Post on 25-Feb-2021
Section Ten. Christian Morality
Reflections on the Reformation
Martin Luther Huldrych Zwingli John Calvin
John WesleyJacobus ArminiusThomas Cranmer10.1
Reformatio Semper Reformanda
The Protestant Reformation wanted to throw off what it considered the accretions of the
Catholic Church over the centuries and return to first generation Christianity. Ironically,
the Reformers succeeded beyond their wildest dreams in that wish.
If we look at the Book of Acts, the letters of Paul and histories of the time, Christians
were severely divided from the very start.
Acts tells us that in the Jerusalem Church, the widows of Jewish Christians who spoke
Greek complained that they were being short-changed in favor of the widows of those
Jewish Christians who spoke Aramaic. Stephen and several other Deacons were
appointed to deal with this issue.
The Council of Jerusalem had to deal with complaints from Gentile converts that some
Apostles were telling them that they had to obey the Jewish Law while others said no.
Paul indicates in 1 Cor. 1:12 that there was division within the Church of Corinth over
who their teachers were (of Paul, of Cephas, of Apollos). Clement, a companion of Peter
and a Bishop/Presbyter in Rome had to write yet another letter to the Corinthian church
to deal with yet other divisions there about thirty-five years later.
I don’t think that it is far fetched to see Luther as somewhat of a conservative reformer
especially compared to Zwingli and Calvin. Those two had much in common but not
everything. If Calvin’s Reformed Christianity could be seen as a reformed version of
Lutheranism, Jacobus Arminius was a reformer who reformed the reformed movement
of Calvin. Arminius led a group called the Remonstrants against the Dutch Reformed
Calvinist Church. John Wesley was a great sympathizer of the Remonstrants. 10.2
The Success of the Catholic Reformation
It is true that the Catholic Reformation owes a lot of its success to the Jesuits, but it
also owes much of its success to the divisions that were breaking out within
Protestantism. This does not mean that Catholicism didn’t have its own issues.
Before discussing the impact of all the various movements of reform within Western
Christianity, it might be useful to survey the situation as the seventeenth century
began.
10.3
The Jansenists were essentially Catholic Calvinists. They were popular in regions of
Europe such as Southeastern France and the Netherlands where Calvinism had taken
root. The movement was largely quashed by the Jesuits but remnants of it remain
today in what is called The Old Catholic Church.
Western Christianity After the First Surge of Reformers
Once the series of reformations had ended, Protestantism showed its greatest success
in the largely Germanic countries of Northern Europe. Calvinist groups were present in
Switzerland, Scotland (John Knox) and portions of France and the Netherlands.
Calvinists also managed to overthrow the Anglican English Monarchy for a brief time and
replace it with a Calvinist protectorate under Oliver Cromwell. Before Cromwell’s
success, some English Calvinists fled Anglican repression and came to the New World
by way of Holland. They were known as the Puritans or the Pilgrims. 10.4
General Comments on the Reformation
There is no question that the Roman Catholic Church was in great need of reform long
before the time of Martin Luther. Church practices had become corrupted. Monasteries,
once designed to eschew the things of the world, became centers of wealth and luxury.
Celibacy, a central part of Catholic practice (not of dogma), became almost a joke
because the letter of the law was actually being faithfully upheld. Celibacy does not
mean abstinence from sex . Celibacy is a vow not to marry and Catholic priests did,
indeed, abstain from marriage. That left too many of them free to take advantage of
concubines. Of course, there was the ever-present sale of indulgences.
Martin Luther deserves the credit for the Reformation but not because he was the first
serious reformer. John Wycliffe and Jan Hus were serious reformers well before Luther.
Luther is credited for being the first successful reformer. I do not mean to diminish the
accomplishments of Luther. The map showed how the largely magisterial Luther
succeeded into linking his religious Reformation with politics. The Churches of Norway,
Sweden, Finland and Denmark were all official state Churches and all were Lutheran.
