The Crisis of Authority in the Reformation

When I was a young man, I used to hear stories of the courage of Great Protestant Reformers like Martin Luther and John Calvin. In my reformation heritage, the emphasis on the sole authority of the Bible generated examples of lonely figures who stood up against the tyranny of the Roman Church in the sixteenth century.

None was presented braver than Martin Luther who, confronted with the command to obey the Pope at the Diet of Worms, boldly proclaimed that he must be shown to be wrong on the basis of Scripture and not some self-appointed authority of the Pope. When asked to recant his teachings, he insisted, "Here I stand. I can do none other. God help me." This and many other examples appealed to something in me that I did not recognize at the time. As an American, I treasured independence and freedom from tyranny. Wasn’t our country itself founded on the same self-determination of government that Luther insisted on in the sixteenth century? In both religion and politics, I valued independence and self-determination.

My theological education in the Reformed (Calvinist) heritage reinforced these childhood images of the Reformers. Details were filled in, and honest problems with the Reformation heritage were faced, but there was never a question that the alternative, Roman Catholicism, was a substitute for biblical freedom. I was convinced that the apostle who sought to save the Galatians from the slavery of legalistic teachers (cf. Gal 5:1), would also condemn, were he alive in Luther’s day, the yoke of Roman subjugation. So, even in my more sophisticated knowledge of theology, I believed that the Reformation represented a return to the biblical freedom from which the Roman Catholic Church had slipped into bondage.

Only later, when I began to investigate the history of the Reformation in greater depth, did I understand how the Protestant insistence on individual freedom in religion was both a product of and a vehicle for the crisis of authority that we have in the Western world today. Luther’s stand against the authority of Rome did not sprout up in a vacuum. The turbulent changes in thinking, which had begun already in the Renaissance of the fifteenth century, shaped not only Luther’s thinking; they also prepared an audience to receive Luther’s message. That audience, the leaders and people of various Protestant groups, became the instruments of an ever-widening independence from Church authority that still affects the world today. Out of this complicated history, I want to sketch two developments that have deeply affected Christianity in our world: the crisis of interpretation and the crisis of unity. But first, let’s explore why the Reformation happened.

The early modern period from ca. 1500 to 1700 brought momentous changes in Europe, so much so that the face of Christendom in the Western world was forever altered. Few Americans today realize that much of our modern understandings and assumptions stem from this period. The changes that swept Europe began much earlier in the fifteenth century, but few had greater impact than the discovery of the new world. The voyages of discovery brought various European cultures and the Christian faith to the new world, but the discoveries of the new world also had a profound effect on Europeans as they expanded their horizons to include peoples they never knew existed. Many European Christians were fired with a new enthusiasm to preach the gospel to every creature.

What exactly is the gospel? Scholars and churchmen in early modern Europe debated this important question vigorously because it affected three essential aspects of their lives: their vision of the world, education and the Church itself. They needed to be clear on what should be preached to the newly found peoples across the seas. And with growing disagreements between Protestants and Catholics, their respective churches felt very keenly the drive to rescue the new world from the clutches of the other’s teachings. Yet, there was also widespread agreement on the need for reforming education and the Church. Changes in one area would inevitably bring transformations in the other.

In education, changes were already underway. The fifteenth century witnessed an even greater flood of ancient sources than the ninth and tenth centuries had seen. New texts revived old philosophies. Aristotle—or simply the philosopher as St. Thomas called him—was waning in influence as figures like Marsilio Ficino founded the Platonic academy in Florence. More and more scholars were learning Ancient Greek and translating Greek philosophy into the standard Latin of their day. With Platonism came a renewed emphasis on St. Augustine, whose writings would become as much a battleground between Protestants and Catholics as the Bible itself. Over the next two centuries, ancient philosophies as different as Epicureanism and Stoicism would be revived by scholars as diverse as the priest Pierre Gassendi and the Parisian scholar Jean Pena. Emerging transformations in science would also leave a permanent change on the European landscape. As scholars translated treatises of ancient science such as Ptolemy’s Geography and Greek medical texts, new assessments of old doctrines were coming into play. Nicholas Copernicus intended no astronomical revolution, but his treatise On the Heavenly Spheres, together with numerous other new scientific theories, brought about a transformed view of nature. Nor did the advocates of scientific reform fail to seize on the reforms in religion as a weapon in their armamentarium. The most famous English methodologist of the seventeenth century, Francis Bacon, explicitly called for revolution in science as a fulfillment of the reformation in religion which his native England had adopted. By the time of the founding of the Royal Society during the reign of Charles II (1660s), almost every Protestant agreed with Thomas Sprat’s analogy between religion and science. Just as a great Reformation had occurred by returning directly to the Scriptures, so we needed a great reformation in science by returning directly to nature. Catholics were as prominent (though not as numerous) in the science of this period as Protestants were, but it was the Protestants who used the rhetoric of religious reform to argue for the liberation of science from the shackles of medievalism.

