Rulers use to be able to carry God around and have people bow to their possession. The rich used to be able to buy divine favors by simply hiring a priest and having him perform masses. Rich and poor, political power and peasants, were all made into the ultimate heaven reality. Gold didn’t just buy your luxuries; it bought forgiveness. Power didn’t mean controlling people; it meant controlling God.

These things were not actually true but they (among other things) were the popular percetion and thus the great political reality. Denying transubstantiation was a shotgun blast in the face of the social order as it had existed for centuries. All those obscure arguments about “presence” are anarchy in ink. They dare to question whether the powers are capable of compressing divinity into a wafer and making people go to their knees when they parade their passive god nearby.

So martyrs like Hugh Latimer died for a point in theology when they refused to affirm transubstantiation. But it was not a “fine point” as Evangelicals like to pretend exist. We should admit that sometimes things appear to be inconsequential when they are not, but nothing in true theology is ever really inconsequential. The martyrs died for the truth that Jesus is the only Lord and Savior of the world. And that has never been a “fine” distinction. It has been explosive to the powers of darkness and always will be.

Because the movie version of Alan Moore’s (quite anti-Christian) comic book has come out (I haven’t seen the movie and am not recommending it), I can’t help but think of Guy Fawkes. He merely had gun powder to light, but Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley proved to be fuses in a more powerful blast.

“Be of good cheer,
Master Ridley,
and play the man,
for we shall this day
light such a candle in England
as I trust by God’s grace
shall never be put out.”