We honor the Roman Catholic Church for her historic role in spreading and preserving Christianity in the Western World. We also recognize the grace, life and gifts that continue to flow from the Catholic Church.

During the time of Luther, the Roman Catholic Church was in great need of reform. Though lip service was paid to love of God, most church leaders seemed far more focused on worldly affairs. Consequently, the church was filled with moral failings, political power struggles, and manipulations for financial gain.

Beginning more than a century before Luther, God sent prophets calling for reform. Sadly, church authorities killed or attempted to silence these men by other means. These prophetic voices included the Waldensians, Wycliffe, Hus, Savonarola … and then Martin Luther.

In 1517, Martin Luther was an obedient Augustinian monk, a teacher in the Wittenberg University, and a loyal Catholic. He was not a rebel trying to start a new church separate from the Roman Catholic Church.

Luther’s 95 Theses were his initial prophetic message.

It is historically proven that Martin Luther sent the 95 Theses to his Archbishop, Albrecht of Mainz. This is in accord with the New Testament model of prophets submitting prophetic messages for testing by apostolic authority. Luther expected to initiate an internal church discussion, as well as an academic debate regarding the validity of the points raised in the 95 Theses.

There is no direct historical evidence that Luther posted his 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. In his extensive notations Luther never mentions taking this action. Ferdinand Pauwels’ well-known picture of Luther nailing the 95 Theses to the church door comes from a time in the 19th century where Germany was proud of people who rebelled against the Roman Catholic Church. Our initiative believes that the posting of the Theses is an unhelpful legend, because it reinforces a wrong picture of Luther in 1517. He was not a rebel at that time but a pious monk obeying his bishop and sending him the 95 Theses for further discussion — not knowing that the pope and the archbishop of Mainz were deeply involved in the trade of indulgences.

Archbishop Albrecht’s ability to respond correctly to the 95 Theses was compromised. He had purchased his bishopric with the goal of financial gain, and thus his first concern was neither the will of God, nor the truth, nor the pastoring of the flock entrusted to him. Further, half of the proceeds of the indulgences he sold were being used to pay off his debt to the Fugger bank, which had loaned him the money to purchase his bishoprics. To receive the prophetic word from Luther would have been to undermine his own financial position – which is rightly what he would have done, of course, but not what he did do. Rather than replying to Luther at all, he forwarded the prophetic message along to Rome.

Pope Leo X was in a similarly compromised position when he received Luther’s prophetic word from Albrecht. He was the one who had authorized the indulgences in Germany, in the expectation of receiving half the revenue. This money was being used for his announced renovation of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican at Rome. To receive the prophetic word from a lowly monk in Germany would have been to face the loss of funding for his ambitious building project. Instead, he first tried to silence Luther through channels of church authority, and eventually issued a papal bull for Luther’s excommunication.

What if the apostolic and prophetic giftings had worked together, as God intended, for the equipping of the body of Christ for works of service? What if either Archbishop Albrecht or Pope Leo X had truly sought God regarding the 95 Theses, and engaged Martin Luther in sincere dialogue concerning what he was hearing from God? How might church history have been changed for the better?

The Roman Catholic Church excommunicated Martin Luther.

Martin Luther called the pope “Anti-Christ,” spoke about killing Bishops and clergy as equivalent to killing enemies in a war, and consistently employed harsh and hostile invectives against those who spoke or wrote counter to his views.

The Protestant/Catholic split led directly to the 30 Years’ War, which eventually killed around one-third of the population of Europe.

Violence between Protestants and Catholics has continued to our day, with recent examples in Mexico and Northern Ireland.

In addition to actual physical violence, these two streams of the body of Christ have been engaged in what might be called a “Cold War” – suspicion, accusation, contempt, anger, mutual anathemas, and lack of co-operation throughout the centuries.

Protestants and Catholics have both persecuted proponents of the Radical Reformation – Anabaptists, Pietists, Quakers, and other movements that advocated separating the church from the power structures of states and nations.

Another area of “unity in hostility” has been anti-Semitism. During the centuries before, during and after the Reformation numerous Protestant and Catholic leaders persecuted Jews. Papal directives and Reformation preachers exacerbated the hatred of the Jewish people, leading to centuries of torture, brutality, murder and the confiscation of their property. Luther inherited the anti-Jewish views of Augustine and the Catholic Church, repeating and adding to them in his writings to such an extent that Adolf Hitler could quote Luther as justification for persecuting Jews in Nazi Germany. Today, stark reminders of anti-Semitism remain throughout Europe. One of them is a poignant symbol of the joint Catholic/Protestant hatred of the Jewish people – a Judensau (Jew-Pig) sculpture on Luther’s home church in Wittenberg! This Judensau was erected by Catholics in 1305, praised and pamphletized by Martin Luther in 1543, and subsequently embellished by Lutherans with a blasphemous inscription.

The Protestant legacy has been one of further and further splintering. Accepting the very name “Protestant” is to accept a core identity of being against something – a protester. Any disciple of Luther’s who then came to disagree with some aspect of his theology or practice, would naturally be tempted to follow Luther’s example and establish a new church to correct the perceived error. This pattern has been repeated through decades and centuries of church and denominational splits. While the exact number changes too fast to be definitively known, it is currently estimated that there are more than 40,000 distinct Protestant denominations, many believing that in fact they are the only true Christians. Protestant hostility against other Protestants has grown to rival Protestant hostility against Catholics.

