The Reformation churches establish themselves in Europe

The outworking of the Reformation was unique within each country in continental Europe, Scandinavia, and the British Isles. The extent of reform depended on the strength of opposition from the Roman Catholic Church and the attitudes of the populace toward the church in each of the affected countries. It also depended on which branch of the Reformation churches became the most influential in the affairs of reforming the church. Some may have been directly influenced by the work of Luther, Zwingli, Calvin and other early reform leaders while other late-comers to the Reformation were influenced by the followers of those early leaders.

Although the reformers readily affirmed their allegiance to “the scriptures alone” as the authority of the church and living the Christian life, it was far more difficult matter to shed centuries of church practices that conflicted with or undermined faithful adherence to the scriptures. Therefore, the implementation of the reforms in the new Protestant churches often carried with it many of the old ways of doing the business of church. By 1550, the church in the west had settled into three branches: Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism (Christianity allied with the state), and Calvinism (theocracy). The branches were similar in that each was a compulsory religion, had strong ties with the state in one way or another, and attempted to use the state to impose a religious monopoly.[1]

In countries with a strong Catholic-state alliance, Protestantism made little if any headway. Spanish royalty was predominantly Catholic and virtually exterminated Protestantism through the Inquisition in the 1550s. Protestantism in the Italian states was shunned by the aristocracy and was of small concern and consequence. France was ruled by a Catholic monarchy but the aristocracy became divided because some sections of France were ruled by Huguenots which comprised over ten percent of the nation’s population that heavily favored Calvin’s brand of reformation. After three internal wars separated by intermittent periods of peace, the Huguenots of France won official tolerance for their faith by the 1590s. However, this was short-lived as the monarchy was Catholic and subsequent leaders embraced a more severe interpretation of papal power and cancelled the edict. In 1559 the Scottish nobility sided with Calvin’s disciple John Knox and rose up against Catholic domination. Protestantism became the state religion of Scotland in 1562. In the Netherlands, Protestant resistance against the Catholics began in the 1560s. As the religious divisions and conflicts grew across Europe, the common theme of the church (whether Lutheran, Calvinist, or Catholic) was to look to the sword of state for assistance. As a result, civil and international war became the norm until the late seventeenth century.[2]

The origin of the bonds between church and state during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries came about whenever one of the three contenders for the allegiance of a nation’s citizenry successfully allied itself with the bearer of the state’s sword. Similar to the mass conversions to Christianity under Constantine in the fourth century Roman Empire and the Christianizing of the barbarians during the middle ages, membership in Protestant churches during those early years of the Reformation was largely the result mass conversions. When the ruling entity (a prince, city council, or state) decided to join the Protestant reformation movement, the ruling entity brought all of the people within their domain into the churches. These mass conversions were mostly of membership in name only and not true conversions and commitments to Christ. As with earlier mass conversions in the church’s history, the Protestant mass conversions brought much worldliness into the church.[3]

The years between 1520 and 1562 were a time of bloody martyrdom for the Protestants. But the worst was to come between 1562 and 1648 when Protestants fought for their very survival.[4] In a belated and half-hearted effort to reunite the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestants, Pope Paul III called for a council to consider reforms within the church in the little town of Trent in the mountains of northern Italy. With two interruptions of several years each, the council lasted from 1545 until 1563. The council developed a creed and a new catechism (religious instruction) for the church. The religious abuses that had caused much of the trouble for the church were corrected, and provision was made to better educate the clergy. Although great reform had been accomplished, the essential character of the church remained unchanged which was considered a triumph for the papacy.[5] The efforts of the Catholics at Trent revitalized the church following the shock of the Reformation and spurred its efforts to stamp out Protestantism. Between 1562 and 1618, the Calvinistic Protestants suffered the greatest martyrdom. In 1618, the Lutherans were also dragged into the conflict with the Catholics. The Catholic-Protestant wars eventually ended in 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia which fixed much of the boundaries of Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism in Europe to the present day.[6]

The Reformation in England

We have reserved for last a discussion of the struggle between Catholics and Reformation-era Protestants for dominance in England. The progress of the Reformation and rejection of papal authority generally was a grass roots affair in every country as most rulers were aligned with the Catholic hierarchy. But the Reformation in England was unique in that it became the first nation-state to reject papal authority but not the church’s doctrine or form of worship.

Henry VIII was eighteen when he became king of England in 1509 and ruled for thirty-eight years until his death in 1547. Henry became embroiled in a controversy with the papacy because of his desire to divorce his long-time first wife and marry Ann Boleyn (second of six marriages) with the hope of producing a male heir to inherit the throne. Failing to receive a timely reply from the Pope, the powerful monarch took matters into his own hands and pushed the Parliament to rubber-stamp the necessary legislation which decreed that Henry was the supreme head of the Church of England. His actions were not meant as a rejection of Catholicism for he had previously rejected Luther’s concept of the church. But Henry’s proclamation of royal supremacy over the church effectively separated the English church from Rome and led to the dissolution of monasteries and the confiscation of church property which Henry sold to the aristocracy and gentry.[7]