These new developments coincided with the Protestant Reformation which resulted from this search for new authorities. At the end of the fifteenth century, one of John Calvin’s own teachers, Jacques Lefebvre, called Europe back to the gospel which the Church had lost sight of in his opinion. The Church had grown lax, morally and doctrinally. Nor was his voice the only one calling for reform. Desiderius Erasmus, the great Catholic humanist, argued for a stringent moral reform of the clergy while condemning the departures of the Protestants. England especially was a hotbed for revolutionary ideas, as the first century of the Church of England was to demonstrate. How could the same King Henry who wrote a scathing critique of Luther (A Defense of the Seven Sacraments 1521) suddenly turn against the Pope less than fifteen years later? Was He simply a power hungry tyrant who wanted to ensure his offspring on England’s throne? Whatever Henry’s personal ambitions, his behavior cannot explain how the majority of the bishops in the English Church could so quickly abandon Papal and Catholic authority. It is disingenuous to suppose that the English bishops had no more backbone than what history generally records. More likely their support of Henry against Rome must be seen as a result of the crisis of authority that Luther both inherited and promoted.

From the very beginning of the Protestant Reformation, the issue of the authority of the Scriptures stood in a central place. When Luther was asked how he knew his interpretations of the Bible were right, and how he could stand against the interpretations of the Church Fathers and the Church prior to him, he replied that the message of salvation in the Bible was so clear that even a farm boy behind the plow could understand their message as correctly as the most learned theologians in the universities. The people of God did not need some imposed authority to interpret the Bible for them.

The issue of clarity of the Scriptures was so important that it affected virtually every aspect of Christian teaching in the Reformation. One such controversy concerned free will, and took place between Erasmus, the humanist of Rotterdam, and Luther in 1524 and 1525. Erasmus the Catholic challenged Luther thus:

Erasmus, a master of rhetorical skill, saw an implicit contradiction in the Protestant claim that previous teachers in the Church had blindly missed the doctrine of justification by faith in Scripture while at the same time claiming that the Scriptures were as clear as crystal. By what assurance could we know that the Scriptures were clear? By the gift of the Holy Spirit, said the Protestants! Erasmus considered the next question. Who possesses the Spirit so as to give us an authoritative interpretation? Everyone? Of course, in baptism every Christian is given the Holy Spirit, but that didn’t mean the Spirit had given the same gifts to everyone equally. Whom did the Spirit give the task of authoritatively interpreting the Scriptures? Since there are multiple interpretations, how do we know which ones are certain since all have the Spirit? Are there no authoritative interpretations? If not, we are left without the Spirit’s certain guidance. Does it not make more sense that God would give the authoritative interpretation of the Holy Spirit through those to whom He committed His mission of preaching the Gospel, the Apostles and their successors?

Luther’s answer to Erasmus focused mainly on the issue under debate, i.e. free will. What about the other point as to who would interpret Scripture authoritatively? Luther and later Protestants appealed to two sources of authority. Scripture would become clear by comparing one text with another, as St. Augustine had taught in De doctrina christiana. The believers could also depend on the internal witness of the Holy Spirit to lead him into all truth. This became the standard Protestant answer to the Catholic challenge, but a problem remained. How does one judge whether a particular believer is teaching what the Spirit is teaching? By comparing Scripture with Scripture. Yes, of course, but both Catholics and Protestants compared Scripture with Scripture. Who judged which comparisons were correct or acceptable? Wasn’t an authoritative interpreter still needed to decide unresolved issues? Luther never really answered Erasmus’ challenge, but only asserted that his opponent had missed the clear teaching of Scripture.

Catholics and Protestants were at an impasse. Protestants insisted on the authority of the Bible alone and depended on the internal witness of the Spirit and textual comparisons to arrive at proper interpretations. The Catholics insisted that as good as these reasons were, they still left open the question as to how to resolve doctrinal and moral disputes. God gave the hierarchical Church to resolve such issues. Catholics said that the Protestant method was a recipe for disaster because it allowed every person to follow his own lights, rather than be obedient to Scripture as interpreted by the Church.

Martin Luther had no intention of leaving the Catholic Church. He wanted to reform its abuses, both in morals and in doctrine. But in the 1520s, Luther and other Reformers began attacking some very central doctrines previously defined by the Church that led to some irreconcilable differences. Different interpretations of the Bible led to different churches. Still, the Protestants hoped to find some unity among their disparate movements.

On several occasions, leaders of the Reformation tried to come together to agree on some fundamental tenets, but in the end they could not agree. Only twelve years after nailing his nine-five theses to the Wittenburg church door in 1517, Luther and his cohort Philip Melanchthon met with the Reformer of Zürich, Ulrich Zwingli. Zwingli had already developed a symbolist interpretation of the Eucharist under the influence of a Dutch physician, Cornelis Hoen. Hoen convinced Zwingli that Christ’s words, "This is my body" had to mean "This signifies my body." For Luther, this was unacceptable. Luther had completely rejected the notion of transubstantiation and the sacrificial character of the Mass, but he still wanted to affirm that Christ was bodily present in the Lord’s Supper. With this growing tension between the reform movements of various cities, some civil leaders wanted to find common ground. So Philip, the Landgrave of Hesse, called a colloquy for many of the Protestant leaders in his capital of Marburg.

In the first three days of October 1529, Zwingli, Luther and several other theologians tried to reach agreement. And agreement they did reach on many doctrinal points. But they knew what anyone raised the Catholic culture of the sixteenth century knew, that the preeminent sacrament and rite of the Church was the Eucharist. It did not matter what else they agreed on. If they could not agree on the Eucharist, they could not be united. This fact is incomprehensible to present-day Protestants because the Eucharist simply does not enjoy such an exalted place in their thinking. But for Christians of early modern Europe, the Eucharist held the place of preeminence it had among the Fathers and medieval teachers of the Church.

Luther and Zwingli tried hard to agree on the proper meaning of our Lord’s words, "This is my body." When Zwingli argued that the is means signifies, Luther responded that Zwingli was trying to rationalize Christ’s words according to human reason and judgment. If that were true, what need would there be for faith in Christ as the Son of God. No, Luther insisted, Christ’s is means is, and he can be present on all the altars in the world because his omnipresence in heaven is communicated to his human nature. Luther and Zwingli wanted very badly to agree. Melanchthon warned Luther against agreeing too easily because agreement with Zwingli would mean no hope of reunion with the Catholics. So, on one day in early October, 1529, the Protestant movement in German speaking lands lost any hope of mounting a united front against Rome.

What happened in Marburg that October was repeated again and again in the Protestant movement. Philip Melanchthon tried several times to engage John Calvin in hopes that some unity between them might be found. Yet no united front could be established for the same reason that Zwingli and Luther could not agree. All the Reformers had been shaped and molded in an essential Christian truth inherited from the Catholic culture in which they had grown up, namely, that unity had to be founded on truth. Since they could not agree on doctrine, they all knew they could not have unity. And they could not agree on doctrine because they could not agree on how the Scriptures should be interpreted. The task of finding unity in truth plagued the relations between Protestant leaders thereafter.

It was England which manifested the greatest divisions, differences that were transferred wholesale to America. A century after King Henry’s break with Rome, the religious landscape in the British isles resembled a patchwork quilt of conflicting beliefs. Charles I, a staunch catholic in his doctrine, lost the support of his subjects, and dearly paid the price with his life. In 1649, Charles was executed by the Puritans.

England was never the same. During and after the commonwealth in the 1650s, England was home to a bewildering diversity of sects, all of which claimed to adhere to the true religion. England had High Church Anglicans, Presbyterians, Baptists, Catholics in the Lake District, Quakers, and dozens of others that have since passed from the scene. Some still hoped for the reunion of Christendom. Many catholic-oriented clerics in the Church of England saw what these divisions had wrought. Even the Puritan pastor Richard Baxter thought the Reformation emphasis on forensic justification had divided the Church of Christ unnecessarily. But these hopes for reunion were whistling in the dark. England and Europe were religiously divided and they would never be the same.

