Did the Protestant Reformation do anything good?

[FabiusMaximus]

Do you think the Protestant Reformation did anything good? I personally thing it was one of the greatest tragedies in the history of the human race, but could’ve been avoided. And if it were avoided, things would be a lot better off today. Why did it happen, and what could have been done to stop it, and what can be done now to reverse the damages wrought by it?

Well I’m not a Roman Catholic, so obviously I probably wouldn’t have the same perception as you. To non-Catholic Protestants, the Reformation was necessary.

But even from a Catholic perspective, I think you can make an argument that the Protestant Reformation did good. It provided the much needed impetus for internal ecclesiastical reform. The Church was in a deep crisis, it needed to be reorganized. And since usually Church councils arrive during a time of crisis, the Protestant Reformation provided the perfect opportunity.

Schisms were always going to happen. Even if the Protestant Reformation never occurred when it did, various schisms would naturally arrive. It’s not like the Church was one when Martin Luther came along.

 

[RTully]

Excuse me? When was Martin Luther ever arrested? The edict was to proclaim that he is to be arrested, but he never actually was. He was promised safe passage to and from the diet. His arrest was never really enforced as the Emperor was busy with political issues at the time.

Your playing semantic games. There was decree that he could be killed with no legal consequence and that it became a crime for anyone to give him food or shelter. He was accused, stood trial and was condemed to death. Call it what you want.

 

[PiousTemplar]

“had him arrested and at the Diet of Worms verdict had an order anyone could kill him without fear of being punished and forbade anyone to give him food and shelter?”

A) He wasn’t arrested. B) Where in the order below, does it give an order ‘that anyone could kill him without fear of being punished’? And where does it say ‘It is forbidden to give him food and shelter’?

Emperor Charles V, declared at the Diet of Worms:

For this reason we forbid anyone from this time forward to dare, either by words or by deeds, to receive, defend, sustain, or favor the said Martin Luther. On the contrary, we want him to be apprehended and punished as a notorious heretic, as he deserves, to be brought personally before us, or to be securely guarded until those who have captured him inform us, whereupon we will order the appropriate manner of proceeding against the said Luther. Those who will help in his capture will be rewarded generously for their good work.

 

[PiousTemplar]

Your playing semantic games. There was decree that he could be killed with no legal consequence and that it became a crime for anyone to give him food or shelter. He was accused, stood trial and was condemed to death. Call it what you want.

You are exadurrating the facts to support your own conclusions.

 

[RTully]

You are exadurrating the facts to support your own conclusions.

Here is the source:

Bratcher, Dennis. “The Diet of Worms (1521),” in The Voice: Biblical and Theological Resources for Growing Christians. Retrieved 13 July 2007

 

[PiousTemplar]

Here is the source:

Bratcher, Dennis. “The Diet of Worms (1521),” in The Voice: Biblical and Theological Resources for Growing Christians. Retrieved 13 July 2007

It points to this:
“For this reason we forbid anyone from this time forward to dare, either by words or by deeds, to receive, defend, sustain, or favor the said Martin Luther.”

There is more than one interpretation to "by deeds, to receive, defend, sustain, or favor ". You could say that he meant by food and shelter, or you could say that he meant ‘greet him with open arms, defend him from arrest, sustain him in his work’.
You are however, blatantly wrong about his supposed ‘arrest’.

 

[PiousTemplar]

Unless you can show me that the Pope meant explicitly giving him food and shelter, then I am sorry but I cannot be convinced of that argument.

 

[guanophore]

A lot of Protestants didn’t believe in evangelization, figuring that God already knows who He is going to save and who will be damned.

I have never met a Protestant that “figured” this way, nor is it consistent with anything I have read about the Reformation, or the doctrines invented during it commonly known as the TULIP. What makes you think this is true?

 

[RTully]

Unless you can show me that the Pope meant explicitly giving him food and shelter, then I am sorry but I cannot be convinced of that argument.

