What Is the Protestant Reformation? Everything You Need to Know

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The Protestant Reformation marked an explosive turning point in church history, as it recovered and proclaimed the gospel of saving grace. Its message was that God justifies men in his sight by faith alone. To be saved, a person must place their trust only in what Christ has done for them.

This quickly brought the Reformers into conflict with the leadership of the Catholic Church. As a result, Protestants also argued for the primacy of the Word of God contained in the holy Scriptures, above both church tradition and ecclesiastical authorities.

This wide-ranging movement transformed the church as well as ordinary life for men and women across Europe. Beyond the pulpit, important changes and new perspectives arose in liturgy, law, the arts, and education. The Reformation created major lines of division within the church, laid the foundation for modern denominations, and set the stage for our contemporary socio-political world order with sovereign nations, civil liberties, and international law.

Eventually, the Reformation changed the world.

See our complete list of articles on different theological traditions, including our Definitive Guide to Christian Denominations.

When did the Protestant Reformation take place?

We can’t say what the Reformation was without addressing when the Reformation was. But this is a tricky question.

One way to date the Protestant Reformation is to start with Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses and conclude with the Peace of Augsburg. This is how the popular 2003 movie Luther treats the Reformation. But this only covers the years 1517 to 1555. An alternative conclusion is the end of the Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation with the Council of Trent in 1563. English and American points of view prefer to extend the Reformation into the reign of Queen Elizabeth or even the Mayflower voyage in 1620.

Additionally, scholars now refer to a “post-Reformation” era, a time when churches formed during the Reformation underwent development. In Anthony Milton’s recent book, England’s Second Reformation, he argues that 1662 concludes the Church of England’s founding. Gerald Bray’s Documents of the English Reformation notes that it was not until 1689 that Baptists completed one of their founding documents. Bray even identifies the 1701 Act of Settlement, which required that English monarchs be Protestant and members of the Church of England, as a “Reformation” document.

While not as tricky, historians also debate the beginning of the Reformation. In 1517, Martin Luther posted his Ninety-Five Theses on an incredibly symbolic date. October 31 was the eve of All Saints’ Day, the start of a multi-day festival that focused on the Christian dead and the status of their souls. It provided the perfect occasion to protest false views of purgatory. But biographers of Luther commonly note that he had already been on a hugely important theological journey for a few years leading up to this point. Roland Bainton points to Luther’s study of the Psalms and Paul’s epistles to the Romans and the Galatians from 1513 to 1516 as the time when his views on salvation began to dramatically change.

There is also good reason to see the Reformation as an outgrowth of the broader European Renaissance. In 1440, Gutenberg’s printing press allowed for the distribution of literature on a scale previously impossible.The development of mining and military technology was also essential to create the material conditions for the Reformation. The rising bourgeois class and new Renaissance education in Geneva created conditions for clerical training and formation in the Reformation there. And regarding linguistics and textual criticism, the Reformers were quite simply carrying on the Renaissance work of humane learning. The Reformation would not have occurred without the educational and economic transformation that the Renaissance produced.

In addition to the cultural changes, developments in theology were gradually building up to the Reformation. The Ninety-Five Theses were not Luther’s first controversial work. A month earlier, he had written the Disputation Against Scholastic Theology. In this disputation, Luther defended Augustinian theology over and against later developments in medieval scholasticism. He was relying on a much longer history of theological development: An “Augustinian Renaissance” going back to the 1330s had shaped the theological environment which eventually produced Martin Luther. Key developments in the relationship between divine predestination and the doctrine of justification also occurred in the fifteenth century. Incredibly, at the Council of Constance in 1415, where the proto-Reformer John Hus was put to death, theologians debated whether the office of the Pope might become the antichrist.

So while 1517 is still an attractive and simple year to mark the beginning of the Reformation, nearly all of its main elements had been coming together for at least a century prior.

The Reformation, then, should be understood as beginning around 1517 and continuing for about a century. But it did not stand in historical isolation. We can identify an extended prologue period which lasted for at least a century, and we can note another century after the Reformation where its ideas were more fully worked out.

