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Age of Critics (1350-1550)
ALL WAS NOT WELL, then, with Christian society at the close of the Middle Ages. Not only were the Latin and Greek portions of the Church at odds, but the new national monarchies coming into existence in Western Europe threatened unity under Papacy and Empire. Once pope and emperor had clashed over primacy of the spiritual, but now all international control was challenged. A French king defied the pope, and his successors long maneuvered to confine papal residence at Avignon, in the midst of France. Italian and French ecclesiastics contended and when the papacy broke away from Avignon to return to Rome, a schism occurred. For nearly half a century (1378-1417), there were two, and sometimes three, claimants to the papacy, with nations jockeying for favor and funds. Attempts were made to solve the problem by general councils, but here the clergy from outlying churches, affected by rising nationalism, denounced alleged papal financial oppression to promote international causes. Many erroneously asserted that a council was superior to a pope.
Though this "Great Western Schism" was finally healed, papal prestige had been seriously weakened. National monarchs employed bishops and abbots as statesmen, and of the latter many were too ready to oblige. Neglecting their spiritual duties, alienated from the lesser clergy and the people, they became targets for criticism. As discipline relaxed many clerics for whom standards seem to have been lowered since the "Black Death," came to neglect their duties. Too many presumed on their assured position as dispensers of sacraments necessary for salvation. That is why critics would eventually arise to deny these sacraments, perhaps not so much out of dislike for the sacraments, as to cut the ground from under objectionable clergy. The monks in whose hands lay much of the social service of the time were accused of being lazy, wasteful, inefficient; all sorts of grasping men argued that property ought to be taken away from clergy and monks and given to themselves to manage.
A new intellectual spirit, Humanism, was also abroad. This professed to despise the Scholastic method with its plain, pragmatic Latin; classicists pleaded for a return to the glorious language of Plato and Cicero. More serious was the accusation, only partially true, that Holy Scripture was being neglected for word-chopping; that philosophy had been substituted for true theology. Some began to demand: back to Scripture, back to the way of the primitive Church -though in that most unhistorical of ages few really knew what was the authentic spirit of the primitive Church.
Others asserted that Scholasticism was old-fashioned, out of step with "modern" times, static in a universe expanded by geographical discoveries in America, India, and Cathay. Enough of deductive speculation, it was said; we must have scientific induction to prove or disprove everything. Enough of sacrosanct principles; one ought to doubt everything, change and experiment with everything; to see if improvement and progress were not possible. Enough of unity, of cooperation; let the age of the individual dawn: let each man be himself, do what he wants without bothering about laws and social taboos. Each man can pray for himself; each can work out his own salvation; everyone could interpret Scripture as he sees fit. Each can go to heaven in his own fashion, for "man is the measure of all things." Not all these things were thought or said with full seriousness; exasperated men were letting off steam. Yet they confused the people: frightened some, and made others delirious. The situation was tense, explosive; a spark could ignite it.
MARTIN LUTHER (1483-1546)
Luther's teaching began in pessimism: original sin has so ruined man's nature that he can do nothing henceforth but sin, for Luther identified sin and its effect of unruly concupiscence. Observance of God's law thus becomes impossible and man has but a single recourse: to believe trustingly on the merits of Christ his Savior. But these merits and Christ's justice remained exclusively His; in no way did salvation mean freeing man from his own sins, or a giving to him of a share in the divine nature through grace whereby he could work out his salvation with divine assistance. Instead man remained in his satanic darkness, though if he persevered in faith, God would impute to him Christ's merits.
As a consequence, man can in no way merit for any good works. While good works ought to be done to demonstrate that faith is in us, one ought never to glory in them. Since good works effected nothing for Luther, sacraments meant to him merely symbols to excite faith-although inconsistently he held that Baptism and the Eucharist were in some way necessary. To meet the difficulty brought up by Anabaptist rebels that saving faith could not be excited in infant Baptism, Luther held that infants were given a moment of reason. Throughout his life he defended a garbled notion of Christ's Eucharistic Presence: Christ's body in heaven is ubiquitous and becomes present to the believer, but only at the moment of his communion. But Luther denounced the Mass and the doctrine of sacrifice as insults to the unique sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. He had no ordained priests but only preachers or ministers of the Gospel. For him marriage was a mere civil contract subject in all things to secular legislation.
For Luther, the Church was "altogether in the spirit . . . entirely a spiritual thing . . . believed in but not seen. . ." Ministers were to be chosen and deposed by the congregation according to Luther's original plan, but eventually he was constrained to acknowledge that the prince is the "principal member of the Church," and to accept royal superintendents to rule over the congregations. Thus began a tradition of Lutheran subjection to the State that lasted until the Protestant revolt against Hitler's new paganism. The Bible, as interpreted by Luther, was to be the sole rule of faith. But the list of Scriptural books amounted to Luther's own judgment: he threw out the Epistles of James and Hebrews, besides some Old Testament books, and rated the rest "A" or "B" insofar as they contained good Lutheran doctrine. Luther did produce the first good literary translation of the Bible into German though there had been fifteen vernacular versions before him.
