By the late sixteenth century, the lines of division within western Christianity were permanently drawn. And the blood shed there is for Protestants and Catholics, anti-Semites and evangelical Southern Baptists, Germans and Frenchmen, liberal historians, and first-year seminariansall unrighteous ones who need a Saviors alien righteousness. These patterns affected monasticism as well. He also personally translated the Bible into German and he happily met with his ever-growing group of followers. One German prince had his court preacher calculate the total number of years that his (the rulers) large collection of relics would eliminate from his and his subjects time in Purgatory; the total was 1,902,202 years and 270 days. He concluded that God, who transcended both time and space, chose some people as the elect, those who will be saved, before they are even born. The Restoration Movement (also known as the American Restoration Movement or the Stone-Campbell Movement, and pejoratively as Campbellism) is a Christian movement that began on the United States frontier during the Second Great Awakening (1790-1840) of the early 19th century. By 1520 Luther was actively engaged in writing and publishing inflammatory pamphlets that attacked the popes authority and the corruption of the Church. This idea salvation through faith alone was a major break with Catholic belief. Luther Reformed: Nailing Down Church Unity The Catholic Reformation is often associated with the baroque style of art and music which encouraged an emotional connection with Catholic ritual and, potentially, with the experience of faith itself. This is the kind of stuff that happens after half a millennium, when the tug-of-war between hagiographic fact-or-fiction is won and lost by a slew of different card-carrying demographics: Nazis, evangelical Southern Baptists, liberal historians, and so on. Chapter 6: Reformations - Western Civilization: A Concise History - NSCC Numerous devout priests, monks, and nuns abhorred the corruption of their peers and superiors in the Church and called for change the Spanish branch of the Church enjoyed a strong period of reform during the fifteenth century, for example. The Babylonian Captivity and the Great Western Schism both undermined the Churchs authority. Sixteenth-century portrait of Calvin. Luther publicly disagrees with other religious reformers on issues of theology. Alex Duke is the editorial manager of 9Marks. That being noted, one of the reasons that Lutheranism caught on so quickly was that there were large numbers of people within the Church who had long fought for, or at least hoped for, significant changes. Why Do People Say Amen at the End of a Prayer? In Catholic doctrine, salvation is achieved through a combination of the sacraments, faith in God, and good works, which are good deeds that merit a persons admission into heaven. It had a dynamic economy and significant towns and cities. ), but there was no budging on doctrine. In one sense it was a separation, especially a reaction against the rigid juridical structures of medieval Roman Catholicism and its claim to universal truth and jurisdiction. The Protestant Reformation began in Wittenberg, Germany, on October 31, 1517 . It resulted in the creation of a branch of Christianity called Protestantism, a name used collectively to refer to the many religious groups that separated from the Roman Catholic Church due to differences in doctrine. In the 1520s most Lutherans were reform-minded clerics, regarding Luthers movement as an effective and radical protest against all of the problems that had plagued the Church for centuries. The Unity of the Church and the Reformation - JSTOR In this they failed. Likewise, there was no widespread awareness among most Church officials that anything out of the ordinary was taking place with Luther; despite the radicalism of his position, most of the clergy assumed that Lutheranism was a flash in the pan, doomed to fade back into obscurity in the end. This concept was potentially revolutionary because in one stroke it did away with the entire edifice of church ritual. Here, however, we find a two-edged sword, one that cuts in a positive directionbut also leaves an individual without a mediator before God. They each took the throne in fairly rapid succession after his death in 1547; under Edward and Mary (both of whom died of natural causes after only a few years), the kingdom oscillated between a more extreme form of Protestantism and then an attempted Catholic resurgence. The Church began to stage plays not just of Biblical scenes, but of great moments in the Churchs history. Nowhere was there the slightest notion of religious tolerance in the modern sense both sides were convinced that anyone and everyone who disagreed with their spiritual outlook was damned to an eternity of suffering. Unlike many other orders of missionaries, the Jesuits distinguished themselves by not only learning the native languages of the people they ministered to, but of adopting their customs as well. the Church of England was almost identical to the Catholic Church in its doctrine and rituals, it simply substituted the king at its apex and discarded allegiance to the Roman pope. Finally, most of