The Reformation, then, can be roughly divided into at least four key periods:

The prologue to the Reformation, ranging from the middle of the fourteenth century until the early sixteenth century.
The early stage of the Reformation, which ran from 1517 to 1521, when Luther could still be understood as a member of the Roman Catholic Church and final divisions had not hardened between Protestants and Catholics.
The period of particularization and confessionalism, from 1521 through the Counter-Reformation Council of Trent in 1563, the 1580 Lutheran Book of Concord, and the 1619 Synod of Dort.
A post-Reformation era, lasting from 1619 to 1700, which established the enduring church bodies and denominations with which we are familiar today.

Seeing the Reformation in this way clarifies its various expressions and highlights its diverse causes and accomplishments.

What caused the Protestant Reformation?

While the history of the Reformation is complicated, it nonetheless centered on one key doctrinal idea: the question of salvation, specifically how a sinner might be forgiven and accepted by God. This was the essential cause of the Reformation.

Justification by faith alone is the central defining truth of the Protestant Reformation.

The doctrine of justification is what caused the definitive break between the hierarchical leadership of the Catholic Church and those who would become known as Protestants. This doctrine set the Protestant Reformation apart from the various moral and social reform movements which had preceded it. It also explains the fundamental change in how Protestants came to understand the sacraments and Christian worship.

Justification by faith alone is the central defining truth of the Protestant Reformation. Philip Schaff put the matter this way:

we must inquire after the material or life principle (principium essendi) of the Reformation. This, according to history, is no other than the great doctrine, which is presented by Paul especially as the entire sum of the gospel—the doctrine of the justification of the sinner before God by the merit of Christ Alone through faith. This doctrine was the fruit of Luther’s earnest spiritual conflicts already noticed; and it formed the proper soul, the polar star and center of his life from the commencement of his reformatory career on to his last breath.

Sola fide

The event that kicked off the Reformation was indeed Luther’s challenge to the practice of selling indulgences on October 31, 1517. That was the initial topic of his Ninety-Five Theses. It is true he did not explicitly argue for the doctrine of justification by faith alone in those theses. But one must understand that Luther had already experienced his “evangelical awakening” before writing the Ninety-Five Theses, what Roland Bainton calls Luther’s “Damascus road.”

Luther underwent a changing understanding of salvation beginning in 1513 with his focused studies on the Psalms, Paul’s epistle to the Romans, and Paul’s epistle to the Galatians. Although still developing, this newfound perspective immediately showed itself. Even in the Ninety-Five Theses, Luther can ask such suggestive questions as, “Why does not the pope empty purgatory for the sake of holy love?” Other thesis statements give the same emphasis: “Any truly repentant Christian has a right to full remission of penalty and guilt, even without indulgence letters,” and, “Any true Christian, whether living or dead, participates in all the blessings of Christ and the church; and this is granted him by God, even without indulgence letters.”

In 1519, Luther preached that we are justified by an “alien righteousness … instilled from without” which is “the righteousness of Christ by which he justifies through faith.” By his 1520 Babylonian Captivity of the Church, Luther could write that the Mass is neither a “good work” nor an “opus operatum” nor a “sacrifice” but rather “a promise … to be approached, not with any work or strength or merit, but with faith alone.” Later in that same year, Luther wrote, “the soul … is justified by faith alone and not by any works.”

Luther’s protest against indulgences was his critique of a symptom. The doctrine of justification was the underlying issue.

Justification by faith alone can be found in all of the Protestant confessions of faith. The Lutheran, Reformed, and Anglican churches all proclaim justification by faith alone as essential to the gospel, the means by which a sinner is accepted by God and so eternally saved. Luther’s Smalcald Articles call the doctrine “The First and Chief Article.” Article 11 of the Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion describes it as “a most wholesome doctrine, and very full of comfort.”

Sola Scriptura

The “five solas” are a popular way to summarize the main ideas of the Reformation. While catchy, the outline only goes back to the middle of the twentieth century.

The more historically accurate way to speak of Reformation “solas” is to focus on two: sola fide and sola Scriptura. The first of these was the “essential” or “material” principle of the Reformation, the doctrine of justification by faith alone. The second is what can be called the “formal” or “knowledge” principle. This is the doctrine of sola Scriptura, that the Scriptures are the only ultimate or infallible authority in matters of faith and doctrine.