Henry’s view of the Church of England (also called the Anglican or Episcopal Church) was that it was still Catholic in doctrine but now rested on the supremacy of the king and his descendants. Henry’s wished for heir (Edward VI) was born in 1537 to his third wife. Edward assumed the throne at age nine upon Henry’s death. Edward lived to be only fifteen and was succeeded by a half-sister in 1553. During his short reign Reformation sentiments grew throughout England. Queen Mary was thirty-seven when she ascended the throne but ruled only five years until her death. Her pronounced Catholic sympathies pushed for a reversion to papal authority. She was called “Bloody Mary” because of her burning of Protestant heretics. Mary’s younger half-sister Elizabeth I became queen in 1558 at age twenty-five and ruled England for the next forty-five years. Elizabeth’s returned the Church of England to the model that matched her father’s position on the supremacy of the monarchy over the church. Many Catholics were martyred not because their beliefs were considered heretical but because they were judged as traitors to the crown by rejecting the supremacy of the crown over the church.[8] Although Henry thought Luther a heretic, many Protestants believed Henry’s rejection of papal authority was a step, however feeble, in reformation of the church. [9]

It appears that the English Reformation was the result of royal intrigues and politics of government, kings, and queens. But perhaps reformation is too strong a word for what had happened in England. The Church of England considered itself neither Protestant nor fully Catholic for the changes were more political and organizational than religious and doctrinal. As a result, unrest and desire for freedom from the strictures of the Church of England continued for a long time after the Reformation had run its course and become settled in other countries. Those members of the Church of England who pushed for a more thoroughly purified were called Puritans. They objected to the rites, ceremonies, and episcopal form of government of the Church of England, they wanted to remain in the church and work for reform from within. Separatists were those who believed the process of reforming the Church of England was hopeless and chose to separate from the church altogether. The Separatists were called Congregationalists or Independents and eventually founded the Plymouth Colony in 1620. Nine years later the Puritans followed and establish a reform-minded outpost of the Church of England at the Massachusetts Bay Colony.[10]

Back in England, their brother Puritans continued to suffer persecutions since the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603. But in 1640, Presbyterian Puritans gained the majority in Parliament and executed two of the chief leaders from among their persecutors, one an Archbishop leader and the other a member of the aristocracy. King Charles took exception to the actions of Parliament and soon plunged England into Civil War. Against the King, the nobles, and country gentlemen stood the Parliament and their allies comprised of shopkeepers, small farmers, and a few men of high rank. The war lasted nine years and ended with Charles I’s execution.[11]

For a time there was a great measure of religious freedom in England including those calling themselves Nonconformists and Dissenters. But the English people soon become dissatisfied with the rigidity of Puritanism and brought back Charles II, the son of Charles I who was executed in 1649. Puritan reforms were now pushed aside by Parliament now strongly dominated by Anglicans. Charles II died and was succeeded by his brother, James II, whose great obsession was to restore Catholicism in England. James II sought aid from Louis XIV of France in his endeavor, but the Protestants found their champion in William III and Mary who came from Holland in 1688 and drove James II from the throne in 1688. The following year religious toleration was granted to all dissenters including Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, and Quakers. The only exceptions were Roman Catholics or those denying the Trinity.[12]
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Although presented in a highly abbreviated manner, the first seven chapters illustrate the enormous importance of biblical doctrine (dogma, creed, belief) to the church during the first sixteen hundred years of its history. And this importance is evident through Satan’s relentless attacks on biblical truth over the centuries. The church has often made its authority equal or superior to the Bible in many areas which has led to error and corruption within. Also, the church was attacked from without because it had absorbed much of the humanistic worldview. And since the fourth century, the church had perverted its proper scriptural role and relationship with rulers and governments. All of these attacks had one central purpose—that was to challenge and discredit the truth of the inerrant word of God as revealed in the Bible.

As America’s colonists were primarily of English origin, so too was their religious heritage and experience. Religious persecution by the English kings and queens and the Anglican Church was the paramount reason which led to the establishment of at least half of the American colonies. The colonists’ experiences in England and their 150-year history in American formed the unique nature of Founders’ religious impulse that significantly prepared them for their rebellion against the effronteries of the English crown.

Hopefully, this brief history has given a general understanding of the foundations, circumstances, and experiences which informed the new American church as to the importance of their reliance on biblical truth in living the Christian life and which also guided the Founding generation in establishing a nation based upon biblical principles. But to a large measure this reliance on the Bible has been progressively abandoned by the church and nation since the late nineteenth century.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976), p. 288.
[2] Ibid., pp. 290-293.
[3] B. K. Kuiper, The Church in History, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1951, 1964), p. 205.
[4] Ibid., p. 244-245.
[5] Ibid., pp. 233-234.
[6] Ibid., pp. 244-245.
[7] J. M. Roberts, The New History of the World, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 579-580.
[8] Ibid., pp. 581-581; “Henry VIII,” Encyclopedia Britannica. http://www.britannica.com/biography/Henry-VIII-king-of-England (accessed August 10, 2015).
[9] Kuiper, pp. 223, 229.
[10] Ibid., pp. 249-251.
[11] Ibid., p. 251-252.
[12] Ibid., pp. 253-257