Yet, John Calvin, who himself was magisterial in principle having no problem with the
mixing of Church and State in the Cantons of Switzerland, was far less magisterial in
practice. The Presbyterian Church of Scotland is probably the most successful mix of
Church and State of all the churches that have adopted Calvinism. As mentioned,
England was ruled by a Calvinist leader, Oliver Cromwell, who ran what was called a
Protectorate that desired no King and no Bishop. But Calvinism became the foundation
of many of what were once smaller and later movements within Protestantism. Many
newer Protestant denominations as well as independent Protestant churches tend to
follow the beliefs of Calvin and, in that way, Calvin can be said to be at least as
important as Martin Luther. Lutherans and Anglicans are sometimes called Catholic Lite.10.5
The Problem of Causality
In the middle of the Golden Age of Islam, the Muslim philosopher al-Ghazali wrote the
Incoherence of Philosophers. Ironically, he used his quite formidable skills as a
philosopher to question the use of reason in general and of philosophy in particular to
try to better understand the nature of Allah. Al-Ghazali felt that what Aristotle believed
was effect flowing from cause was unproven and, worse, seemed to diminish the power
of the divine will of Allah.
I’ll use a pretty poor example to give an illustration. We know that the works of al-
Ghazali were made available to those in Western Christianity through translations by
such men as the Jewish scholar Maimonides. We know that William of Ockham
produced a theory very similar to al-Ghazali’s called Nominalism and we know that
Ockham’s work came after those translations. That, of course, does not in any way
prove that al-Ghazali influenced Ockham though it is my opinion that he did.
Most readers would understand that it is a fallacy to say that just because A happened
before B that B was caused by A. Al-Ghazali took that understanding to an extreme. He
seemed to be saying that God could have an effect without an obvious cause. OK, most
people could accept that. It is possible that a miracle could happen. Yet both al-Ghazali
and Ockham seemed to distrust any use of cause and effect in trying to understand
truths about God. Both Ockham and al-Ghazali believed that the use of reason, which
employed cause and effect as a primary tool, diminished the power of the Divine Will
which transcended all space, all time and all human reason. What makes this ironic is
that both men believed in the use of reason to prove the existence of God. They also
used that same reason, and used it very well, in their arguments against those who
opposed their ideas.10.6
The Reformers on Human Reason
In the middle of the Golden Age of Islam, the Muslim philosopher al-Ghazali wrote the Incoherence of Philosophers. Ironically, he used his quite formidable skills as a philosopher to question the use of reason in general and of philosophy in particular to try to better understand the nature of Allah. Al-Ghazali felt that what Aristotle believed was effect flowing from cause was unproven and, worse, seemed to diminish the power of the divine will of Allah. Ockham believed that Aristotelian categorizations such as species and phylum, order, genus and species were human inventions given human nomina or names (nomina is the plural of nomen).
Martin Luther had the following to say about human reason;
"But since the devil's bride, Reason, that pretty whore, comes in and thinks she's wise, ad thinks that
what she says, what she thinks, is from the Holy Spirit, who can help us, then? Not judges, not
doctors, no king or emperor, because [reason] is the Devil's greatest whore ." -- Martin Luther's Last
Sermon in Wittenberg. Second Sunday in Epiphany, 17 January 1546. Dr. Martin Luthers Werke:
Kritische Gesamtsusgabe . (Weimar: Herman Boehlaus Nachfolger, 1914),Band 51:126,Line 7ff.
The Reformation replaced the teleological social ethics of Roman Catholicism based on virtue with
formal social ethics based on rules and enforced by magistrates, because they regarded human
reason as too depraved to acquire virtue
Pagan philosophers set up reason as the sole guide of life, of wisdom and conduct; but Christian
philosophy demands of us that we surrender our reason to the Holy Spirit; Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life. Page 27
John Calvin had this to say about human reason;
In his book, The Unintended Reformation, Brad Gregory, holder of the Dorothy G.
Griffin Chair in the Department of History at the University of Notre Dame wrote this;
10.7
Ockham, Luther and Calvin
Both Luther and Calvin had a self-admitted distrust of human reason when it came to
matters concerning God. Both believed that Revelation alone (and Luther made it clear,
and Calvin agreed, that Revelation alone was to be found in Scripture alone) provided
human beings all the things that they needed to know about God. Oddly enough, it was
Calvin who believed that reason had a place in the affairs of a religious state that was
more distrustful of reason than Luther in matters theological. Calvin’s five points make
that clear. The acronym TULIP explains the five major beliefs of Calvinism.
Total Depravity of the Soul The free will of the human soul was so corrupted by Original
Sin that it was unable to cooperate with the Holy Spirit to perform any good works. All
good works derived completely from the action of the Holy Spirit.
Unconditional Election Any soul who is saved was selected by God to be saved before all
time. Any soul that was damned was damned by God before all time. Human morality has
nothing to do with salvation. Everything is of God lest humans should boast. This
principle is called Double Predestination. (Makes Tim, 2:3-4 interesting)
Limited Atonement Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross was only meant for those who were
elected to be saved
Irresistible Grace Since the human will is too corrupted to play any role in salvation,
those who are elect cannot resist God’s grace
Perseverance of the Saints Once saved, always saved. Salvation, once gained, can
not be lost. (The situations of the Biblical Scholar Bart Ehrman and the once Calvinist
Christian radio personality Hank Hanegraaff make this point interesting.)
10.8
The Reformation of the Reformed Church (I)
There was a denomination of Protestantism named after Luther but there was never a
denomination named after Calvin. However, there were denominations clearly identified
as following Calvin’s principles; The Presbyterian Church, the Dutch Reformed Church
and many affiliated and non-affiliated Evangelical Churches. But there was a group that
rose up among the members of the Dutch Reformed Church that were not happy with
Calvinism. They were called the Remonstrants and they were led by Jacobus Arminius.
The Remonstrants preferred traditional Christian ideas of salvation. That branch of
Protestantism that agreed with the Remonstrants is called Arminian Protestantism,
named, of course, after its founder.
John Wesley, an Englishman of some renown both in his homeland and in the New
World, was interested in the Remonstrant movement. From 1649-1660, he had seen
how England ceased to be a Kingdom and was referred to as a Commonwealth. Oliver
Cromwell, a Calvinist, had led troops into Ireland in 1649 bring that island into the
Commonwealth. In 1653, a new Parliament (the Rump Parliament) appointed Oliver
Cromwell as Lord Protector. In that same year, King Charles I was executed. In 1657,
under Cromwell, Scotland was forced into the new Commonwealth by the Tender of
Union. Cromwell then died and was replaced by his son, Richard who proved an
ineffective leader. By 1660, the monarchy in England was restored under Charles II and
the Church of England was once again joined to the state.
John Wesley wanted very much to revitalize Christianity both in England and in British
territories in North America. Given England’s recent experience with Calvinism, Wesley
and his new Methodist Church were, like the Remonstrants, in favor of a more
traditional Christianity. The next slide contains the beliefs of the Remonstrants10.9
The Reformation of the Reformed Church (II)
Salvation or condemnation on judgment day will be conditioned by either the faith of the
believer, graciously enabled by God or the lack of faith of the one who does not believe.
(Election is conditioned. Negates the U of TULIP. It also denies the Double
Predestination of Calvin.)
Believers are able to resist sin through grace, and Christ will keep them from falling;
but one must look to scripture to determine if their sin is deadly or not (this negates to
some degree the P of TULIP). Most of the viewpoints of Arminians are not far different
from Catholic and Orthodox views. This viewpoint is uniquely Protestant.