For something to be considered doctrine—anything which must be believed to avoid sin or receive grace—it must be taught by the Scriptures.

The doctrine of sola Scriptura does not maintain that Christians should reject church tradition as unimportant. Neither is it opposed to reason or philosophy, as such. Instead, it asserts that for something to be considered doctrine—anything which must be believed to avoid sin or receive grace—it must be taught by the Scriptures and not any merely human authority. Article 6 of the Church of England’s Thirty-Nine Articles puts it this way,

Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation; so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.

Sola Scriptura allowed for a new sense of equality between churches, as no single ecclesiastical corporation could claim the authority to define faith and practice. This commitment also inspired a widespread growth in biblical literacy, the mastery of the ancient languages of Hebrew and Greek, and even early forms of textual and historical criticism (as spurious documents and artifacts were identified and challenged).

Political conditions

In addition to these theological causes, the Reformation also had a number of social and political causes.

We’d be incorrect to explain these as incidental matters or “merely politics.” At the time, church and state, religion and politics, were fully intertwined, and the civil magistrate played a central role in the Reformation. This can be seen in the title of one of Luther’s important treatises, An Open Letter to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation Concerning the Reform of the Christian Estate. The Reformation in England began with what was called “the king’s great matter,” the controversy surrounding Henry VIII’s attempt to take a new wife in the hopes of producing a male heir to the throne.

This political aspect of the Reformation had its own historical pedigree. Conflicts between princes and popes had been common throughout European history. An extended saga, known as “the Investiture Controversy“—over who could select bishops, how church discipline was enforced, and whether the clergy were subordinate to or independent from the civil magistrates—had dragged on from the eleventh century into the fifteenth century. Luther directly appealed to this controversy, writing, “when pressed by the temporal power, they have made decrees and said that the temporal power has no jurisdiction over them, but, on the other hand, that the spiritual is above the temporal power.”

The delicate relationship between the papacy and the Holy Roman Emperor was one major reason why Luther’s local prince, Frederick the Wise, was able to wield so much power. Frederick was one of the men who would elect the new emperor. This explains how he was able to softly defy the papacy’s request to condemn Luther and to delay action for a crucial amount of time. In response to this, Luther proclaimed, “Ultimately, even [Cardinal] Cajetan will have to learn that secular power also comes from God. … I am happy that the Elector has shown his patient and wise impatience in this matter.”

Similar political support proved essential for the Reformation’s progress in Switzerland, the Netherlands, and especially in England. Lack of such support does much to help explain the Reformation’s failure in places like France.

The Reformation insisted that the Word of God must be translated into the common language of the people. This fit neatly with the emerging concept of the nation state. In Reformed lands, the clergy were not subjects of an international ecclesiastical empire, but rather citizens of their respective kingdoms. The Reformation’s interest in increasing biblical literacy also promoted national solidarity. In every Protestant country, the Scriptures were translated into the common language of the people. Vernacular Bibles often served as the primary way a unifying national language spread among the people. This served as an important early step towards the formation of popular culture and mass media. Incredibly, around two million copies of Luther’s writings were published in the German language during his lifetime.

The political and doctrinal causes of the Reformation were not merely mutually supportive; sometimes they were entirely united. This can be seen in the idea of the Christian prince, the conviction that the civil magistrate held at least some jurisdiction over religion. Luther held this on account of the universal priesthood of believers. He wrote, “Since, then, the temporal authorities are baptized with the same baptism and have the same faith and Gospel as we, we must grant that they are priests and bishops, and count their office one which has a proper and useful place in the Christian community.” This was perhaps taken to its greatest extreme in England with the doctrine of the royal supremacy. Thomas Cranmer held to this policy. Shocking to modern ears, he wrote that God has delivered to “all Christian princes … the whole cure of all their subjects, as well concerning the administration of God’s word for the cure of souls, as concerning the ministration of things political and civil governance.”

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Study the Protestant Reformation, including key figures like Thomas Cranmer, using Logos’s Factbook.

Who were the key figures in the Protestant Reformation?