Calls for reformation within the church occurred over several centuries and produced a complex series of events that challenged the authority of the church hierarchy. Calls for reformation began with the Waldenses in the twelfth and thirteen centuries and continued with Wycliffe, Hus, and the Brethren of the Common Life in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. When Luther nailed the ninety-five theses to the door of the Wittenberg Church in 1517, he called into question certain practices of the church and sought to change them. Initially his actions were not meant to divide the church but to rid it of the practices that many in the church felt were doctrinally contrary to the tenets of the New Testament. What many define as the beginning of the Protestant Reformation in 1517 may be more correctly viewed as a step (although the major one) in a centuries-long process that eventually led to the irrevocable separation of the Western church into its Catholic and Protestant branches.[1]

Martin Luther

Luther (1483-1546) received a Master’s degree from the University of Erfurt. Subsequently, he began studying law but changed to theology. In 1507, he was ordained a priest and began tutoring in the university at Wittenberg. He was transferred back to Erfurt in 1509. During a trip to Rome in 1511, Luther observed the low state of religious and moral convictions of the church in Rome at the time, and his opposition to church hierarchy grew. Although he remained a loyal Catholic, Luther concluded that the road to salvation was best gained by fleeing the world. He began living the acetic life of a monk in a monastery and attempted to earn salvation by his good works. Try as he might he remained oppressed by a sense of his utter sinfulness and separation from God. Sitting in his monk’s cell near the end of 1512, Luther read Paul’s letter to the Romans. He read Romans 1:17, “The righteous will live by faith.” He pondered those words for a few moments and then was astounded by the magnitude of their meaning. He was overwhelmed with joy as he realized he was saved by faith and not works.[2] The crushing burden of sin and separation from God had been lifted.

Between the time of his conversion in 1512 and the ninety-five theses nailed to the Wittenberg door on October 31, 1517, Luther continued ponder the many abuses in the church and preached and spoke against them. According to one authorized history of the Catholic Church, it was not Luther’s intent to leave the church, and “…much of what Luther believed and taught was authentic Catholic doctrine that had been distorted by abuses and incorrect practices.”[3]

The recent development of the printing press made it possible for Luther’s theses to be quickly known throughout Germany. Within four weeks they had been translated into many languages and carried to every country in western Europe. As a consequence, the sale of indulgences was almost completely stopped. Over the next three years Catholic officials made numerous efforts to silence Luther. But the war of words continued unabated between Luther and his followers and those defending the Catholic Church and papal authority. In 1519, theologian Johannes Eck challenged Luther to a debate in Leipzig, Germany. Although the debaters were evenly matched in learning and speaking ability, Eck eventually forced Luther to admit that some of the teachings of John Hus had been unjustly condemned by the Council of Constance.[4] As you may recall, Hus had been burned at the stake by the church 104 years earlier because he had strongly opposed the sale of indulgences and taught many ideas that became central teachings of the Reformation.[5] Luther now stood openly with Hus who had been officially condemned as a heretic by the church. At this point the reconciliation between Luther and the Roman Catholic Church was impossible.[6] In 1520, Luther published three treatises which rejected the authority of the Catholic Church and the popes as well as the sacraments of the church with the exception of baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and repentance. Luther was excommunicated in 1521 because he would not retract his statements regarding the Catholic Church’s dependence on good works and the practice of selling indulgences to gain remission of sin and salvation.[7]

In Roman Catholic orthodoxy, there are seven sacraments (ceremonies or rituals). Protestants embrace both the Lord’s Supper and water baptism as ordinances of the church but differ significantly with Roman Catholics as to their meaning and practice. Luther, and like most Protestants since the Reformation, did not reject the need for penance (repentance), but he rejected the Catholic doctrine that penance was dependent on its sacramental elements. For Protestants, this disagreement stands at the heart of the Reformation as found in Romans 1:17 along with the scriptures alone as the source of the church’s authority.

In Luther’s day the sacrament of penance was the center of controversy with regard to Catholic practices. The heart of penance was the priestly act of absolution (forgiveness) which was the pardoning of sins and release from eternal punishment for those sins. Absolution involved three requirements of the penitent sinner: contrition, confession to a priest, and satisfaction. The priest would decide what the penitent must do to receive satisfaction such as saying a number of prayers, giving alms, fasting, or pilgrimage to some shrine. In time the church permitted the penitent to make payment of a sum of money and receive a document call an indulgence that would release him from other penalties required for satisfaction.[8]

The practice of indulgences began at the end of the eleventh century when Pope Urban II permitted a penitent to join a crusade to the Holy Land as a substitute for any other penance required of the priests. By the end of the thirteenth century indulgences were granted to secular rulers for political reasons. By 1400, the sale of indulgences was a common practice in many local churches, and many indulgences were being sold for trivial sums for almost any occasion or merely given away. During Luther’s time, indulgences were being trafficked in a scandalous manner throughout the church. In his original ninety-five theses, Luther did not attack the indulgences granted by the church but the manner of abuses connected with their sale.[9]

Pope Leo X ruled the church from 1513-1521. Leo X assumed the papacy only two years after Luther traveled to Rome and within months after his conversion in late 1512. Leo X was deeply consumed with the paganizing culture of the Renaissance. Although he lived a blameless moral life, he was exceedingly worldly and had little interest in religion. His greatest interest was building the magnificent St. Peter’s Church at the Vatican in Rome. Because of its huge cost, the pope raised the necessary funds by the sale of indulgences on an unprecedented scale.[10] Four years after Leo X’s ascension to the papacy, Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the church door in Wittenberg which became the match that ignited the flames of the Protestant Reformation.