The atoning suffering and death of Jesus is qualitatively adequate for all human beings
(atonement is not limited, negates the L of TULIP)
No human being gains saving grace by himself, nor solely by the energy of his free will.
Without the work of the Holy Spirit, no one is able to respond to God's call. (This is a
slight negation of the T of TULIP because it implies some human action in response to
God’s call. Every Nicene Christian believes that salvation begins with the prompting of
God and the life of the Holy Spirit)
The grace of God is the beginning, continuance, and accomplishment of any good,
nonetheless, humans may resist the Holy Spirit. (grace is resistible, this negates the I of
TULIP)
Over time, the term Arminian began to be used for Churches beyond those established
by the Remonstrants. Very often the Methodist Church, the Anglican Church and others
may be grouped under this label. Arminian beliefs are far more in line with traditional
Christian beliefs, but Arminian Churches are, and always have been, Protestant. 10.10
Matthew Henry: Calvinism and the Scriptures (I)
Salvation in Reformed (Calvinist) Christianity is elegant in its straightforwardness and
simplicity. Those who are saved have been destined for salvation by God before all
time. The same can be said for those who are damned. Those who are saved are
justified when they are born-again by committing themselves to Christ, not by Baptism
which is merely a response of obedience to Christ’s call to be baptized.
Matthew Henry was a Welsh-born Presbyterian (i.e. Calvinist) minister who did most
of his work in England in the late seventeenth century. His commentaries on
Scripture are well regarded in Calvinist thought. Below are selections from his
commentary on Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter 9 verses 14 to 24. I chose them
because they are an eloquent and honest representation of Reformed Christian
thought
All the children of men being plunged alike into a state of sin and misery, equally under guilt and
wrath, God, in a way of sovereignty, picks out some from this fallen apostatized race, to be
vessels of grace and glory. He dispenses his gifts to whom he will, without giving us any reason:
according to his own good pleasure he pitches upon some to be monuments of mercy and grace,
presenting grace, effectual grace, while he passes by others. The expression is very emphatic,
and the repetition makes it more so: I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy. It imports a
perfect absoluteness in God's will; he will do what he will, and giveth not account of any of his
matters, nor is it fit he should. As these great words, I am that I am (Ex. 3:14) do abundantly
express the absolute independency of his being,
Rev. Henry’s version of Calvinism sees no role at all for the human individual in working
out his salvation. God, like the Islamic Allah, is all will. God is the puppet master and
humans are his puppets.10.11
Matthew Henry: Calvinism and the Scriptures (II)
If that assessment seems too harsh, let’s see what else Rev. Henry has to say on the
issue.
The truth, as it is in Jesus, abases man as nothing, as less than nothing, and advances God as sovereign Lord of all. Who art thou that art so foolish, so feeble, so unable to judge the Divine counsels? It becomes us to submit to him, not to reply against him.
Islam underwent a Golden Age of learning until al-Ghazali wrote The Incoherence of
Philosphers questioning the role of human reason in matters of faith. Allah told the
faithful all they need to know in the Qur’an and it the job of the faithful is to submit to
God’s word, not to question it or ponder it. The word Islam means submission. Rev.
Henry goes on;
Would not men allow the infinite God the same sovereign right to manage the affairs ofthe creation, as the potter exercises in disposing of his clay, when of the same lump he makes one vessel to a more honorable, and one to a meaner use? God could do no wrong, however it might appear to men. God will make it appear that he hates sin. Also, he formed vessels filled with mercy. Sanctification is the preparation of the soul for glory. This is God's work. Sinners fit themselves for hell, but it is God who prepares saints for heaven; and all whom God designs for heaven hereafter, he fits for heaven now. God is bound no further than he has been pleased to bind himself by his own covenant and promise, which is his revealed will.
