The church has “functionally replaced the Five Solas of the Reformation with pragmatic, and often idolatrous, solas of our own making,” says Bible study author, speaker and blogger Michelle Lesley. I’d venture to say that a large number of professing Protestants have no clue what the five solas are. Not only that, many Protestants are unclear what the Protestant Reformation was all about. Why, they wonder, does an event that happened 500 years ago matter today?
According to Michelle Lesley, the Protestant Reformation not only matters, it was a really big deal. So she’s taken the time to fill us in on the events leading up to the schism from the apostate Roman Catholic Church that was sparked by a humble German monk….who changed the course of religious history. Lesley also reveals the Christian’s instructions for life and godliness. She writes:
This year marks the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. October 31, 2017 will commemorate the date in 1517 when Martin Luther famously nailed his 95 theses – a list of grievances against the Catholic church for unbiblical doctrines and practices – to the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany.
Luther’s calls for reform spread quickly throughout Europe, inspiring the likes of church fathers Ulrich Zwingli (Zurich), John Calvin (Geneva), and John Knox (Scotland) to join the effort in their own locales. As they worked to address the issues raised in Luther’s document, these men codified what we know today as the “Five Solas of the Reformation,” the basis of Protestant church doctrine. The five solas are:
