Henry VIII: How He Ignited A Reformation Part 1

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. So far in our journey through the Reformation, we've stayed in continental Europe. Today, we cross the Channel into England and meet the famous Henry VIII. We'll learn about his life and what motivated him to upset the church in his country.

Stay with us. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, I think it's safe to say that doctrines were not at the forefront of Henry's reasons for breaking with Rome. Dave, I have to say that Henry VIII is one of the most fascinating figures in all of history. I've studied his life, and at the end of this broadcast, I'm going to be telling all who are listening about an interesting story that I love to tell, having visited Windsor Castle a number of years ago.

That's where Henry is buried, and I want to speak about that. For now, I want to emphasize that the Reformation itself is incredibly interesting. Not only that, but Henry VIII, of course, was responding to Luther. All of these details are in my book entitled Rescuing the Gospel, and I had the privilege of standing where Luther stood in the very pulpit where he stood, and he preached his last sermon, and I had the privilege of having part of the sermon there and preach it to the tour group. Well, if you want to know what that last sermon was about, and if you want to hear about Henry VIII, you stay tuned, because I'm going to be telling you both of those stories at the end of this message.

For now, I want you to listen. I have been doing a series on the Reformation, and we continue that tonight. You know, I've always been concerned about Christians who generally believe that church history began with the first Billy Graham Crusade, and what I want us to do is to understand certain things about theology historically, and tonight you're going to learn about how Anglicanism came about. Here we're going to see the providence of God like seldom you see it in history. I mean, you talk about one little thing in history being important, like a pebble on a lake, and the ripples go all the way to the shore. That's what happens. You know, of course, that Catholicism not only had Europe in its pocket, but also England, and so when we talk about the Reformation, we're talking about the Protestantization.

I don't think there's a word like that, but let's say it is. England becoming Protestant. How did it become Protestant?

We learned about Germany and something about Switzerland, but what about England? Now, of course, the way was prepared for the Protestant Reformation in England because of the ideas of Martin Luther, and if you were here in the first lecture that we gave, you remember that there were lawlords in England under John Wycliffe, and they were promoting the English Bible, and so even though they lived a hundred years before this time, there were preparations being made for people to accept the Protestant faith. People were tired of the abuses of the clergy, but nonetheless, there is great opposition to Luther.

Imagine his impact. Here he is in Germany, and he's influencing England. 1521, state officials and Catholics are worried about Luther's works, and they have a ceremony, and they burn them in front of St. Paul's Cathedral in London.

Whenever I'm at St. Paul's Cathedral, and I've been there two or three times, I visualize. I stand back and I visualize 30,000 people gathering for the burning of Luther's books, but nonetheless, Protestantism began to gain some foothold, and now I introduce to you the man who is one of the most remarkably evil and yet unique individuals in all of history. His name is Henry VIII. Henry VIII was not supposed to be the next king of England. His older brother Arthur was supposed to be the king, and Arthur married a woman from Spain. This marriage took six years to arrange. The idea was that if Arthur, who was going to be the king supposedly, they thought, that if he married a Spanish princess, then Spain and England would be together and they would be united.

That's the way things worked in those days. So after six years, Arthur marries Catherine of Aragon, this Spanish woman, and lo and behold, Arthur dies within six months without ever having been the king. His father, who is Henry VII, is to rule until he dies, and now next in line is the man who is going to be Henry VIII. Henry VIII has to marry Catherine of Aragon, because after all, she was married to his brother who died, and furthermore, the marriage took six years to work out the details with Spain. Obviously, he has to continue this succession, and so he marries her, Catherine of Aragon. But Catherine of Aragon did not bear him a son, and Henry was obsessed with a son. She did give him a daughter who would be called Mary, and that daughter is going to turn out to be, in history, bloody Mary. Now, what happens is this. Henry begins to wonder exactly what to do next, and he wants to get out of the marriage, because he has to marry somebody who's actually going to bear him a son, and she's getting older, and he doesn't think she can bear a child anymore, and he is absolutely obsessive compulsive about having a son, because they obviously make better rulers than a woman.

