Embark on a riveting journey back to the tempestuous days of the Reformation in Germany, where Fr. Stephen Sanchez offers his profound insights into the religious and political whirlwind that reshaped the Christian faith. Prepare to unearth the roots of denominationalism and discover the painstakingly woven influences of figures like Wycliffe and Huss, pivotal moments such as the Avignon Papacy and the Great Western Schism, and the Renaissance's nurturing of individualism—all setting the stage for Martin Luther's indelible impact on history and theology.
This episode paints a vivid tableau of the aftermath of Luther's defiance, from the Peasant Revolt to the rise of the Anabaptists and the intricate denominational splits that followed. Immerse yourself in the narratives of Zwingli, Calvin, and the English Reformation under Henry VIII, as we explore how these leaders and their controversial decisions led to an array of new religious movements and sects. Father Sanchez helps us grapple with the enduring legacy of these tumultuous times, assessing how they continue to influence our contemporary struggle between personal significance and the common good. Join us for an enlightening exploration of the events that forever changed the course of Christian history.
Have something you'd love to hear Fr. Stephen and John talk about? Email us at myfriendthefriar@gmail.com or click here!
Embark on a riveting journey back to the tempestuous days of the Reformation in Germany, where Fr. Stephen Sanchez offers his profound insights into the religious and political whirlwind that reshaped the Christian faith. Prepare to unearth the roots of denominationalism and discover the painstakingly woven influences of figures like Wycliffe and Huss, pivotal moments such as the Avignon Papacy and the Great Western Schism, and the Renaissance's nurturing of individualism—all setting the stage for Martin Luther's indelible impact on history and theology.
This episode paints a vivid tableau of the aftermath of Luther's defiance, from the Peasant Revolt to the rise of the Anabaptists and the intricate denominational splits that followed. Immerse yourself in the narratives of Zwingli, Calvin, and the English Reformation under Henry VIII, as we explore how these leaders and their controversial decisions led to an array of new religious movements and sects. Father Sanchez helps us grapple with the enduring legacy of these tumultuous times, assessing how they continue to influence our contemporary struggle between personal significance and the common good. Join us for an enlightening exploration of the events that forever changed the course of Christian history.
Have something you'd love to hear Fr. Stephen and John talk about? Email us at myfriendthefriar@gmail.com or click here!
Welcome to our podcast friends. Thank you so much for listening. If you like our podcast and want to support us, please subscribe or follow us, and please don't forget to click the notification bell so you will be notified when new episodes are released. Thank you and God bless.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining me and my friend, the friar father Stephen Sanchez. A discolored caramalite priest, and maybe a cat or two, maybe.
Speaker 1:Don't give me that.
Speaker 2:I think she left. Oh okay, good afternoon, good afternoon, father. What a whirlwind. Uh-oh. I won't say that again because it will turn into discolored all over. I can't say it All right. Last time we left off on the importance of why we're doing all this, which. Why don't I let the expert? Can you recap that for us again real quick? Why are we talking about church history when we're talking about denominationalism?
Speaker 1:Because the how we got here, especially in the United States, the denominations that predominate the religious landscape is rooted back in the history of Europe and how the different things contributed to the rebellion of different, not only monarchs but also religious leaders. Wycliffe Huss, the problems that happen within the church between the Eastern Church and the Western Church, the problem that happened within the church with the Avignon Papacy, and then the Great Western Schism we had three popes for a while right, all that leads up to then the call for reform, but also the fact that as the church was trying to reform, it was for some people it wasn't reforming fast enough. And then that's how we wind up getting to this division within the body of Christ and how some people actually leave the church and found or begin their own churches away from the historical institution of church that was founded by Christ.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and doesn't that sound familiar, that things aren't happening fast enough? For our liking.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Oh, my goodness, and I find it so fascinating that this is 500 years ago at this point, and we're still feeling the ramifications, the thoughts and the philosophies and the ideologies and all the oligies that came out of the Renaissance are still developing. I wouldn't even say that these are necessarily the repercussions. They're still developing and it's really strange because, as you were saying last time, one of the goods that was coming out of it, whether or not it manifested well, is this move towards the kind of like the value of the individual. Yeah Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the human dignity, going back to the whole idea of human dignity.
