Эссе на тему: «Reformation and protestant reformation»

Эссе «Reformation and protestant reformation»

Throughout the Middle Ages, the church played a significant role in the life of society, perfectly fitting into the feudal system prevailing in the West. The church hierarchy was a complete reflection of the secular hierarchy: just as in a secular feudal society different categories of lords and vassals were lined up - from the king to the knight, so the members of the clergy were graded by feudal degrees from the pope to the parish priest. Being a large feudal lord, the church in various states of Western Europe owned up to one third part the amount of all cultivated land on which it used the labor of serfs, using the same methods and techniques as secular feudal lords.

Protestantism[1] is one of the three, along with Orthodoxy and Catholicism, the main directions of Christianity, which is a combination of independent churches, church unions and denominations. The origin of Protestantism is connected with the Reformation, which is a broad religious and socio-political movement in Western and Central Europe of the XVI - early XVII century, aimed at reforming the Catholic Church.

The Reformation is the greatest catastrophe that has befallen the Church in its entire history up to the present day. Neither the heresies of the early Christian period, nor the medieval sects, nor even the separation of the Eastern Church from Rome can be compared to the Reformation in their impact on the very existence of the Church and faith. For despite the deep and far-reaching unhealthy confrontation between Greek Orthodoxy and the Latin Church, they represent the same type of sacramental, hierarchically organized ecclesiasticism. Only the Reformation created such an organization of Christianity that essentially deviated from the Catholic one and proved strong enough to exist for centuries; only as a result of the Reformation was the unity of Christians in the faith broken.

In addition, the Reformation, thanks to its global influence, has become the core of the modern history of the Western world. Moreover, it directly or indirectly affected the entire modern world, including the Catholic Church. And the impact was multifaceted and profound. Its significance was revealed only in our days, when the revived ecumenical thinking embraced the entire Church.

The consequences of the Reformation have a direct impact on the most important events of modern state, church, economic and private life. And only now it becomes clear that the Reformation originated within the Church, that its ideas were originally aimed at the positive transformation of the Church from its own core.

The Reformation[2] is as much a social event as it is the creation of individual outstanding personalities. As a social phenomenon, it is a spiritual, historical, political and economic movement. But the individualistic and philosophical movement of humanism played a significant role in its spread. It reflected the diverse moods and demands of the late Middle Ages in all areas of human activity. It was not only an ecclesiastical, religious and not exclusively theological or historical-theological process, but a comprehensive political conflict. For all that, the Reformation is the product of creative individuals, such as Luther and Calvin, who complicated and intensified its impact by the contradictions that were characteristic of these personalities.

The Reformation was prepared and caused by a violation of the basic principles and basic norms of behavior that took place in the Middle Ages.

The main factors of the Reformation:

1) The erosion of principles and norms in the Church itself (papacy, episcopates, clergy, people),

2) Factors acting alongside and against the Church (humanism, socialism, apocalypticism, spiritualism, local ecclesiasticism).

The overall result was a weakening of the stability of the Church's religious heritage, dissatisfaction with the prevailing orders in the Church, and a sense of the vital need to urgently reform the highest institutions of church power. The Reformation is a struggle for the true form of Christianity. This struggle was not a matter of course; it was even less self -evident that the outcome of this struggle would be decided by the majority of Western Christians in an anti-Catholic sense.

The main prerequisites for the possibility of the Reformation were two circumstances:

1) Regarding the existing and dominant Catholic Church, there was doubt whether it was the true Church of Jesus Christ. This doubt developed gradually and was caused by various reasons. Even before it was formulated, it was already hidden in the internal tendency of decisive ideas and actions, until it suddenly manifested itself in various forms of reproach, threat, claim or in a theological thesis.

2) The question of the need for intra-church reform penetrates the minds quite slowly, but even more slowly the West realizes the existence of the problem. But in philosophical, religious, political and economic life, ties with the Church are weakened: the feeling of the impossibility of encroaching on the church principle, which for a long time determined mainly Western consciousness, disappears, the idea of the possibility of radical transformation comes to the fore.

The beginning of the Reformation is considered to be in 1517, according to legend[3], on this day Martin Luther nailed his «95 theses» to the doors of the Wittenberg Castle Church, in which he opposed the existing abuses of the Catholic Church, in particular against the sale of indulgences. Historians consider the signing of the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 to be the end of the Reformation, as a result of which the religious factor ceased to play a significant role in European politics. Protestantism spread throughout Europe in the creeds of the followers of Luther, Jean Calvin, the «Zwickau prophets», Ulrich Zwingli, as well as Anglicanism, which arose in a special way.

Martin Luther was a German Christian theologian, the initiator of the Reformation, the leading translator of the Bible into German. One of the branches of Protestantism, Lutheranism, is named after him. One of the creators of the German literary language.

