God and the Reformation

[Bob_Crowley]

I’m not sure what you mean by that. Of course the Reformation was one of the causes of the Thirty Years’ War. There were plenty of others. France’s intervention on the “Protestant” side, which helped prolong the war, was certainly not caused by Protestantism. And even the Protestant rulers, such as Gustavus Adolphus, had secular reasons for what they did as well.

But unquestionably religious zeal on *both *sides played a major role.

You assume first that all the “Reformation Wars” were *solely *caused by religious disputes, and secondly that the Protestants were uniquely to blame for these wars. The first of these is dubious reductionism, and the second is pure ideological bias.

Edwin

I didn’t say that the Protestants were solely responsible. We’ve all got an impulse to defend ourselves against attack.

What I do think is that God expected Luther to be a martyr, and that through his martyrdom, God would have worked reform through the Church, just as He established His church on the “blood of the saints”.

But Luther refused, and instead of “one man dying for the people”, millions died. And the worst of the slaughter took place in Germany, where the Reformation began. The violence started there, and it took its greatest toll there.

Moreover, Shirer commented that if he had to nominate an “evil genius” who directed the German frame of mind to absolute obedience to the state, and thus provided the seed for Hitler’s later Nazism, he would have nominated Martin Luther.

That’s what I think.

My old Protestant pastor’s comment, which I stated earlier was “Some of the things Luther said and did weren’t very Christian.” He went a bit further. He thought, that if there was a “false prophet” in Revelation, it was probably Martin Luther. Since he gave his second youngest son the middle name of “Luther”, then somewhere along the line between his days as a young pastor and an older pastor, he must have read things about Luther that changed his mind.

I suggest the following for starters -

tentmaker.org/books/MartinLuther-HitlersSpiritualAncestor.html

 

[antoniont1]

My wife and I are the same - Catholic and Baptist. But I was Protestant when we married. So far she hasn’t attended a single mass, other than a Carol night. I sometimes go to her church, although she doesn’t object when I go to mass either.

…

And of course things like “Papal Infallibility” (never mind the glaring abuse which is being exposed even now, Papal or not - if it’s such an important doctrine, why has it been invoked only once or twice in well over a hundred years?), and the ruling on the contraceptive pill in a world which already has 6 billion people (7 billion in a couple of years), most of whom live in poverty, don’t help very much to win over the practical Protestant mind.

I also suspect that God has “allowed” Islam to survive for so long, despite it’s centuries old decline, and resurge today as a challenge to our faith. Because that’s where the next major challenge is coming from, you can bet your bottom dollar. In fact, we probably will.

I honestly think your point of Papal Infallibility is misguided. In short, it’s that every doctrinal teaching by the Popes is true. This is how we build upon Holy Tradition - not allowing anyone interpret the Bible the way they want, and uphold the unity of the Church.

As for the pill and condoms and abortions, isn’t preventing life the very opposite of what God wills??

On the other hand, evil is allowed to exist for a reason. We may not understand, but some people (like me) believe that God allows evil to exist in order to test our faith (I think this probably comes from one of Jesus’ parables, if I remember correctly). Eventually God will judge everyone.

 

[antoniont1]

…
How did it come to exist in the first place?

I don’t want to be insensitive, but there are only three possibilities:

1. You got married knowing that this “sad divide” was in place. In that case, you knew what you were getting into. I hope you didn’t get married in the expectation of converting your wife. Getting married in the expectation of changing your spouse in any respect is generally unwise. If you marry someone knowing that they are a certain way, don’t you think it’s a bit unfair to them to then start speaking about the way they are as something you hope will “soon be gone”?

Sorry to be hard on you, but I’m a married man myself, and one of the reasons I’m not Catholic (not the only one by any means) is that I don’t want the “sad divide” to be there in the first place. So this is an issue that means a lot to me.

