Reformation

Counter – Reformation

• It was during this political intrigue of the 1500's that the Renaissance and Reformation burst out upon the scene. In 1517 John Tetzel., a hawker of indulgences, appeared in Wittenburg selling indulgences to pay for the building of St. Peters in Rome. To persuade the people to buy his spiritual wares, he told them, according to Luther, that as soon as their money clinked into the bottom of the chest the souls of their deceased friends forthwith went up to heaven. Enraged Luther posted on the door of the Church of All Saints in Wittenburg, his 95 theses proving indulgences unscriptural.

• Controversy flared up which caused Luther to regard the papal ruler as a hateful usurpation. His teachings were directed to the common people who despised the immorality and brutal life of the clergy and soon the whole of Germany was on the eve of a revolutionary movement. The ignorance of Scripture, so skillfully placed over the people by the popes, was being dispelled with the translation of the Bible in the common vernacular and soon the people read the Bible for themselves.

• In the succeeding centuries the reformation movement gathered momentum and soon the papacy lost followers in Switzerland, Scandinavia, Hungary, France, the Netherlands, England and Scotland.

Reformation Stage

Renaissance and Reforms

• Discoveries and Missionaries• Through the late 15th and early 16th centuries, European missionaries and explorers spread

Catholicism to the Americas, Asia, Africa and Oceania. Pope Alexander VI, in the papal bull Inter caetera, awarded colonial rights over most of the newly discovered lands to Spain and Portugal. Under the patronato system, state authorities controlled clerical appointments and no direct contact was allowed with the Vatican. On December 1511, the Dominican friar Antonio de Montesinos openly rebuked the Spanish authorities governing Hispaniola for their mistreatment of the American natives, telling them "... you are in mortal sin ... for the cruelty and tyranny you use in dealing with these innocent people". King Ferdinand enacted the Laws of Burgos and Valladolid in response. Enforcement was lax, and while some blame the Church for not doing enough to liberate the Indians, others point to the Church as the only voice raised on behalf of indigenous peoples. The issue resulted in a crisis of conscience in 16th-century Spain. An outpouring of self-criticism and philosophical reflection among Catholic theologians, most notably Francisco de Vitoria, led to debate on the nature of human rights and the birth of modern international law.

• In 1521, through the leadership and preaching of the Spanish explorer Ferdinand Magellan, the first Catholics were baptized in what became the first Christian nation in Southeast Asia, the Philippines. The following year, Franciscan missionaries arrived in what is now Mexico, and sought to convert the Indians and to provide for their well-being by establishing schools and hospitals. They taught the Indians better farming methods, and easier ways of weaving and making pottery. Because some people questioned whether the Indians were truly human and deserved baptism, Pope Paul III in the papal bull Veritas Ipsa or Sublimis Deus (1537) confirmed that the Indians were deserving people. Afterward, the conversion effort gained momentum. Over the next 150 years, the missions expanded into southwestern North America. The native people were legally defined as children, and priests took on a paternalistic role, often enforced with corporal punishment. Elsewhere, in India, Portuguese missionaries and the Spanish Jesuit Francis Xavier evangelized among non-Christians and a Christian community which claimed to have been established by Thomas the Apostle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Roman_Catholic_Church

• Renaissance Church• In Europe, the Renaissance marked a period of renewed interest in ancient and

classical learning. It also brought a re-examination of accepted beliefs. Cathedrals and churches had long served as picture books and art galleries for millions of the uneducated. The stained glass windows, frescoes, statues, paintings and panels retold the stories of the saints and of biblical characters. The Church sponsored great Renaissance artists like Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, who created some of the world's most famous artworks. The acceptance of humanism had its effects on the Church, which embraced it as well. In 1509, a well known scholar of the age, Erasmus, wrote The Praise of Folly, a work which captured a widely held unease about corruption in the Church. The Papacy itself was questioned by councilarism expressed in the councils of Constance and the Basel. Real reforms during these ecumenical councils and the Fifth Lateran Council were attempted several times but thwarted. They were seen as necessary but did not succeed in large measure because of internal feuds within the Church, ongoing conflicts with the Ottoman Empire and Saracenes and the simony and nepotism practiced in the Renaissance Church of the 15th and early 16th centuries. As a result, rich, powerful and worldly men like Roderigo Borgia (Pope Alexander VI) were able to win election to the papacy.

