The Reformation at 500: An Orthodox View
2nd October 2017
artin Luther’s Protestant Reformation turns 500 at the end of this month, and I honestly think he would have been surprised to see it last this long, not so much because his initial project of reforming the Church of Rome would have been realized by now but rather because he was under the impression that the world was probably ending soon. Well, here we are, and it’s 2017. A lot has happened in Protestantism’s five centuries.
Most people look at the Reformation from either a Roman Catholic perspective or a Protestant perspective.
There is a reason that there has never been a ‘reformation’ in Orthodoxy. Most of the issues that Protestants raised are areas in which the Roman church departed from Orthodoxy. Sale of indulgences can’t happen in a Church that doesn’t believe in Purgatory, for example.