The writings of the Protestant Reformers addressed many of the failings of the universal church up to that point in history. Luther may have struck the match, but many other reformers had contributed much of the kindling that aided in spreading the flames of Protestantism. Even though there was a general consensus of the church’s authority centered on “the Bible alone,” the various reformers had different ideas on charting the way forward with regard to the finer points of interpreting scriptures as they related to doctrinal matters. It must be remembered that the reformers had been a part of the Catholic Church, and its doctrines and practices were not quickly, easily, or entirely abandoned. Also, most priests and the people were exceptionally ignorant of the Bible. The reform leaders faced the daunting task of both organizing the church and educating the Protestant faithful in their respective countries.

Luther did not believe that he and his followers had left the church. Rather, his efforts were meant to reform the church, and these efforts were quickly implemented in 1521. Luther’s first task was to translate the Bible into the German language which he completed in March 1522. He also began preparing training materials for children, developed a new hymnbook, and eventually guided the church in its statement of faith called the Augsburg Confession in 1530.[11]

Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin

Less than two months after Luther’s birth, Ulrich Zwingli was born on January 1, 1484, in Wildhaus, the German-speaking part of Switzerland. Zwingli developed his ideas for reform of the church independent of Luther’s influence. Inspired by Luther, Zwingli attacked indulgences in 1518 and soon church reform spread throughout Switzerland. A key difference between Luther and Zwingli lay in the idea of the Lord’s Supper. Zwingli believed the Supper was only a memorial ceremony in which the bread and the wine were symbols while Luther clung to the Catholic tradition that the body of Christ is actually present in the bread and wine. Meeting in 1529, Zwingli and Luther could not come to an agreement. Following Zwingli’s death in 1531, Protestants in Switzerland and southern Germany began following the teachings of John Calvin.[12]

Born in 1509 near Paris in northern France, John Calvin was twenty-six years younger than Luther and Zwingli. Although Calvin had studied for both the law and theology, he eventually chose the life of a scholar in Paris. In 1533, while at the university, he heard a speech by the university’s rector that mirrored the reform ideas of Erasmus and Luther. Rumors circulated that Calvin had written the speech, and he had to flee for his life. By 1535, Calvin had settled in Basel, Switzerland, and in 1536 wrote Institutes of the Christian Religion which has been called the Reformation’s greatest presentation of evangelical truth.[13]

With regard to the doctrine of predestination, Luther and Calvin were in agreement. This doctrine states that God has from eternity chosen those who are to inherit eternal life. The form of worship followed by the Catholic Church was retained by Luther except where expressly forbidden by the Bible, but Calvin departed from the Catholic form of worship in all ways as far as possible. With regard to relations with the state, Luther allowed the state to have many powers over the church. Calvin denied that the state had any power over the church. Rather, the church was to have power over the state. Both men believed education was very important and that the people should be well-grounded in the Bible and doctrinal matters. Although salvation by faith alone was a foundational doctrine for both Luther and Calvin, Luther placed the emphasis on the salvation of man by faith while Calvin believed the heart of the church stood on the doctrine of predestination which was focused on the glory of God. [14]

In spite of their differences, there were four fundamental elements common to all the reformers of the Reformation era. The reformers stressed the priesthood of all believers by which they meant that the believer gained salvation through Christ alone and not through the church or offices of the priest. In all questions of faith and morals, the Bible was the supreme and final authority. Also, the reformers looked back to the spirit and practices of the Apostolic Church as described in the New Testament as the model for church operation. This led to the view that the “church” was the community of believers and not the hierarchy of church officials and church government.
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The church had traveled a seemingly incomprehensible path through 1500 years of persecution, victories, corruption, triumphs, and tragedies. Along the way the universal church had accumulated an inordinate amount of wealth, excess doctrinal baggage, and a large measure of worldliness. But in spite of the faults and corruption within the church, the sustaining inerrant truth of the New Testament and its doctrines was the church’s life preserver to which it clung, however tenuously, for a millennium and a half. The Reformation was a time of casting off of much of the church’s excesses, failures, and worldliness, but it would be a painful and imperfect parting for both Catholic and Protestant churches. Satan used the church’s distractions and disruptions to thrust into its breaches the humanistic dregs of the waning Renaissance of the sixteenth century and the ascending humanism of the era of Enlightenment in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to further his efforts to destroy the church of Jesus Christ. To this we turn our attention in the coming chapters and set the stage for a look at the new American Church.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] B. K. Kuiper, The Church in History, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1951, 1964), p. 157.
[2] Ibid., pp. 160-163.
[3] Alan Schreck, Ph.D., The Compact History of the Catholic Church, (Cincinnati, Ohio: Servant Books, 2009), pp. 73-74.
[4] Kuiper, pp. 165, 169-174.
[5] Ibid., pp. 145-146.
[6] Ibid., pp. 172-173.
[7] Schreck, pp. 73-74.
[8] Kuiper, pp. 158-159.
[9] Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976), p. 233.
[10] Kuiper, p. 231.
[11] Ibid., pp. 184-185.
[12] Ibid., pp. 187-189.
[13] Ibid., pp. 189-191.
[14] Ibid., pp. 200-201.

