Protestant Reformation

Protestant Reformation

What were the main issues and ideas involved in the protestant reformation?

Before the conversion of Constantine to Christianity in 315 A.D., the government of Rome had been victimizing the Christians. Christianity, after this conversion, turned into a permitted religion of the Roman Empire, and for this reason, the power of the Roman government merged with the “visible” Church. The merger of the state and the church resulted in the establishment of the Roman Catholic Church, and with the passage of time, resulted in the refinement of the doctrine by the Roman Catholic Church and development of its organization in a manner which served best for the Roman regime's purpose. In this duration, challenging the Catholic Church was equivalent to challenging the Roman government and brought about severe penalties with it.

In case somebody argued against the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, it was a crucial accusation which frequently led to excommunication and even death at times. However, all through this period in the past, there were true “born again” Christians who would rebel and challenge the secularization of the Roman Catholic Church together with the travesty of faith which trailed. The Roman Catholic Church, by means of this combination of the state and the church, efficiently silenced the ones who challenged any of its practices or doctrines, and effectually became a virtually generic church all through the Roman rule (Carey, 2008).

At all times, there were pockets of conflict and disagreements to a few unbiblical teachings and practices of the Roman Catholic Church, however they were comparatively isolated and small. In the sixteenth century, before the Protestant Reformation, people like John of Wessel in Germany, John Huss in Czechoslovakia, and John Wycliffe in England, had laid their life for their disagreement to a few unbiblical teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. In the sixteenth century, the challenge and confrontation to the Roman Catholic Church together with its fake teachings reached to a height, when ninety five theses or propositions were posted by Martin Luther, a Roman Catholic monk, in opposition to the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church on the Castle Church door at Wittenberg, Germany (Hans, 2009).

Luther intended to introduce reform to the Roman Catholic Church and in pursuit of doing this; he challenged the power of the Pope. When the Roman Catholic Church refused to heed the call of Luther towards reformation and returning towards the practices and doctrines of Bible, the Protestant Reformation started. From the Protestant Reformation, four main traditions or divisions of Protestantism would evolve, counting in the Anglican, the Anabaptist, the Reformed, and the Lutheran. In thus duration, God elevated godly men in varying nations for the order of restoring the churches once again all around the globe to their grounds in the Bible and to the Biblical practices and doctrines (Madeleine, 2003). There are four fundamental doctrines lying behind the Protestant Reformation according to which the reformers had a belief that the Roman Catholic Church was erroneous. These four doctrines or questions are;

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