The protestant reformation was a catastrophy.
It was Erasmus’ New Testament translation in 1516 that influenced so many of the protestant reformers. He would attack Jerome, of a thousand years before, with his new commentary of what the Bible text means; John the Baptist’s cry in the wilderness as strictly a cerebral notion, as opposed to Jerome’s penance, any hint of Mary in the Old Testament being unfounded allegory…
Erasmus, the prince of humanist was a master of compromise. Erasmus fled the monastic life, having fallen in love with a fellow monk, Servatius Rogerus, to rove about living off the writings of his letters.
He would continue to grub about with his new revision three years later in 1519, attacking Gabriel’s greeting to Mary as simply gracious, as opposed to full of grace…
Luther’s rift with Erasmus was based on Luther’s increasingly dark view of human potential as opposed to Erasmus’ humanistic ideology of how the world might be changed with reasonable reform. Luther of course insisted that human reason was totally corrupted and useless in the theology as a result of the “fall”. Erasmus would eventually be forced back to the existing structures of the Catholic Church as a result of his disputations with reformers like Luther saying, “Therefore I will put up with this Church until I see a better one; and it will have to put up with me, until I become better.”
Tragically, Luther, Zwingli, Melanchthon, Calvin and the rest would, as Erasmus bemoaned, choose their ideas of Augustine’s doctrine of grace, and reject his doctrine of the Church.
Luther, the unhappy monk, devised a barbarian creed - salvation by faith alone. Luther, known to have bouts with the devil as they hurled insults and feces at one another, and engage in battle by fart, would be set free from his own sinfulness by faith alone!, while being relieved of a bout of constipation. “Knowledge the Holy Spirit gave me on the privy, in the tower”, Luther would say. His theology was morally deficient of any intelligence or forethought.
The dump that Luther left on the theological landscape is of no ‘value’ to the Church. This would be Luther’s throne, the toilet. He should have wiped his mouth before he flushed.
The identification of the Church and Commonwealth became a big problem for Luther. Luther could not help but get involved with politics. That was foundation of his theology, the integration of the ecclesiastical and civil authorities, a state church – the godly Prince replaces the Pope.
Calvin’s Geneva, however, would become a police state. His philosophy was to keep the Church separate and distinct from the secular authorities as two distinct entities working together for the good of God. This worked well for Calvin when he had Michael Servetus burned at the stake, and several of his opposition who objected to his increasing support from the civic elite, beheaded with their heads nailed up.
Zwingli had a more humanistic view of the commonwealth, following the teachings of Erasmus; viewing the community as the church, one in the same. Baptism didn’t wash away sin, is simply welcomed one into the community of believers. This would eventually be a problem for him however, as radical separatists would reject infant baptism because babies couldn’t have faith – this didn’t work well for Zwingli’s attempt at an orderly Christian community.
Eucharist theology was a big part of the picture as the opposing camps attempted to distinguish themselves from one another in their understanding of Communion.
Luther would eventually advocate a consubstantiation of some sort. Zwingli rejected any notion of the presence of Christ in the bread. To him it was just a symbolic expression of a believer’s faith. Calvin, well his ideas were a little more complicated. The poor fella became hopelessly confused because of his utter rejection of Mary as anything more than a sack, and eventually ended up advocating some kind of symbolic instrumentalism – something about signs of a reality that become instruments of grace that unite, bla bla bla. I could go on, but it’s so difficult for me to dwell on this kind of nonsense.
A Catholic mystic is never outside the Magisterium of the Church. The heretical spirituali however, like John Wyclif and the Lollards, Hussites, and those who would follow the pernicious ways of the Protestants all rejected the Church, and the Truth Jesus Christ teaches through Her.
The protestant reformation has been a colossal failure all around.
The protesters reject the Eucharist as a popish trick, but demand that you swallow their heretical counterfeit religion as the Gospel. Whatever we gain through compromise, we will ultimately lose.
