Why, for instance, didMartin Luther succeed, whereas other important rebels against the medieval church — likeJohn Huss — fail? Well, Luther was successful because printing had been developed by the time he advanced his cause. So his good earthywritings were put into pamphlets and spread so far and wide that the church officials couldn't have stopped the Protestant Reformation even if they had burned Luther at the stake. ~Isaac AsimovIn the Reformation,text andpicture competed with one other as different religiousmedia, in a turn againCatholic visual politics. TheCounter-Reformation above all used theweapons of a re-catholicized visual politics that transformed the space of the church into atheatre ofheaven. The church directed this strategy against theprivatereading of thebible propagated by the Reformation. ~Hans BeltingTheCatholic Church was derived from three sources. Itssacredhistory wasJewish, its theology wasGreek, itsgovernment and canon law were, at least indirectly,Roman. The Reformation rejected the Roman elements, softened the Greek elements, and greatly strengthened the Judaic elements. It thus co-operated with thenationalist forces which were undoing the work of social cohesion which had been effected first by theRoman Empire and then by the Roman Church. ~Bertrand Russell
Why, for instance, didMartin Luther succeed, whereas other important rebels against themedieval church — likeJohn Huss — fail? Well, Luther was successful becauseprinting had been developed by the time he advanced his cause. So his good earthywritings were put into pamphlets and spread so far and wide that the church officials couldn't have stopped the Protestant Reformation even if they had burned Luther at the stake.
Aniconism is apicturetheory under reverse conditions and usually reflects a negative experience with pictures. In the Reformation,text andpicture competed with one other as different religiousmedia, in a turn againCatholic visual politics. TheCounter-Reformation above all used theweapons of a re-catholicized visual politics that transformed the space of the church into atheatre ofheaven. The church directed this strategy against theprivatereading of thebible propagated by the Reformation. In modernsecular society, religious pictures lost their old credibility, which also damaged their status as works ofart. So even within the same religious tradition pictures were subject to historical change.
The hinges on which the controversy turns are these: first, in their contending that the form of theChurch is alwaysvisible and apparent; and, secondly, in their placing this form in the see of theChurch of Rome and itshierarchy. We, on the contrary, maintain, both that the Church may exist without any apparentform, and, moreover, that the form is not ascertained by that external splendour which they foolishly admire, but by a very different mark, namely, by the purepreaching of theword of God, and the due administration of thesacraments.
Tounderstand thechange in Protestant thought and practice, we need to understand the Protestantvision offamily andfertility, particularly as expressed by Luther and Calvin, and how it has changed over the last hundred years. Early sixteenth-centuryEurope was an era very different from ours. The latemedieval Church claimed about one of every four adults in celibate orders, serving either aspriests,nuns, ormonks or in celibate military and trading groups such as theTeutonic Knights. Over the centuries, thereligious orders had, through bequests, accumulated vast landed estates and gathered in the wealth that came through this ownership of productive land. The trading orders held remarkable assets inland, goods, andgold. Many orders were nonetheless faithful to their purposes and vows and used this wealth to tend the sick, help thepoor, and liftprayers toheaven.
While occasionally acknowledging in unenthusiastic fashionSt. Paul’s defense of the single life, theReformers were far more comfortable with the social order described in Luther’sExhortation to the Knights of the Teutonic Order: “We were all created to do as ourparents have done, to beget and rear children. This is aduty which God has laid upon us, commanded, and implanted in us, as is proved by our bodily members, our daily emotions, and the example of all mankind.”
According toHarvard University historian Steven Ozment, in his bookWhen Fathers Ruled: Family Life in Reformation Europe: “Never has the art ofparenting been more highly praised and parental authority more wholeheartedly supported than in ReformationEurope.” Child rearing, in this view, was not just “woman’s work.” In the Protestanthome, father and mother would share the duties of child rearing to an unusual degree. Luther saw the years frombirth to age six as a time when a child’sreason was “asleep.” During these years, themother took the dominant role in childcare. But at age seven, fathers should take the lead, with special responsibility for the moral and practicaleducation ofchildren. Inspired by Luther’s message and example, publishers turned out dozens of so-called Housefather books, sixteenth-century “self-help” volumes for dads.
The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes And dead is all the innocence ofanger andsurprise, And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty room, And Christian dreadethChrist that hath a newer face of doom, And Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee, But DonJohn of Austria is riding to the sea.
Because of the central importance in Luther’s thought of individual reading of theBible,Protestantism encouragedliteracy, not to mention printing, and these two things unquestionably encouragedeconomic development (the accumulation of ‘human capital’) as well asscientific study. This proposition holds good not only inPrussia but also all over the world. Wherever Protestant missionaries went, they promoted literacy, with measurable long-term benefits to the societies they sought toeducate; the same cannot be said of Catholic missionaries prior toVatican II.
Niall Ferguson,Civilization: The West and the Rest (2011)
[T]here are two justifications for it. One... ispragmatic and the other... ismoral. The pragmatic justification is thatliberalism is... a political doctrine that seeks to enable societies to govern themselves overdiversity. It arose in the minds of thinkers likeThomas Hobbes orJohn Locke orSamuel Pufendorf... as a result of theEuropean wars of religion following the Protestant Reformation.
Francis Fukuyama, 2020 Owen Harries Lecture (2020) as quoted in a YouTube Creative Commons video,7:53.
Scott Hahn, Kimberly Hahn.“Rome Sweet Home”. Chapter 3 “New Conceptions of the Covenant”, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993.