In Christ,

Edwin

Hi Edwin,

By “sad divide” I mean the schism between the Catholic Church and Orthodox and Protestant churches. Jesus never wanted to have different churches, and the epistles also talked about Christian unity. If Jesus would say something about the divide, he would definitely say He’s sad about it. So would the Apostles Peter and Paul (and the others).

We are both cradle Christians - me Catholic and her Baptist, but I went to Anglican schools all the way up to university and she to Catholic schools. We treasure each other’s faith in God, and despite the differences we very much hope that there would be a grand reunification. The only problem for us is that sometimes we would try to convince the other that “my church’s understanding is better than yours”, although (un?)luckily we don’t go all the way to force our understanding on the other, perhaps because I think “we may both be right” and she thinks “we may both be wrong”.

May God bring all Christians, no matter what denomination, back together as one so that others may come closer to Him.

In Christ,
Antonio

 

[Contarini]

I didn’t say that the Protestants were solely responsible.

Fair enough.

Moreover, Shirer commented that if he had to nominate an “evil genius” who directed the German frame of mind to absolute obedience to the state, and thus provided the seed for Hitler’s later Nazism, he would have nominated Martin Luther.

I am going to give more credence to scholars who have actually spent most of their time on the sixteenth century–who generally think that the picture is much more complex than that–than to someone looking back from a specialization in 20th-century history to find a historical scapegoat.

Shirer was under no necessity to nominate such an “evil genius” in the first place.

Luther’s “two kingdoms” doctrine has both strengths and weaknesses. I think the weaknesses outweigh the strengths. It’s not quite fair to say simply that it promotes absolute obedience to the state, but it does separate charity from faith (Luther thought that charity would be present wherever faith was present–something his Catholic critics often fail to understand–but he thought they did very different “jobs”), and this certainly didn’t help Lutherans of the mid-20th century resist Nazi claims to be the divinely authorized maintainers of civil order.

Edwin

 

[Bob_Crowley]

Fair enough.

I am going to give more credence to scholars who have actually spent most of their time on the sixteenth century–who generally think that the picture is much more complex than that–than to someone looking back from a specialization in 20th-century history to find a historical scapegoat.

Shirer was under no necessity to nominate such an “evil genius” in the first place.

Luther’s “two kingdoms” doctrine has both strengths and weaknesses. I think the weaknesses outweigh the strengths. It’s not quite fair to say simply that it promotes absolute obedience to the state, but it does separate charity from faith (Luther thought that charity would be present wherever faith was present–something his Catholic critics often fail to understand–but he thought they did very different “jobs”), and this certainly didn’t help Lutherans of the mid-20th century resist Nazi claims to be the divinely authorized maintainers of civil order.

Edwin

Shirer may have been a journalist, and not a formal historian, but he was well versed in German history, and he lived there for quite some time, so he had first hand knowledge of the Lutherian influence on the German mindset.

And what would you call a man who divided the church at the cost of millions of lives, was known for bellicose, belligerent and foul mouthed statements, and who, by his own testimony, lived the “life of Junker George” whilst under aristrocratic protection?

A saint? You may be annoyed by my antipathy to Luther, but I also get annoyed by the constant white washing of Luther as though the only thing he ever did was promote “salvation by faith”.

 

[benidict]

Does anything happen in human history with which God has nothing to do?

He’s not “the founder.” He’s one of the founders. The Baptists have been a varied and disorganized bunch, right from the start. Smyth and Helwys were the founders of the “General Baptists.” who are the minority tradition with regard to Britain and America (Baptists in Eastern Europe are “General Baptist” in theology, but I’m not sure that they have any historical continuity with the original General Baptists). Modern Baptists in America are largely Arminians who believe in eternal security, but as that vestigial doctrine indicates, their ancestry is Calvinist.

I’d like to see your evidence for this (that this was always his intention). According to Wikipedia he never actually became Mennonite but was moving in that direction at his death. The Baptist historian Leon McBeth (in The Baptist Heritage) pointed out that Smyth boarded with a Mennonite while he was developing his ideas about baptism, and yet never asked the Mennonite to baptize him.

