Theologia et Vita

Thoughts on Reformation Month J Neil Daniels Every October, a certain date looms large in the memory of the church: October 31, 1517. It was on that chilly autumn day that a little-known Augustinian monk named Martin Luther strode up to the Castle Church door in Wittenberg and nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the wood. The document wasn’t meant to start a movement, not exactly. Luther had intended it as an invitation to academic debate over the sale of indulgences, those paper promises of shortened time in purgatory hawked by men like Johann Tetzel. But sparks have a way of leaping farther than we expect, and this one landed on dry tinder. Within weeks, copies of Luther’s theses were spreading like wildfire across Germany, and within months the tremors could be felt throughout Europe. The world would never quite be the same. That moment is why many Christians call October “Reformation Month.” It’s not merely a nod to one monk with a hammer but to an entire seismic shift in the story of...