JOHN CALVIN (1509-64)
John Calvin was a French townsman quite different from the German peasant Luther, yet he built upon Lutheran ideas. Driven out of France by the royal inquisition, Calvin eventually became the religious director of Geneva in Switzerland, which he made over according to his notion of a "godly" community. While Lutheranism yielded to the State, Calvinism tried to dominate it. The Geneva consistory, though never attaining the international prestige of the medieval papacy, retained the notion of improving secular society through religious direction and control. Calvin did not hesitate to put dissenters to death in the same way as the medieval Inquisition. The early New England ministerial influence mirrored many of Calvin's concepts.
While Luther wished men to be certain that they had been justified through Christ's merits, Calvin, while agreeing with Luther on this point, went farther. He demanded that men be also sure that they would remain justified, that is, that they would be saved. Hence he argued that God's favor once given because of faith in Christ's merits could never be lost: the elect were absolutely predestined. As for devout Calvinists, then, they did not so much "receive" faith as to "perceive" that they had always possessed it, that God had elected them from all eternity.
All this left very little for the sacraments of the Church. For Calvin, "the sacrament is added like a seal to a document, not to give force to the promises, but merely to ratify it in our regard, so that we may look upon it as more certain." Calvin rejected the Mass and even Luther's notion of Christ's "corporeal presence." In consequence Calvin also repudiated the Catholic priesthood, though unlike Luther he did hold that the clergy were divinely called "ministers of the word of God," predestined to be ministers just as the elect were predestined to be Calvinists. These ministers, with Calvin at their head and lay elders at their side, rule the "reformed" congregations. The ministers interpreted Scripture in closely supervised obligatory Sunday schools, as well as dispensing the Lord's Supper several times a year. The elders assisted the ministers in upholding the godliness of the congregation according to minute social regulations. The result was an aristocratic religious society, represented by Presbyterianism in Scotland, the Puritans in England and New England, the Huguenots in France, and the Reformed in Holland. The town government of Geneva was controlled by Calvinists until 1906. After Calvin's death, however, Arminians denied his absolute predestinarianism and "pietists" placed more stress on warm feelings and good deeds than Calvin's icy logic called for. One contribution cannot be denied the Calvinist tradition: a moral seriousness and social decorum that left its impression for centuries.
ANGLICANISM
Anglicanism was an original blend of Lutheran and Calvinist teaching and organization. When Pope Clement VII and the Catholic Supreme Marriage Court refused to allow King Henry VIII of England (1509-47) to divorce his wife of twenty years, Catherine of Aragon, in order to wed his mistress, Anne Boleyn, the king broke with the Roman communion. His own royal version of Christianity was set up by an "Act of Supremacy," November, 1534, decreeing that "our sovereign lord, his heirs and successors, kings of this realm, shall be taken, accepted, and reputed the only supreme head on earth of the Church of England." An oath was exacted of important subjects; Sts. John Fisher and Thomas More, bishop and chancellor, refused. The latter distinguished: while Parliament might choose a king independently of the pope's wishes, it could not regulate the Church; More was willing to accept Henry as king but not pope. But Henry put his critics to death and went on with his plans, which included seizure of most of the Church property for his own and his noble allies' profit. While Henry claimed to keep all other Catholic doctrines, after his death his ecclesiastical aids, Thomas Cranmer, Primate of Canterbury, made decisive changes.
Cranmerian doctrine as formulated under King Edward VI (1547-53) and permanently established under Elizabeth I (15581603), was a religious compromise. After a first Book of Common Prayer had presented a transitional English version of the old Latin Mass, a Second Book imposed pure Calvinism: the Eucharist is bread to the eyes but Christ's body to the mind. All rites mentioning sacrifice now disappeared. A table replaced the altar, and all vestments save a surplice were omitted. "True sacraments" were reduced to Baptism and the Lord's Supper. Unlike Luther and Calvin, Cranmer retained episcopal control while rejecting papacy. These bishops, henceforth appointed by the Crown, were to be disciplinarians for a uniformly functioning clergy. Cranmer's 42 Articles-reduced to 39 by Elizabeth I-remain official Anglican doctrine. About half of these articles retain the ancient Catholic teaching on the Trinity, Incarnation, etc. For the rest, Cranmer followed conservative Protestant norms, while steering clear of doctrinal extremism and social radicalism. Neither the Lutheran denial of human freedom nor Calvinist predestinarianism were clearly enjoined, though justification by faith was stressed .
After putting down the Catholics, the Anglican establishment had to face the objections of "Puritans" who wished to "purify" the Anglican organization yet more from alleged remnants of Catholic practices. Primate Grindal was led to complain in 1565: "Some say the service and prayers in the chancel, others in the body of the church; some say the same in a seat made in the church, some in the pulpit with faces to the people; some keep precisely to the order of the book, others intermeddle psalms in metre; some say in a surplice, others without. Some receive kneeling, others standing, others sitting" (Moorman, History of Church in England, 217). Though the Anglo-Saxon spirit of compromise sought the assent of a majority to this middle of the road religious solution, these differences of view and of practice have accompanied Anglicanism or Episcopalianism throughout its history.
Courtesy of
Catholic Information Network (CIN)