Scotland became devoutly Calvinist, under the Presbyterian branch of the Calvinist movement (many Scottish nobles remained Catholic until well into the seventeenth century, however). Unity Downloadable. Copyright 2023 The Gospel Coalition, INC. All Rights Reserved. Karl Adam's Roots was quite prophetic, but even he could not see what greater efforts toward Christian unity would be implemented in the second half of the twentieth century. Elizabeth I went on to rule for decades (r. 1558 1603) as one of Europes most effective monarchs. Having developed the essential points of his theology, Luther then confronted what he regarded as the most blatant abuse of the Churchs authority: indulgences. Initially a slur against heretics, the term Protestant was soon embraced by those followers, who used it as a defiant badge of honor. Half a millennium after the Protestant Reformation tore apart the Roman Catholic Church, the question of Christian unity is on many people's minds. However, his presence was not without controversy. The best known Calvinists in the American context were the Puritans, English Calvinists who left Europe (initially fleeing persecution) to try to create a perfect Christian community in the New World. Chapter 7: Religious Wars - Western Civilization: A Concise History The history of Christianity concerns the Christian religion, Christian countries, and the Christians with their various denominations, from the 1st century to the present.Christianity originated with the ministry of Jesus, a Jewish teacher and healer who proclaimed the imminent Kingdom of God and was crucified c. AD 30-33 in Jerusalem in the Roman province of Judea. And, while he criticized the popes wealth and (implied) greed, Luther did not attack the office of the papacy itself. Luther and Calvin came to detest one another, finding each others respective theology as flawed and misleading as that of Catholicism. The days of unintelligibly going through the motions had passed. How did this shift play out? Luther responded by posting a list of ninety-five attacks against indulgences to the door of the Wittenberg cathedral. The Reformation was a mixture of theology, ecclesiology, politics, and nationalism, all of which led to breaks in fellowship and created institutional alienation between Christians throughout Western Christendom. In a sense, the very notion of a permanent break from Rome was difficult for many people, certainly many priests, to conceive of. The contrast between the required vow of poverty taken by monks and nuns and the wealth and luxury many monks and nuns enjoyed was obvious to laypeople. For practical political reasons, the pope and various rulers were either unwilling or unable to use force to crack down on Protestantism at first, as witnessed with Charles Vs failed attempts to curtail Lutheranisms spread. No one, by mere happenstance of birth, is wrought in spiritual privilege. Jesuits were also active missionaries, soon traveling all over the known world. All of the past heresies had remained limited in scope as compared with the incredible rapidity with which Lutheranism spread. Practically speaking, the German states ended up being divided roughly evenly, with a concentration of Lutheranism in the north and Catholicism in the south. The very nature of breaking with a single authoritarian institution brought about a number of competing movements, some of which were directly inspired by and connected to Luther, but many of which, soon, were not. Naturally, most people would much rather proceed directly to heaven if possible, and so the Church found that the sale of indulgences to avoid time in purgatory was enormously popular. Christianity was (and remains, although the enmity between the different groups is much less pronounced in the modern era) divided as follows: The Catholic Church remained dominant in almost all of southern Europe, including Italy, Spain, Austria, parts of the Balkans, and kingdoms like Poland as well. If God was all-powerful and all-knowing, and he chose to extend his grace to some people but not to others, Calvin reasoned, it was folly to imagine that humans could somehow influence Him. According to Catholic belief, reiterated under Paul IV, the Bible had to remain in Latin because only trained priests had the knowledge and authority to interpret it for laypeople. Paul urged us "to walk worthy of the calling you have received, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, accepting one another in love, diligently keep the unity of the Spirit with the peace that binds us" (Ephesians 4: 1-3, HCSB). Many religious people disagreed during this time, but after the church received imperial recognition in 313 A.D., it exercised enough power to silence opposition with the sword. In 1542 Paul III approved the creation of a permanent branch of the Church devoted to holding Protestantism in check: the Holy Office, better known as the Inquisition. The most important Protestant denomination to emerge after the establishment of Lutheranism was Calvinism. The Jesuits were founded by Ignatius of Loyola (1491 1556), a kind of Catholic counterpart to Luther or Calvin, in 1540. Students had to apply for admittance, and the Jesuits working at the schools were