Fair enough, we should probably both look into the issue more. I should probably get to work but I will leave you with this portion of the verdict:

As for his accomplices, those who help or favor the said Martin in whatever manner or who show obstinacy in their perversity, not receiving absolution from the pope for the evils they have committed, we will also proceed against them and will take all of their goods and belongings, movable and fixed, with the help either of the judges in the area in which they reside or of our parliaments and councils at Malines or in other cities in which these events are made known. Action will be taken according to the desire of the accusers or of our fiscal procurators, but always according to the constitution and the laws, whether canon, civil, or divine, written against those who commit heresy or the crime of lèse majesté . These laws will be applied regardless of person, degree, or privilege if anyone does not obey our edict in every manner

 

[PiousTemplar]

Fair enough, we should probably both look into the issue more. I should probably get to work but I will leave you with this portion of the verdict:

As for his accomplices, those who help or favor the said Martin in whatever manner or who show obstinacy in their perversity, not receiving absolution from the pope for the evils they have committed, we will also proceed against them and will take all of their goods and belongings, movable and fixed, with the help either of the judges in the area in which they reside or of our parliaments and councils at Malines or in other cities in which these events are made known. Action will be taken according to the desire of the accusers or of our fiscal procurators, but always according to the constitution and the laws, whether canon, civil, or divine, written against those who commit heresy or the crime of lèse majesté . These laws will be applied regardless of person, degree, or privilege if anyone does not obey our edict in every manner

Interesting post. We must remember however, that in the eyes of the Church, Luther was leading souls to Hell, and was perverting the Fullness of the Truth. When we look at the issue with those eyes, it’s not unsuprising that helping the man would be legislated as a crime. But, saying that, nowhere in those documents does it ever show proof of the Church treating him inhumanely. ( Not allowing him food, necessities of life)

 

[guanophore]

a. Tetzel did nothing wrong. Luther terrorised this pious monk into cowering in a monastery.

Did nothing wrong according to whose stanard? Pope Leo’s?

What was the source of Luther’s ability to “terrorize”? Since he had no temporal or ecclesial authority, this is an interesting concept.

Life in a monastery is infinitely superior to standing on the street, fleecing the flock. Even if Luther could do this, he did Tetzel a favor.

b. There were abuses in the Church as there are today and in every age. Many other Catholics like St Thomas More and Erasmus were fighting to stamp out the abuses. They didn’t for a momnet think that it would be necessary to change Catholic doctrines to do so.

I don’t believe I suggested they did.

c. In what way can any of Luther’s novel doctrines be characterised as “a reaction to abuses”? The changes Luther made only created more widespread and worse abuses.

I am going to assume that you know nothing, and have read nothing about the ecclesial abuses of the time.

Do you think Tetzel was doing anything that upset Luther?

If so, what do you think Tetzel was doing?

If not, why do you think he felt the way he did about Tetzel?

 

[Contarini]

It made the Church wake up to how widespread the clergy’s abuse was. The Council of Trent, a response to the Reformation, did a lot of good.

Some, but a lot of harm as well in my opinion (though probably less the Council itself than the general ethos of Counter-Reformation Catholicism–Trent, like Vatican II, had a “spirit,” and in both cases the “spirit” is a lot more dubious than the texts of the respective Councils themselves).

I would tend to argue that both the Protestant Reformation and the official “Tridentine” response did a lot to prevent real reform. Or rather renewal, which I think is a lot more important than reform.

Erasmus’s version of Christian humanism, though not without problems, had a lot in common with the “ressourcement” theology of the 20th century. But these efforts to renew Catholicism by paying more focused and humble attention to the Biblical and patristic sources were put off for centuries by the conflicts of the Reformation era.

Specific reforms that I think should have happened include a vernacular liturgy, the encouragement of direct lay engagement with Scripture, and possibly permission for married men to become priests.

Instead, Trent and its aftermath circled the wagons, discouraged lay reading of Scripture, and fostered an elitist model of the priesthood that still curses Catholicism today.

So from my perspective the fact that the Protestant Reformation led to this kind of response by the Catholic hierarchy was one of the many bad effects of the Protestant Reformation.

That doesn’t mean that I think Trent was dogmatically wrong–there are one or two points that bother me, but they’re fairly minor and technical points. And I admire Trent’s moderation in many ways given the climate. I certainly think it far preferable to any of its Protestant counterparts.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

You understand the Pope had him excommunicated, had him arrested and at the Diet of Worms verdict had an order anyone could kill him without fear of being punished and forbade anyone to give him food and shelter?

First of all, Luther was never arrested (he was kidnapped by Elector Frederick and taken into protective custody).

