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The Reformation

Issues: Salvation

Salvation was the central issue for Martin Luther and it was the central issue for many other reformers as well. What must a Christian do to be saved? And how does one know if one is saved or not? The Catholic Church at the time had a set of answers, which the reformers rejected.

Or, rejected most of them. One answer was fundamental and universal within the Church: some sort of confession of faith and specifically of belief in Jesus Christ as divine. Things got sticky fast after this simple profession of faith, but there was no doubt that faith was a necessary element of salvation for all Christians. Despite the thick layer of outward signs associated with the late medieval Catholic Church, faith and profession of faith still lay at the foundation.

Faith is tricky, though. Many among the faithful might be troubled by doubts. They might sin. Or they might simply have questions. There was a whole vocabulary of distance with regard to God; one man might be near God while another might be far from God, yet both were Christians. Over the centuries, the Church had developed a variety of rituals and institutions and beliefs that offered some measure of reassurance and guidance to those who wanted it.

It developed a priesthood, for example. The priests acted as intermediaries between the secular and the divine. Those who wished to approach the divine world must do so by way of, and under the guidance of the priests. Churches developed into sacred sites that held special status within secular society. Certain religious acts needed to be held there in order to be valid, or at least the acts held more potency there. Lay people were given things they could do to help offset the burden of sin: they could go on pilgrimage, they could make pious donations, they could undergo penance, and so on. All these were administered by a Church hierarchy.

Especially by the 13th century, the Catholic Church was becoming more and more explicit about its role in society. Whether it was marriage or war, heresy or theology, the Church was issuing decrees, making legal rulings, sending out proclamations. What had been handled informally (and therefore inconsistently) was increasingly being handled formally. This brought the role of priests and of papal rulings to the forefront.

In the matter of salvation, this meant that the Church increasingly was presenting itself as the only avenue open to the Christian. Other paths were fraught with error and even heresy, and certainly brought in their train personal chaos and social disorder. All through the 15th century we see an increase in "lay piety"—in charitable acts, penitential activity, and popular outbursts.

This was dangerous territory. For if the believer began to doubt the efficacy of the Church's path, and the traditional paths were closed off, then the only recourse was to reject Church authority over the most fundamental matters of Christian religion. It might just be possible that salvation was not something the Church could offer.