far closer to their students than were the very aloof professors at traditional universities at the time. The Reformation was a mixture of theology, ecclesiology, politics, and nationalism, all of which led to breaks in fellowship and created institutional alienation between Christians throughout Western Christendom. Simultaneously, Henry petitioned the pope for a divorce a practice that was strictly forbidden. A major focus of the Church was reconnecting with common people, something that many reformers (including popes) believed was only possible if the Church put its house in order. While Catholic monarchs continued to almost completely control the Church in their kingdoms (this was especially true of France), popes had at least moderate success in forcing bishops to stop living like princes, to have priests remain at least nominally celibate, and for church officials to actually live in the places they were supposed to represent. St. Teresa led a major reform that redoubled the nuns vow of poverty and their focus on prayer and purity (the reforms also abolished separate residences and lifestyles for nuns from rich and poor families). Discipline in the church was also very lax. The concept of indulgences relied on the notion of a treasury of merit a kind of spiritual bank whose savings had been deposited by the sacrifices made by Christ and the saints. He could not understand how anyone merited admittance to heaven no matter how many good works they carried out while alive the very idea seemed petty and base compared to the awesome responsibility of living up to Christianitys moral standards. These denominations included Lutheranism, Calvinism, Anglicanism, and other (generally smaller and less historically significant at the time) denominations like Anabaptism. The Roots of the Reformation: The Relevance of History & Criteria For The most important new religious order, by far, was the Society of Jesus, better known as the Jesuits. A growing movement within the Church of England, however, openly embraced Calvinism, and that movement became known as Puritanism (or low church) still technically Anglican, but rejected by the Church hierarchy. A (highly dramatized) portrayal of Luther at the Diet of Worms painted in the nineteenth century. Frederick both genuinely supported and agreed with Luthers views and also realized that he could benefit from rejecting the authority of the pope and, to a lesser extent, the emperor. Luther struggled with his spiritual identity. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. A fellow professor and member of the Church, Johann Eck, publicly debated Luther and forced him to admit that the pope had the authority issue indulgences. As a former soldier, he founded the Jesuits to be faithful soldiers of the pope. The purpose of the Jesuits was to fight Protestantism and heresy, forming a militant arm of scholar-soldiers available to the pope. Its greatest leaders undoubtedly were Martin Luther and John Calvin. Theyre no longer fountainheads of grace, but arrows pointing us to the inexhaustible riches that Gods people have in Christ. The Christianization of the Americas and the evangelization of Asia, Africa, and Australasia gave geographic substance to the Christian title . In other words, when Protestants began fighting each other with the same vigor as their attacks on Rome, they no longer seemed like a clear and simple alternative to Roman corruption. In other words, sola scriptura predicated sola fide; this is crucial to understanding the thrust of Reformation theology. At first, indulgences were granted by the pope for good acts that were supported by the Church; they were heavily associated with the crusades, both in terms of mitigating the normal spiritual consequences of the atrocities committed by the crusaders and in rewarding the crusaders for trying to recapture the Holy Land for the Church. Though the reformers departed from Rome, they also departed from one another. The Protestant Reformation, a religious movement that began in the sixteenth century, brought an end to the ecclesiastical unity of medieval Christianity in western Europe and profoundly reshaped the course of modern history. If so, it may turn out to have been Helmut G. Koenigsberger is Professor of Early Modern European History at Cornell University. Likewise, many princes realized that Protestantism often led to political problems in their territories; even though many of the German princes had originally supported Luther in order to protect their own political independence, many others came to realize that the last thing they wanted were independent-minded denominations in their territories, some of which might reject their worldly authority completely (as had the German peasants who rose up in 1524). The new fervor led to a revival of religious orders focused on reaching out to the common people rather than remaining sequestered from the public in monasteries and convents. His attack on Catholic doctrine was fundamentally based on what he saw as a return to the original message of the Bible. This understanding upended the Catholic Church and its notions of progressive, drip-drip-drip justification. It is insidious, debilitating, and destructive. Throughout