Blame it on Martin Luther?

Many years ago I had the privilege of delivering a lecture on the life and ministry of John Calvin in the unlikely context of the Interfaith Seminar of the Catholic Archdiocese of Trento in northern Italy.

A lone Reformed voice speaking to a room filled with priests and monks at the historic epicenter of the Catholic Reformation, I may not have been the exact modern equivalent of Leonidas at Thermopylae but I enjoyed being heavily outnumbered nonetheless.

At the end of my lecture, every single question I was asked related to the burning of Michael Servetus by the Genevan authorities in 1553. The fact that Servetus was burned in Geneva was almost an accident of history. A hunted, notorious heretic, he might have perished at the hands of numerous others, Protestant and Catholic. But again and again those in the audience demanded to know how I could lecture dispassionately on the man who killed Servetus.

Eventually, I pointed out that, when it comes to who burned whom in the 16th century, neither side in the Reformation emerged with much glory. It is always easier to blame the other side for the dark crimes of history while assuring ourselves that it would have been so much better if we had been in charge.

I was reminded of this when reading Casey Chalk’s recent article, “The Autonomous Self Is a Coercive God,” at Public Discourse. Chalk argues that conservatives need to be very careful about unconditionally embracing comedians Jim Breuer and Dave Chappelle. Though conservatives may appreciate the stands Breuer and Chappelle have taken against cancel culture and certain elements of woke orthodoxy, we must keep in mind that they are representatives of a libertarian notion of the autonomous self that is scarcely compatible with Christianity. Certainly I can affirm this central concern of Chalk's argument.

Yet I dissent from Chalk’s genealogy of modernity. He goes on to argue that this notion of the autonomous, emotivist self can be traced to Martin Luther. In part this is because Chalk depends upon Jacques Maritain's Three Reformers: Luther, Descartes, Rousseau for his reading of Luther. Luther is simply not the great apostle of subjectivism that Maritain claims he is. It may well be that subjectivism is where the Protestant Reformation led, but it was certainly neither Luther’s intention nor his own stated position. The debate with Zwingli over the reality of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist is the most obvious example of his concern for objective truth detached from the individual’s own beliefs, though one might also point to his notion of conscience as formed by the Word of God in the context of the Christian life, not as some principle of autonomous personal judgment.

Whether Luther’s positions on these issues proved stable in the long run is a matter for debate. The point is that he was wrestling with how to balance objective truth and personal commitment (an issue found throughout the New Testament). He was not arguing for human beings as isolated, atomized human beings.

This points to a deeper difficulty with Chalk's genealogy. In presenting Luther as the beginning of the problem, Chalk opts for the standard Catholic triumphalist opening: The Protestants are to blame. But Luther does not emerge from a vacuum. Philosophically, he is the heir of late medieval nominalism (a Catholic phenomenon). He achieves public prominence by asking for a debate about the sale of indulgences (a Catholic practice). Wondering about whether the sale of indulgences as exemplified by Tetzel represents the teaching of the Church seems wholly reasonable for a Catholic pastor concerned about the financial fleecing of his congregation. And the crisis of authority that Luther represents is not of his own making. The corruption of the papacy and the chaos of the 15th century shattered papal authority.

Astute theologians might respond by saying that we are not Donatists, that the corruption of the men who lead the Church and even the corruption of the papal bureaucracy do not negate the truth of the Gospel. That is true at a theoretical level. But in practice hypocrisy undermines credibility. It is not surprising that at the start of the 16th century there was a crisis of popular authority with regard to those who claimed to be Peter’s successors and Christ’s representatives on earth and yet who ostentatiously indulged the sins of the flesh.

If Luther was wrestling with the question of religious authority, it is in large part because the religious authority of his day had so signally failed in its task. Perhaps modernity is the fault of a failed papacy and not a Saxon friar?

We can complicate the narrative of authority yet further. The advent of the printing press and the rise of cities and trade served to reconfigure social structures across Europe. Power, once tied to land, started shifting more toward capital. The marketplace rose in prominence, challenging old hierarchies. Increasing levels of literacy served to remake and energize self-consciousness. Even if, purely for the sake of argument, one were to allow that the 13th century represented a rather harmonious period in which church and state, and faith and reason, lived together in perfect harmony, that world depended upon a social framework that required material conditions that technology and trade simply swept away. There is no medieval solution to the problems of modernity.

The above is not intended as a piece of Protestant triumphalism. Rather, it is a call for more self-awareness regarding the matter of the problems of our present age. Did Luther cause modernity? Was it the failure of the medieval papacy? Or was it the printing press and the rise of capitalism? Until such time as we eschew the simplistic blame game and start to think more historically, we are unlikely to move beyond partisan point-scoring. More significantly, we will prove incapable of moving beyond pipe dreams and nostalgia to real solutions to our difficulties.

Carl R. Trueman is a professor of biblical and religious studies at Grove City College He is an esteemed church historian and previously served as the William E. Simon Fellow in Religion and Public Life at Princeton University. Trueman has authored or edited more than a dozen books, including The Rise and Triumpth of the Modern Self, The Creedal Imperative, Luther on the Christian Life, and Histories and Fallacies.

1. the work of al-Ghazali destroying the scientific questioning in the Islamic world
2. Hulagu Khan who destroyed Baghdad and the Caliphate, ending the triumphalism of Islam
3. the reconquista again giving a moral blow to Islam

4. the Marathas conquering the Gurkhani (i.e. the “Mughal”) empire.

Those are certainly important items. But Islam came very close to conquering Christendom several times. We might add the various revolts against the Islamic Khan in what is now Russia, which finally succeeded in 1380.

