and concepts of liberty that continue shaping our world.

When Martin Luther wrote “We are beggars. This is true” as his final words, he was confessing that even at the end of a life that had changed the world, salvation remained entirely God’s gift to the undeserving. This conviction—that humans come before God empty-handed, relying wholly on divine grace through faith in Christ—was the theological heart beating throughout the Reformation. Understanding this central truth is essential to understanding what the Reformation was truly about.

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So it’s a deeper dive you’d like? Here’s 2,420 pages of Reformation History you didn’t know you needed. (PDF download)

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Even deeper still: Christianity’s Dangerous Idea, by Alister E. McGrath (The Protestant Revolution—A History from the Sixteenth Century to the Twenty-First) (PDF download)