by Stephanie Shin

“For were the works of God readily understandable by human reason, they would neither be wonderful nor unspeakable.”
-Thomas À Kempis

As I read up on Thomas À Kempis (much of the following thoughts taken from Pages from Church History) one of the forerunners of the mysticism movement and author of the well-known work, The Imitation of Christ, it became a challenge to find a happy medium between many of the ideas espoused by the mystics and a faithfulness to the living Word of God. In the end, a growing appreciation for Thomas À Kempis and his teachings found its way in God’s sovereignty. But let’s start at the beginning.

À Kempis was believed to have lived from 1380-1471. Some of À Kempis’s earlier contemporaries were sizeable figures such as John Wycliffe, who championed the then-heretical teachings on the sole authority of Scripture in the church life, and Jan Hus, Wycliffe’s counterpart in the Czech Republic. While the Roman Catholic Church in the 14th and 15th centuries had grown in size and wealth, the pope struggled to maintain its hold on Britain and Germany. This is the era that prefaced the Reformation and the context that À Kempis lived.

A heavy influence on the writings of Thomas À Kempis developed from the monastic order that he was a part of—the Brethren of the Common Life founded by Gerard Groote. The heart of this monastery was the idea of being a “true disciple,” an imitator of Christ. At the time, the scholastic movement had penetrated Christianity. Many criticized the scholastics for the heavy emphasis placed on intellectual examination and rationale. This movement ignited the reactionary mysticism movement of which À Kempis himself was a proponent. The mysticism movement, as a rejoinder, described the knowledge of God as personal and transcendent; God was not to be found in books but experience. Unfortunately, this often came at the expense of Scripture.

Many of Kempis’s own convictions took shape in his most renowned book, an organized meditation named The Imitation of Christ. His book was split into four sections: Counsels on the Spiritual Life, Counsels on the Inner Life, Counsels on Inward Consolation, and On the Blessed Sacrament. A brief look at the three points in the first section is a good indicator of his ideals that:

1. We must follow Christ’s way of life if we are to attain true enlightenment and freedom from the blindness of the heart.

2. There must be humility in learning of the Trinity. Lofty words attain nothing, but a good life is pleasing to the Lord.

3. There must be a withdrawal from the love of visible things and an affection to things invisible.

À Kempis wrote much of his treatise with the context and practice of monastic life in mind, but he acknowledged that spiritual health does not stem from the monastery in and of itself, but from the transformation of one’s life.

Coming from a fairly sparse knowledge of À Kempis and the mysticism movement, it was interesting to see how God used men like À Kempis and Groote to impact the coming Reformation. They gave voice to the dissatisfaction that was rising against the Roman Catholic Church and the need for moral and reform restructuring was identified.

While À Kempis was unable to bring about any extensive change because his teachings lacked the biblical foundation, a relatively new focus on the “suffering servant” and the idea that the Scripture was to be lived out in real life and not just intellectually known surfaced. While faith and Bible knowledge standing on their own do not depict the full picture of the Christian, it was soon made clear through revolutionaries like Martin Luther that Christ demanded full obedience in both areas. How awesome to know we are enabled because we are controlled by His love!

by Jennifer Shin

Even before Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, there was another man who opposed the Roman Catholic Church and challenged its teaching and its authority – John Wycliffe. Wycliffe is considered to be the main precursor of the Reformation and is thus called “The Morning Star of the Reformation.” It was through his own Bible studies that he first began to question the teachings and traditions of the Catholic Church.

Wycliffe challenged several views that were held by the Catholic Church including transubstantiation – the idea that there is a change of substance from the bread and wine to the actual body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist – and also submitted the view of the priesthood of all true believers. But the foundation of his desire for reform in the Roman Catholic Church laid in the authority of Scripture. He believed in the sole and absolute authority of Scripture in the life of the Church but much of what he saw in the Church was Papal supremacy. The papacy did not adhere to the will of God according to Holy Scripture. Wycliffe stated, “Holy Scripture is the highest authority for every Christian and the standard of faith and of all human perfection.”

Because he believed the Word of God to be the absolute and only authority for the Christian, he also believed that the Bible needed to be made available to all men. At the time, England only possessed Bibles in Latin Vulgate. Church services were conducted in a language the people could not understand. Complete Bibles were only found in monasteries, college halls, the largest abbeys, and in the homes of the elite. Wycliffe thus conducted a translation of the entire Bible into the English vernacular from the Latin Vulgate. Though parts of Scripture were already translated into English prior to his involvement, Wycliffe was the first to oversee the process of translating the entirety of Scripture and to produce the first fully translated English Bible.