I remembered how one of my favoritetheologians, Dr. Gerstner, once said in class that if Protestants were wrong onsola fide-and the Catholic Church was right that justification is by faithand works-“I’d be on my knees tomorrow morning outside of the Vatican doing penance.” We all knew, of course, that he said that for rhetorical effect, but it made a real impact. In fact, the whole Reformation flowers from this one difference. Luther and Calvin often said that this was the article on which the Church stood or fell. That was why, for them this was the article on which the Church stood or fell. That was why, for them, the Catholic Church fell and Protestantism rose up from the ashes.Sola fide was the material principle of the Reformation, and I was coming to the conviction that Saint Paul never taught it. In James 2:24, the Bible teaches that “a man is justified by works and not by faith alone.” Besides,Saint Paul said in 1 Corinthians 13:2, “. . if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.” This was a traumatic transformation for me to say that on this point Luther was fundamentally wrong.
Scott Hahn, Kimberly Hahn.“Rome Sweet Home”. Chapter 3 “New Conceptions of the Covenant”, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993.
Thefamily inearly modern Europe was apatriarchal unit. This view, confirmed by contemporaries andhistorians alike, held that theman, as bothhusband andfather, was supposed to rule hiswife and the rest of the household. TheGerman pastorJustus Menius stated it trenchantly in 1528: “A husband has two functions: first, he should rule over his wife, children, and servants and be head and master of the entire house; second, he should work and produce enough to support and feed his household.”Theologians andhumanists shared this opinion about the man’s role in marriage. In Reformation Germany the model of patriarchy was promoted both by theHausvater literature and by the pamphlets of Protestant preachers like Menius. These authors, and presumably many of their readers and listeners, believed they were living in a time “when fathers ruled.” Humanists, who admonished men to fulfill their civic as well as their familial duties, argued that a man who could not rule his family was a man who could not exercise authority in the commonwealth.
It has often been said that a reformation should begin with each man reforming himself. That, however, is not what actually happened, for the reformation produced a hero who paid God dearly enough for his position as hero. By joining up with him directly people buy cheap, indeed at bargain prices, what he had paid for so dearly; but they do not buy the highest of all things.
The Present Age, bySøren Kierkegaard, 1846, Dru translation 1962, p. 56-57
As it happened, the merging ofreligion andnationalism furthered the cause ofEuropean colonization in the New World by helping spur intense competition in a variety of ways betweennation states. Europeans, even as they fought over the Reformation, were in competition for economic resources and trade.Nations were attempting to become the most dominant power inEurope and sawcolonies as the best means to achieve that goal quickly. And they were also in competition over propagating their brand ofChristianity. The leadingimperial powers in what was to become theUnited States all wrestled withfaith andnationalism in different ways.
Lyingteachers are rising, introducing ruinoussects, and drawing upon themselves speedy doom. Their tongues are fire, a restless evil, full of deadlypoison. They have bitter zeal, contention in their hearts, and boast and lie against the truth.
The league atAllstedt wanted to establish this principle,Omnia sunt communia, ‘Allproperty should be held in common’ and should be distributed to each according to hisneeds, as the occasion required. Any prince, count, or lord who did not want to do this, after first being warned about it, should be beheaded or hanged.
Thomas Müntzer inRevelation and Revolution: Basic Writings of Thomas Müntzer (1993), p. 200
[T]he Reformation, which was itself a triumph ofAugustine's doctrine of grace over Augustine's doctrine of the church.
Thomas E. Peck, 'Thornwell's Writings',The Southern Presbyterian Review (July 1878), reprinted in Thomas E. Peck,Miscellanies, Vol. II (1896), p. 385
The Catholic Church was derived from three sources. Itssacredhistory wasJewish, itstheology wasGreek, itsgovernment andcanon law were, at least indirectly,Roman. The Reformation rejected the Roman elements, softened the Greek elements, and greatly strengthened the Judaic elements. It thus co-operated with thenationalist forces which were undoing the work of social cohesion which had been effected first by theRoman Empire and then by the Roman Church.
Bertrand Russell,History of Western Philosophy (1946), Introduction.
Before the Reformation, the value ofsexual intercourse was viewed almost exclusively through the lens of procreation. After the Reformation, the lens widened to embrace the unique joys and pleasures of the covenantcompanionship marriage provides. Thus, sex could be wholeheartedly enjoyed even if performed without the express intention of conceiving children. This view helped paved the way for acceptance of what are now known as “natural”birth control methods. Yet, neither the Catholics nor the Reformers could ever have fathomed the numerous other options that would arise in light of modern medical advances.
"Iconoclasm was the centralsacrament of thereform," states Eamon Duffy. It is an assertion that is more provocative than strictly accurate, especially in its dismissive use of the term "sacrament" in association with theAnglican Church, but many historians have persuasively presented iconoclastic extremism as a defining factor in theEnglish Reformation. The long struggle over "images" had broad and deep connections with the transformation of English society and the ideologies ofselfhood,identity,gender, andsexuality that governed, or as Louis Althusser puts it, "interpelated",men andwomen into the grand narrative of theirculture.Today, some may say thepicture of the world advanced by the reformers was maybe no less false, theidolatry of theWord no less pernicious than the idolatry of theImage. Yet Aston confesses that while she believes thathistorians are "not supposed to take sides," she finds it hard to "sympathize with the reformer's zeal fordestruction. Doing without images is one thing, annihilating them is another.Destruction may be exhilarating, but it has an eventual fall-out which is the opposite of life-enhancing."
[I]t isAugustine who gave us the Reformation. For the Reformation, inwardly considered, was just the ultimate triumph of Augustine's doctrine of grace over Augustine's doctrine of the Church.
B. B. Warfield, 'Augustine',Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics, Volume II: Arthur—Bunyan, ed. James Hastings (1909), p. 224
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