In the second place, it was the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V who issued that edict at Worms. Charles was no papal puppet. However, it’s certainly true that the Pope would have approved of this and that papal emissaries pushed for Luther’s condemnation.

But finally, Luther began to speculate that the Pope was the Antichrist before he was excommunicated and certainly before he was condemned at Worms. The decisive moment seems to have been not his excommunication but the Leipzig Debate, which made Luther realize how radical was the opposition between his position and that of the institutional Catholic Church (whether in its papal or conciliar aspects).

Luther did not come to the conclusion that the Pope was Antichrist because the Pope treated him badly. (Luther was a person of better character than that, in my opinion.) Rather, Luther came to the conclusion that the Pope was Antichrist because the Pope opposed what Luther took to be the Gospel.

The key question for a Protestant to answer is whether Luther was right in this judgment. Was Luther’s teaching really the Gospel? Was the Pope Antichrist because he opposed it?

If the doctrines of the Reformation do not need to be church-dividing, then the Protestant Reformation was a terrible mistake and Protestants need to repent.

Does “repent” mean “seek immediate communion with Rome under whatever conditions Rome imposes” or does it mean “promote ecumenism and work and pray for reunion that will allow us to retain those aspects of truth and goodness that presently seem incompatible with the requirements of Rome?”

My argument up to this point does not, in and of itself, answer this question. Protestants need to consider what these elements of truth and goodness are and whether immediate reunion with Rome would really result in sacrificing any truth. I’m not sure that it would.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

I’m sorry, but I find this very one-sided and judgemental. It’s impossible to know the situation he was facing, we can only generalise with the information we have of the time.

Right, and there’s no compelling evidence that I can see that Luther’s awareness of abuses was either a necessary or sufficient condition for his break with the Church In fact, he made it very clear that it wasn’t a sufficient condition. It may possibly have been a necessary condition–that’s a counterfactual we can’t know, since as you say obviously there were abuses and he certainly knew about them. But he insisted that he was distinct from earlier reformers like Wycliffe and Hus because they focused on abuses and he got to the root of the problem, which was the corruption of the Gospel. And he said that it was actually a good thing that monasticism had become so corrupt, because if it had remained pure and holy people wouldn’t have seen how contrary to the Gospel it was. That inclines me to think that at least in principle abuse wasn’t even a necessary condition for rejection of traditional Catholicism in Luther’s mind. (Admittedly, one shouldn’t base too much on Luther’s inflammatory rhetoric.)

Yes, we know he had theological disputes with the Church

That’s not an adequate way of describing it. He didn’t see his key disagreement with Rome over justification as just a theological dispute. He saw it as the abandonment/obscuring/corruption of the Gospel. (By comparison, one could say that his rejection of transubstantiation was a theological dispute. I know I’m nitpicking, but I’m trying to indicate the immense gap that separated garden-variety theological disputes from the core of the Gospel in Luther’s eyes.)

but from his point of view there were abuses which didn’t look like they were going to get fixed.

What is your evidence that this was a decisive consideration for Luther? By the end of his life he had come to recognize that abuses hadn’t been fixed in Protestant churches either. From his perspective, abuses came from human sinfulness and were pretty much inevitable.

By looking at the evidence of the Church’s intent of reform today, the fact the Church was in the process of reform

I don’t think that the reform that the Papacy had begun to sponsor by the end of Luther’s life had much to do with the reform he wanted. Even the Erasmian reform movement among intellectuals with which people initially identified Luther (and with many of whose goals he agreed) was a relatively trivial thing from his perspective.

we can easily point the finger at Luther for being overly dramatical; but in the mindset of the lower-class in renaissance Europe, the Church would of looked immovable, far away from any type of reform.

From Luther’s perspective as a well-informed academic (I wouldn’t call him “lower class” but that’s a matter of definition) the Church as a whole didn’t look immovable. I don’t think that’s how any educated person saw things. The Church of the early sixteenth century was in ferment before Luther came on the scene.

Luther redirected reform energies away from things such as getting Christians not to kill each other (one of Erasmus’s major concerns) and toward condemning fellow Christians for not getting their soteriology straight. That’s one of the main reasons I consider him a disastrous figure in Christian history (though also a figure who did much good and whose theology has much value–cue GKC again about history being complicated).