• Reformation wars• The Fifth Lateran Council issued some but only minor reforms in March of

1517. A few months later, October 17, 1517, Martin Luther issued his Ninety-Five Theses in a letter to several bishops, hoping to spark debate. His theses protested key points of Catholic doctrine as well as the sale of indulgences. Huldrych Zwingli, John Calvin, and others further criticized Catholic teachings. These challenges, supported by powerful political forces in the region, developed into the Protestant Reformation. In Germany, the reformation led to war between the Protestant Schmalkaldic League and the Catholic Emperor Charles V. The first nine-year war ended in 1555 but continued tensions produced a far graver conflict, the Thirty Years' War, which broke out in 1618. In France, a series of conflicts termed the French Wars of Religion was fought from 1562 to 1598 between the Huguenots and the forces of the French Catholic League. A series of popes sided with and became financial supporters of the Catholic League. This ended under Pope Clement VIII, who hesitantly accepted King Henry IV's 1598 Edict of Nantes, which granted civil and religious toleration to Protestants.

• England• The English Reformation was ostensibly based on Henry VIII's desire for annulment

of his marriage with Catherine of Aragon, and was initially more of a political, and later a theological dispute. The Acts of Supremacy made the English monarch head of the English church thereby establishing the Church of England. Then, beginning in 1536, some 825 monasteries throughout England, Wales and Ireland were dissolved and Catholic churches were confiscated. When he died in 1547 all monasteries, friaries, convents of nuns and shrines were destroyed or desolved. Mary I of England reunited the Church of England with Rome and, against the advice of the Spanish ambassador, persecuted Protestants during the Marian Persecutions. After some provocation, the following monarch, Elizabeth I enforced the Act of Supremacy. This prevented Catholics from becoming members of professions, holding public office, voting or educating their children. Executions of Catholics under Elizabeth I, who reigned much longer, then surpassed the Marian persecutions and persisted under subsequent English monarchs. Penal laws were also enacted in Ireland but were less effective than in England. In part because the Irish people associated Catholicism with nationhood and national identity, they resisted persistent English efforts to eliminate the Catholic Church.

• Council of Trent• Historian Diarmaid MacCulloch, in his book The Reformation, A History noted that through all the

slaughter of the Reformation era emerged the valuable concept of religious toleration and an improved Catholic Church which responded to doctrinal challenges and abuses highlighted by the Reformation at the Council of Trent (1545–1563). The council became the driving-force of the Counter-Reformation, and reaffirmed central Catholic doctrines such as transubstantiation, and the requirement for love and hope as well as faith to attain salvation. It also reformed many other areas of importance to the Church, most importantly by improving the education of the clergy and consolidating the central jurisdiction of the Roman Curia. The criticisms of the Reformation were among factors that sparked new religious orders including the Theatines, Barnabites and Jesuits, some of which became the great missionary orders of later years. Spiritual renewal and reform were inspired by many new saints like Teresa of Avila, Francis de Sales and Philip Neri whose writings spawned distinct schools of spirituality within the Church (Oratorians, Carmelites, Salesian), etc. Improvement to the education of the laity was another positive effect of the era, with a proliferation of secondary schools reinvigorating higher studies such as history, philosophy and theology. To popularize Counter-Reformation teachings, the Church encouraged the Baroque style in art, music and architecture. Baroque religious expression was stirring and emotional, created to stimulate religious fervor.

• Elsewhere, Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier introduced Christianity to Japan, and by the end of the 16th century tens of thousands of Japanese followed Roman Catholicism. Church growth came to a halt in 1597 under the Shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu who, in an effort to isolate the country from foreign influences, launched a severe persecution of Christians. Japanese were forbidden to leave the country and Europeans were forbidden to enter. Despite this, a minority Christian population survived into the 19th century

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Roman_Catholic_Church

The Protestant Reformation

• 15th century- Reformation period saw the rise of literacy and the art of printing.

• Many Christians discovered early Christianity and compared it with what was happening in the Roman Catholic church.

• Roman Catholic church had a fundraising or church building activities which were criticized because of they way money was raised.

• Indulgences- remission of the punishment for sin by the clergy in return for services or payment.

• The church sold relics, purchased masses for the dead, spiritual pilgrimages and taught about the “earning of spiritual merit by donating to the church”

Martin Luther (1483-1546)

• A monk, priest and professor if Biblical studies at the University of Wittenberg.

• He studied the Bible intensely and realized that Jesus teachings spoke of salvation to sinners in spite of their sin. Salvation was by the grace of God alone received through repentance and faith.

• He questioned how one’s sins could be totally atoned for by ones own actions.

• He criticized the Catholic teachings on indulgences and the idea of the purgatory (the place of purifying suffering for those who died in a state of repentance and grace but were not yet stainless to enter heaven).

• 1517-Luther invited the university to debate this issue with him by nailing his 99 theses on the door of the church.

• He had no intention of dividing the church• June 15, 1520, he was excommunicated by the

Papal Bull (decree).• He moved to Germany and got supporters of his

ideas.• Attempts to reconcile the church with him failed.

