Post-Reformation Signposts

 

The Pace of Religious Change:

 

            After the Reformation, the pace of religious change seemed to accelerate.  While the medieval church had seen much more change that contemporaries (not to mention some historians) saw, the ideal was for the church and Christian theology to continue on a smooth and even course.  The greatest of medieval sins, heresy and schism, were essentially sins against continuity, and tradition—that which was handed down—was seen as having authority in its own right.   Although protestants continued to use the language of heresy (and some still do), the movement had difficulty in locating fixed marks that defined normative belief.

 

The Search for the Essence of Protestantism. What then gave Protestant Christianity any real shape or form.  In some Protestant countries, the persistence of the state church seemed to provide an answer.  If one was a member of the state church, baptized and confirmed, then one was Protestant.  The stability of the church was the stability of the state.  As we shall see, even in areas where the state church was strongest, this did not always work.

 

Three  Theological Approaches: I rarely give theological solutions to historical problems.  But the question of what gave Protestantism its continuity in time is a profoundly theological issue.  Protestant Christianity, after all, was born in a theological revolt and very often defined itself in theological categories.  Three Solutions:

 

Ernst Troeltsch, the great liberal historian of Christianity, believed that the heart of Protestantism was the Protestant insistence on the centrality of the individual.  In the last analysis, Protestantism was united by its paradoxical belief in the power of individual persons to formulate their own convictions about what Jesus of Nazareth taught and what Jesus meant.  Like his friend, Harnack, he tended to see the inheritance from Christ as essentially the love of God and neighbor.

 

Jaroslav Pelikan,

 

            A more recent neo-orthodox interpreter of Christianity saw Protestantism as having its real basis in its continuity with Catholicism.  This Catholic substance, contained in the ancient creeds and in the writings of the church parents, provided the churches with sufficient stability to allow them to critique freely any particular expression of the universal faith.  Unlike the liberal Troeltsch, Pelikan believed that there were definite fences around the faith.

 

Paul Tillich

 

While Tillich also appreciated the Catholic substance of Protestantism, he went back to an older scholastic distinction between the formal (the authority of Scripture) and the material (justification by faith) principles of the faith and asked what happened when these were taken seriously.  He believed that the result was a restlessness that he called the Protestant principle that refused to consider any statement about faith absolute, including the biblical formulations about God.   Tillich, a passionate Christian socialist, would have included Troeltsch’s individualism as itself standing under the same relentless destruction of idolatry.

 

War Shapes Protestant Theology

 

            Religious War was a mark of the century after Luther’s death.  It finally climaxed in the brutalities of the Thirty Years’s war.

 

The War began in the small of Donauwoerth when the Protestant majority prevented the Catholics from holding a religious procession from the monastery that was their last stake in the city.

This led Maximilian of Austria to intervene and demand the conversion of the city.

 

Catholics and Protestants immediately began to search for allies

 

When Ferdinand became King of Bohemia, he resolved to force Catholicism on its residents.  When his counselors were thrown from the window, the defenestration of Prague, War broke out. For the next Thirty Years, Eastern Europe was crossed by armies that killed approximately one fourth the human population and much of the cattle, hogs, and chickens.  It would be the most destructive war until the later wars of Napoleon.

 

1648: The peace of Westphalia ends the conflict.  It was a purely secular treaty that was not signed by or blessed by the Pope.  Basically, it provided that religious toleration would be the policy between states and that dissenters would have the right of immigration.  In other ways, it settled some long standing issues:

 

            the independence of Holland was finally recognized by Spain and others

 

            Switzerland was seen as an independent country

 

            Made the nation state the model for later developments until 1945 when

            Europe began to move to another principle of organization.

 

Dangerous Circumstances:

 

            The century from 1550-1650 has been called the period of Protestant orthodoxy or

            Protestant scholasticism.

 

            Whether we are talking about Polemics or Dogmatics, the goal of theology was

            Clarity and, above all, defense.

                        Aristotle Returns as do most of the classical doctrines of faith

                        Biblical infallibility becomes a mark of Protestant theology.

                        In effect, the various texts of the Bible are arranged logically around the

                        various categories of theology

 

The Road to the Book of Concord (Lutheranism). 1580

The Book of Concord contains documents which Christians from the fourth to the 16th century A.D. explained what they believed and taught on the basis of the Holy Scriptures. It includes, first, the three creeds which originated in the ancient church, the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed. It contains, secondly, the Reformation writings known as the Augsburg Confession, the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, the Smalcald Articles, the Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope, Luther's Small and Large Catechisms, and the Formula of Concord.