Protestant Reformers

Martin Luther (1483–1546) was without a doubt the single most important figure in the Reformation. His initial protest against indulgences and his subsequent debates about the nature of saving grace caused the Reformation to become what it did. Luther also popularized the Reformation by writing its battle hymn, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” translating the Bible into the German language, and even using satirical political cartoons to spread his message to a mass audience.

Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) was one of the first Swiss Reformers. Often overlooked and not infrequently despised, Zwingli still deserves to be credited as a leading Reformation figure. Though not a singular “founding father” in the same way as Luther, Zwingli was a major founder of the “Reformed” branch of Protestantism. Known chiefly for his controversy with Luther over the nature of the presence of Christ in the sacrament of the Eucharist, Zwingli was also a forerunner of more radical expressions of the Reformation. He promoted a rigorous preaching ministry, one that focused on expository or exegetical preaching. Zwingli also occasionally promoted iconoclasm and even religious violence.

John Calvin (1509–1564) was an austere religious scholar who inspired an international network of Reformed thinkers. While in Geneva, Calvin was able to assert immense influence over ecclesiastical and civil affairs. He founded a university as well as schools for youth and ministerial training centers. Calvin wrote commentaries on almost every book of the Bible, which were widely translated and disseminated across Europe and later in North America.

Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556) was the father of the English Reformation. In addition to helping to form a Protestant national church in England, Cranmer also compiled the Book of Common Prayer. He was the Reformation’s liturgical genius, whose influence in this regard we still feel. Some of his services, like “the Solemnizaton of Matrimony,” became universal templates for English-speaking ceremonies well beyond the boundaries of Anglican churches. Cranmer was a politically subtle man who found himself in more than one compromising moment. While Cranmer began his career assisting Henry VIII in a quest to dissolve a marriage, his life ended at the hands of the daughter of Henry’s first marriage, Queen Mary.

John Knox (c. 1510–1572) was a Scottish firebrand who clashed with various Catholic and Protestant authorities. He spent time as a galley slave in a French ship and was exiled to England and then the European continent before returning to his native land to help found the Reformed Church of Scotland. Knox promoted a style of Protestantism that would eventually become Presbyterianism.

Roman Catholic leaders

While it’s only natural to emphasize the Protestant Reformers, several important personalities defended the Roman Catholic Church and its doctrine during the Reformation. Some of these were staunch opponents of the Reformation entirely, but others were themselves participants in the preliminary stages of the Reformation.

Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) was a Dutch priest, Renaissance humanist, and internationally renowned writer and thinker. Many of the later Protestant Reformers either worked directly with Erasmus or read his materials from a distance. Erasmus helped to produce new editions of the Greek New Testament and inspired later biblical translations and critical scholarship. He also lampooned the decadence and moral decline of the church in his day. Erasmus eventually came to reject the theology of Martin Luther, however, especially Luther’s insistence on divine predestination and his denial of free will in matters of salvation.

Thomas More (1478–1535) was an English law and Renaissance humanist. His book Utopia explored modern ideas of liberty and civil rights. Having worked closely with Henry VIII for many years, More rejected Henry’s plan to separate from the Roman Catholic Church and was eventually executed for his protest. The Roman Catholic Church declared him a martyr and eventually a saint.

Johann Tetzel (1465–1519) was an infamous seller of indulgences who motivated Luther to write his Ninety-Five Theses. While comically corrupt, Tetzel held powerful positions, including that of Inquisitor in Saxony.

Johann Eck (1486–1543) was Luther’s early debate opponent. Sometimes portrayed as a stock villain, Eck was a formidable theologian, and he forced Luther to acknowledge aspects of longstanding church tradition which the Reformation undermined. Eck was also a participant at the Diet of Worms.

Thomas Cajetan (1469–1534) was a Roman Catholic Cardinal assigned to examine the teachings of Luther. A staunch defender of the papacy, Cajetan assisted in Luther’s excommunication.

Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556) was a Spanish priest and the founder of the Jesuit order. Loyola expressed a radical commitment to the authority of the papacy. The Protestants saw the Jesuits as something like religious terrorists, especially in England, but they were also hugely instrumental in Roman Catholic foreign missions and the founding of the modern Catholic school system.