It wasn't until Europe (Christendom) developed science and technology Islam could not match, that the Muslim threat was actually contained, then placed on a serious defensive position, then relegated to third class status with the defeat of the Ottoman Empire.

Nearly all the tech which Christendom developed to defeat Islam passed through the Umma to Europe and Christendom. The Chinese and the Islamics both had first and second chances to develop it and use it and gain final advantage over Christendom.

They either chose not to develop it or could not develop it.

I put the reconquista right at the beginning of the modern era.

That is how I see it; but I do not claim to be a scholar of the conflicts between Islam and Christianity. I have only read some articles and a book or two.

But there are a few problems with your assumptions

1. Europe (Christendom) vs Islam and Chinese --> this one is the most egregious. We in the west (and me at one point as well) do this most often that we completely forget about the ancient Church of the East - the Church in Ctesiphon-Seleucia. This, the Assyrian Church, had adherents as far away as Mongolia. The Uyghurs were Christians first, as was the wife of Genghis Khan and the wife of Hulagu Khan

2. tech passed through the Umma -- this is the story that many non-historians use to portray a "golden age of Islam" when Islam supposedly preserved the ancient works while Europe was barbaric. This is false:
a. the ones who copied the ancient texts in the Islamic world were near unanimously Christians and some Zoroastrians. Not Muslims
b. The Christian world also included the Roman empire - which still continued until 1453, we forget about that
c. Even west of Croatia, the "dark ages" were only from 450 to 800 in France, were barely from 453 to 640 in Italy and hardly touched Spain before the Muslim conquests.

Both the terms "dark ages" and "byzantine empire" were created by German scholars in the 1800s as a way of disparaging everything that came before themselves.

But there are a few problems with your assumptions

You are putting your words in my text.

1. Europe (Christendom) vs Islam and Chinese --> this one is the most egregious. We in the west (and me at one point as well) do this most often that we completely forget about the ancient Church of the East - the Church in Ctesiphon-Seleucia. This, the Assyrian Church, had adherents as far away as Mongolia. The Uyghurs were Christians first, as was the wife of Genghis Khan and the wife of Hulagu Khan

So? Nothing I wrote is contradicted by what you wrote. The Khans became Islamic after Hulagu Khan. (not sure how soon, exactly, but it was clearly Islamic long before 1380. All part of the vast destruction caused by Islam.

2. tech passed through the Umma -- this is the story that many non-historians use to portray a "golden age of Islam" when Islam supposedly preserved the ancient works while Europe was barbaric. This is false:

a. the ones who copied the ancient texts in the Islamic world were near unanimously Christians and some Zoroastrians. Not Muslims

b. The Christian world also included the Roman empire - which still continued until 1453, we forget about that

c. Even west of Croatia, the "dark ages" were only from 450 to 800 in France, were barely from 453 to 640 in Italy and hardly touched Spain before the Muslim conquests.

So? Again, nothing you write contradicts what I wrote. The tech did pass through the Umma from various places to Europe. It doesn't matter if it were Christians who copied ancient texts. The Islamic civilization, such as it was, was not able or was unwilling to develop them as Christendom did (Europe). I never claimed there was a "golden age of Islam". If anything, just the opposite.

Yes, Constantinople was not completely conquered until 1453, which just emphasizes my point that Islam wasn't really contained until Europe (Christendom) developed modern technology which the Muslims and Chinese were unable or unwilling to do.

Christendom is the home and source of science and the modern age.

I am not sure what you are trying to say about the terms "dark ages" and "byzantine empire". They were not part of my thesis.

My central thesis is both the Chinese and Islam had a chance to develop the technologies that Christendom developed to conquer them before Christendom did. The Chinese and Muslim civilizations (we can add India if you like) were conquered because they were unable or unwilling to develop modern technology, mostly because their religion/political organization were unable or unwilling to do so.

You are putting your words in my text. - I definitely did. I apologize

For point #1 I wanted to point out that Christianity should not be considered a European only or even European mainly religion

The reason I emphasise on that is because of the wealth of history and knowledge in the Church of the East

#2 The tech did pass through the Umma from various places to Europe -- and that's where I disagree with you. In what I've seen, the level of that is exaggerated - a lot of what "the West" got was not from or through the umma, but either internally or from Christian sources in Constantinople and from the Church of the east

For point #1 I wanted to point out that Christianity should not be considered a European only or even European mainly religion

Apology accepted. I do not disagree with you on where Christianity is today.

But at the time of the beginning of the modern era (about 1450), Europe was the overwhelming last redoubt of Christendom under siege by Islam. Sure, there were Christians in Ethiopia. There were some in India, I think. There were quite a few under the despotic control of Islam. There were Christian kingdoms in Russian Asia.

The tools the Modern era is built on, the compass, reliable ocean crossing sailing vessels, paper, printing, gunpowder, mathematics, astronomy, metallurgy.

All of those, or precursors, were available to Islam, China, India, elsewhere before they became well known and used in Christendom. They may even have been independently discovered or re-discovered in Europe. Europe independently developed their own sailing ships, in my opinion. But gunpowder, for example, clearly was known in China, long before Europe. Paper was developed in China. China had printing blocks, but never developed the printing press. Algebra was developed in India, I recall. The Chinese had ocean crossing vessels a bit before Europeans, but destroyed them. Most of those technologies moved from the East, through Islamic controlled lands, to Europe.

But I think we agree on that.

Off hand, I cannot think of any significant technology developed by Islam.

Perhaps you can give me an example or two.

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