Rev. Henry uses the potter and his clay as his example rather than the puppet master
and his puppets but the point is clearly the same in both comparisons. 10.12
Matthew Henry: Calvinism and the Scriptures (III)
At the heart of what al-Ghazali. Ockham and Calvin seem to concern themselves with
is the supremacy of the will of God. They all believed, each in his own way, that
salvation was the work of God alone lest man should boast.
Yet the response to that concern, oddly enough, can be found in a statement by
Reverend Henry.
God is bound no further than he has been pleased to bind himself by his own covenant
and promise, which is his revealed will.
God can bind Himself, specifically, His own will to respect his two great gifts to
humanknd; an intellect capable of knowing love and a will sufficiently free to say yes
or no to love. Isn’t this what being made in the image and likeness of God s all about?
Didn’t God intend us to experience the abiding happiness of sharing in his life of
unselfish love. Did he not give that same opportunity to the first humans? Did he not
send his only begotten son to re-open the gates that the first humans closed behind
them out of love and for love. Wouldn’t giving the human will freedom to cooperate
with the Holy Spirit of God’s love really be God’s will revealed at Eden, at Sinai at the
Sermon on the Mount ad finally realized at Calvary?
Is it possible that the union of church and state that started in the fourth century has
caused us to look at salvation as a matter ot the courtroom and law rather than as a
matter of love. In the context f love, I can really agree with the statement of Rev. Henry
as shown and explained in this slide.
More Problems With Reason
As mentioned, Protestantism had real concerns with human reason trying to place
God into a box, diminishing the power of his will. There is the other side of this though
that has its own set of problems. We have the famous saying by the TV minister
Kenneth Copeland that God is about 6 feet, two inches tall. Rev. Copeland claims that
he comes to that from the revelation of scripture alone.
I like to cite sources and here is my source for that statement.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPUCL5qDmkM
More Problems With Reason
If you listen to the Rev. Copeland, you will note another danger of reading only the
words of Scripture, the danger of misquoting. In his message, Rev. Copeland says the
following “is uncanny that he (God) is very much like you and me.” Scripture tells us
that we were made in the image of God, not the other way around.
Yes God did create human beings in his image and likeness. We have an intellect, that
is, our reason, capable of understanding revelation and probing ever more deeply into
its meaning, and a will. Our will is that part of us that is capable of making a choice. I
think many Christians would agree that faith is that choice put into action. Calvinists,
especially, would disagree that the human will played any role in that choice. They
would say that it was all of the Holy Spirit, lest mankind should boast. Arminian
Protestantism, Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy would all agree that our
response was due to the prompting of the Holy Spirit but also that our will played its
role by cooperating with the Spirit.
10.15
Reason and Faith In Balance
Faith and Reason were in balance when the Good News was first preached to the
Jewish world. Jesus first preached his message to people of faith who were familiar
with their Scriptures. Jesus and the first generation of his followers used reason to
show how Jesus was the Messiah, not Messiah in the style of the Judges, or of David
and Solomon but the Messiah of the Suffering Servant of Isaiah and the Paschal Lamb
of the Torah.
Most Christians today would agree that God was using the Hebrew Scriptures to
gradually prepare his Chosen People for Jesus. Is it possible, however, that God was
also preparing the Gentile world for Jesus by what was going on in Athens. Most of the
Gentile nations had a pantheon of Gods headed up by a father figure, be he Zeus or
Jupiter or Thor or Odin. Yet Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle had paved
the way to a belief in a single God by use of their reason. When Jesus was preached to
a world that did not have the faith of the Scriptural context that the Jewish people, the
Apostles and disciples had to preach a different way to explain Jesus in a context that
they would understand. Paul, who had said that he became all things to all people for
the sake of the gospel (1 Cor. 9:22-23), did just that in Athens when he saw the altar to
“the unknown God” (Acts 17:22-31) and used it as a basis for preaching Jesus. This is
another example of faith and reason working together.
