The purpose of this paper is to examine some religious reformers and mission ideas. There are some negative aspects on the mission ideas of Religious reformers until now. Except theologians of Roman Catholic Church, Gustav Warneck, who is the father of modern missiology, also evaluated that there were not any mission ideas and mission activities to religious reformers, for Luther did not recognize mission duty, compared with those Roman Catholic which made inroad and was active abroad more than before.However, the study that there was mission to religious reformers was presented by western and Korean scholars. Despite of this positive study, the center of criticism is that if they have mission ideas and theology, how their ideas and theology are systematic and have persuasive power. Therefore, the evaluation to them may be more negative judging from the circumstances resulted in the geographical expansion of gospel and numerical increase of believers because the mission of christianity after 19th century which was called as ‘The Great Century,’ produced a large number of missionaries abroad.Through the examination of results and a limit about the study on the mission ideas of religious reformers until now, this paper, on the other, presented the mission as ‘a witness.’ Jesus Christ gave Great Commission to his disciples, and all of them carried out their duties as the witness of gospel through religious martyrdom. The Latin ‘martyrium’ of ‘martyrdom’ came from the Hellas ‘μαρτυριον.’ The ‘μαρτυριον’ means originally the word ‘witness’ and ‘evidence.’ The etymology of the word ‘witness’ and ‘evidence’ is the same.The martyrdom is the ultimate evidence of gospel. Martyrs strongly impressed to christian community as the witnesses of gospel in their lives, and took the role of enthusiastic missionaries leading the others to faith. Consequently, this paper analyzed their practice more than their theory on the mission of religious reformers, that is, their lives as a martyr for the truth, Jesus Christ. This is because the martyrdom for gospel is the most obvious witness and mission of gospel at once.

This thesis aims to Know the views of the religious reformers including Jan Hus, Martin Luther and Jean Calvin on missionary work, and to know if they actually partake in missionary activities themselves. How did their views on mission influence the way in which future generations conduct missionary work? To approach this theme, we must first establish a clear definition of what missionary work is. And lastly, according to Karl Hartenstein, missionary work is to participate in God’s mission, that is Missio Dei. The author of this paper is interested in the latter definition since this concept seems to have originated from the religious reformers. Jan Hus placed the authority of the Bible over the authority of the church. According to him, the missionary work is to reform the church, when it goes away from the truth of the Bible. According to Martin Luther, the missionary work is the salvation of the world by the promulgation of the Gospel: “only by the belief in Jesus Christ.” According to Jean Calvin, man’s salvation depends upon only God’s sovereignty. Therefore, only God can practice the missionary work by his sovereignty. Like Jan Hus, Luther made efforts to reform the church, when it went away from the truth of the Bible. Jean Calvin taught many theologians in Geneva and sent them to France and other European countries. The religious reformers exerted an important effect upon today’s church. They taught us what is the genuine meaning of missionary work and what must be the direction of today’s missionary work.

The religious authority has generally rejected iconolatry. In order to reinforce the religious authority and to organize the Church which was distracted by the Reformation, the authority had to introduce the image which was the fruit of the Western Catholic Church, and the piety which was distracted by hagiolatry, into the Protestant Church system. There were cases where the desire for Reformation was connected to the ambition for the religious power. Naturally, the arts began to be excluded, and only Luther among all the Reformers did not forbid the arts from being passively accepted. The other radical Reformers were dissatisfied with this kind of attitude and insisted upon stronger iconoclasm. Karlstadt, Calvin and Zwingli started to go their separate ways. The Reformers held fast to the recognition that art was idolatry itself, as a response to idolatry of the Roman Catholic Church, even before they mentioned any theological criteria regarding distinction between art and idol. And the iconoclasts marked radical acts down as clearer, stronger response to the Catholic Church, which would strengthen the Reformation. It cannot be affirmed that the other radical Reformers except Luther failed to have eyes for art and beauty. In Churches of the regions where the Reformers gained victory, holy pictures were no longer demanded as they used to be in the Middle Ages. The artists had to paint other topics for living. Ironically, the Korean Protestant Church of the present time is actively accepting modern technology. The images of Jesus Christ and the holy pictures are slowly disappearing from Church walls. and are replaced by CCTVs showing videos of the pastor’s sermon. The influence of the pastor’s image which is periodically broadcast through closed circuit cannot be irrelevant to the Church’s propaganda and the believers’ idolization of their pastor. A theological excuse is demanded to carefully reconcile the attitude of Luther who used his own portrait to unfold the Reformation, with the attitude of the other Reformers who were dissatisfied with him and insisted upon stronger iconoclasm. The Protestant Church has to focus more on esthetic education to enhance piety through the religious arts, rather than strongly present the pastor’s image on a CCTV.