Luther-Background to the Reformation

The Theology of Martin Luther

Background to the Reformation

Did Luther tear apart a united Christendom?
Were the Reformers impatient? immoderate? unfaithful? simply wrong?

There were many tensions and crises on many fronts:
     princes akin to warlords;
     towns in tension with rural dwellers;
     the Holy Roman Emperor in tension with kings and princes;
     tension within the church between
          (1) conciliarists and papalists,
          (2) scholastics and humanists,
          (3) those who sought greater spiritual depth and those contented with
          e.g., masses for the dead and indulgences.
     a shift from agricultural economy to an urban entrepreneurial economy.

Features of the turbulence:
[A] Religious upheaval:
     Hussite movement
     Waldensians
     Late mediaevalists who sought simpler expression of the Christian faith
          devoid of pomp and perversity

[B] Objections to Papal Power:
     Erastianism
     The question of Rome's primacy
     The precedent of France and England
     Germany's objection despite its political fragmentation

[C] Renaissance Humanism (see next week)

[D] Ecclesiastical corruption and public perception of it

III

The nature of the clergy
     a: higher clergy
    b: lower clergy
     c: public perception

The religious life of the common people
     a: the prevalence of fear
     b: the propensity for "revelations"
     c: the place and proliferation of relics
     d: the traffic in indulgences
     e: the primacy of Jesus the Judge
     f: the godliness of, e.g., the Brethren of the Common Life
     g: mysticism
     h: the nature of, e.g., the Devotio Moderna

The religious consequences of urbanization

The influence of Occam
The authority of the church
The Council of Constance

VII

Other Forces:
[A] economic
[B] social unrest
[C] printing press
          a: theological tomes
          b: tracts and treatises, "occasional" writings
          c: pamphlets
[D] new universities

Reverend V. Shepherd