up by the founders of the American Republic was not so much a well-thought out ideal as it was a reaction to the sectarianism that now plagued Europe. Two solutions to the animosity and religious conflict were possible. One would be to establish a country on a religious faith that all professed. That ideal was what had governed Europe for centuries. The other was to make the State neutral with respect to religious commitments. Some on the American continent wanted the first, i.e. to retain the ideal of unity taught by Christ and the Apostles. The early Puritans of Massachusetts hoped to create such a new world. In the end, however, the founding documents opted for the second, i.e. government neutrality. This began one of the most delicate balancing acts the world has ever seen. Could any government really be neutral? Was it possible to treat all religious groups the same? Almost all of the sects transferred from Europe found a home in America. But one Christian faith experienced the kind of severe persecution that had been in Europe, Roman Catholicism. But they too eventually found freedom of religion. Catholicism in America was always in a precarious position. The notion of individual freedom of religion permitted the practice of the Catholic Faith but their faith told them that truth was not founded on individual choice. The Protestant principle of private interpretation was transferred to the political sphere. It assured Catholics a place in the diversity of conflicting beliefs while their own beliefs in the unity of truth and the Church required them to reject the principle of private interpretation. The crisis of unity that the Reformation had planted in Europe grew into full flower in a land where Catholic unity was deemed unacceptable.

The Protestant Reformation denied the position of the Church to interpret the Scriptures with binding authority, and resulted in a religious landscape that led to as many conflicts with one another as the original Reformers had with Rome. The Protestant appeal to the clarity of Scripture failed to unify its diverse and disparate interpretations. In fact, there was no one Protestant Reformation; there were many. And the many conflicting visions of reformation resulted from an insistence on private interpretation of Scripture—a principle that the Bible itself rejects (II Peter 1:20).

The orientation to the “Church Catholic” is, no doubt, a tremendous asset of Lutheranism.

What happens if an issue comes up that is not in the Book of Concord and not expressly stated in the Scripture?

For example, did anyone a short century ago foresee the gay “marriage”?

Is contraception treated in any way? I know that prior to 1930 every Christian community of faith considered contraception sinful. Now none in the Protestant (using the term loosely) world does.

You have succumbed to a common myth about Protestantism. It is not "every man for himself." There is a long record of agreement on orthodoxy (vs orthopraxy).

I was listening to Hank Hanegraaf one day on a discussion of Calvinism, with two guests, one pro and one con. The discussion was rather heated, and periodically Hank jumped in and reminded the listeners that this was an "in-house debate".

I thought about that for a bit, wondering how he came to that notion. My best guess is that he knows that within the communities that grew out of the Reformation, both streams of thought were present since the very beginning. You had good solid Christian thinkers and theologians on both sides. Therefore, the issue was more open than, say, an issue like the Trinity, Sola Scriptura, and Sola Fide that all the Reformers believed.

So I'm inclined agree with you about there being an overarching orthodoxy of Protestantism: which can perhaps be defined as the basic beliefs that all (or almost all) Reformed denominations share.

And I actually think Hank's methodology is a sound one: did Christians all agree on this, or did they have a range of opinions? But my question is...why stop with the Reformation? In other words, why do we not extend his methodology back past 1500 into the 1200s, the 800s, the 500s, and all the way back?

I think scripture is clear enough on Sola Fide (no such thing) and on baptism, confession and Eucharist (Catholic ones). Believe it or not, I had a discussion with someone who defended gay “marriage” on scriptural grounds. The Old Testament prohibitions were, he said, in line with other unduly harsh prohibitions such as stoning adulterers, which Christ condemned. The abhorrence of homosexuality in Romans, he said, really condemns homosexual adultery in the context of a heterosexual marriage (the “wide stance” phenomenon), because the scripture clearly says “lie with a man as with a woman”. On the other hand, — he went on offensive — Christ taught us charity to even sinners and so, bingo, homosexual marriage is biblical.

The Lutheran doctrine of Sola Fide , as recited in the Augsburg Confession, is much simpler than its detractors argue:

"...men cannot be justified before God by their own strength, merits or works, but are freely justified through Christ's sake, through faith, when they believe they are received into faith and that their sins are forgiven for Christ's sake, who, by His death, has made satisfaction for our sins."

That this doctrine has ample support in Scripture (Galatians 2:15-16; Romans 3:28, for instance), can be viewed as creating a conflict with James 2:24 or it can be read in concert to say that neither the ritualistic proclamation of faith nor the performance of work according to the law justifies man to God, which is what Jesus Himself is recorded to have taught at Matthew 8:22-23.

I share your puzzelment has to how any Christian, Catholc, Evangelical, or otherwise, could claim to find support in Scripture or the tradition of the church fathers to justify sodomy.