Speaker 2:right, and so we are, I would say, in a day and age where that is, it's paramount almost, and maybe that's where the pendulum swings too far, where it's I matter most instead of I matter too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, now we're struggling with individualism, right, so it's the individual against the common good, yeah, and it goes back to. It goes back to it's historical, it's historical.
Speaker 2:So now we're in Germania, yes, germany.
Speaker 1:So okay, so we've talked a little bit about, you know, what was happening in France, and then about the reform that was beginning in England. We had Wycliffe, we had John of Gont who was pushing, for political reasons, the anti-clerical movement. Again, it's about getting money and properties from the church and stuff. And you have all these things going on and you have the Renaissance, as we spoke of before last time. So now, remembering that, the northern Europe, the Renaissance, was slowly trickling into the northern parts of Europe.
Speaker 1:So at this time in the history the German bishops were very, very powerful and their seas right, or their diocese right, the cathedrals, the different seas of Germany, they were sought after by noble, dynastic families. Okay, if my son I have a son and my first son can inherit everything, my second son can't inherit, or the third son can't inherit, so I need to make sure he gets something right. So let's see if I can get him into the priesthood and get him to become bishop so he can have money and power, and then he can look after our family too, exactly.
Speaker 1:Right so, again, human element. So the seas in Germany were sought by noble dynastic families, and the local clergy were ignorant and abusive. Again we're getting over the residue of the Dark Ages. Right so in England and France, again, the seas came to be rewards that were dispensed by the crown to its favorites. For example, one of my favorite movies that I watch in December, every December, is Beckett, where Henry II Plantagenet makes Beckett an archbishop. He's like yeah, I can do that, I'm going to send Rome, submit your name so you can be bishop. Right, so that's the way.
Speaker 1:The kings would also make sure that the bishops would be on their side politically. Right so Germany was the most backwards of the medieval societies. While the other monarchies were advancing and developing and becoming modern nations, all of Northern Europe was far from the important economical and cultural advances achieved by France, italy and Spain. So Germany was ripe for revolution. The German princes found themselves too politically weak or too economically restricted to be able to develop their territories and they, with avarice, cast their eyes upon the rich abbeys that were outside of their taxing jurisdiction but, within their political territories.
Speaker 2:Here comes some taxes again.
Speaker 1:Yes, money, I need money. Into this powder keg of a situation wanders the Dominican priest, prior Martin Luther. Oh, I'm sorry, he was an Augustinian monk, he wasn't Dominican.
Speaker 2:He was an.
Speaker 1:Augustinian monk. Okay, who finds objection to scholastic theology and had posted his theses against scholasticism in September of 1517? Okay, and this was not uncommon. People did that. You didn't. You know you'd go and post the theses on a church door. You know, like this is my proposal or my objection or whatever right. So it wasn't something new, is just something that he did.
Speaker 2:It's like the community message board. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:Right, so the immediate cause for the rise of Protestantism was Luther's protest against the preaching of John Tetzel, a Dominican, that's the Dominican involved. Okay, so John Tetzel had received permission from Pope Leo X to preach an indulgence for those who contributed to the building of St Peter's in Rome. Okay, so Luther posted his 95 theses against the indulgences on the castle door of Wittenberg, saxony, in November of 1517. Okay, the posting of these, theses, theses, was nothing new in a university town. It was a way of debating points and a way of intellectual exercise, as you say. Right, this is the, the posting board for the for the community. So Dawson says in.
Speaker 1:A complicating factor in this protest for reform is Luther's character. Luther was a complex and volatile man who was enthralled with his own talent for speech making. Okay, so Dawson says he recognized no truths except those which he felt and saw directly by an immediate act of psychological intuition. In comparison with this, nothing else mattered. The authority of the church, the witness of tradition, the religious experience of others, the dogmas of the theological schools counted for nothing, or less than nothing, when they did not agree with his personal intuitions and convictions. This makes his teaching more subjective and one sided than that of any other Christian thinker.