The Council of Nicaea also used faith and reason to explain the relationship of the Son
to the Father in response to Arius. Arius believed that there was a time when the Son
was not, so the Son was beholding to (and therefore less than) the Father. Nicaea
understood that God transcended space and time. For God there is no before and
after. That is why Nicaea said that the Son was “eternally begotten by the Father”. This
is a very reasoned explanation of an article of faith. 10.16
Faith and Reason Becomes Faith or Reason
Did al-Ghazali’s mistrust of reason really move Islam away from the great discoveries
of its Golden Age which ultimately were passed on the Western World during the High
Middle Ages and proved to be fodder for the Renaissance a century or so later. It’s
almost ironic that, in this case, cause and effect cannot be proven but the linkage
between the two remains highly probable and highly likely.
In the same way, it’s hard to say that Ockham’s Nominalism caused the Reformation.
We do know for certain that Nominalism was a foundational part of the Protestant
Reformation because the Reformers themselves said so. There were two more obvious
candidates for the cause of the Reformation; the politics and corruption of the Roman
Catholic Church and the invention of the printing press. But the splintering of
Christianity that came soon after the Reformation, both within Protestantism itself and
between Protestantism and Catholicism both Eastern and Western was not inevitable
and remains a blot on Christianity to this day.
While Faith and Reason were tightly tied together at the University level during the
High Middle Ages, Theology (faith and matters religious) became set apart at the
University level during Ockham’s time. The Reformers’ distrust of the use of reason in
matters of faith fostered a growing skepticism about human reason where faith
touched science. On reason that the Roman Catholic church hierarchy was reluctant to
accept Galileo’s theories because they were afraid that it might provoke a negative
Protestant response. Protestants put great faith in the Bible and took Joshua 10:12-14
very seriously. In response, scholars of the physical sciences at the University level, in
their turn, began to question the usefulness of religious studies in Universities. The
gap between men of faith and men of reason was starting to grow exponentially. That
gap would widen even more during the Enlightenment. 10.17
In Defense of Faith and Love
Both Judaism and Christianity were meant to produce a society where faith and reason
were joined to bring an example of selfless love, the agape that Jesus taught, to the
nations of the world. This is preached in the Gospels and in the Epistles of Jesus’
disciples. Both the gospel of John and the letters of John were full of that message
including the famous “God so loved the world” of John 3:16. Did anyone ever write
more eloquently of love than Paul did in Chapter 13 of First Corinthians. Consider also
these words of the Christian philosopher, Aristides of Athens, as he described
Christian morality to the Roman Emperor Hadrian in 125 CE.
They honor father and mother, and show kindness to those near to them; and whenever they are
judges, they judge uprightly … Falsehood is not found among them; …and whatsoever they would
not that others should do unto them, they do not to others;… from widows they do not turn away
their esteem; …They go their way in all modesty and cheerfulness. and they love one another,
Consider also these simple and honest words of the Christian Tertullian in 200 CE as
he overheard one pagan speaking to another about Christians.
See these Christians how they love one another.
Now compare these words with the words of Rev. Matthew Henry. Jesus preached at the
Sermon of the Mount that Judaism had forgotten the selfless love that formed the
foundation of the Torah and focused too much on external obedience to a growing
number of precepts. The Union of Church and State by Theodosius, the Rise of Islam
and its skepticism of reason that was passed on to the West by Ockham’s Nominalism
and the division of Christianity the was the Reformation combined to take Christians
back to where Jesus and Paul warned them about. In both Roman Catholic and
Protestant Christianity, the internal transformation from selfish to selfless love had
taken a back seat once again to external observation of a growing list of laws. 10.18
Summary Statement
If men of faith during the time leading up to and including the Reformation had shown
increasing skepticism about the use of reason, an age was coming where men of
reason were about to get their revenge. A divided Christianity was moving on from the
Renaissance and the Reformation and into the Enlightenment where men of reason
would demonstrate their own skepticism, especially when it was skepticism about
those very men of faith the Christian faith, both Catholic and Protestant.
10.19