This year, there were several milestone anniversaries for evangelical Protestants, Roman Catholics and Jews.
Here’s a look back at some of the historical and spiritually important events in 2017 that matter to these religious groups and why.
500th anniversary of the launch of the Protestant Reformation
On Oct. 31, Protestants, evangelicals, and Pentecostals around the world marked the day when an Augustinian monk and scholar by the name of Martin Luther is widely believed to have posted 95 theses outlining his objections to corrupt practices in the Catholic church to the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany.
However, this event is not what exists in the collective mind of many people, as Eric Metaxas, author of Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God An Changed The World, explained to CP earlier this year.
Only in retrospect can anyone look back on this specific event as the key moment it was when what Luther thought he was doing was not audaciously pounding a list to the door in defiance but “effectively tacking something to a bulletin board,” Metaxas said.
“It really was a very quiet, almost passive act,” he explained, as if Luther was saying, “‘I’m just going to put up this thing and we’re going to have a debate.’ It had nothing to do with grace. It had nothing to do with his future. It was just about an ugly practice that needed attention.”
Arguably, the most important recovery from Luther’s life was the doctrine of justification, that a person receives salvation by the grace of God through faith and not by any of his of her works, a truth that had gotten buried under mounds of traditions over the years.
The Christian Post went to Germany to cover the festivities in late October and early November. CP visited the Wartburg castle near Eisenach where Luther was sent after he was excommunicated and where he translated the Bible into German, as well as Erfurt, the city where Luther studied and entered the monastery.
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SOURCE: Brandon Showalter
Christian Post
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