Sorry about that. I'm just quoting Henry. So what happens is he begins to wonder what he can do, so he appeals to the pope for an annulment. Clement is ruling in Rome, and he says, please annul my marriage. What Henry did is he got the scholars to try to figure out some biblical reason why he could divorce Catherine of Aragon.

And lo and behold, they found one in Leviticus chapter 20 verse 21. If a man shall take his brother's wife, they shall be childless. Well, he wasn't exactly childless. He had a daughter, but he didn't have a son, and so taking this verse and building a shaky theory on it, he says the marriage should have never been consummated. This isn't really a marriage at all. It's a marriage that wasn't a marriage. So he appeals to Clement and says annul it for me.

Pause right here. If the pope Clement VII had gone ahead and said, okay, I'll give you an annulment. They used to do it in those days just like they do it now. The reformation would not have happened. Certainly not this way. There would have been some kind of a reformation, but I'll tell you, it would not have happened in the way it happened. All of history would have been changed. Well, why didn't Clement do it?

Annulment here and annulment there. The problem was that the head of the Holy Roman Empire at that time was Charles V. And Charles V was in a war with the pope. In fact, the pope was a virtual prisoner in Rome.

And you know what? Charles V was the nephew of Catherine of Aragon. He would not have liked it to see his aunt humiliated. So the pope's hands were tied. He wanted to give the annulment, but couldn't. Henry's absolutely desperate. He appeals to the universities of Europe and says, get me out of this marriage.

Find out a way. Luther and Melanchthon weigh in on it and say, oh, you know, you could have bigamy like the man who had two wives. Isn't that bigamy?

He said, I'm going a little fast for you tonight. Go Mary too. And all the universities said, oh, annulment is the way to go. And then he appeals to the clergy. The clergy would love to have given him an annulment.

The problem was they didn't want to get into trouble with the pope who had said no to the annulment. By now Henry is madly in love with a woman by the name of Anne Boleyn. As a matter of fact, she's pregnant with a child. Of all things, she's going to give birth to a girl. And that girl's name is Princess Elizabeth and is going to be Queen of England, Elizabeth I, reigning for 45 years. Anne Boleyn doesn't know that, obviously, but she's pregnant. And the marriage has not yet been annulled to Catherine of Aragon. Henry's in a stupor.

What do I do now? So he goes ahead and he marries Anne Boleyn, his second wife, still has Catherine of Aragon to take care of. So what is he going to do? The pope doesn't give him an annulment, so he's desperate.

Well, I'll tell you what he does. He decides that what he's going to do is to encourage the parliament to come up with the act of supremacy. The act of supremacy says very much that Henry is the head of the Church of England and that the pope is to be regarded as nothing more than one of many Italian bishops and the new head of the Church of England is none other than King Henry VIII, king of the Roman Catholic English Church. I am above the pope, the act of supremacy. So with the action of parliament, the pope has no authority in England.

Could I give you a parenthesis? Previously to this, Henry was a very good Catholic. In fact, he died a very good Catholic. In fact, Martin Luther had written a book in which he says that there were only two sacraments and lo and behold, Henry, with the help of some of his aides, wrote a book against it defending the seven sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church and the pope was so pleased that he named him and crowned him defender of the faith.

That's why in England that was on their coins for years. That's its origin, defender of the faith. So the pope, you see, had given this award to Henry. This was, of course, before Henry decided to come forward with the act of supremacy and he was the defender of the faith and now he takes the very pope who had so honored him and basically says the pope has no authority and so the act of supremacy put Henry in charge of the head of the church. And who's the head of the church today in England? The king.

Where did that come from? Right here, telling you the story. Well now, you know, there were some people who, after he had done the act of supremacy that didn't like it, but Thomas Cranmer, hang on to that name, folks. He initiates a way by which the marriage is annulled and what does Henry do to Thomas Cranmer? He appoints him as the Archbishop of Canterbury. That's where the Archbishop of Canterbury in England came from today. Why is Canterbury so important? Well, it's a very large diocese, but Henry appoints him Archbishop and that's why the succession of the Archbishops of Canterbury has been so important in English history, going back to Henry.

Now, what happened? Henry has created the English Catholic Church. Now, the problem was that there were some people like Thomas More who refused to accept the authority of Henry over the pope because Thomas More was a good Catholic.

If you've seen the movie A Man for All Seasons, it's his story and he's generally thought of as a very principled person because he actually was beheaded by Henry for refusing to accept Henry's authority. Now, I might say in passing that Thomas More had been a vicious enemy of Protestants, but let that be as it may. The fact is that Thomas More was beheaded because of his principle of being unwilling to accept Henry's authority over the church. I should point out that in addition to the act of supremacy, Henry also put in place the law of treason and heresy. You know what the law of treason and heresy was? If you do not accept my authority over the pope, you die. That's how come Thomas More died, but a lot of others did too. Good Catholics died because they wanted to accept the authority of the pope above Henry's and Henry says, you can do that, but your body will be in two pieces. Well, Anne Boleyn, bless her, as I mentioned, did not bear Henry a son, but did bear him a daughter, I should say, who's going to become Queen Elizabeth and will reign for 45 years, and Henry suspects her of adultery, and Anne Boleyn is taken to the Tower of London and beheaded.

Now, it's time for a parenthesis. I believe with all of my heart that Anne Boleyn is going to be in heaven. I didn't bring it with me because I don't have time, but if you were to read the prayer that she prayed before she died, it was an amazing prayer. She said, I entrust my soul to the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ who shed his blood for sinners.

I mean, it would give you goosebumps. As a matter of fact, when she went to, was beheaded there at the Tower of London, and you can go to the site today to see the place of beheading, as I have done on an occasion, she actually had with her a New Testament, and where did she get that New Testament from? Tyndale. Now, she never met Tyndale directly because he was on the continent, but what Tyndale did was he sent her a New Testament, and she spent time advancing the Protestant cause, and Henry didn't like that at all. Now, she was accused of adultery.

That's why she was beheaded, but very probably she was not at all guilty of adultery. Henry already had someone else in his sights, because we've only covered so far just two of his wives. The third was Jane Seymour, his third wife. He married her the day after Anne died, after Anne Boleyn died and was executed, and she gave Henry his son Edward. He took this as vindication that the other two marriages were never marriages.

At last, God smiled on him. As for Jane, she had difficulties in childbirth and died, in effect, shortly after little Edward was born, and Henry was really heartbroken. When you go to Henry's tomb today, it's Jane Seymour who's buried with him, the only one of his six wives who has that privilege.

Well, we must hurry on to number four. That's Anne of Cleves. She was recommended to him by Thomas Cromwell, who's an ancestor to Oliver Cromwell. In fact, Anne was from Germany.

She was brought there to form another alliance politically and so forth. She only knew German. She was not able to function in the king's court.

Could I say humbly? He was unable to consummate the marriage. He never did connect with Anne of Cleves. She was number four. Well now we get to number five, Catherine Howard. She apparently kept up male friendships and so forth, so he had her beheaded. And then his final wife was Catherine Parr. She's number six, and she outlived the old man because by now he was bloated and he died of syphilis, and she outlived him and actually married someone else, and that was her fourth marriage. She had been married twice before Henry. She married Henry and then the fourth time.

Now here's the point. The confiscation of the monasteries took place under his rule. All of the monasteries in England were sold. The nuns and the monks were told, you don't need to be monks and nuns anymore, and the lands were sold, and that's where the aristocracy in England really arose.

It is 578 monasteries were sold between 1530 and 1540. All right, Henry dies. Henry dies, but what has happened?

A couple of things. First, the pope no longer has any authority in England, so the strength of the papacy is gone. No more having to pay taxes to the papacy. You have also the fact of the act of uniformity which says that everyone should conform to the new religion, the new kind of Catholicism out of which Anglicanism is going to come. And you also have this man Thomas Cranmer who is the Archbishop of Canterbury who was a Protestant. Now he was appointed by Henry because remember he arranged Henry's annulment of his first marriage.