Smyth certainly was a rather erratic person whose ideas changed throughout his life. I’m not sure how much of an argument that is from a Baptist perspective, though. Baptists don’t hold the beliefs they do based on reverence for a founding figure, but on what they believe to be the teaching of Scripture. And they typically regard a willingness to change one’s mind as one comes to a “fuller” knowledge of Scripture as a good thing, not a bad thing.

Edwin

hi. i think this would make an interesting thread, instead of taking this on here. it is interesting to note however, that before his death, he attempted to move his entire congregation over to the mennonite camp. after his death, many of his congregation did leave the baptist. and his name was placed on the wall of the church, as a mennonite elder. again, it would be better if we took this up on a new thread. i myself am a former baptist, and my ex wife is a former mennonite. its probably why i urge caution, before you marry outside your faith. Peace

 

[abucs]

As said above, the Reformation was a movement that had different causes in different countries.

In many countries it was simply the state take over of religion.

Be it because of a monarch worried about succession or a quick grab of Church lands and monasteries.

As a Protestant you’d want a good universal reason to split the Christian Church, preferably helped and authorised by the Almighty Himself. The closest arguement like that is for some ‘corruption’ by officials in secular and religious matters.

But it is obvious that this was not a universal reason for the split and the split caused much more evil than it “retrospectively” was supposed to have solved.

As far as the Church straying in religious matters from “true Christianity” the different Protestant churches themselves split almost immediately and have (generally) moved a very long way from the theology of those involved in the different national Reformations.

 

[Contarini]

Shirer may have been a journalist, and not a formal historian, but he was well versed in German history, and he lived there for quite some time, so he had first hand knowledge of the Lutherian influence on the German mindset.

He didn’t have first-hand knowledge of anything about Luther, unless he had a time machine. Statements about historical influence are always shaky.

And what would you call a man who divided the church at the cost of millions of lives,

A follower of Jesus, who came not to bring peace but a sword?

Nothing about the objective historical facts of the Reformation proves Luther not to be doing God’s work. To claim otherwise is a mistake for Catholics, because you are tying your defense of your faith to a position that is at best impossible to establish to the satisfaction of any fair-minded person.

Jesus divided people. Jesus’ life and work contributed in some measure to the Holocaust (in exactly the same ways that Luther did–and if you accept Matt. 23 as Jesus’ words, that even includes the harsh rhetoric–nothing that Luther or any other late medieval Catholic said about the Jews is objectively any worse than calling them “children of hell”).

I think Luther was wrong because I think his teachings do not hold up theologically and exegetically as “the Gospel”–they are at best an interesting and fruitful way to interpret the Gospel. The devastating effects of his teachings confirm me in my opinion, and show me that the question is one of some importance. But if Luther were correct, then the turbulence and destruction that followed the Reformation could be explained quite easily as the effect that always follows God’s action in the world, just as turbulence and destruction have followed Christianity throughout its history, beginning with Jesus.

was known for bellicose, belligerent and foul mouthed statements

Again, I think these statements were in many cases wrong, and that’s why I condemn them. I am perpetually amused by the Catholic obsession with Luther’s “bad language,” especially since one of the reasons holiness folks like my family have doubted whether most Catholics were “real Christians” has often been their tendency to use foul language!

and who, by his own testimony, lived the “life of Junker George” whilst under aristrocratic protection?

I’m not sure what you are trying to insinuate here.

A saint?

No, a sinner, just as Luther himself would claim.

You may be annoyed by my antipathy to Luther, but I also get annoyed by the constant white washing of Luther as though the only thing he ever did was promote “salvation by faith”.

Yes, and I’m annoyed by the Catholic propensity to trash Luther unfairly and viciously and justify this as a reaction to the “whitewashing.”

This policy of reacting to one distortion by another is, ironically, one of Luther’s unfortunate legacies (his whole soteriology has the character of such a reaction, which is the best reason to reject it). So why imitate him in this regard? Why not try to determine the truth and tell it as fairly as you can?

Edwin