According to Max Weber, the Lutheran sermon not only gave impetus to the Reformation, but also served as one of the turning points in the birth of capitalism and defined the spirit of the New Age.

Luther also entered the history of German public thought as a cultural figure - a reformer of education, language, and music. In 2003, according to opinion polls, Martin Luther became the second greatest German in the history of Germany[4].

Since 1515, in addition to lecturing, Luther has been preaching in the city church. In 1516 and in subsequent years, he participated in a number of debates, during which he increasingly persistently expounded his critical views on theology. In 1516 and 1517 he preached several sermons on absolution and indulgence. In the confessional, he witnesses the results that the sale of indulgences and Tetzel's unworthy Christian sermon about absolution for money led to.

By composing his famous 95 theses in his office in Wittenberg, Luther intended, in fact, only to contribute to the eradication of abuses within the Church[5]. He had no intention of coming into conflict with the Pope, much less establishing his own Church. That is why he did not nail the theses recorded on October 31, 1517 to the gates of the Wittenberg palace church.

Then Luther presented these to some theologians, from whom they them in an amazingly short time, like a storm, fell on the general public, although they were written in Latin. Thus, Luther and his criticism entered the arena of world history, and it happened in a situation of church disorders and the export of money to Rome, so Luther's speech certainly had to find loud approval. The theological significance of these theses does not lie in the criticism of noun-structures: here Luther was basically right and ahead of his time. Tetzel did indeed preach that as soon as the money for the indulgence was paid to him, the soul for which absolution was being bought would be freed from the fiery hell; but he never claimed that sins could be absolved without repentance. Tetzel was a wandering merchant of indulgences, who did not complicated his life with austerity, but we have no reliable information about gross violations of morality in his life.

These theses do not contain the full doctrine of purgatory and absolution of sins, they can be misunderstood as attacks on the church hierarchy. In this direction lies the main impact of theses and their danger lies. And yet theological positions can still be interpreted as Catholic.

The reaction to the theses, which quickly became widely known, turned an ordinary monk who tried to resist abuses in the Church into a revolutionary who stirred up the medieval world so much that it affected the entire future of Europe.

Luther's teaching spread very quickly throughout the European continent. But the conflict with the Catholic Church, as the papal Church with its center in the Vatican now became known, was becoming increasingly bloody. Both sides began to arm themselves. As a result, this religious conflict resulted in the Thirty Years War, at the end of which in Germany, and then in other European countries, the Catholic and Lutheran doctrines were recognized as equal.

Answering the last question, Germany can be called examples of Protestant countries. In the German Reformation of the princes, this movement was largely fueled by political selfishness and general dissatisfaction with church circumstances[6]. But on the other hand, the inner appeal of reformist ideas was revealed in the fact that many theologians and people with an organizational streak hurried to spread the new teaching throughout the country and quite far beyond its borders. Along with the formation of various Protestant Churches in Germany, various Protestant sects began to appear, so communities of neophytes of a more or less spiritualistic kind, which, with the light hand of Luther, received the general name of «dreamers». France can also be attributed to Protestant countries. The first Protestants in France were members of secret societies, hence probably the name of the Huguenots. The spread of Calvinism in France during the reigns of Francis I and Henry II is one of the most exciting pages in the history of the Reformation and the general history of the Church.

Also, the Reformation successfully penetrated into the northern countries and into England. Protestantism in a Calvinistic form penetrated into Scotland under the leadership of John Knox, who for a long time lived as an exile in Geneva. Even in Italy and Spain, reformist ideas found some support in the third and fourth decades of the XVI century.

Bibliography:

1. Ameln K. Luthers Kirchenlied und Gesangbuch: offene Fragen // Jahrbuch für Liturgik und Hymnologie XXXII (1989), SS.19—28.
2. Bainton, Roland. Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1950) Access mode: https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.155980 (Date of application: 23.01.2022)
3. David B. Morris: Martin Luther as Priest, Heretic, and Outlaw: The Reformation at 500. Access mode: https://www.loc.gov/rr/european/luther.html?loclr=earare (Date of application: 23.01.2022)
4. Lindsay T. M. Luther and the German Reformation. Edinburgh, 1913, SS. 115-152.
5. Reformation Collection. Publications relating to the Reformation; sixteenth century. Access mode: https://www.loc.gov/rr/rarebook/coll/195.html (Date of application: 23.01.2022)
6. Reformation Day: Martin Luther, the Reformer. How Martin Luther and the Reformation have continued to influence German society until the present. Access mode: https://www.deutschland.de/en/topic/life/martin-luther-the-reformer (Date of application: 23.01.2022)