Prior to the 1930’s, it was viewed as a sin in most confessional Lutheran synods.

The trouble is that during WWI, much of what the American Synods did was dictated to by the government. My grandfather remembered when they were forced to use the Anglican liturgy (which became the basis for the liturgy in the Red Hymnal). There remained some cross pollination for decades.

When contraception first hit the scene, the LCMS and many other synods were dead set against it. In fact, that was never officially changed, but it was allowed to be forgotten. Recently, there have been some pastors who have been quietly trying to bring it back to the forefront, but with the current PDL nuttiness that probably won't happen.

As to the doctrine of the Real Presence, take a look at Pelikin’s “History of Doctrine” series, specifically the book number 4 that was about the Medieval Catholic Church. Transubsitution as it is currently defined was not the consensus for all time (that Christ is truly in the bread and wine was, but not the details). Look at the Orthodox, they believe in the Real Presence, but do not define it like the Western Catholic do (don't know the Eastern Catholics view). The Lutheran view was basically that we believe Jesus’s body and blood is really there, but we don't really know how (it is a miracle).

As to the crisis of authority, I agree. The Roman Catholic Church as quite the crisis of authority right now :) What I mean is that while you can point out to all the paper dogmas about it, but it is rarely (if ever) used. Case in point, my wife is a Catholic and we live in eastern Iowa right by the Illinois border. The Davenport diocese is quite frankly whacked. When we first moved here, my wife looked into many local parishes, and heard many a sermon about gay rights, how horrible the war is, and that unwed mothers were really all right. Not to mention you rarely saw a cross or crucifix.

Now in the Peoria diocese across the river, you do have a lot of happy clappy praise songs (which annoys me), but I have never heard anything like what you hear in Davenport. A few to many Life Teen services, but that is that.

If you were to take someone and drop them into the two dioceses, they would swear it was two different denominations, if not religions. One is fairly orthodox, and one is trying to take the sex abuse title from Boston (and they are close!). Both claim the same "Unchangeable" authority, but both teach radically different things. Both claim to hold to the teaching of the Catholic church, but they contradict each other.

In my synod, if I go from district to district, the differences are a lot smaller. When I was on the road, the little church I went to in New Mexico had the same teaching as the church in Nebraska I belonged to. The differences between the two Catholic dioceses that are right next to each other are a lot greater.

Nothing I disagree with as far as our own crisis of authority goes. The American Catholic Church is in real crisis of orthodoxy. I am hopeful though — orthodoxy attracts: the more conservative seminaries and parishes are full, the liberal ones — I don’t really care what they do. I don’t think it would be bad for the Church to be less in numbers and more in orthodoxy. Of course, the reason for my hope is precisely that: that the structure of authority exists, I just wish it were exercised more. See, you made a papist argument, and immediately, I agreed.

You are also correct that transsubstantiation is one explanation of the Real Presence, so in principle there could be others, or none at all. What troubles me in consubstantiation is the idea that the faith of the communicant makes it Body Blood and Divinity of Christ. That is not patristic, nor is it Real Presence then.

Dear redgolum,

“The trouble is that during WWI, much of what the American Synods did was dictated to by the government. My grandfather remembered when they were forced to use the Anglican liturgy (which became the basis for the liturgy in the Red Hymnal). There remained some cross pollination for decades.”

Could you elaborate on this point? Are you saying that the US federal government dictated religious policy and practice to some US ecclesial bodies? I'd appreciate any further explanation and details.

Thanks,

sitetest

Prior to WWI, most of the Lutheran synods operated as “immigrant churches” in that they had the liturgy in the home language. So they officially operated in German for the LCMS.

In the lead up to WWI, the federal and state governments basically told the various German speaking synods (and a few German Catholic churches) to speak in English, or else. That “or else” meant your church got burnt down, or you ended up in jail, or some locals came in the middle of the night and made sure you understood your “duty” as an American. My grandfather was a 10 year old boy in 1918, and remembered when they suddenly had to speak in English at church, put the US flag on the altar steps, and other things to prove that their loyalty wasn't to Germany. Never mind that most of them left Germany because of the religious madness that the Prussians were imposing at the time.

Pres. Wilson would not accept anyone who didn't tow the party line. There were people who were jailed for not saluting the flag (because of religious reasons they could not). Anytime I hear someone talking of “repression of freedoms” during the war on terror, I just point them to a few history books on WWI to give them a little perspective.

Things were a bit tense in WWII, but by that time most of the German immigrants had assimilated very well.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.