Edwin

 

[Swiss_Guy]

Indulgences were never on sale. To this day as she always has, the Church encourages almsgiving and teaches that it gains spiritual benefits for the giver. This is not “selling” anything.

Of course the Church encourages almsgiving. The problem was that almsgiving got turned into buying/selling indulgences. It was an abuse happening. The Church may not have supported it, but it happened. If it didn’t, it’s likely that Luther never would’ve broke away from the Church.

 

[ltwin]

a. Tetzel did nothing wrong. Luther terrorised this pious monk into cowering in a monastery.
b. There were abuses in the Church as there are today and in every age. Many other Catholics like St Thomas More and Erasmus were fighting to stamp out the abuses. They didn’t for a momnet think that it would be necessary to change Catholic doctrines to do so.
c. In what way can any of Luther’s novel doctrines be characterised as “a reaction to abuses”? The changes Luther made only created more widespread and worse abuses.

This is totally wrong. Tetzel was fleecing the flock of God. The 95 Theses:

1. Christians are to be taught that the buying of pardons is a matter of free will, and not of commandment.
2. Christians are to be taught that the pope, in granting pardons, needs, and therefore desires, their devout prayer for him more than the money they bring.
3. Christians are to be taught that the pope’s pardons are useful, if they do not put their trust in them; but altogether harmful, if through them they lose their fear of God.
4. Christians are to be taught that if the pope knew the exactions of the pardon-preachers, he would rather that St. Peter’s church should go to ashes, than that it should be built up with the skin, flesh and bones of his sheep.
5. Christians are to be taught that it would be the pope’s wish, as it is his duty, to give of his own money to very many of those from whom certain hawkers of pardons cajole money, even though the church of St. Peter might have to be sold.
6. The assurance of salvation by letters of pardon is vain, even though the commissary, nay, even though the pope himself, were to stake his soul upon it.
   …

1. To think the papal pardons so great that they could absolve a man even if he had committed an impossible sin and violated the Mother of God — this is madness.
   …
2. This unbridled preaching of pardons makes it no easy matter, even for learned men, to rescue the reverence due to the pope from slander, or even from the shrewd questionings of the laity.
3. To wit: — “Why does not the pope empty purgatory, for the sake of holy love and of the dire need of the souls that are there, if he redeems an infinite number of souls for the sake of miserable money with which to build a Church? The former reasons would be most just; the latter is most trivial.”
4. Again: — “Why are mortuary and anniversary masses for the dead continued, and why does he not return or permit the withdrawal of the endowments founded on their behalf, since it is wrong to pray for the redeemed?”
5. Again: — “What is this new piety of God and the pope, that for money they allow a man who is impious and their enemy to buy out of purgatory the pious soul of a friend of God, and do not rather, because of that pious and beloved soul’s own need, free it for pure love’s sake?”
6. Again: — “Why are the penitential canons long since in actual fact and through disuse abrogated and dead, now satisfied by the granting of indulgences, as though they were still alive and in force?”
7. Again: — “Why does not the pope, whose wealth is to-day greater than the riches of the richest, build just this one church of St. Peter with his own money, rather than with the money of poor believers?”
8. Again: — “What is it that the pope remits, and what participation does he grant to those who, by perfect contrition, have a right to full remission and participation?”
9. Again: — “What greater blessing could come to the Church than if the pope were to do a hundred times a day what he now does once, and bestow on every believer these remissions and participations?”
10. “Since the pope, by his pardons, seeks the salvation of souls rather than money, why does he suspend the indulgences and pardons granted heretofore, since these have equal efficacy?”

 

[Swiss_Guy]

This is totally wrong. Tetzel was fleecing the flock of God. The 95 Theses:

b and c are correct. But the abuses were much worse back then than they are now.

 

[GKC]

Right, and there’s no compelling evidence that I can see that Luther’s awareness of abuses was either a necessary or sufficient condition for his break with the Church In fact, he made it very clear that it wasn’t a sufficient condition. It may possibly have been a necessary condition–that’s a counterfactual we can’t know, since as you say obviously there were abuses and he certainly knew about them. But he insisted that he was distinct from earlier reformers like Wycliffe and Hus because they focused on abuses and he got to the root of the problem, which was the corruption of the Gospel. And he said that it was actually a good thing that monasticism had become so corrupt, because if it had remained pure and holy people wouldn’t have seen how contrary to the Gospel it was. That inclines me to think that at least in principle abuse wasn’t even a necessary condition for rejection of traditional Catholicism in Luther’s mind. (Admittedly, one shouldn’t base too much on Luther’s inflammatory rhetoric.)