Speaker 2:You know, without knowing, because I've read some of what Martin Luther has written and man the guy was, he was kind of a jerk and the way he wrote to like he'd be calling out your mama kind of thing, right Like he didn't care. But I would bet the guy probably had some kind of troubled home life growing up. I don't know if he's the only son, or the youngest son or the oldest son, but whatever Some trauma, I guarantee you, there was something there, you know what I mean yeah.
Speaker 1:So the Lutheran movement then in Germany was a result of Luther's gift for whipping up an assembly with his speeches, and this brought about a rapid polarization around Luther of diverse alienated segments of the German culture. There was the humanist sector that supported him in his denunciation of the scholastic model of theology and looked to Luther as the promoter of a new model. There were those who sought reform of the church and saw him as the reforming agent. Now remember Wycliffe and Huss.
Speaker 1:So this isn't new. The princes and the political arm, the regnum, saw Luther as a way to vent against the Italians who received ecclesiastical taxes instead of themselves, and Luther finds himself not heading a reform but pushing to the forefront of a revolution. Now, another thing that happens with the princes that are pushing Luther is this has to do with the fact that they vote for the Holy Roman Emperor. So, as the reform is happening, you have princes who are for the reform and want to elect their candidate for Holy Roman Emperor and other princes who were faithful and loyal to the church and opposing these new reform-minded princes. So there's politics involved here, right?
Speaker 2:Very much so Is the church and state still won in Germany at this time.
Speaker 1:Yes, still at this point.
Speaker 2:So I can see that snowballing, because I'm sure, after this is all said and done, they're not well, maybe not fully, at least unified.
Speaker 1:What happens after Luther is that then Germany is divided according to its princes. Remember talking about separation of church and state. So you had Catholic princes, and so everybody in their territory was Catholic. And then you had Protestant princes, and everybody in their territory were Protestant. So you had Catholic and Protestant not just princes, but whole territories of Catholics, according to what the prince believed or had faith in right.
Speaker 1:So anyway, come Lord Jesus he was. Luther was formally excommunicated in 1520 and was given 60 days to submit to the authority of the church. Right, the princes didn't want him to reconcile with the church because it was against the interest of the princes, because they wanted money, they needed to keep him separate from the church. So two key points of difference between Luther's theology and that of the church the concept of sin and the place of good works and free will. For Luther, sin is found in the passions, the feelings. Right. For the church, sin is in the will. It is an act of choice. So here's another quote from Dawson. From the Lutheran point of view, the conclusion follows that, as nobody is ever entirely passionless, there can be no freedom from sin in this world. Man is born and dies in iniquity. The utmost he can attain is an assurance that this won't be counted against him, that Christ's redemptive suffering covers all. Hence justice is only imputed. The Lutheran concept which became the center of controversy.
Speaker 2:So and Nia we've talked about that before too.
Speaker 1:Justification, the difference yes, imputed justification and real justification right.
Speaker 2:Yep, and I don't know if Lenny now see more cats. Now Lenny's here and then she's gone, so maybe Bertha will join us too. So how might that have played out with the Renaissance mentality of the individual?
Speaker 1:Well, this is where, again, yeah, it gets very complicated. So the whole idea, then of the individual is for Luther, than here the individual has become the individual list, in that he decides then that he's not going to pay attention to the tradition, everything that's been inherited by the church for all those you know, 1500 years, and he decides, well, no, that's not the way it is. And so me, this is my idea, this is my, this is the way I see it, and again, because of his personality, he questions the whole thing. And so now you have again what begins the worth of the individual carry to the extreme, where the individual now makes these sweeping decisions without being informed enough to make an educated decision right.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So the same way, the artisan is on the same level as the prince, yes, and the prince signifies the state. And if the individual is at the same level, then the individual becomes a state. And I can see how, with the church, the church can be seen as a state. And so now the individual, just like the artisan, can make their own have. They have their own value, they have their own opinions, they have their own whatever's. And I guess Martin Luther probably wouldn't have I mean, he probably would have told you you're wrong, but I think maybe he would have even let you think whatever you wanted to think, because as long as it, as long as it disagree with him.