But Thomas Cranmer is a very important person in this story. So before Henry dies, he says what he would like to do is he outlined the succession after his death. He says, first of all, I want Edward to reign. Edward, you remember, is the son of Jane Seymour. And then I want Mary to reign, the daughter of Catherine of Aragon. She's going to be Bloody Mary. And then Elizabeth, the daughter of Anne Boleyn.

He said this is the succession. When Henry dies, he dies a good Catholic. As a matter of fact, he leaves lots of money for the church to say lots of masses for him because he killed a lot of people and he knew that he needed absolution. See this is why Luther's doctrine of justification by faith alone was so devastating to the church. When people died, when rich people died, they left the church an awful lot of money so that the church would remember to say a lot of masses for them. And now suddenly justification by faith alone was cutting through all that and saying you don't need these masses. Well, Henry dies of syphilis. He was a very immoral man and he passes off the scene. All right, Edward reigns. He's nine years old when he takes the throne.

Two counselors are appointed. One is Thomas Cranmer. Protestantism is increased in the land. The mass is abolished and all kinds of changes come.

Parliament passes a law that all communicants should be allowed to partake of the wine and the bread. And the images were removed from the churches. But alas, he rules very, very few years because at the age of 15 he dies.

What did he die from? Almost certainly he was poisoned by his half sister, Mary, because she was so anxious to get to the throne. So Edwards dies and Protestantism must retreat because coming to the throne now is the daughter of Catherine of Aragon. And you remember Catherine was from Spain, very Catholic, and Mary herself had been persecuted by the Protestants. So she is determined to turn the clock back to Catholicism.

She mandates that the mass is going to be used throughout all of England. And she reigns. And my, how does she reign? Her marriage, she had a disastrous marriage to Philip II of Spain.

And that's a long story. And she was obsessed about having a son. She wanted a son desperately because she did not want the throne to be given to her half sister, Elizabeth, whom she knew was a Protestant. Elizabeth very probably came to understand the Protestant faith because of her mother.

Is this all becoming clear? She is the daughter, Elizabeth is the daughter of Anne Boleyn, who I told you I believe is going to be in heaven. And so Mary wants a son. Now there is a name for it, but she actually had a disease where she thought that she was pregnant. And the bells in London told that a child had been born. But alas, happened on two occasions, alas, there was no child. She ended her life basically being psycho. But she rounds up 2000 clergy who had married and she fired all of them.

They lost their positions. The mass was restored throughout England. And four or 500 people were burned at the stake and massacred because they were Protestants. And that's where she got her name, Bloody Mary. So if you remember the three children of Henry and the order in which they ruled, you basically understand the Protestant Reformation. First of all, you have Edward, he's poisoned at the age of 15. Then you have Mary, who turns out to be Bloody Mary, and then you have Elizabeth. Well, this is Pastor Lutzer.

I promised I was going to tell you two stories, so I shall give them to you very quickly. When I was in Windsor Castle, where Henry VIII is buried, I had the privilege of walking over his grave, because he is buried beneath the aisle. Now the reason that was so interesting is, before he died, he gave a bundle of money, however that was given in those days, so that he would have a huge sarcophagus built over his tomb. Well, the money was used for other purposes, and today people walk over Henry VIII's grave.

There's a lesson there, I think. But then back to the issue of Luther's last sermon. I had the privilege of standing in the very pulpit where Luther preached it and I happened to have the message with me, and I preached a few paragraphs. Now, the passage of Scripture is Matthew 11, verses 25 and 26. Jesus said that the Father had hidden these things from the wise, and he revealed them to children.

Why? Here's Luther. Everything that God does, the wise think they must improve, so that there is no poorer, more insignificant and despised disciple on earth than God. He must be everybody's pupil.

Everybody wants to be his teacher. Well, that's why God reveals things to the babes, but not to the wise. All this, of course, is in my book entitled Rescuing the Gospel. Go to rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337.

You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 60614. When Rome's grip on the church was broken by the reformers, there was great chaos. In England, politics and the church were quite intertwined, and a lot of people lost their heads as a result. Next time on Running to Win, more on the story of Henry VIII. Thanks for listening. For Pastor Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.