Do you ever feel not good enough? Are you worried about your conscience and whether God, if there is one, might have reason to punish you? You are not alone. We all at times feel inadequate. The Good News is, God has much more grace than we have shortcomings. Hallowe'en and Reformation Day can help us to understand this.

Ever wondered about the origins of Hallowe'en and the Protestant Reformation? On October 31, 1517, the evening before All Saints, the Augustinian monk and theology professor Martin Luther posted 95 theses on a church door in Wittenberg. Hallowe'en 1517 is considered the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.

Modern science came through the Reformation

The Reformation changed history and even our modern thinking. Ideas like freedom of thought and tolerance became common through the Reformation. It was the spiritual enlightenment that freed thinkers from the restrains of the Church doctrine and thus made modern science possible. People like Galileo, Kepler, and Copernicus only trusted themselves to talk about their findings because of the Protestant Reformation.

Google’s AI tool says: “The Protestant Reformation influenced science by encouraging a culture of challenging authority, promoting empirical observation through a literal interpretation of scripture, and providing a religious rationale for studying nature as God's creation.

“This shift fostered a new scientific mindset that favoured direct observation and experimentation, which in turn helped pave the way for the Scientific Revolution.”

When Michael King Sr visited Germany in early 1930s he was so impressed by the Reformer that he changed his and his son’s name to Martin Luther King. Interestingly, Martin Luther King Jr’s life later had a lot in common with the reformer, especially not to back down when the establishment opposed them.

Hallowe'en is old English for holy evening

Luther had chosen Hallowe'en, the evening before All Saints, for two reasons. Firstly: Hallowe'en is the night, when medieval folks tried to get rid of bad spirits by making noise and wearing scary masks, so that they could celebrate the next morning peacefully. In a way, Luther wanted to get rid of the bad spirits that had entered the Church, like indulgence.

His second reason was, that he could reach a huge audience on the holiday. He wanted to have a theological discussion at the University of Wittenberg like modern day debates with affirmative and negative.

However, this debate did not happen. Luther had sent a copy to Archbishop Albert of Mainz, who was responsible for the sales of indulgence in Germany. However, the Archbishop was not interested in theological debates, he needed the money from the indulgence sales.

Indulgences were an invention of the medieval Roman church to apparently shorten one’s penalties in purgatory. Purgatory itself was not a biblical concept either, but a concept from Greek philosophy, which was adopted by the medieval Church over time and in 1274 was established as dogma. It was an instrument to reduce “bad behaviours” by threatening the people with horrific punishment after death to “purge” the souls of sinners so that they could enter heaven.

How were indulgences supposed to help?

The idea of indulgences is a balance-sheet idea. Simply said: for every good deed one gets merits, for every bad deed one gets minus points. Ideally the sheet should balance out or, like in case of the so called saints, have a surplus of good deeds.

The Church’s argument was that since the saints did not need the surplus, they gave it as a treasure to the Church which could then give it to the people for money.

Most people lacked good deeds to balance their “account”. To make up for it they were encouraged to go on a pilgrimage, pray certain prayers several times a day, look at relics (objects that supposedly had been related to Jesus, Mary or other saints), or support the church financially by buying indulgences.

Around 1515 the coffers of the Roman Church were sadly empty, but newly elected Pope Leo X still wanted to build a huge cathedral above the grave of St Peter in Rome and thus needed lots of money. He wanted to sell indulgences for that purpose.

Worldly rulers did not like the idea that money (gold) would leave their countries without material value in return. So the stronger kingdoms like England and France outright denied the Pope the sales. Germany on the other hand was not a unified country, but had about 100 regional principalities. Only very few powerful princes like in Electoral Saxony, where Luther lived, were able to forbid the sales. But their people just crossed the border to the neighbouring territory to buy “their ticket to Heaven”, or “help” a loved relative who had died.

What was Luther’s point?

Luther had studied the Bible intensively. In his early years he felt he was never good enough for God. Even though he was very serious about faith, he felt, he missed the mark. When he studied theology and the Bible he realised the whole idea of purgatory and indulgence was not biblical. The Bible, especially the New Testament, had a totally different concept, the concept of grace. Particularly in the Book of Romans, he found a new way of being reconciled with God: by grace alone.

He had learnt that God loves us so much, that he took care of our negative balance by sending his Son, Jesus Christ, into this world to save the world (John 3:16). Christ did everything that had to be done.

He grants us forgiveness. Nobody can gain righteousness out of works. Not even the best saints could claim righteousness, according to the Bible. Romans 3:20-22 (NIV) says: “Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin. But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.” What a liberating thought.

Good deeds are not bad, but they don’t get us righteousness. Righteousness is granted by faith in Christ alone, our good deeds can only be an expression of gratitude after our salvation, which is called sanctification.

If even our own good deeds cannot get us righteousness, indulgence, the good deeds of others, cannot either. Only God’s Grace in Jesus Christ can and will help us.

For Luther, the Bible was the only authority for those matters. He accepted arguments only from scripture and logical reason, not tradition. Tradition, lie councils, had erred before and contradicted each other. Thus, scripture became very important.

Consequently Luther translated the Bible into German. An English student in Wittenberg, William Tyndale, began translating the Bible into English for his people. Unfortunately, he was executed for doing so before he was finished, but his work was later used for the King James Version. Can you imagine that people were burnt on the stake for just owning a Bible in their own language?

Attempts to silence Luther

The Pope and Archbishop tried to get Luther silenced by having him banned rather than find theological solutions. To avoid persecution Luther was abducted and brought secretly to the castle in Eisenach. Everybody was talking about his ideas. The Reformation became a huge movement throughout Europe.

Thanks to the newly invented printing press, ideas spread very fast, similar to our social media revolution today. Other reformers, like Huldrych Zwingli in Switzerland, John Calvin in Geneva and Strasbourg (France), Thomas Cranmer in England, John Knox in Scotland and many more argued like Luther and educated the people opposing the Roman tyranny, as they called it.

They all agreed on four principals for salvation: Sola Gracia (by Grace alone), Sola Fide (by Faith alone), Sola Scriptura (Through Scripture alone) and Solus Christus (Through Christ alone).

• Karsten Decker is a German theologian with a double degree equivalent to an MTheol and MDiv. He studied in Marburg (Germany), Knoxville (USA), and Toronto (Canada) and comes from a united church of Lutheran and Reformed Churches. He was the pastor of Peace Lutheran Church in Bermuda from 2010 to 2017, and after returning from Germany is now the temporary pulpit supply at Centenary United Methodist Church in Smith’s