The Reformation – Principles and Persons

December 30, 1962
Rochester

Sermon Series: Our Judeo-Christian Heritage
14. The Reformation – Principles and Persons

The reformations of the sixteenth century are the great hinges of the door which opens to the room of religious understanding. I venture to say that any person who becomes thoroughly informed on these Protestant movements will acquire considerable insight into religion as a social force which draws men together, and religion as a social force which splits men apart from each other.

Behind these opposing movements, which seem to make organized religion a self-contradiction, is the basic issue of private judgment as opposed to outside authority. When we keep this primary dilemma in mind, not only will the vast confusion of historical forces and persons become a bit clearer to us, but also issues in our own time will be shown to be closely akin.

The causes of the reformation could be listed as moral, ecclesiastical, political and doctrinal. These are but approximate separations, for there were other immediate and tangential sparks which lit the bonfire of the reformation. A partial additional list would include economic struggle and the rise of a middle class, class warfare between lords and peasants, individuals peculiarly disturbed and the desire to create and perpetuate movements of art and architecture.

The traditional date of the Reformation is October 31, 1517, when Martin Luther composed 95 theses attacking the practice of indulgences and nailed these propositions to the door of Wittenburg Cathedral as a challenge to debate. But there had been sporadic efforts to reform and there had been revolutionary outbursts for hundreds of years.

One could say that Abelard, who lived from 1079 to 1142, was a doctrinal reformer. His well-publicized affair with Heloise has caused his intellect and courage to be largely overlooked. But his critical mind saw that there were contradictions in the literature of the sacred scripture and the writings of the Church Elders. He felt that the purpose of educated leaders should not be to find ways to support conclusions which had been established by prior authority, but to discover truth by evidence and logic.

John Wyclif, the bold Englishman (1328-1384) and his followers, the Lollards, maintained brave, heretical positions. Wyclif brought about the first translation of the Bible into English, illuminating his conviction that the Scriptures, not the Church, were the supreme religious authority for man. This was an assertion of the superiority of private judgment as against the authority of the Church.

John Hus of Bohemia (1369-1415), influenced by Wyclif, not only maintained the supremacy of scripture, but also attacked the behavior of the clergy. Furthermore, the Hussites drew up a document asserting belief in freedom of the pulpit, communion of wafer and wine for both laymen and priests and argued against the morality of the Church owning great properties and amassing huge wealth.

At the famous Church Council at Constance in 1415, John Hus appeared to defend his views at the invitation of Emperor Sigismund, who had guaranteed his safe conduct. But the Church Council was false to its promise on the basis that “no faith was to be kept with heretics,” and burned John Hus as the stake.

But the evangelical spirit generated by John Hus could not be so easily consumed. For centuries to come, numerous movements carried on the ideas of Wyclif and Hus. Sometimes known as Taborites, sometimes as the Brethren of the Free Spirit, they were something like lay counterparts of the Mendicant orders of the Church. There was considerable response to their heretical ideas. Again and again Church and State drove the movements underground by torturing and executing the “Free Spirits,” but the spiritual vitality continued in spite of efforts to smother it.

The Waldensians, who organized in about 1175 and still continue in south-east Europe, also took a stand on the Bible, as well as asserting that there were no essential distinctions between clergy and laity.

Repression and the Inquisition prevented a wide distribution of these ideas and convictions which, in their essence, repudiated the authority of the Church. Twenty years before Luther’s decisive day, Savonarola, who was strangled and burned, proclaimed himself an obedient son of the Church, but his insistence on the subjection of the Church to Scripture was heretical, notwithstanding.

Under political and economic tensions, rulers of European states, particularly the hundreds of German states and principalities, had been restive for decades. The clergy had great possessions, owning one-fifth to one-third of all real estate – and of course, claiming [an?] exemption for it. The Church insisted on the right of Investiture – the right to appoint the bishops who would hold title to these vast estates.

In addition, Annates were due from each bishop to the Pope at Rome. Annates were one-half the year’s income of every bishop.

The Inquisition also represented a considerable drain of wealth from the secular to the ecclesiastical treasuries. The Inquisition confiscated all the goods of those persons labeled “heretics.” Obvious is the temptation of rich prizes awaiting only the organization of charges and confessions produced by torture.

All these expanding and contracting pressures were ignited into conflagration by Martin Luther’s challenges to the practice of indulgences. Because the controversy about the indulgences involved not only disputes of doctrine, but issues involving the growing nationalistic spirit, economics, morality and international politics, a review of the indulgences dispute will help light the historic state of the organized reformations.