That’s not an adequate way of describing it. He didn’t see his key disagreement with Rome over justification as just a theological dispute. He saw it as the abandonment/obscuring/corruption of the Gospel. (By comparison, one could say that his rejection of transubstantiation was a theological dispute. I know I’m nitpicking, but I’m trying to indicate the immense gap that separated garden-variety theological disputes from the core of the Gospel in Luther’s eyes.)

What is your evidence that this was a decisive consideration for Luther? By the end of his life he had come to recognize that abuses hadn’t been fixed in Protestant churches either. From his perspective, abuses came from human sinfulness and were pretty much inevitable.

I don’t think that the reform that the Papacy had begun to sponsor by the end of Luther’s life had much to do with the reform he wanted. Even the Erasmian reform movement among intellectuals with which people initially identified Luther (and with many of whose goals he agreed) was a relatively trivial thing from his perspective.

From Luther’s perspective as a well-informed academic (I wouldn’t call him “lower class” but that’s a matter of definition) the Church as a whole didn’t look immovable. I don’t think that’s how any educated person saw things. The Church of the early sixteenth century was in ferment before Luther came on the scene.

Luther redirected reform energies away from things such as getting Christians not to kill each other (one of Erasmus’s major concerns) and toward condemning fellow Christians for not getting their soteriology straight. That’s one of the main reasons I consider him a disastrous figure in Christian history (though also a figure who did much good and whose theology has much value–cue GKC again about history being complicated).

Edwin

And complex, too.

GKC

 

[Contarini]

While it is true that Luther was neurotic about his salvation and he was trying to assuage his terror, his doctrines were more a reaction to widespread abuses in the Catholic hierarchy.

As I’ve said in response to other posts on this thread, I think that this is way overblown. Plenty of people were upset about abuses. The difference with Luther was that he came up with a theology that he identified with the Gospel, and judged the Church by that standard.

The faithful were being grossly misled and were not being taught the faith.

I don’t think that’s fair to early-sixteenth-century Catholicism. There are all sorts of things about the religion of that era that make me cringe, but there was also plenty of solid piety, as in any era.

John Colet, Dean of St. Paul’s, was certainly teaching the faith in a very public way before anyone heard a peep out of Luther. And he was by no means alone.

His own witness of the corruption when he was in Rome

I think it’s highly unlikely that this affected him that much. He would have been a very strange early-sixteenth-century German if he hadn’t gone to Rome with some rather lurid ideas of the corruption to be found there. No doubt he saw things that confirmed his stereotype, and no doubt this was additional confirmation to him later when he developed the view that the Papacy was Antichrist for theological reasons.

and the activities of Tetzel, supported by the Pope, pushed him to extremes.

The whole anti-Tetzel business was more or less a sideshow for Luther. He had come to conclusions that contradicted the standard theology regarding penance and indulgences quite independently of Tetzel.

The reality of Catholicism he saw was very different than the one we see today.

I think this is shaky ground to stand on. As a Catholic, don’t you believe that the Catholic Church is always the true Church? Was that any less true in 1517 than it is now? And it’s not as if the Church isn’t full of scandal and corruption today as well.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

And what gave you the idea that the Protestant Revolt somehow helped, rather than massively hindered, the spread of Christianity? If you’re thinking of Protestant missionaries, they didn’t even get started until the mid 19th century

Untrue. John Eliot and others were doing missionary work in the 17th century, and there was a significant missionary movement in the 18th century.

300 years after Protestants

And Catholics. . . .

began colonising and exploiting non-Europeans.

I agree that Catholics did a lot more early on, and that they were relatively more likely to convert, subjugate, patronize, and oppress natives rather than committing outright genocide as Protestants sometimes did! Catholic nations tended to be much more willing to intermarry with natives, for instance. The Catholic doctrine of natural law provided some safeguards, and there were Catholics such as Las Casas who spoke out against the oppression of indigenous people. But the Catholic record is only relatively better than the Protestant–both records are pretty bad on the whole.

Edwin