Dr Paul Allen

Have you ever wondered why people call themselves “Reformed”? The word “reformed” generally means “improved”—as in, desperate parents may send an incorrigible adolescent to a reformatory school to get them back in line; politicians promise economic reforms to undo the damage of their predecessors. In theological circles, the word is written with a capital and acts as a self-designation for those who consider themselves to be direct doctrinal descendants of the progenitors of the Reformation, namely Martin Luther, Jean Calvin, et al. For example, plain vanilla Baptists get upgraded to “Reformed Baptists” if they embrace not only the tenets of Baptists but also the doctrines for which the Reformers risked life and limb. Exactly 504 years ago, to the day (October 31, 1517), the Catholic priest, Martin Luther, nailed, to the door of the Wittenburg Castle Church, his list of 95 things the Catholic Church needed to reform/improve in order to be faithful to what the Bible teaches. Reformed fo...

“A cesspool of heresies.” This was the judgment rendered by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V on May 26, 1521, shortly after Luther took a stand at the Diet of Worms. Earlier, in the bull Exsurge Domine, Pope Leo X described Luther as a wild boar loose in the vineyard of Christ and as a stiff-necked, notorious, damned heretic. On May 4, 1521, Luther was “kidnapped” by friends and whisked off to Wartburg castle, where he was kept secretly hidden, disguised as a knight. There Luther immediately undertook the task of translating the Bible into the vernacular. Frequently the Reformation is described as a movement that revolved around two pivotal issues. The so-called “material” cause was the debate over sola fide (“justification by faith alone”). The “formal” cause was the issue of sola Scriptura, that the Bible and the Bible alone has the authority to bind the conscience of the believer. Church tradition was regarded with respect by the Reformers but not as a normative source of revelation. ...

The gospel of Jesus Christ is always at risk of distortion. It became distorted in the centuries leading up to the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. It became distorted at innumerable other points of church history, and it is often distorted today. This is why Martin Luther said the gospel must be defended in every generation. It is the centre point of attack by the forces of evil. They know that if they can get rid of the gospel, they can get rid of Christianity. There are two sides to the gospel, the good news of the New Testament: an objective side and a subjective side. The objective content of the gospel is the person and work of Jesus—who He is and what He accomplished in His life. The subjective side is the question of how the benefits of Christ’s work are appropriated to the believer. There the doctrine of justification comes to the fore. any issues were involved in the Reformation, but the core matter, the material issue of the Reformation, was the gospel, espec...

William Perkins’s convictions on the ministry of God’s word are best known through his preaching manual, The Arte of Prophecying, which became a standard textbook on the subject. The volume articulated a thoroughly Protestant understanding of the nature and authority of Scripture and rooted itself in a thoroughly Reformed hermeneutic.  The book also featured a fountain of homiletical advice, as Perkins detailed his method of sermon development and delivery. More than any other, the popularity of this book explains Perkins’s enduring significance in the decades and even centuries after his death. Perkins’s business was the ministry of the word, and it extended far beyond his sermons . He carried this commitment to the word into every genre of his writing. This consistency evidences his convictions concerning Scripture itself as well as the nature of his goals as a reformer.  It is not an overstatement to say the systematic interpretation of the Bible and the presentation of its...

Over 500 years ago, a German monk named Martin Luther started a protest that exploded into a worldwide movement. So what was the Protestant Reformation all about? 500 years ago, a German monk named Martin Luther started a protest that exploded into a worldwide movement. At that time, Europe lived in the shadow of the Roman Catholic Church. It was more like an empire than a church. It crowned and cast down kings, and used its dominance to keep people in the darkness of superstition. That sounds pretty unfamiliar. But in some ways, Luther’s day was very much like our own. Just like today, everyone had an opinion about the Bible even though almost no one had actually read it. Like so many of us, they were trusting the thought-leaders and taste-makers of their day to tell them what was in the Bible and whether or not to believe it. Luther was one of the very few people actually reading the Bible, and what he found was earth-shattering. Even though he was a monk, Luther hated th...

On October 31, 2016, Pope Francis announced that after five hundred years, Protestants and Catholics now “have the opportunity to mend a critical moment of our history by moving beyond the controversies and disagreements that have often prevented us from understanding one another.”  From that, it sounds as if the Reformation was an unfortunate and unnecessary squabble over trifles, a childish outburst that we can all put behind us now that we have grown up. But tell that to Martin Luther, who felt such liberation and joy at his rediscovery of justification by faith alone that he wrote, “I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates.” Tell that to William Tyndale, who found it such “merry, glad and joyful tidings” that it made him “sing, dance, and leap for joy.” Tell it to Thomas Bilney, who found it gave him “a marvellous comfort and quietness, insomuch that my bruised bones leaped for joy.” Clearly, those first Reforme...