At the time of Luther’s challenges, indulgences has been a part of Church practice for centuries. The doctrine of indulgences held that the saints of the Church had been better persons than they needed to be. They had not only earned their own salvation, but also acquired a surplus. This surplus of merit comprised a treasury. The Pope held the keys to this treasury of merit and could authorize disbursements of merits to sinners who had committed too many sins to be qualified for salvation on their own efforts. An indulgence was the granting of some of the merits from the treasury of the saints by the Pope to a sinner.

In Luther’s time indulgences could be given not only to people living on Earth, but to sinners serving out their time in Purgatory.

Then a confluence of art, economics, politics and morals created the fullness of time for Martin Luther, Augustinian monk, university teacher, great preacher, competent administrator of monasteries. The Pope embarked on the completion of St. Peter’s, the costliest, largest, most magnificent church building in the world, then and now. He needed all the money he could raise for the great project.

Duke Albert of the house of Hohenzollern wanted to be named Archbishop of Mainz, the ruling primacy of Germany. Because he was already bishop of two other sees, the Pope insisted on a huge installation fee before he would name Duke Albert to the see of Mainz.

They bargained. The Pope’s initial asking was 12,000 ducats (for the twelve apostles); Duke Albert countered with an offer of 7,000 ducats (for the seven deadly sins); they reached a compromise figure of 10,000 (for the Ten Commandments).

The financing was complex. To pay the Pope, Albert borrowed the money from a banking house. In order that the loan could be repaid, the Pope granted permission for the sale of indulgences in Albert’s territories – one half for Albert, one-half for the Pope to go to the building fund for St. Peter’s.

The vending of indulgences became a scandal as people were pressured to buy release from purgatory for their deceased relatives and friends. Tetzel, the most successful and most mercenary of the indulgence salesmen, used a couplet to shame people into buying indulgences to release relatives from purgatory:

“as soon as the coin in the coffer rings,
the soul from purgatory springs.”

Now if Luther had confined himself to criticizing the financial abuse of indulgences, history might have been quite different. There were many in the Roman Catholic Church who were outraged too at the venal practice. The Roman Catholic Church was to reform a great many of the corrupt practices and strengthen administration and discipline at the Council of Trent (1564).

But in addition, Luther denied the doctrine of indulgences, proclaiming that there could be no such treasury of merit; even saints were never as good as they could be; all were sinners and saved only by faith and the grace of God. This denial of doctrinal authority could not be tolerated. The struggle engaged. In the process of time, Luther was excommunicated; the Lutheran churches formed; the convents and monasteries emptied; Luther’s German translation of the Bible and the Biblical sermon became central, not the sacraments.

The time was ripe in Germany for this Reformation. Emancipation from the ecclesiastical rule, political influence and economic demands of the Roman Catholic Church at Rome were in the interests of many of the more than three hundred German states.

The printing press was a great power in the spread of the new doctrine that the “just shall live by faith.” For example, in 1517, only 37 books in the vernacular were printed; in 1518, the number increased to 71; in 1523, 498 books were printed and 180 of these had one author, Martin Luther.

To understand our heritage it is crucial to know that the Lutheran movement neither created free churches nor granted to individuals freedom to choose a religion. In the long, confused struggle, the so-called “halfway” principle was adopted. The ruler of each state or principality acquired the right to choose Roman Catholicism or Lutheranism. All his subjects were bound by his choice – the state decreed whether its subjects were to be all of them Lutheran, or all of them Roman Catholic.

Thus the various princes and Dukes either chose to remain faithful to the Roman Catholic Church, which claimed universality and sovereignty over all peoples; or chose allegiance to a national Church, responsible to the prince, not the Roman Pope. Neither choice, in any way, would be in keeping with the separation of Church and State. The choice was between a state-church or a church-state.

The development of the theocratic city-state, notably Geneva under the strong leadership of John Calvin and Farel, was a different emphasis, but just as restrictive. Geneva witnessed the growth of theocracy, wherein the city council, city laws and ordinances were dictated by Calvin, an ecclesiastical leader. Geneva was the scene of the execution of Servetus, an anti-Trinitarian, whose ideas anticipated much modern, liberal, religious thought. Servetus was persecuted by the Calvinists, with John Calvin emphatic in his malice toward the Spanish physician. It is only fair to note that Roman Catholics also vowed to execute Servetus if they captured him first.

When we consider these portions of our heritage – the imperial church asserting world authority, the national church subservient to the State, the theocratic city intolerant of diversities, we would be in a quandary to trace to the Reformation our heritage of freedom from doctrinal necessities and our insistence on the separation of church and state. In order to understand the Reformation origins of some of the important ideas in our liberal heritage, we must look at the Peasants’ Revolt and the Anabaptist movements which more fully emphasized what came to be known as the “Protestant Principle – the freedom of private conscience from all human authority.” (Sohm)

Thomas Muntzer was the most representative figure of the Peasants’ Revolt. Thoroughly grounded in Hebrew and Greek, a close student of the scriptures, originally a monk, Thomas Muntzer was an early follower of Martin Luther. before long he broke with Martin Luther because the latter was too subservient to the princes and wealthy ruling classes in Muntzer’s view.

