PROTESTANT REFORMATION

Context of the Protestant Reformation:  

There was a papal palace in Avignon, France. But that's weird because all of the popes live in the Vatican in Italy. 


In the high Middle Ages there was a series of bitter and ongoing disputes between Roman Catholic Popes and European kings, especially the king of France. 


So in 1309 the king of France pressured the new pope to establish the papacy away from italy. 

The churches in Avignon focused almost none on the spiritual well-being of the church and all on consolidating power and wealth. 


Eventually the seat of the papacy was moved back to italy in 1377 under the leadership of a new pope that wanted to make sure that this violation never happened again. 


This led to a lot of fighting and so back in france, they just elected another pope to rule from avignon 


In 1377 the catholic church in Europe was dominated by two rival popes who both claimed absolute power - lasted for almost 40 years so going into the 16th century the average person thought the church was corrupt and hopelessly flawed. People thought that popes were more interested in consolidating power than guiding the lives of the faithful. 


Entered Martin Luther: 

By the 1500s, the catholic church got tangled up in political matters and accumulated a lot of wealth and engaged in corrupt practices  


Corrupt practices - simony - the buying and selling of chruch offices. 

The buying and selling of indulgences. 

  • The the 12th century the Chruch developed the doctrine of Purgatory which said that after death, you went neither to heaven nor to hell, but rather to a middle space called purgatory. 

In the 16th century Pope leo the 10th offered catholics indulgences for purchase to finance the completion of St. Peters Bisiliica. 


Martin Luther - around 1515 a revolution occurred in his thinking, he discovered that it was not acts of penance which rendered forgiveness to the sinner but rather god forgave sins for free based on the finished work of Christ. 

He began to hold to the priesthood of all believers which challenged the entrenched catholic dogma of the priesthood of only a few believers. 

Because the papacy and the priesthood had been severely demoted in many people’s estimation due to their involvement in recent conflicts, the idea of the priesthood of all believers would become very appealing. 

He also maintained an idea known as “Scripture alone” the idea here is that the final authority for christians was the bible and not the papal dogmas. The result of this is called the 95 theses which outlined in detail his complaints against the catholic church. He nailed them to the wittenberg church door. 

He write these theses in latin which meant that he was interested in sparking a discussion amond a few educated monks and priests. But because THE PRINTING PRESS the 95 these were spread throughout the german states of the holy roman empire. Many other germans felt the same way. 

The church officials heard about this and they officially denounced him as a heretic. 

Called him to stand before the imperial diet of worms and demanded that he recant his writings. HE DID NOT. 


THE REFORMATION SPREADS. 

John Clavin was a minister in Geneva switzerland one of his most significant contributions to the reformation was to systematize Protestant doctrine which he did in what is known as the Institutions of the Christian Religion. 


Calvins distinctive doctrines: 


  1. Predestination which taught that God had from before the foundation of the world decided who would be saved and who would go to hell.

  • Salvation and damnation was not a matter of human choice but of Gods choice. 


  1.  Elect 

  • The elect were those whom god had chosen to save 

  • Those who were truly elect had no choice in the matter and could never lose their salvation. 


Calvins Geneva was run as a Theocracy - which means that the bible was the rule of law. 

Upsides - Calvin taught that financial wealth was the proper reward for hard work and that so long as the elect did not allow money to become their God, then their accumulation of wealth could be seen as a sign of God's favor. 

Downside - if you disagreed with calvin he would have you burned at the stake. 




Anabaptist: 

Believed in the reformation principles that Luther and Calvin did but separated from them on the question of baptism. They believed that only adults should be baptized. 






The Reformation spreads

Martine luthers reforms were spread mainly due to the printing press. 

For centuries the bible was only written in the bible, only a certain amount of popes, cardinals, and bishops could translate the text for the people. If only one group can read and interpret these documents then theres a lot of power to them. 

Martin wanted to print them in German. 



The reformation and the sate: 

The Protestant church of england (the anglican chruch) was established becuase Henry the 8th couldnt get the catholic church to grant him a divorce. He was the head of the church. 

Decades later under the reign of Elizabeth the first, the puritans rose up to challenge those lingering vestiges of catholicism that hung around the church of england. 

Puritans were of the calvinism persuassion and their attempts at reform led them into conflict with James and Charles the first. Led to the english civil war.    


The anapabtist believed in the absolut seperation of the state. That was fine until their monarchs started calling them up for military servies. Anabapstis reufsed such calls on account of their religous convictions that madated them to priotritze the spiritual life over their secular commistments.