Speaker 2:That's the problem. Yeah, it's like you stay over there, I'm going to stay over here. You do whatever you want to do, that's fine. You just don't put any of that on me, and Jesus is going to cover all this anyway. So the individual matters most.
Speaker 1:So now we get to the peasant revolt and the Anabaptists. This is again the opening. So Luther opens Pandora's box.
Speaker 2:This is just man, yeah, because, at this point, because the church is what was holding Europe together and keeping them from killing one another.
Speaker 1:Trying to. Anyway, we're trying.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for hundreds and hundreds of years. Right, and the church has no power at this point, right?
Speaker 1:Right. So because Luther's emphasis was on personal interpretation of the scriptures, this led to a wide variety of interpretations and stances on what a particular group stood for. So in Switzerland they're developed another reformer, ulrich Zwingli a priest.
Speaker 1:A priest who consumed Luther's writings and also denied the value of clerical celibacy. He asked to be released from his celibacy, and when his bishop denied this, he married a woman with whom he was living. And so then, within his own reform, they're formed another group known as Anabaptists. So he marries this woman, attempt or we would say, attempts marriage. So he's going to be excommunicated. You know he's not going to be Catholic priest anymore. So then, ulrich, as well as Luther, still believed in infant baptism at this point, right. Luther changes his mind later, but this group, the Anabaptists, rejected it. So he06. Infant baptism and its understanding of salvation was based on faith. That works. Today there are still Anabaptists, and the groups that follow their reasonings are the Amish, the Mennonites and the Hutterites. Okay, so then Zwingli and his group expelled the Anabaptists for refusing to baptize their infants, and then the Anabaptists rebaptized themselves, because they refuted their own infant baptism.
Speaker 2:What's this and yeah, this quote protestation to revolt. Was that say the tragedy? Okay, this is from Dawson again, the tragedy of schism is that it is a progressive evil.
Speaker 1:Schism breeds schism until every social antagonism is reflected in some new religious division and no common Christian culture is conceivable. Now we'll be able to apply that to the denominations of the United States very shortly.
Speaker 1:We will see how this is incarnated in the United States. Okay, so, because Luther had openly rebelled against the Holy See, the interpretation of the common people in Germany led them to revolt against the authorities over them, the princes. There was a general revolt against the princes, to which Luther himself asked the princes to put an end. The peasant revolt led by Thomas Munzer, who was an Anabaptist, was defeated in 1525, leaving 5,000 dead and their leaders executed by the German princes.
Speaker 1:And all this would lead to the religious war of 1529, which was much more political than religious now, not only do you have this, but you also have the Holy Roman Emperor trying to quell the religious wars as well. So you have that other political arm coming in like wait, wait, wait, wait. You're disrupting nations, you're disrupting economies, you're just so. Then the Holy Roman Emperor had to get involved. So now, this is a quote from William Wallin, his book Separated Brethren. He says Protestantism soon split into four main branches. The followers of Martin Luther disagreed with the Zwinglians and Calvinists on the real presence and other doctrinal issues. In England, elements of Catholicism and Protestantism combined to form the Anglican Communion. Finally, the left wing of the Reformation Luther, zwingli, calvin. The left wing of the Reformation, the sects developed into the various Baptist, congregational, mennonite, disciples of Christ Church, of Christ Holiness churches and Adventist bodies. The four main branches then are Lutheranism, calvinism, which is basically the Presbyterian and the Reformed churches, anglicanism and what they call the independent or radical branch, which is most of the denominations in the United States. Luther split from the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Then you have Zwingli, split from Lutheranism, and with Zwingli we have the founding of the radical sects to which Presbyterianism belongs.
