Impact of the Protestant Reformation on Change in Western Society
The Reformation which is also called the Protestant Reformation is the religious movement that occurred in the Western Church in the 16th century. Its biggest figures were definitely Martin Luther and John Calvin. With far-reaching political, economic and social consequences, the Reformation became the cornerstone of Protestantism, one of the three main branches of Christianity.
The time of the Protestant Reformation has been a period of great change in Western society. The Roman Catholic Church would see its power contested in a manner that was unimaginable, and the world would see the emergence of numerous religious feuds and rivalries, some of which still remain today. The origins of the revolution occur in several different ideas that began to circulate among the people of Europe, beginning in 1500. Pope Leo X provided indulgences to collect money for the restoration of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Those indulgences were offered by Johann Tetzel not far from Wittenberg, where Luther was professor of theology. The selling of indulgences was a process in which the Church accepted a donation or other charitable service with a document (indulgence) certifying that your soul will reach heaven more easily by minimizing your time in purgatory. Whether you have done no serious sins that have secured your place in hell, and you have died before you repented and atoned for all your sins, so your soul has gone to Purgatory-a kind of way-station where you have completed atoning for your sins before you are allowed to reach heaven. Luther was profoundly concerned by the manner in which a financial exchange linked him to heaven. But the sale of indulgences was not Luther's only dispute with the Church's institution.
People started to think that they could gain access to the grace of God through a personal relationship with him, without the Church and its leaders as an intermediary. Many people no longer considered the Pope as a God's right hand man, but only as a moral profiteer who thought even more about making money than about catering to the spiritual needs of his followers. The feeling of anticlericalism spread rapidly across the country.
Martin Luther was arguably the most persistent and successful reformer of his day. He confronted the Church publicly and openly, refusing to stand down from what he saw as both major flaws of theology and great shortcomings in faith. Luther's most important teaching came from his own personal experience until he began fighting against the Roman Church. He had always obsessed with his own supposed sinfulness, and could never comprehend how he could accomplish anything except the wrath from a just God.
Luther's doctrines started to be directed at the Church in 1517. It started when the friar began offering indulgences to the inhabitants of Wittenberg, where Luther lived at that time. Luther witnessed that the people in his town were scammed out of their income by the people who were meant to be supporting, by their religious leaders. This event filled Luther with a furious anger, and on October 31, 1517, he published his most famous work, his 95 theses . This work revealed another of Luther's most important doctrines that the Pope had only the authority to forgive the punishments he had inflicted.
For the next twenty years, Luther will begin to write more of his writings, allowing him to extend and refine his teachings. For the remainder of his life, he would teach his most powerful lesson that it was not through the good deeds, the seven sacraments, or the indulgence that one gained redemption, but through faith alone. Luther also insisted that the Bible was the one and only word of God, and that it was the final word of Christianity. He would back up his opinion on this by working hard for years to translate the Bible into German and attempting to make it available to all people so that they could read and interpret it for themselves. Finally, only two of the seven sacraments of the Catholic Faith, baptism and the Lord's Supper, Luther introduced into his new Religion, although he denied the Church's argument that the priest had performed miracles and transubstantiation.
In Switzerland the Reformation was carried out in a more radical form. From 1541 the process was led by Jean Calvin, a Frenchman working in Geneva. He, like Luther, was a professor of theology and the founder of the Protestant current, Calvinism. He developed Luther's view of the predestination of the divine will, according to which if a person accumulates great wealth through his labor, he is chosen by God, and whose labor does not bring wealth will be 'punished' by the Lord. According to him, the 'chosen ones' would go to heaven, and the 'punished' - to hell. According to the teachings of Calvin, since no one knows the will of God in advance, every person must believe that he is the chosen one and with his ascetic life, which is the service of God, prove it daily. Success in business is one of the signs of human choice, but not a means of gaining worldly goods.
There was neither an altar nor an image of saints in the Calvinist Church, and the worship of the cross was forbidden. Calvin forbade dancing, attending theatrical performances, wearing expensive clothes, playing games, and entering the shop.
Calvin's doctrines paralleled Luther's so much, and, like Luther, he too had a life-changing experience of 'sudden conversion' that set him on the course of his religious work for the remainder of his life. Like Luther, Calvin firmly believed that it was by faith alone that redemption could be won. He also introduced only the baptism and the Lord's Supper into his doctrines, casting aside the other five sacraments of the Catholic Church. Calvin, however, still has his own theories on certain facets of Christianity. Calvin, for example, believed in the concept of predestination. Unlike Luther, who claimed that individuals could be predestined for heaven, but not for damnation, Calvin did not make any distinction. Calvin believed that humans were predestined to God for heaven and damnation, and that little could be done in one's life to alter that destiny, but that they should be grateful for God's only judgment, no matter what..
Calvin was also, as said earlier, a great organizer. He spent the last twenty years of his life working day and night to put together his Church. This is another area where Calvin and Luther differed, where Luther only required that churches accept his teachings of justification by faith and the Bible as the word of God, and allowed them to keep any other traditional Church practices, Calvin was much stricter. Calvin did away with the luxuries of the traditional mass, getting rid of ornaments, singing, and other things he viewed as trivial, in favor more plain and minimal sermon. Calvin also held his followers to a stern code of morals. The textbook tells us that Calvin “banned frivolous activities like dancing in favor of constant self-examination.” Finally, thanks to his Institutes of the Christian Religion, his written work that he continued refining for the last thirty years of his life, his followers had a place to turn for any questions they might have had relating to religious practice and faith.
Though the Protestant Reformation saw many great teachers contribute to one of the most significant events in western history, it is clear that Martin Luther and John Calvin left the greatest legacy of any. Today, nearly five hundred years later, we still talk about these men and their involvement in both society and religion. Even though they are no longer here, their work lives on and their ideas continue to find new adherents every day.
The Church initially ignored Martin Luther, but Luther's ideas (and variations of them, including Calvinism) quickly spread throughout Europe. He was asked to recant (to disavow) his writings at the Diet of Worms (an unfortunate name for a council held by the Holy Roman Emperor in the German city of Worms). When Luther refused, he was excommunicated (in other words, expelled from the church). The Church's response to the threat from Luther and others during this period is called the Counter-Reformation ('counter' meaning against). The Council of Trent, which met from 1545 to 1563, expressed the Church's response to the problems that led to the Reformation and the Reformers themselves. The Catholic Church of the Counter-Reformation era grew more spiritual, more literate, and more educated. New religious orders, especially Jesuits, combined strict spirituality with globally-minded intellectuals. The Inquisitions, both in Spain and in Rome, were reorganized to combat the threat of Protestant heresy.
Without the Reformation, we cannot grasp modern history. Without studying the Reformation, we cannot grasp the history of Europe, England or America. For e.g. there would never have been Pilgrim Fathers in America if there wasn't a Protestant Reformation at first. The Reformation has had a significant influence on the current understanding of politics and law. Prior to the Reformation, the Church administered politics; it regulated emperors and kings and governed land rule. Indeed, the sense of most Western literature is quite meaningless aside from the interpretation of the Reformation. Also Martin Luther has stabilized the German language for all practical purposes. In the field of science, contemporary scholars usually admit that there would never have been modern science without the Reformation. Previously, all scientific investigations and efforts had been governed by the Church. Just by pure ignorance of history can many western scientists conclude that Protestantism genuine biblical religion is contrary to true science. The Reformation founded, once and for all, the right and duty of the individual conscience and the right to obey the dictates of that individual conscience. Many men who speak glibly about 'freedom' neither know nor understand that they owe their liberty to this case.