Anabaptists and the Radical Reformation

A third group at the time of the Reformation was neither Protestant nor Catholic. The Anabaptists, or “Radical Reformers,” followed after Luther’s protests but quickly took their arguments further, striking at foundational notions of the church, political society, and occasionally basic beliefs about the characteristics of God, Christ, and even certain moral laws.

Andreas Karlstadt (1486–1541) was the chancellor of the University of Wittenberg while Luther was a student and quickly joined Luther in the Reformation project. Karlstadt also debated Eck and was excommunicated in the same bull as Luther. Karlstadt began to promote a more rigorous and even violent form of Reformation, however, and he argued for a sort of spiritual presence of Christ in the sacrament which greatly disturbed Luther. Karlstadt later moved to Switzerland and served as an important influence on the Anbaptist leaders there.

Thomas Müntzer (1489–1525) was a radical German Reformer who promoted the peasants’ revolt. Müntzer also advocated continuing divine revelation and the imminent return of Christ. He founded a religious militia which eventually led to his arrest and execution by Lutheran authorities.

Menno Simons (1496–1561) was a Friesan priest turned Anabaptist leader. He promoted pacifism and rejected the practice of infant baptism. The Mennonite movement takes its name from Menno, and he is a key influence on several Anabaptist groups.

How did the Catholic Church respond to the Protestant Reformation?

The Roman Catholic Church responded to the Reformation with what is called the Counter-Reformation. The Church corrected certain moral matters and abusive practices. Importantly, it explicitly condemned the selling of offices, including those of priest and bishop. Nonetheless, it defended and codified as dogma most of the main doctrinal points challenged by Luther.

The Council of Trent was held from 1545 to 1563. It proclaimed that the institutional Church did indeed possess and distribute the treasury of merit acquired by the saints throughout the years. It upheld the use of indulgences. It codified the doctrine of purgatory and condemned the doctrine of justification by faith alone. The Council of Trent upheld a version of Augustinian theology but did not enshrine any particular position on predestination. The council also defended the veneration of relics and images, and it proclaimed as canonical the apocryphal books, which were disputed by Protestant theologians.

The Catholic response to the Reformation would form the primary identity for Roman Catholicism up until the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s.

What impact did the Protestant Reformation have?

The Protestant Reformation produced many important and lasting changes. The first was the existence of different kinds of Christian churches in the same area. Initially, the Reformation’s vision was limited to national churches, and religious diversity was still seen as problem. But continuing theological debates would lead to our modern “denominational landscape” and new understandings of religious liberty.

Another major result of the Reformation was the translation of the Bible into the common local language. Rather than a single Latin Bible, vernacular Bibles became fixtures of European, and eventually American, Christendom.

New hymns were also written in the languages of the various Reformed countries. “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” and “We Gather Together” both have Reformation roots and continue to be sung in churches today. Additionally, several of the tunes in the Genevan Psalter have featured prominently in religious music across the centuries. The common tune for the Doxology, “Old One Hundred,” began as a metrical setting for Psalm 100.

As a product of Renaissance learning, the Reformation continued to promote education. It launched schools for youth and universities. The Academy of Genevan, the University of Edinburgh, and Leiden University were all founded during or shortly after the Reformation. Literacy improved dramatically in part thanks to the Reformation. Clerical education was entirely transformed, as ministers were expected to have a familiarity with Hebrew and Greek, as well as biblical and classical studies.

The Reformation doctrine of the priesthood of all believers led to what the philosopher Charles Taylor has called “the affirmation of Ordinary life.” This expression describes the new outlook that secular life, including mundane or domestic duties, could be just as pleasing to God as religious or clerical works. This sentiment is captured in the poetic words of George Herbert, who wrote:

A servant with this clause
Makes drudgery divine:
Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws,
Makes that and th’ action fine.

Wedgeworth’s top books on the Protestant Reformation

The Reformation: A History by Diarmaid MacCulloch
Thomas Cranmer: A Life by Diarmaid MacCulloch
Calvin by Bruce Gordon
Zwingli: God’s Armed Prophet by Bruce Gordon

Reformation Theology: A Reader of Primary Sources with Introductions

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Age of Reform 1250–1550: An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe

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What Is the Protestant Reformation? Everything You Need to Know

When did the Protestant Reformation take place?