Speaker 1:John Calvin, a Frenchman, embraced the reform after his father was excommunicated. Calvin left France and traveled to Geneva where he influenced Presbyterian communities with his theological stances. And Calvin's contributions were the idea of predestination, the idea of limited atonement, the idea of total depravity which is from Luther the idea of irresistible grace and the idea of the perseverance of saints. Another quote from Moïle. In other words, calvin taught that man's nature, since the fall, is totally depraved. God elects some men to salvation and damns others to hell. Christ died only for the elect who cannot resist God's grace and cannot backslide once they have received this grace of election. No free will. To complicate things, now we have John Knox, who was a disciple of Calvin. He took Calvinism to Scotland and started the revolt there against Mary Queen of Scots and established Scotland as a Presbyterianism stronghold.
Speaker 1:The denominations that are affected by Calvin and Calvinism are the Puritans, the Congregationalists, the Baptists and Methodists, the Anabaptists who had split from Zwingli. You have in them the Mennonites as well as the Baptists split from the Anabaptists. So then within the Mennonites you have the Amish, split from the Mennonites. There are other groups that split off from the Presbyterians and Baptists in 1832 form the Disciples of Christ, and from the Disciples of Christ two other groups split off, forming in 1906, the Church of Christ and the Christian Churches Another quote from Whelan. Through historical and geographical circumstances, the Fourth Branch, variously known as Independent, radical, nonconformist and Free Church, gained ascendancy in the United States. In the rest of the world, prosthenism has been dominated by the other three Winks Lutheranism, calvinism and the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church In the United States. The issues of civil war and slavery further split denominations into northern and southern branches.
Speaker 2:Uh, like it's just mind boggling, it's dumbfounding. I can't wrap my mind around it, because it's because the work of the Holy Spirit is unity, yes, and the work of the devil is to isolate, you, divide, you get you thinking you're God and I don't.
Speaker 2:that's the thing that gets me. I don't know, especially if you've read the Gospel of John in Jesus' Prayer for Unity before the Last Supper. I don't know how anyone has ever read those things. How could you ever read those things and think that you're okay to do any of this, Like how can you think that that is an appropriate response? I just I don't understand.
Speaker 1:Because they're isolated communities, they're in their religious bubble and since they don't have a guiding interpretive authority, you have these people that can interpret the scripture according to what they wanted to say and you convince people, like-minded people, that you know they hear what they want to hear and then they they decide that it's going.
Speaker 1:This is true, that this is good, this is right. The Bible says so. But because they've isolated themselves and they've moved away right. So within the Protestants themselves, they don't agree with each other, obviously, so they split and left Rome. But most of the Protestants don't even know why they're Protestant. They don't know the roots of their division. They don't know the roots of that. If you would talk to Baptists and Methodists about Calvinism and predestination and the whole idea that the total depravity of the soul, they'd go like is that what we believe? Yes, that's what you believe, but I don't know.
Speaker 2:If you're told that that's what you believe because that's the foundation of their church or their community, I should say yeah, and it's and it's frustrating and something that because that very, very quickly not that we're done with the 1500s, but that very, very quickly just shows what happened between 1500 and 1800.
Speaker 1:Like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom boom, like everything falls apart, it just shatters.
Speaker 2:And during this time the Christian church, the Catholic church, is doing its own actual reformation, like there was even the Carmelite order was reformed. So there's all of this stuff that's actually going on in the Catholic church. That are good things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the problem with the reformation was that most modern Catholics think of the Holy Sea as like, yes, like back then the Holy Sea was not. The church was not as unified behind the Holy Sea as it is today. Because again, distance, national interests, political stuff, again trying to reform a whole church when communication takes forever. I mean it's.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and back then it was even having the fact that you could actually send a letter with relative confidence it's going to get to its destination, like that's light speed. Oh yeah, but even that is so. It's not like someone's sending out tweets, no.
Speaker 1:It takes months and I guess.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that just shows how, why we're even more divided now as people, and not just Protestants, but even Catholics, because everyone is still like this philosophy, this individualistic thinking is still growing and still I don't know spreading, and so people think that what they have to say matters simply because they have to say it or they think it Right. You know Right.
