June 10, 2004
WHAT CAN WE DO?:
Big volume wraps up the Reformation: a review of THE REFORMATION: A History By Diarmaid MacCulloch (David L. Beck, May. 30, 2004, San Jose Mercury News)
The Reformation was messy. It did not begin on Oct. 31, 1517, when Luther allegedly tacked his 95 Theses on the debate against indulgences -- selling tickets to heaven -- to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg. Indeed, writes MacCulloch, ``Probably Luther did not see what he was doing as particularly important, since he had spoken on indulgences before, and he was currently much more pleased with his campaign against his bugbear Aristotle.''And it did not end in 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia, which halted the devastating struggle for dynastic and religious dominance known as the Thirty Years' War. MacCulloch arbitrarily and a little reluctantly halts his book in 1700, after the Glorious Revolution gave Britain's last openly Catholic king, James II, the heave-ho, but before John Wesley, whom he greatly admires, set to work.
The idea that eruptions in the body of the Western Christian church are a nearly permanent condition, rather than an isolated if lengthy cataclysm, is at the heart of The Reformation. Running all through it is the gloomy vision of Augustine of Hippo, the fourth-century bishop and theologian who, adumbrating Paul's commentary on Adam and Eve in his Epistle to the Romans, worked up the theory of original sin as a sort of ``hereditary disease.'' When Adam and Eve had sex, they disobeyed God. Sex was therefore sin. "All sin was thus Adam's first sin," writes MacCulloch, "and no human could escape it. How could beings so sunk in sin possibly do anything to earn themselves salvation?"
The Reformation, then, is the struggle among millions of Western Europeans to answer that question, in their own language, at their own time, in their own place, with all the local complications of emotion, politics and authority. The Reformation was dozens of Reformations. If eventually Northern Europe shook out in one way, and Southern Europe another, with Lutherans here and Catholics there and Reformed Protestants sort of everywhere, it was not a single, consistent shaking. Poland, for example, came out of the era a rigidly Catholic land; but it came in as the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a vast area of extreme diversity -- Catholic, Reformed, Lutheran, Orthodox, even Muslim.
(Let me pause here to mention that Christianity, at the beginning of the Reformation, was about the age that Islam is today. Make of that what thou wilt.)
It is at least suggestive that Europe became great trying to answer the question and lapsed into decline once it stopped caring about the answer. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 10, 2004 7:39 AM
Europe became great at about that time because the conflict relieved its residents with brains from the crushing oppression of religion.
Europe thought its way to greatness. If all it took was belief, it'd have been great earlier, no?
Posted by: Harry Eagar at June 10, 2004 2:25 PMEurope became great because for the first time people could actually read the Bible for themselves in their own language. The Reformation allowed people to obey God directly; for the first time they understood that God's law could trump the corrupt authority of priests and even kings.
The common man (i.e. non-priests) could finally read for themselves that God loved them personally and held even the lowest peasant in great worth.
The Reformation did not 'relieve its residents with brains', it did exactly the opposite. The Reformation created the empowerment of the individual, thus laying the groundwork for the creation of a prosperous (and yes pious) middle class, and thus ultimately laying the foundation for the rise of Western civilization.
Posted by: Gideon at June 10, 2004 4:15 PMAugustine of Hippo, [a] fourth-century bishop and theologian who, adumbrating Paul's commentary on Adam and Eve in his Epistle to the Romans, worked up the theory of original sin as a sort of ``hereditary disease.'' When Adam and Eve had sex, they disobeyed God. Sex was therefore sin. "All sin was thus Adam's first sin," writes MacCulloch, "and no human could escape it. How could beings so sunk in sin possibly do anything to earn themselves salvation?"
Could he have been more wrong ?
And, even if he had been right, I note that few people stopped having sex, in order to save their souls.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at June 10, 2004 11:19 PMAugustine was a libertine before he converted; his remonstrance towards sex when he was a bishop flows from his earlier life. Luther had quite a different view.
Posted by: jim hamlen at June 11, 2004 12:45 AM