The Catechisms and the Smalcald Articles came from the pen of Martin Luther; the Augsburg Confession, its Apology, and the Treatise were written by Luther's co-worker, the scholarly Phillip Melanchthon; the Formula of Concord was given its final form chiefly by Jacob Andreae, Martin Chemnitz, and Nickolaus Selnecker.” (quoted from http://www.bookofconcord.org/intro.html)

The two parties

            The Philippists

Like Philip Melanchthon, whom they admired, this party was willing to compromise, including with the Calvinists and Catholics

                        Did not accept the doctrine of the enslaved will.

 

            The Strict Lutherans

                       

                        No compromise possible with non-lutherans, especially, on the        

                                    Supper

                        Tended towards a more radical doctrine of the enslaved will

 

The Formula of Concord (1577)

           

            Settled the issues largely in agree with the strict party

            Chief theologian behind the new collection was Martin Chemitz

 

The Rise of Reformed Orthodoxy

Never a standard Confession.  Most Reformed churches revised confessions periodically.

 

Like the Lutherans, the Reformed Scholastics, such as Beza, Voetius and Turretine, borrowed heavily from Aristotle.

 

Themes: the covenants, the inspiration of Scripture, predestination.

 

                        The Great Battle over Jacobus Arminus, 1560-1609

                                    Arminius came to doubt the high Calvinism of Beza

                                    particularly supralapsarianism

 

                        He and, particularly, his followers the Remonstrants, put together a

                        Five point position:

                                    That election is conditional, not absolute

                                    Universal atonement

                                    Humans need the spirit for faith

                                    Grace is not irresistible

                                    It is possible to fall from grace

                        Holland immediately fell into serious controversy

                        The Synod of Dort !618/19

                                    The Tulip

                                                Total depravity

                                                Unconditional election

                                                Christ died for all

                                                Irresistible Grace

                                                Perseverance of the saints

                        In a limited form, these are reflected in the Puritan Westminster

                                    Confession.

                                                The Covenant Theology

                                                The Lord’s Day

 

The New Puritans and the Civil War:

 

Remember that the word Puritan and Puritanism were originally insults applied to those who believed that reform needed to go further.

 

Often those called Puritans were primarily united by the opposition of their enemies.

 

Never homogeneous.

 

 

            The Three Faces of the Puritan Eve:

                       

Puritans were intensely interested in a society that balanced freedom and order.

 

The King’s government had unbalanced England by tipping power to the King and the Lords

 

                                    The discovery of radical democracy by John Lilburne (Lilbourne)   

Whose books have frequently been cited by the Supreme Court as authorities on natural rights and on the theory of the constitution.

 

 

“...If the World was emptied of all but John Lilburne, Lilburne would quarrel with John, and John with Lilburne...”

Attributed to Henry Marten

http://www.british-civil-wars.co.uk/biog/lilburne.htm

 

An Agreement of the Free People of England

 

 

                        Puritans were intensely committed to finding a form of government for the

                                    Church that would be less hierarchical

 

                                    Bishops as only administrative officers (low church Anglicans)

                                    Presbyterianism

                                    Congregationalism

                                    Baptists

                                    “A free pulpit in a free church”

 

                        Puritanism was an intense spirituality that stress:

                                   

                                    Conversion

                                    An almost narrative understanding of the Christian life

                                                The diary

                                                The Cases of Conscience

                                                The concept of preparation for salvation

 

                        Puritanism could only hold together as long as it was persecuted.

 

            Puritans and English Politics:

                        The Reign of James I (1603-1625)

 

                                   

                                    Son of Mary Queen of Scots

                                   

Never completely at home in England

                                   

Believed to have been gay

                                   

Advocate of the Divine right of Kings

                                   

Influential writer and poet

 

Very anti-presbyterian.  Believed that the Puritans had killed his

Mother and that Presbyterianism had made Scotland almost ungovernable.  Introduced a modified episcopacy into Scotland

 

The Millenary Petition (1000 church leaders requesting changes)

 

            Only part of the petition granted was to order work on a

                        Revision of the English Bible

 

            The KJV was to be one of the treasures of English literature

                       

            Many scholars, including Burt Throckmorton, wondered

            whether much was not lost with the newer translations. 

            The King James made many people speak Bible.

 

            The version that we read is an 18th century revision that

            Sought to clean up spelling and corrected some notable

            Problems in the text.

