Protestant Reformation Research Paper

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Pursuit of Stability and the Reformation The Reformation was one of the phenomenal religious revolution that took place in the Western church in the 16th century. The Prominent leaders of the revolution were Martin Luther and John Calvin. With diversified influence on socioeconomic as well as political structures of Europe, the reformation became the basis for the birth of Protestantism, which is among the three major branches of Christianity in our world today. The Protestant Reformation, often referred to simply as the Reformation, was a schism from the Roman Catholic Church initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli and other early Protestant Reformers: Protestant Reformers were those theologians, churchmen, and statesmen whose…show more content…
However, Martin Luther is recognized to have started the Reformation with his work of The Ninety-five Theses in the year 1517. In his publication, Luther criticized the trading of indulgences which is a way of reducing the amount of punishment one has to undergo for sins committed, insisting that the Pope had no authority over purgatory. According to Catholic Church doctrine, Purgatory is an intermediate state after physical death in which those destined for heaven "undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven (****) and that the Catholic doctrine of the merits of the saints had no foundation in the gospel. The Protestant position, however, would come to incorporate doctrinal changes such as sola scriptura and sola fide. The core motivation behind these changes was theological, though many other factors played a part, including the rise of nationalism, the Western Schism which eroded people's faith in the Papacy, the perceived corruption of the Roman Curia, the impact of humanism and the new learning of the Renaissance which questioned much of the traditional

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