Many opposed the idea of the “average man” having a Bible in his hands and attacked Wycliffe and those who shared his vision, stating that those who could read English “did not know enough theology to understand the Bible.” The Church also took action and burned the English Bible wherever they found it.

The Bible was hard to obtain, even after it was translated into English, because of its monetary value. One Bible cost as much as two hogs, which fed an entire family for a year. It’s quite unfortunate to see how the majority of the copies of Scripture today are sitting on our bookshelves, full of truth, yet unable to transform our lives – not because it is powerless, but because we do not care to know what God says. We would rather choose to be swayed by the influences of the world and live under its authority, rather than allow God to govern our lives through His Word.

“Above everything else Wycliffe placed the Word of God, which was to him a beacon and a shining light in a world of gross spiritual darkness.” There is no greater authority than God, Himself. And knowing what this world is like and how it so easily manipulates us and tells us how to live, we ought to be constantly running to His Word for wisdom and protection from its ways.

by Kevin Au

When we think of the Reformation, no other name comes to mind more than Martin Luther, and for good reason. This was the man who stood at the forefront of the German Reformation, nailed his 95 theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg, and stood before men who could take his life yet held his ground at the Diet of Worms in one of the greatest moments in church history. But underneath these grand acts of devotion to the truth lay a deep appreciation and die hard commitment to the Bible as basis for truth.

Luther spent most of his early years in preparation to become a lawyer, and came very close, except by a surprising act of God. As Luther was on the road, coming home from law school, he was caught in a thunderstorm and so frightened that he vowed to St. Ann to commit his life to the monastery if he survived. Luther admitted later that this was a blatant act of sin, but he and all of subsequent church history is thankful for all the good that came of it.

True to his word, he committed his life to the monastery, where he developed a deep sense of his sin and guilt, but without the proper understanding of the gospel to free him. He was constantly tortured by his own guilt, desperately seeking God’s approval and mercy on his soul with his sorrow and acts to please God. He would often beat himself, hoping to curry some favor from God. Through his study of the Bible, he would come to understand that salvation and righteousness comes by faith alone. His passion for getting the truth out to the common man would soon challenge the heresy of his day.

What characterized Luther’s ministry and drove his influence in the church was his devotion to and emphasis on the Bible, or the external Word, as he called it. He believed that the Bible was true, applicable, and more valuable than the authority of the hierarchical establishment of Rome. It wasn’t long before a host of circulated writings attacked the beliefs and practices of the established church. This culminated with the nailing of his 95 Theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg, as Luther publicly challenged the stranglehold of the Catholic Church.

This was revolutionary. Revolutionary enough that he was brought before the Imperial Diet and given an ultimatum: either he recant his writings or be condemned as a heretic and punished. In response, Luther gave his famous defense, concluding that “I neither can nor will make any retraction, since it is neither safe nor honourable to act against conscience.

Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen.”

Luther escaped his sentence with the aid and protection of Frederick the Wise, ruler of Saxony. He spent the rest of his days practically in exile in Saxony, where his ministry took place in relatively quieter fashion. Though most would know of the grander events of his earlier life, the bulk of his ministry took place during the rest of his years, as he took on the role of preacher, teacher, and writer.

While he was known as a university professor for most of his life, Luther was also a regular preacher, preaching well over 3000 sermons between 1510 and 1546.

In addition to this, Luther also was a family man. He married Katharina von Bora and had 6 children with her, also having to deal with the loss of his daughter Elizabeth in the midst of the busyness of his life.

During these years as well, Luther’s ministry as a writer flourished. He wrote regular publications, and among them, his most famous work: The Bondage of the Will.

His ministry did not end there. He bore the weight of the church, dealing with the practical issues of churches that were walking for the first time without the support of Rome. Luther continued to fuel the Reformation he helped to start, writing the Large and Small Catechism for the instruction of the church, publishing a hymnal for worship, and translating the complete Bible into the German language, giving the common man access to the Word of God.

The influence this man had on the church is immeasurable.

Though there were reformers before and after him, his writings and devotion to understand the Word, as well as the circumstances that God brought about in his life worked to ignite the Reformation in earnest.

by Moon Choi

Protestantism reached France soon after Luther nailed his ninety-five theses on the door of Castle Church. French Protestants followed Lutheran theology but later became aligned with Calvinistic theology once Calvin set up his ministry in neighboring Geneva, Switzerland. These French Protestants were known as the Huguenots (pronounced hue-ga-nots). The origin of this name is still unknown, but the Huguenot name came to identify these French Protestants around 1550.

Until their dispersion, the Huguenots had been severely persecuted. As it happened in other countries in which Rome had a stronghold, the papacy and the French monarchy relentlessly persecuted the Huguenots in an effort to extinguish the heretical movement. In 1536, a general edict was passed, which encouraged the eradication of the Huguenots. However, in 1561, Catherine de’ Medici, the queen of France, passed the Edict of Saint-Germain, giving the Huguenots some liberties with their worship, as long as it was private. She was not sympathetic toward the Huguenots; rather, she was seeking to establish a political stability between the Catholic Church and the new Protestant movement. This was short lived. In 1562, the Wars of Religion was galvanized when twenty three Huguenots were slain and roughly two hundred were injured at Vassy, France. The Wars of Religion lasted for thirty years and ripped apart France, both socially and financially.

The political tension between the Catholic monarchy and the Huguenots escalated, the former fearing retaliation from the latter. As a result, on August 24, 1572, a mass Huguenot massacre began and lasted for weeks following. Thousands of Huguenots flooded into Paris for a wedding between Huguenot Henry of Navarre and Marguerite de Valois, who was Catherine de’ Medici’s daughter, another marriage planned in a desperate effort to bring political peace. Charles IX, de’ Medici’s son, ordered the death of these Huguenots. The killings lasted a weeks as the Huguenots were chased from Paris into the countryside.

Henry of Navarre’s life was spared and he converted to Catholicism. He became King Henry IV. Though a converted Catholic, Henry IV was very sympathetic to the Huguenots. In 1598, he passed the Edict of Nantes, bringing an end to the Wars of Religion. This allowed the Huguenots to have twenty “free” cities in which they could have public worship. Peace followed but after Henry IV was murdered by a Catholic zealot, his son, Louis XIII blatantly refused the rights of the Huguenots found in the Edict of Nantes, stating, “[Henry III] feared [the Huguenots], and [Henry IV] loved them; but I neither fear nor love them.” Thus the persecution of the Huguenots began once again. All the free cities granted by the Edict of Nantes were destroyed until the last one, La Rochelle, an important Huguenot stronghold, fell in 1629. Louis XIV, Louis XIII’s son, revoked the Edict of Nantes all together in 1685. Protestant pastors were given a twenty-four hour notice to leave but the laity was forbidden to leave the country. Still, many risked their lives by following their pastor out of the country, some even hiding out in the barren lands of south-eastern France to practice their faith, undisturbed. Those who were captured were either fined, imprisoned, killed or became galley slaves. Women were sent to prison for life. Children were ripped away from their parents to be reeducated by the priests and nuns. All it took for the men in the galleys to escape was a revocation of the Protestant faith. Many men remained galley slaves for twenty, thirty years, refusing to deny that they were saved by grace alone through faith alone through Christ’s substitutionary atonement. Many families fled the country in fear of their children’s souls. Some pastors risked death twice and left France for Geneva explicitly for the purpose of being trained by Calvin himself, only to return to shepherd their flock.

For those who remained in France, Louis XIV also issued draggonades, a policy which forced Huguenot families to house particularly difficult dragoons (cavalrymen) in their homes. These dragoons “gave such loose rein to their passions that their frightful excesses would have shamed a horde of brigands” (Withrow, 1). There were also forced conversions by means of torture. Though men had their feet burned until they were crippled, driven to madness by dripping water on their heads, or their bones broken for hours, they shared the same sentiment as a victim, Pastor Homel, who said to his weeping wife, “Farewell, beloved spouse. Though you see my bones broken to shivers, yet is my soul filled with inexpressible joy” (Withrow, 1). Those who weren’t tortured were excluded from the public life, not being able to participate in higher education and the arts.

The enthusiasm that the French monarchy once had for Protestant persecution soon died down to a point in 1764 when they were practically tolerated and left to openly practice their faith. They were given legal protection a quarter of a century later.

In the end, about 250,000 Huguenots left France. Some 200,000 Huguenots had perished through persecution. This caused a “brain drain” in France as many Huguenots constituted the upper-middle class. These Huguenots scattered around the world, some going to neighboring countries such as Switzerland, Germany, England, the Netherlands or Poland for refuge. Some came to America. Others went to South Africa. The Huguenots, after a few generations, eventually integrated into their respective cultures. However, wherever the Huguenots went, they built a reputation for themselves as industrious, honest people. Some American colonists were of Huguenot descent, the most famous one being a man who was named after his father, Apollos Rivoire, which, when anglicized, is Paul Revere.

It is easy to merely read all the numbers of those who were persecuted and perished and to store it in our minds as historical information. However, when we consider the fact that all it took for these Huguenots was a simple Catholic confession of faith to be saved from exile, torture, or death, it is amazing to see that so many of the saints that came before us simply refused to reject the doctrine of grace and to cling to the cross. They truly saw that to live is Christ and to die is gain.