The papacy in the second half of the Middle Ages

The popes from the fifth century to the Reformation in the sixteenth century were not unlike the judges and kings of ancient Israel. The papacy contained both saints and scoundrels, and the witness of the church rose and fell accordingly just as God’s people did in ancient Israel under the judges and kings when they intermittently experienced seasons of blessing through obedience to God or languished in wilderness because of rebellion. However, an examination of the papacy’s history is beyond the scope of our inquiry. That said, we should note the general trends of the church under the papacy in the second half of the Middle Ages that led to the Reformation.

Innocent III was pope from 1198-1216. Pope Innocent’s view of the papacy was that, “The Lord gave Peter the rule not only over the universal Church, but also the rule over the whole world…No king can rule rightly unless he devoutly serves Christ’s vicar (the pope).” But Innocent’s ideal church reached beyond his desire for secular power. In 1215, Innocent recognized a need for changes within the church and called a council at the Lateran Church in Rome to initiate reform by which he meant reform of the clergy and monks.[1]

Through the centuries the church had become very wealthy. For many in the clergy, it was an easy vocation with a good income, and many exceptionally worldly men occupied the office of bishop. Thus, the religious and spiritual condition of a large majority of the clergy was appalling. Innocent’s call for reform was shared by many earnest Christians in the church, but as we shall see, their ideas of reform were often dramatically different than those of Innocent and subsequent leaders in the church hierarchy.[2]

One of those was Peter Waldo who believed that the Bible and particularly the New Testament should be the only basis for faith and living the Christian life. Waldo was a wealthy merchant from Lyons, France, but around the year 1176 he sold his merchandise and gave his money to the poor. He and his followers became known as the Waldenses. They memorized large portions of the New Testament, dressed simply, fasted three days each week, used only the Lord’s Prayer, and did not believe in purgatory, masses, and prayers for the dead. Men as well as women were allowed to be lay preachers. The Waldenses and other dissenting groups were considered heretics by the church, and to root out the supposed heretics, the church began the Medieval Inquisition (a Roman Catholic court) not to be confused with the church’s later Spanish Inquisition. The pope enlisted some of the nobles to help in eradicating the Waldenses and other groups, and as a consequence it was said that “blood flowed like water” for twenty years in southern France. But a remnant of the Waldenses survived and found refuge in the Alps of western Switzerland and three hundred years later accepted the teachings of Protestantism.[3]

Innocent and the popes that followed were able to maintain the church’s power over the temporal realm until the end of the thirteen century. But with the rule of Boniface VIII (1294-1303), the church began losing power and declined because of two factors. There was a spirit of rising nationalism among the countries under the church’s political domination thereby weakening the power and authority of a distant pope. From 1309 to 1376, the papal seat moved from Rome to France and was known as the “Babylonian Captivity of the Papacy.” The Italians were highly dissatisfied with this state of affairs and in 1378 elected their own pope which resulted in the “Great Schism” between the Italian and French factions within the Roman church. Thus, the church had two popes which lasted until 1417.[4] But the residual damage to the church caused by the Babylonian Captivity of the Papacy and the Great Schism would last for many years.

Rumblings of reformation

The intrigues and destructive warfare within the church did not go un-noticed by those calling for reform of the church. Englishman and Oxford professor John Wycliffe began to criticize the clergy in 1376 because of the corruption within the church and its quest for wealth and political power. He called for a return to the poverty and simplicity of the apostles and declared that the Bible and not the church should be the only determinant of faith. Since the people could not read the Bible written in Latin, he translated it into the English language. Wycliffe died in 1384. His followers were called the Lollards and continued to preach that the only standard for doctrine was the Bible. Throughout England many Lollards were martyred at the stake and only a small remnant survived in secret until the time of the Reformation.[5]

The teachings of Wycliffe did not die with the Lollards but spread to Europe and eventually to Bohemia. John Hus was only fifteen when Wycliffe died. Hus eventually became the head of the University of Prague and enthusiastically welcomed Wycliffe’s teaching. He began to preach boldly about the corruption of the clergy, and many of his ideas became the central teachings of the future Reformation. Hus claimed that only Christ was the head of the church and popes and cardinals were not required for its governance. He challenged the sale of indulgences which was a monstrous practice that contradicted the doctrines of the Bible. For his brashness, Hus was excommunicated, imprisoned, and subsequently burned at the stake on July 6, 1415. For the next twenty-two years the church battled the Hussite movement which resulted in a great slaughter. In 1436, the church agreed to allow the Hussites certain freedoms in preaching and manner of communion. The church also agreed to attempt a reform of the clergy.[6]

The cry for reform within the church came from other parts of the Roman Church’s world as well. The Brethren of the Common Life arose about 1350 in the Netherlands and Germany. They strongly believed in Christian education as a means to bring about reform. Founded by Gerhard Groote, other leaders in the movement included John Wessel, Erasmus, and Thomas à Kempis.[7]