It has been said that the Protestant Reformation was the greatest movement of God in church history since her birth on Pentecost. The Reformation was the time when God, in effect, said, “Enough,” and rescued the word of God and the church of God out from the darkness. With the commemoration date of the Reformation on October 31, 1517, the 501st anniversary is upon us. It was the day when that little-known monk, Martin Luther, nailed a document written in Latin to the doors of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. In doing so, Luther was not intending to start the Reformation, but, to simply dispute the nature of Rome’s teaching on indulgences. So, what are indulgences? Where did they come from? Why was Luther fired up about them? And what is the implication of this teaching on salvation? Indulgences are like a withdrawal from a heavenly bank account through certain works in order to, in effect, pay down debt so as to move one closer to right standing with God. What was the situation s...

When Martin Luther pounded the 95 Theses on the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, the effects rippled throughout space and time, changing the world then and there, as well as here and now, 501 years later. We may take for granted the impact that feisty monk’s actions had on Europe in 1517 and are still having on our lives this very day. We ought to be grateful to God for what he wrought in our lives with blunt instruments, Martin Luther, John Calvin,  et al . If you read your Bible today in your own language that’s because of the Reformation. Christians in 1517 did not have access to a Bible unless they had been schooled in Latin, a privilege reserved for the wealthy and the ecclesiastical order. So if you wanted to read the Bible you had to take a vow of celibacy, poverty, and obedience, and become a monk or priest.  It was Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible into German that brought about the truth encapsulated (ironically in the Latin phras...

The first of Luther’s famous 95 Theses —whose 500th anniversary we celebrate today—is a critique of an erroneously translated phrase in Jerome’s translation of Matthew  4:17 . In English we know this as, “ Repent , for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Luther wrote in Thesis 1, When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said,  Poenitentiam agite , he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance . (See  Luther’s Works ,  31:25 ) Luther does not come out and say that Jerome erred—not on October 31, 1517. But by at least May 30, 1518, writing to mentor Johann von Staupitz , he feels that the Roman church was indeed “misled by the Latin term, because the expression  poenitentiam ag[ite]  suggests more an action than a change in disposition.” It makes Jesus sound like he’s saying, “Do penance.” And, Luther says, “in no way does this do justice to the Greek.” ( Luther’s Works ,  48:67–68 )  What Jesus really said was, “R...

Do you worship Jesus Christ ? That’s the question Luther, Calvin, and the reformers would want to ask you today. Jesus deserves every single utterance of praise. The Bible tells us that one day every knee will bow and every tongue will confess Jesus Christ as Lord (Philippians 2:10-11). The Reformation simply put Jesus back into the place that He deserved. As they looked around at the religious system they were born into, they couldn’t help but see a system that consistently stole the worship that only Jesus deserved, and placed it on others. For centuries, men and women around the world were told lies, but perhaps the most important one came down to what people taught about Jesus. At the heart of the lies was a man-centered refusal to believe that Jesus could—in an instant—remove all the guilt from a sinner. Luther, Calvin and the rest of the reformers simply re-discovered the Jesus of the Bible and realized the simple truth that Jesus deserved all of the worship and that He, al...

Martin Luther’s great moment of theological clarification came at the climax of a command performance. Facing the threat of martyrdom and execution, Luther appeared on trial at the Diet of Worms before the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire . Asked on what authority he dared to defy the Pope and the magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church , Luther famously replied: “Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Holy Scriptures or by evident reason-for I can believe neither pope nor councils alone, as it is clear that they have erred repeatedly and contradicted themselves–I consider myself convicted by the testimony of Holy Scripture , which is my basis; my conscience is captive to the Word of God. Thus I cannot and will not recant, because acting against one’s conscience is neither safe nor sound. God help me. Amen.” To those words were added: “Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me.” The Diet of Worms was held in 1521. At the conclusion of his defense, Luther simply sa...

Five hundred years later some Christians seem almost embarrassed about the Reformation . Not me. The Reformation must continue, as it still has work to do. Its cry is essential ‘back to the Bible ’ and ‘away with man-made rules and traditions‘. As such it is a cry that must be heard in every denomination, and every church, in every generation. It is understood that it was the 31st October 1517 when the monk Martin Luther pinned his 95 theses to the door and unleashed a revolution that continues to this day. These theses could each have been a tweet, and they were deliberately intended to spark a debate. They undermined the idea that the Pope was the sole source of authoritative teaching, and encouraged the ordinary man to re-examine official Church teachings. That idea still holds power today and must continue to exert its effects. Just as the printing press enabled the ideas of the Reformation to spread, so the Internet allows the Reformation to continue today. May articles such...