the Reformation, little caused as much disagreement as the Lords Supper. We believe that faithful proclamation of the gospel is what our hostile and disoriented world needs. Written in Latin, the 95 Theses were intended to spark debate and discussion within the Church. Catholics and Lutherans mark 500th anniversary of Reformation Lecture 5: The Catholic Reformation The Reformation began with monk Martin Luther in Germany; In 1517 he proclaimed the Ninety-five Theses, short propositions that started a rebellion against the church; Ultimate consequence was the fragmentation of Christian unity; Reformation also brought significant political, social, and cultural change as well; The Medieval Church in Crisis John Calvin Reformation, also called Protestant Reformation, the religious revolution that took place in the Western church in the 16th century. While it was initially organized to try to reconcile, at least in part, with Protestantism, hardliners within the Church won out in the subsequent debates and the Council reaffirmed almost all of the controversial parts of church doctrine and disputed articles of faith; the major exception was that the cardinals and bishops banned the sale of indulgences in the future (the Church still issued them, but they were no longer simply sold for cash). In her forthcoming book on the . The Reformation highlighted that every Christians circumstanceis indeed dire; previously, this may have been obfuscated by pious and sacramental charades, but now it stands in plain sight. The 16th-century church service, before the Reformation took hold, was a mindless chore, a political requirement to accrue whatever grace dripped from priestly faucets. All believers are united with each other whether they know it or not, like it or not, or feel like it or not. The specific phenomenon that brought about the Protestant Reformation was the selling of indulgences by the Church. Answers to these questions have countless layers. A: The Reformation happened for two main reasons. LEARNING OBJECTIVE Understand the origins of the Thirty Years' War KEY POINTS The archbishops called upon Christians to "remember the lasting damage done five centuries ago to the The next dramatic church division took place during the Reformation in the West in the 16th century. Can Catholics celebrate the Reformation? With all that was at stake, couldnt these two Protestant figureheads forego the theological minutiae and establish some sort of co-belligerency? One significant new order along those lines was the Carmelites, an order of nuns reformed by St. Teresa of Avila starting in 1535. History of Christianity - Wikipedia Reformation | Timeline | Britannica During his recovery, Loyola read books on the life of Christ and the saints, which inspired him to give up his possessions and take a pilgrimage across Spain and Italy. The Counter Reformation and the Council of Trent. Lutheranism also spread much more quickly than had earlier heresies, which tended to be limited to certain regions; here, the fact that Luther and his followers readily embraced the printing press to spread their message made a major impact, with word of the new movement spreading across Europe over the course of the 1520s. Paedobaptism was an unquestioned staple of the Catholic Church. Those good works could be acts of kindness and charity, or they could be gifts of money to the Church a common good work at the time was leaving money or land to the Church is ones will. In the end, Luther argued that the pope, and by extension the entire Church, were irrelevant to spiritual salvation. Western Civilization: Ideas, Politics, and Society | Chapter 14: The Lives of saints, prayer books, and anti-Protestant propaganda were printed and distributed throughout Europe. He was obsessively afraid of being damned to hell, feeling totally unworthy of divine forgiveness and plagued with doubt as to his ability to achieve salvation. The French Wars of Religion. Many Protestants interpreted his message as indicating that true Christians were only accountable to the Bible and could therefore reject the existing social hierarchy as well. Luther sparked the Reformation in 1517 by posting, at least according to tradition, his "95 Theses" on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany - these theses were a list of statements that expressed Luther's concerns about certain Church practices - largely the sale of indulgences, but they were based on Luther's deeper concerns wit. The religious-political roots ran too deep, so much that Luther referred to the church as the right hand of God and the state as the left hand of God. Though Simons and the separatist Anabaptists pushed the buck too far in pursuing baptism apart from the church, theyre closer to how credobaptists today understand the ordinance. Roaming salesmen, contracted by the Church, sold indulgences without the slightest concern for the moral or spiritual status of the buyer, and even invented little jingles like when the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs that was the sales pitch of John Tetzel, the specific indulgence salesman who infuriated the key figure in the Reformation, Martin Luther.
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