Humanism enters the church

We are nearing the threshold of the Reformation in the early sixteenth century. But before we discuss those events, we must address one other mayor influence on the church which hindered its efforts at reform and continued to afflict both Catholic and Protestant churches to the present day. The Middle Ages did not spring fully formed in Northern Europe with the fall of the Roman Empire in 476. Although ignorant, the barbarians were not stupid. They were ignorant because they could not read or write. But, in many respects their civilization rivaled those of other parts of the world. They had a religion, laws, systems of government, songs, stories, and knew how to make a living. They were excellent warriors, and the conquest of Rome exposed them to the world of books and other cultures.[8]

Life was harsh in the pioneer wilds of northern Europe at the beginning of the Middle Ages around A.D. 500. The first half of the Middle Ages has also been called the Dark Ages. This was a time when life was focused on the physical demands of survival and less on those tasks required of a cultivated society. Compared to the remainder of the civilized world, these simple agricultural people of France, Germany, the English Isles, and other parts of Northern Europe appeared to be backwards if not uncivilized. Yet, out of such sturdy stock grew Western civilization and by which is meant Christendom.[9]

Because the Northern Europeans began with so little and struggled under very harsh conditions, the Dark Ages did not end until the eleventh century. In the latter half of the eleventh century and early twelfth century, there began to occur significant social, economic, and political changes that produced an awakening in the cultural and intellectual life of Northern Europe.

From about 1100 to 1300, the men of Western Europe built a cohesive and somewhat refined civilization, and the broad and general characteristics of their medieval society remained for centuries and became the ideas and ideals that formed the foundations of modern Christendom. As towns grew and people had more leisure and material possessions, intellectual curiosity also grew.[10]

These early stirrings in Western Europe were the precursors to the Renaissance which was considered a rebirth or revival of learning usually considered as spanning the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. It was a time of transition between the Middle Ages and the modern times. Beginning in Italy, it marked the humanistic revival of the classical influence of Greece and Rome which led to the flowering of the arts, literature, and modern science.[11] But not all of the fruits of the Renaissance can be considered good for man. The humanistic elements of the Renaissance fundamentally changed the thinking about man and put him at the center and focus of life. In contrast with the biblical revelation, man was now the measure. This redefinition of man invaded the church as early as the thirteenth century through the thoughts and writings of Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), an outstanding Catholic theologian whose influence still dominates many within the Catholic Church.[12]

Although Aquinas believed that man revolted against God and was fallen, he believed man was only partly fallen. Aquinas believed the will was fallen but the intellect was not. Men could rely on their human wisdom as well as the teachings of non-Christian philosophers. Philosophy was separated from the Bible. Therefore, man could act autonomously. Aquinas revered the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 B.C.). Through Aquinas, Aristotle’s philosophy began to be incorporated into the church as a source of authority alongside the Bible in giving answers to the questions about life. Aristotle focused on individual things (the particulars) as opposed to biblical absolutes and ideals. Human reason was now autonomous, and more and more of church pronouncements were based on Greek or Roman thought. Aquinas’s so-called unfallen human reason was now equal to revelation. But if one starts with things (e.g., a person’s individual acts) as opposed to the absolutes found in the Bible, there is no basis for values, morals, and law. In other words, there is no basis for determining right and wrong.[13]

Humanism had entered the church in the thirteenth century which resulted in an increasing distortion of biblical teaching because of a mixing of Christian and ancient non-Christian thought. Therefore, based the church’s presumption that man’s intellect was unfallen, it made possible a detour on the Roman road to salvation because fallen man was told that he was able to return to right relationship with God by “meriting the merit of Christ.”[14]

Renaissance humanism continued to strengthen and spread over the next two centuries as it evolved toward modern humanism in which man declared he was totally independent and denied God’s existence. Soon this focus on the particulars without benefit of God and his laws etched in creation spread to all spheres of life and knowledge.[15]

In 1453 Constantinople was conquered by the Turks and eventually renamed Istanbul. The eastern half of the old Roman Empire had fallen and signaled the end of Middle Ages. As a result Constantinople’s Greek scholars steeped in the humanistic worldview fled to Florence and other Italian cities. Only fourteen years prior to the fall in 1453, the Eastern Orthodox Church met in council with the Western church at Florence to discuss a renewal of relations between the two halves of the Christian world. Thus, a channel had already been established for humanistic thought in the Eastern church to flow into the Western church.[16] Over the centuries the Western church had left the simple faith of the fathers of the church as found in the New Testament. The church had also breached the biblical barriers between the ecclesiastical and civil authorities. And in the last half of the fifteenth century, the paganizing influence of the Renaissance seized the papacy.