Jesus said that the world would know He was truly from God by the unity and love of His followers. This means that the divisions and publicly-expressed hostility of His people against one another give unbelievers a solid reason to deny that Jesus was from God. The eternal consequences are sobering to consider. Our attitudes and actions should be an avenue to the new life offered by God for those who are lost and desperately in need of hope; instead, they are often a barrier.

The Holy Spirit was at work in the Reformation. We recognize two clear treasures deposited by the Holy Spirit through Luther.

i. Luther’s cry of pain and indignation against the excesses and sins of the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church, and the failure to make any effective reforms.

ii. Luther’s criteria for reform: (1) The absolute uniqueness of Jesus Christ (2) The absolute uniqueness of trusting faith in reception of God‘s saving Word (3) The absolute uniqueness of the Scriptures as the Word of God inspired by the Holy Spirit, and the importance of putting the Scriptures into the hands of all of the people of God, not just the clergy

These treasures have given birth to a wide range of expressions in what are now the Protestant churches worldwide. The Reformation has truly impacted every corner of the earth and touched the lives of over a billion people.

These treasures have now also been affirmed by the Roman Catholic Church, resulting in renewal. This process began as early as the Council of Trent, but these convictions were made official Catholic teaching at the Second Vatican Council and in the Joint Declaration on Justification by Faith (1999)..

Roman Catholics can thus express gratitude to God for the benefits that have come to them from the work of the Holy Spirit through Martin Luther, rather than either giving grudging acceptance or persevering in willful ignorance of the source of these benefits.

Similarly, Protestants can rejoice with their Roman Catholic brothers and sisters at the continuing work of the Spirit in their midst. There are ancient spiritual treasures carried in unique ways by the Catholic and Orthodox traditions which can instruct and enrich their Protestant friends. For example, the Catholic and Orthodox witness to historic orthodoxy could help Protestants to resist tendencies to weaken their doctrinal affirmations.

To hold these attitudes will help Protestants and Catholics stand side by side at the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, jointly giving thanks to God for His good gifts deposited in His body through the Reformation.

As we together marvel that the Holy Spirit was able to use such a humble instrument as Martin Luther 500 years ago, we should be eager to recognize and receive the more recent and ongoing surprises of the Holy Spirit in the last 100+ years – which are not limited to but are well represented by the following:

i. The Pentecostal and Charismatic movements

ii. The ecumenical movement for the reconciliation of separated Christian churches/communities

iii. The re-establishing of the nation of Israel

iv. Vatican II

v. The re-emergence of an authentic Messianic Jewish stream of the body of Christ

vi. The modern worship music movement

vii. The 1999 signing in Augsburg of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification by the Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church

viii. The retirement of Pope Benedict and subsequent election of Pope Francis.

During His last night on earth, Jesus prays specifically for the Church in our day, “for all who will believe.” The one thing Jesus requests of His Father is that we would be one as He and the Father are one. (John 17:20-24). Has He stopped praying this as He sits at the right hand of the Father? Certainly not! Will the Father answer “No” to His beloved Son’s earnest prayer? Certainly not! We therefore can and rightly should join with Jesus in His prayer, with great hope and assurance that we will with our own eyes see God answer it.

While we pray in hope with Jesus for unity, it would be overreaching to predict what God’s answer will look like. Observing the Holy Spirit hovering over the chaotic “face of the deep” in Genesis 1, surely no one could not have predicted the outburst of creative actions which followed. Similarly, as the Holy Spirit hovers over chaotic state of the divided Body of Christ, we should expect what only God can speak into being, without trying to manufacture it ourselves.

That being said, it can fuel our prayers to survey the current church landscape and see in our day the remarkable work of God in re-connecting the divided body of Christ. He is at work at the highest levels of church leadership, and also among the laity – forging new friendships, removing long-held contempt, resolving theological differences, and inviting creative partnerships for the sake of missions and evangelism.

Praying John 17 with Jesus stirs up hope that unity not only can but must exist in the midst of diversity. This is the mystery of the unity of the Trinity – three persons with unique identities, unique roles united in one God. Viewed in this light, the lamentable divisions of the body of Christ do not lead us to despair, but to the hope for the emergence of a reconciled diversity.

The dynamic of “turning the hearts of the fathers to the children and children to their fathers” is born in the heart of the Trinity. God the Father honors the Son and entrusts all judgment to Him. The Son in turn does nothing on His own, but only what He sees the Father doing. Jesus and the Father are one (John 10:30), and this is the kind of unity Jesus prays for His followers in John 17.

With regards to the Protestant Reformation, we believe it is fitting and healing for Protestants to honor the “history and roots” of the Catholic Church, from which they were born. Some of the treasures which Protestants received from their Catholic heritage include the preservation of holy scripture, the creeds of faith, and the legacy of unbroken worship from the time of the apostles.

Likewise, we believe it is fitting and healing for Catholics to rejoice in the life and work of their Protestant offspring. Gifts of the churches born during the Reformation include a renewed emphasis on scripture, fuller participation of the laity in the work of the Church, attention to personal holiness and missionary zeal.

Both Catholics and Protestants should remember that the first Christians were Jews. The work of Wittenberg 2017 has been blessed by the participation of several Messianic Jews. How can the hearts of Protestants & Catholics be turned towards our Jewish forefathers? We recall the words Jesus spoke to Samaritan woman, “salvation comes from the Jews.” Honoring our Jewish fathers while actively supporting a renewal of Jewish faith in Jesus the Messiah is critical to the work of unity. Jesus prayer for unity will not be fully answered without Messianic Jewish – and Eastern Orthodox – believers at the table.