• Luther continued criticizing the Roman Catholic Church claims that the Pope, Bishops, priests and monks should have spiritual authority over lay people.

• He asserted the “priesthood of believers”• He believed that sacramental rites were

symbolic.

Ulrich Zwingli

• A Swiss priest, broke with Rome by rejecting practices that are not mentioned in the Bible. E.g abstaining from meat during lent, veneration of relics and saints, religious pilgrimages, celibacy for monks and priests, masses for the dead.

• He believed that the Lords supper should be celebrated only as memorial of Jesus sacrifice not as the presence of Jesus blood and body in the wine and bread.

John Calvin

• Shared reform principles of salvation by faith alone and exclusive authority of the Bible and the priesthood of believers.

• Predestination- God has already decided the destiny of each person, hence actions cannot bring about salvation.

• “By grace some are saved and others are predestined not to be saved”3 signs of those that are saved are 1. An upright lifestyle 2. Profession of faith, 3. Participation in the sacrament.

• Calvin also taught the need to excommunicate those who violated the sanctity of the church.

• Calvinism became the state religion of Scotland and followers in England.

• Presbyterians- offshoot of Calvinism. Church governed by Presbyters- a rank that is below that of Bishops, ministers and elders.

The Church of England

• Separated from Roman Catholic Church when King Henry VIII declared it independent of the Church of Rome.

• 1559- King Henry’s daughter finalized the breach and it was referred to as Anglicanism. It shares a lot with Catholicism and Protestantism.

• Anglicanism rejects the authority of the Pope.• Its Bishop of Canterbury is a spiritual leader.• Allows priests to marry.

• Episcopal Church in the U.S is an offshoot of Anglicanism.

• Methodism-began by John Wesley (1703-1791). Wesley emphasized personal holiness and methodical devotions. He traveled 8,000 miles a year by a horseback to promote practical religion.

• Spain, France and Italy remained Catholic.• Ireland –Catholicism/ Protestantism.

• Congregationalism- teach independence of each local church and priesthood of members.

• Unitarianism- Reject the notion of original sin, the trinity and Jesus divinity. Believe in one God, Jesus is a model to be imitated.

• Baptists-Reject the baptism of infants.• Quakers- (Society of Friends– worship without

liturgy or minister. Hope that God can speak through one of them during worship.

• 19th-20th century, more protestant churches sprang up in then U.S.

• Evangelical Churches- Emphasize salvation by personal faith in Jesus, personal conversion , the importance of the Bible in preaching instead of ritual.

• Seventh Day Adventist- Second coming of Jesus is imminent Bible absolute guide of faith and spiritual practice in anticipation of the return . The worship on Saturday.

• Jehovah Witness- Criticize other Christians for falsifying the doctrines of Jesus. Urge people to leave these religions an prepare for a coming time when all who o not hold truth will be destroyed.

• Protestant Missionaries and evangelists took the Gospel to Africa, Asia and South America. In these countries, independent movements evolved.

The Roman Catholic Reformation

• Provoked by protestant reformation, Catholic Church sought to redefine its position.

• 1. Council of Trent (1545-1563).• Legislation if reform among clergy, • tightens church administration• Officially recognizes the absolute authority of the

Pope and Jesus

• The the Council of Trent, the Catholic Church emphasize positions on Dogma as authoritative truths ( doctrine of original sin, salvation requires good works, e.g veneration as saints, sacred images, relics, acts of mercy and participation in sacraments of the Eucharist.

• Emphasized the doctrine of transubstantiation (what appears to be ordinary bread and wine in the Eucharist are mysteriously transformed into the body an blood of Christ.

• In addition to the Councils, more virtuous Popes were elected.

• Monastic orders grew out of desire to reform the Catholic church e.g The Jesuits (The Society of Jesus).

• Founded by Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556) in the 16th Century, the Jesuits believed they were an army of God at the service of the Pope.

• Jesuits practiced meditation and spiritual discernment. They were activists and educators in the everyday world. They were influential in the Reformation.

• They took Catholicism to Asia.• Catholicism spread also to Philippines, and

western hemisphere by Spanish Conquistadores.

• In Spain- Mystics like st. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582 and St. John of the Cross.

Enlightenment and Catholicism

• 18th century enlightenment led to intellectual exaltation of human reason and rejection of faith in Biblical miracles and revelations. Reactions!

• 1. Liberals- compromise faith with modern knowledge.

• 2. Conservatives- saw conflict between faith and science.

• 1911 “Fundamentals publish tenets asserting 1. Total inerrancy of the Bible, 2. The literal virgin birth of Christ, 3. Substitutionary atonement, 4. Bodily resurrection, 5. Anticipated 2nd coming of Christ.