In response to the great wickedness of the times, an Italian Dominican Monk named Savonarola boldly preached in Florence for four years against Pope Alexander VI and the moral abuses within the church. He was hanged in 1498 and his body burned.[17] But calls for reformation would not be quieted. Nineteen years later the sound of nails being driven into the church door in Wittenberg, Germany, echoed throughout the Christian world. The parchment secured by the nails was a cry for massive reform within a corrupt church. It was a call for not only an end to the moral abuses within the church but a return to sola scriptura—the scriptures only as a basis for faith and living the Christian life.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] B. K. Kuiper, The Church in History, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1951, 1964), pp. 124-125, 127.
[2] Ibid., pp. 127-128.
[3] Ibid., pp. 141-143.
[4] Ibid., pp. 134, 136-138.
[5] Ibid., pp. 143-144.
[6] Ibid., pp. 144-147.
[7] Ibid., pp. 150-151.
[8] Ibid., p. 54.
[9] John Herman Randall, Jr., The Making of the Modern Mind, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1926, 1940), pp.10-15.
[10] Ibid., pp. 13-14.
[11] “renaissance,” Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, (Springfield, Massachusetts: G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, 1963), p. 725.
[12] Francis A. Schaffer, How Should We Then Live? (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 1976), p. 51.
[13] Ibid., pp. 43, 52, 55.
[14] Ibid., p. 56.
[15] Ibid., pp. 60, 71.
[16] Ibid., p. 60.
[17] Ibid., p. 80.

The fall of the Roman Empire

The ascendance of Christianity came too late to redeem the social fabric of Rome and the western half of the empire. The Roman world was culturally and spiritually impoverished and no longer had a unifying common core of belief. Its citizens had abandoned their reverence for the old Roman virtues that had once provided cohesion within its far-flung empire. It had been in decline long before the Edict of Milan in 313, and the newly sanctioned Christian virtues had not time to infuse life into the dying empire. The Roman world was culturally and spiritually spent and in a slow motion death spiral during the latter part of the fourth century and early fifth century.[1]

Historians mark certain milestones in the demise of the once mighty empire. To the north lay the barbarian German tribes and behind them were the Mongolian Huns. In 376 the German Visigoths (west Goths) crossed the lower Daube and were the first barbarian tribe to enter the eastern half of the Roman Empire (Byzantine). They were soon followed by the Ostrogoths (east Goths). Even though declining, the empire was still large and had strength enough to drive out the barbarians in 378. The barbarians moved their attacks to the West, and for the next one hundred years hordes of barbarians plundered the western portion of the empire and killed or brought into captivity many of its citizens. The sack of Rome at the heart of the empire by barbarian warlords occurred in 410, and the city was again plundered by the Vandals in 455. The dying body of the empire had its head cut off in 476 when the last western emperor was killed by a Germanic warlord exactly one hundred years after the first invasion of the Goths. The date is more symbolic than meaningful as the empire had ceased to function long before 476. However, that year was far more significant in another way for it marked the beginning of the Middle Ages which lasted for a thousand years until the fall of Constantinople to the Muslims in 1453.[2]

Emergence of the papacy and doctrinal compromise

The second major event to dramatically influence the course of the church’s history occurred in 461 within the church. Out of its second century struggle with the Gnostics and Montanists, the church developed the episcopal form of government (church recognition of a governing authority of bishops) to establish its authority and to determine the meaning of the Bible because even heretical groups claimed biblical authority in promotion of their heresies. At first the organizational structure of the church was relatively simple in that the officials of the church were elders and deacons. Elders were called presbyters. In Greek, overseer meant episcopos or bishop. Bishops were deemed to be the successors of the apostles, and in time the office of a bishop became the leader of group of presbyters.[3]

As the church grew and spread, so did the hierarchal nature of church leadership. Bishops in larger cities (metropolitan bishops, later called archbishops) were eventually looked upon to be of higher rank than bishops from smaller churches. Over time, the bishops of five cities in the Christian realm were recognized as having the greatest authority. Four of these cities were in the eastern and Greek portion of the Roman Empire: Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, and Constantinople. Muslim conquests eventually removed forever the bishops of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria. Only the patriarch of Constantinople in the east and the bishop of Rome in the west were left. In time the bishops in the western and Latin portion of the empire recognized the bishop of Rome as their superior. By the year 461, the papacy had been fully established under Pope Leo I in the western portion of the empire. As previously noted, the last western emperor was killed as the Germanic tribes of the north conquered Rome fifteen years later in 476. Remarkably, the barbarian conquest of the Roman Empire enhanced the power and prestige of the Roman popes who were successful in mitigating much of worst excesses of the invaders. Many of the barbarians who invaded Italy had become Christians and were in awe of the bishops of Rome. Soon the church sent missionaries to the barbarous, unlearned, and diverse tribes of the harsh wilds of northern of Europe. Among these uncivilized peoples, many churches were established which became the foundation of Christendom over the next one thousand years.[4]

When Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi with his disciples, He asked them who men said the Son of man is. Following their response, He asked his disciples who they said He was.

Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” [Matthew 16:13-20. RSV]

Since the second century many Christians believed that the bones of St. Peter were buried on the site of the Vatican church in Rome. Over time the belief grew that the presence of Peter’s bones was proof that he was the first bishop of Rome. Based on Christ’s words that Peter was the rock upon which he would build His church [Matthew 16:18], the Roman church eventually declared that Peter was the founder of the episcopal line of successors (popes) which has never been broken. But the Roman church’s reliance on Matthew 16:18 to establish the papal chain did not exist until approximately 250 and then only marginally until the fifth century.[5] Although the power and authority of the papacy over the Roman church had not come into full flower until the rule of Leo I (440-461), the Roman Catholic Church lists 48 popes before Leo I.[6] Once the papacy had established its supreme authority over the church in the late fifth century, thereafter, all subsequent popes wanting to exert or expand their authority did so based on the church’s interpretation of Christ’s words to Peter. As an example, Gelasius I (492-496) claimed that the popes had ultimate authority to change the decisions of any bishops.[7]

With the authority of church government fully consolidated and vested in the head of the Roman church, a single man now had the power to change or ignore the meaning of scripture, and the church began to deteriorate. Church historian B. K. Kuiper lists many of the unscriptural doctrines that had infiltrated the church by the end of the fifth century.

• Prayers for the dead
• Belief in purgatory (place in which souls are purified after death and before they can enter heaven)
• The forty-day Lenten season
• The view that the Lord’s Supper is a sacrifice, and that its administrators are priests
• Sharp division of the members of the church into clergy (officers of the church) and laity (ordinary members of the church)
• The veneration (adoration) of martyrs and saints, and above all the adoration of Mary
• The burning of tapers or candles in their honor (martyrs, saints, and Mary)
• Veneration of the relics of martyrs and saints
• The ascription of magical powers to these relics
• Pictures, images, and altars in the churches
• Gorgeous vestments for the clergy
• More and more elaborate and splendid ritual (form of worship)
• Less preaching
• Pilgrimages to holy places
• Monasticism
• Worldliness
• Persecution of heathen and heretics[8]

Church and state joined under the papacy

We have previously written that the intertwining of the affairs of church and state began with the legalization of Christianity in 313 under Emperor Constantine and later establishment as the official religion of the empire in 380. This mixing of affairs was a corruption of God’s design for each realm and would last for more than a thousand years.[9]

At first it was the state that interfered with the church. But three hundred years later the church was fully involved in the affairs of state. The most important pope in the first half of the Middle Ages was Gregory I who ruled the church from 590 to 604. He became the example for all subsequent popes that assumed broad political powers over the barbarian kingdoms following the vacuum left by the failed Western Roman Empire. Not only the head of the church, Gregory was heavily involved in the secular realm of European politics and governments including appointment of heads of cities, raising armies, and making peace treaties. Simultaneously, the church also cared for the poor, educated the people, and pursued a measure of justice. Much of Gregory I and his successors’ involvement in civil affairs appear to have been the lesser of two evils during the period in which the church dealt with the trauma and transition of a primitive society that existed in the first centuries following the barbarian invasions. Without the church’s involvement in its civil affairs, European civilization would have remained far longer and deeper in the valley of cultural and spiritual darkness.[10] Nevertheless, the consequences of mixing the ecclesiastical and civil governments would haunt the church until the Reformation and beyond.

The division of the eastern and western churches

At the end of the church’s first millennium, its two branches had grown apart to the point of complete separation. In the west the church was located in Italy but with the fall of the western portion of the Roman Empire had expanded into France, the Netherlands, England, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Ireland, Scotland, and Russia. The church in the eastern half of the empire lasted another thousand years until it fell to the Muslim conquerors in 1453. But even though the eastern branch of Christianity survived the on-slough of the barbarians, its history in the Middle Ages was one of retrenchment having lost Syria, Palestine, and Egypt to the Muslim Arabs. It was confined to Asia Minor and the Balkan Peninsula. Unlike the vibrant, vigorous, and expanding western church, the east was comprised of an old and exhausted people treading water in a stagnant pool.[11]

The character of the two churches had become significantly different. The western church had changed dramatically and had taken on a decidedly Germanic character. The eastern church had a distinctive oriental flavor.[12] Their language, literature, and cultures had drifted apart. The final schism occurred because of differences in the exercise of church authority. Eventually, push came to shove, and Pope Leo IX of Rome sent a letter of excommunication to Michael Cerularius, the patriarch of Constantinople. Cerularius in turn excommunicated the pope. The Greek Eastern church and the Latin Western church had completely divided by 1054 and would go their separate ways.[13] Hereafter in this commentary on the history of the church, the discussion shall be confined to the western branch of Christianity.
______

The accomplishments of the church in the first thousand years of its history are truly remarkable. In the first five hundred years a tiny Jewish sect that claimed a Jewish man named Jesus was the Son of God had suffered, grown, and eventually conquered heathenism in the highly civilized Roman Empire. In the next five hundred years following the collapse of the empire, the church conquered the highly uncivilized barbarians of northern Europe.[14]

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] Russell Kirk, The Roots of American Order, (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway, 1991), p. 132.
[2] B. K. Kuiper, The Church in History, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1951, 1964), pp. 48-51.
[3] Ibid., pp. 18-20.
[4] Ibid., pp. 39-42, 75-77.
[5] Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976), p. 166.
[6] Kuiper., p. 139.
[7] Johnson, p. 167.
[8] Ibid., p. 44.
[9] Alvin J. Schmidt, How Christianity Changed the World, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2004), p. 266.
[10] Kuiper, pp. 57-58.
[11] Ibid., pp. 88-90.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid. p. 98.
[14] Ibid., p. 58.