Speaker 1:And so let's end this with going with talking a little bit about England, right? So you've got Luther. Now let's talk a little bit about Henry. So Henry VIII split from the Catholic Church over the question of his divorce of Catherine of Aragon, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabel of Spain, and she also happened to be the niece of the Holy Roman Emperor, charles V. So it was Bos interview. That's why they, you know, you have to make sure you're healthcare Dawson. Christopher Dawson says.
Speaker 1:During the negotiations with Rome over the divorce, henry was led step by step to assert his supremacy over the church and to destroy one by one the pillars on which the old order of the church and state and England rested. Thomas Cromwell, above all, influenced the development of the English Reformation. He himself had no religious convictions and merely sought a way for his own aggrandizement in the eyes of Henry, no matter what cost to the nation. He was the one who constructed the act of succession, the act of supremacy and the statute of treason. So the act of succession in March 1534 is whereby the subjects were ordered to accept his marriage to Anne Boleyn, to recognize that it was a marriage which would then go against the teaching of the church because he wasn't divorced. There is no divorce. There's no Catholic divorce. There was no annulment, so okay, so by that they were ordered. If you didn't, it was treason. You had to accept that Anne Boleyn and his union was a real marriage. Then again, in 1534, in March, there's the act of supremacy, by which Henry was recognized as the supreme head of the church of England, which then allowed him to grant himself a divorce from Catherine. Then, in December of 1534, you have the statute of treason, which addressed any dissent over the statute of supremacy and the act of succession. So if you disagreed with the act of succession or the statute of supremacy, then you were a traitor, enemy of the state, and so of course you would be killed.
Speaker 1:After Henry VIII's death, the state's religion was basically a revolving door for a while. So with the establishment of Elizabeth I, anglicanism was established. So she abolished the mass, reintroduced the oath of supremacy, although she called herself the supreme governor rather than the supreme head of the church. The 39 articles formed the doctrinal standard for the national church. In this church there arose the Puritan reform which will come to the United States that were eventually ousted and persecuted, leading them to the New World, along with the Anglicanism brought to the United States by the British. So you have the Puritans of the Anglicans coming to the United States. In 1789 the Anglicans in the United States became the Protestant Episcopal Church, actually the USA branch of Anglicanism. So that's the difference between Anglicanism and Episcopalianism.
Speaker 1:Now a little bit about legislation. So within these denominations there are three types of government. There is Episcopal government, presbyterial government or Presbyterial government, or Congregational, the Episcopalians and Methodists. The denominations maintain an Episcopal form of government. In most cases the bishop is elected rather than appointed as in the Catholic Church. So you have the Catholics, episcopalians and Methodists, according to the Episcopalian form of government.
Speaker 1:The Presbyterial or Presbyterial system exercises a measure of control over the local congregation by means of representative presbyteries. There are clerical and lay delegates within the presbyteries, and the clerical and the lay delegates each have equal votes. Now the Congregational type of government hires and fires the minister, whose position then depends on maintaining the goodwill of his congregation. The congregation likewise holds title to all properties. They manage church finances, they elect their own officers and sometimes they formulate their own creedal statements. So the denominations under this type of governance the Congregational type are Baptists, disciples of Christ, churches of Christ, the Quakers, the Unitarians, the Seventh-day Adventists, the Missouri-Centered Lutherans and what are known as the Holiness Groups, or we would say, like Jehovah's Witness, which is the Holiness Group.
Speaker 2:And probably on, and on, and on, and, on, and on, and on and on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and those are the denominations, more than you ever wanted to know.
Speaker 2:My goodness, I think we need to. I think we should just end this here and next time, I think we need to just kind of chew on this and see what it means for modern, like where we at right now, and what it means for the church and what it means in the good right, like where we need to allow the Holy Spirit to work through us. Yeah, and correct.
Speaker 1:Yes, amen, thank you.
Speaker 2:All right.
Speaker 1:Everybody. Thanks guys, God bless.
Speaker 2:We'll see you next time. God bless, god bless. Bye, god bless, god bless.