 

The Book of Sports

1605: The Gunpowder Plot

            led by provincial Catholics

            idea was to kill the King and capture his children

            England to be returned to Catholic Church

            Made Catholicism appear dangerous for years.

 

                        The Reign of Charles I (King and Martyr. 1600-1649)

                                    Unlike his father, Charles I was a persecutor

                                   

                                    Tried to rule with Parliament using unusual forms of taxation,

                                    Such as ship’s money, to raise his budget

 

                                    His queen was a devout Catholic

 

                                    The English revolution might well have happened without religion

                                    As a factor.  Charles was simply an ineffective and unpopular king. 

                                    But ecclesiastical affairs contributed much to his downfall.

 

                                    Ecclesiastical affairs under Charles

 

                                                Promoted high churchman William Laud archbishop of

                                                London and then of Canterbury.  Believed that bishops

Were essential to a true church.  Beginning of modern Anglican theories of episcopacy

 

                                                The Star Chamber and the Stigmata Laudis

 

                                                Systematic persecution of the Puritans. Some fled to

                                                            New England where they established Massachusetts

                                                            Bay Colony and Connecticut

                       

                                                Ordered Scotland to accept a more Catholic version of the

                                                            Prayer Book.

 

                                    The War

 

                                                The Scots rebelled and defeated Charles I who was forced

                                                To summon parliament.

                                   

The Long Parliament passed a law that prohibited its dissolution

 

Charles raised an army of aristocrats, the Cavaliers.  In turn, Parliament raised an army of Roundheads

                                    Cromwell and the New Model Army

                                                The various positions were open to all classes of men

                                               

The essential qualification for promotion was victory

                                               

Heavily puritan and often composed of tradesmen who

                                               

Were in the vanguard of the new sciences.

           

Army was the source of some of the most important t           thought about democracy before the American Revolution

 

                                    Charles I executed on 30 January 1649.  Among the regicides John

                                                Milton who narrowly escaped execution when Charles II

                                                Was restored in 1660.

 

                                    Cromwell’s reign

In many ways, Cromwell became dictator of England.

 

Yet, never was England freer until comparatively modern times.

 

Persecution for religion, with the exception of blasphemy, ended.

 

The Universities were open on the basis of merit

 

The Jews were invited to return.

                                               

                                                            England prospered.

                                                           

His son, however, was weak. And England restored the Stuarts who would reign until 1689 when the Glorious

Revolution finally replaced them with William and Mary.

 

 

Puritan Pieties in Non-Puritan Dress:

 

            The Quakers and George Fox (1624-1691)

 

                       Rufus Jones on Fox: …What he really means is that he has discovered within the deeps of his own personality a meeting place of the human spirit with the Divine Spirit. He had never had any doubts about the historical Christ. All that the Christians of his time believed about Christ, he, too, believed. His long search had not been to find out something about Christ, but to find Him. The Christ of the theological systems was too remote and unreal to be dynamic for him. Assent to all the propositions about Him left one still in the power of sin. He emerges from the struggle with an absolute certainty in his own mind that he has discovered a way by which his soul has immediate dealings with the living God. The larger truth involved in his experience soon becomes plain to him, namely, that he has found a universal principle, that the Spirit of God reaches every man. He finds this divine-human relation taught everywhere in Scripture, but he challenges everybody to find the primary evidence of it in his own consciousness. He points out that every hunger of the heart, every dissatisfaction with self, every act of self-condemnation, every sense of shortcoming shows that the soul is not unvisited by the Divine Spirit. To want God at all implies some acquaintance with Him. The ability to appreciate the right, to discriminate light from darkness, the possibility of being anything more than a creature of sense, living for the moment, means that our personal life is in contact at some point with the Infinite Life, and that all things are possible to him who believes and obeys.

To all sorts and conditions of men, Fox continually makes appeal to "that of God" within them. At other times he calls it indiscriminately the "Light," or the "Seed," or the "Principle" of God within the man. Frequently it is the "Christ within." In every instance he means that the Divine Being operates directly upon the human life, and the new birth, the real spiritual life, begins when the individual becomes aware of Him and sets himself to obey Him. He may have been living along with no more explicit consciousness of a Divine presence than the bubble has of the ocean on which it rests and out of which it came; but even so, God is as near him as is the beating of his own heart, and only needs to be found and obeyed.

http://www.strecorsoc.org/gfox/intro.html

 

                                                           

 

http://www.fredsakademiet.dk/tid/_gifs/fox.gif

 

Margaret Fell, his wife.

 

New way of raising children.

 

William Penn.