Muntzer reveled in the stories of Old Testament blood-lettings, Elijah’s slaughter of the priests of Baal, for example. Believing this was scriptural authority for violence, he agitated among poor miners and weavers, strenuously urging them as the “elect,” to rise up and kill their oppressors. Muntzer believed devoutly that Christ was coming again, but that the millennium could not begin until the godless were no more. The “elect,” in Muntzer's belief, were those who individually had received the Holy Spirit, thus qualifying them to perform the divine mission.

Muntzer denounced both the ruling princes and the burghers of the rising middle class. Under his excitations, the peasants revolted and were ruthlessly slaughtered by the princes. Martin Luther endorsed the bloody repressions, urging the princes to kill all the peasants involved and extinguish the uprisings.

Motives and consequences of the Peasants’ War are not involved and difficult to sort out. Some historians believe that the princes were not sorry to have the chance to crush any possible obstacles to their state-building ambitions. The peasants’ lot had been improving slightly, but they were impatient with obstacles to more progress and were even talking self-government. In any event, the consequences were disastrous to the peasants. 100,000 died and the survivors had then no chance for a better political lot.

Thomas Muntzer was captured and beheaded by the princes in Thuringia in 1525, but his ongoing influence has been considerable. Marx and Engels chose to use him as a prominent symbol of class warfare and a forerunner of proletarian revolutions. This is probably historical dis-placement. While Muntzer did gather revolutionary groups largely through their social discontent, he was more of a violent mystic than a revolutionary theoretician.

But at least his life illustrates that religion cannot be confined to church walls, sacraments and Sunday services. That when religion speaks to human need, to disputed issues, and defends human rights, religion will be a spur, comfort, and support to those who need and want an improved social order. The rights of man did not originate in the reformations, but without doubt these movements extended the definition of human rights and transmitted momentum for the rights of all people.

Even more important to our heritage from the Reformation is the development of a number of diversified movements sometimes called the “Left Wing of the Reformation.” Most prominent were Anabaptists.

The Anabaptists’ beliefs centered in the authority of Scripture for matters of religious belief and practice. They disavowed belief in infant baptism because they could find no warrant for this sacrament in scriptures. The Anabaptists insisted on adult baptism for the converted believer.

Although this doctrine was heretical in the Catholic Church, the national churches and the city-state theocracies, the reason Anabaptists were persecuted and placed under sentence of death was more the consequence of their attitudes toward the State. they would not take oaths for the State, accept office as magistrates, and most of them were pacifists.

There was a perceptible line of influence from the Hussites, the Brethren of the Free Spirit, and other pre-Reformation precursors to the Anabaptists. Primarily all these were characterized by a religion of inwardness. This emphasis on individual piety and reliance on intuitive guidance from God was to be called the “inner light” by later Quakers. And this sovereignty of spirit comes down to us, too, to cherish as a high privilege of a religion which gives us freedom to choose what values we shall revere, what causes we shall honor by our efforts.

Some of the better-known descendants of the Anabaptist Reformation groups are the Hutterites and the Mennonites who still maintain their lives separated from the world, as much as they can – some living in communal groups, wearing plain garb and holding strong pacifist convictions.

One of the great benefits from this Left Wing of the Reformation has been the emphasis it has created on the priority of an individual’s relationship to religion – the right of individual interpretation of what God is for him and what this conviction demands that he should be and should do in the world.

The many Reformation movements, including the Catholic counter-reformation of the sixteenth century, brought to a head awareness of the main difference about the seat of authority in religion (as formulated by the church historian, Sohm:) “But as the Protestant principle – the freedom of the private conscience from all human authority – has its followers – the opposite principle, the subjection of the whole life of the individual and even of its conscience to a visible authority – has its followers also.”

New times bring revised language and altered emphases. But to me it is quite clear that our present and future are on the side of the “freedom of private conscience.” It is true that we have pursued a parallel development, the congregational principle in the ordering of our corporate affairs. As a group, private judgment speaks in the context of consenting community. That is, the consenting community may agree with a proposal, but when it disagrees, it approves the right of announcement of the convictions of individual conscience, even if that voice speaks alone. Unless this part of our beginnings is understood, then Liberal Religion today is inexplicable. In our heritage, this consenting and supporting community is the ministry of mutuality.