The Lutheran Movement of the Sixteenth Century: An Interpretation

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Dedication

TO THE REVERED MEMORY OF

THREE GRF.AT TEACHERS

IN

Preface

The purpose of the writer in this book is not to present a connected and detailed narrative of the events of the great movement of the sixteenth century known as the Reformation, but rather to offer something of an interpretation. What he has sought to do is more in the nature of a valuation than an account. He is conscious of the manifold imperfections and shortcomings of his work on a great subject, which has occupied, with profit and pleasure, much of his attention in the more recent years of his life. The sixteenth century not only saw great changes, which transformed medieval into modem civilization, but also witnessed the birth of a new type of Christianity, which is known as Protestantism. Those changes, with their far-reaching results, came as the consequence of the reinstatement of vital principles in religion, and for this reason its moral, theological and ecclesiastical aspects have always claimed the special attention of the student of history. But that epoch-making movement produced, indirectly, political, national and international results of the greatest importance.

In any study of the great conflicts of history it is important not only to know when and where they were fought, and the leading participants, but also why they were fought and to what issues they led. The scenic and dramatic, the personal and individual, however fully and precisely and brilliantly brought out, are far from exhausting what an historian has to think about and set in order for the times to come. He must know something of those political and religious principles which give purpose to his narration of events, and which serve to interpret men, their motives, fidelity and courage. Church history, like the history of the great kingdoms and nations of the earth, requires a key, and that key is theology in the case of the Church, as in the other case it is political science. Ecclesiastical history is a history of principles and doctrines, as well as a narration of events. The great and permanently influential movements in that sphere had for the foundations upon which they were builded certain fundamental principles of enduring value.

6 PREFACE

No biography of Luther, the chief of the reformers, however excellent it may be, is an adequate history of the movement associated principally with his name, nor any more a mere recital of the successive events following upon the act of the nailing up of the theses in 1517. The Reformation as a whole cannot be judged by the career of the great Reformer alone, remarkable as that career was in its personal aspects. Nor, again, is that great movement to be judged finally by the merely temporary structures of doctrine and polity which took on shape and statement largely because of the exigencies in which both the Qiurch and the State found themselves after the Reformation became a reality.

In harmony with these views of the genius of history, the author of this book has attempted to confine himself largely to an interpretation of the Lutheran movement of the sixteenth century under a fourfold aspect of the subject. Historical data and biographical events, accordingly, when used have been made to serve the purpose of illustrating and interpreting great principles. **No event ever happens in this world of ours," it has been said by one of the world's great preachers, "until the fulness of its time has come." This belief must go along with any true faith in the governing and guiding providence of God. It is in the light of this belief that the writer of these pages has sought to interpret the significance of one of the greatest movements in the history of mankind, without any attempt at giving an exhaustive account. No effort has been made to conceal personal bias. That the mere annalist may be able to do; but the historian cannot, unless he accepts a theory of determinism that is fatalistic and unethical. Bias and partisanship are not equivalent terms. The historian is a witness who must tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth ; but he is also something of a judge, who must do full and strict justice to every person and event which comes before his tribunal. Divesting himself of all partisan interest and prejudice, truth and fidelity are his chief duties. But this does not imply that he must lay aside his own mental energy, the results of his study, and even his religion itself. He is not to be supposed, after an induction into all available historical data, to love nothing and hate nothing. "A Church history," says Hase. "in which the author exhibited no distinct ecclesiastical character, and did not imprint this with clearness on his work, would be of little

PREFACE 7

value to the Church." A man cannot be expected to ignore his own beliefs, his training or his prepossessions. "To pose/* says Professor Bright, "as external to a subject on which we have interior convictions, to attempt, for instance, to sweep the belief in a divine Christ out of our minds, before we begin to read about the Nicene Council, would be like trying to take ourselves out of ourselves, to pretend to be not what we are. If our object is truth, we must not begin by being untrue, and affectation of unreality is untruth." The man who is so impartial that he has no preference for great leaders whom he regards as both good and right, or for religious principles that he regards as sound and Scriptural, and no reprobation for their antitheses, may be qualified to make himself agreeable to all classes, but not to be an accredited historian of the Church, or a qualified interpreter of its great men and events. The writer has made no effort to conceal his convictions, remembering always that these belong to the things that may be disputed or invalidated if untrue.

It is needless to add that this book is not intended primarily for professional students of either history or theology. It is rather for all people who want to know what the aims, the principles and the methods of the Reformation of the sixteenth century were — that movement which achieved their great spiritual emancipation and secured to them their inalienable heritage of religious and political truth.

It remains only for the author to express his best thanks to a good friend and former pastor of his family, the Rev. Charles F. Steck, D. D., Pastor of the Lutheran Church of the Epiphany, Washington, D. C. At the instance of the Lutheran Publication Society, he has reduced the manuscript of the volume to typewritten form, in order to facilitate the work of the printer. This work, which he declares has been a real labor of love, Dr. Steck has done with unusual care and accuracy, and the author desires in this place and way to express his heartfelt appreciation.

In the hope that among Christian believers this book may serve to quicken interest in the origin, principles and development of the movement which inaugurated the modem age, these pages have been written.

David H. Bausltx.

Springfield, Ohio.

Monday after the first Sunday in Lent, 1918.

Section I The Needed Reformation

The Church has never, even at its worst, rested content in the face of moral or administrative evils. The quickening into newness of life has always been marked by the bringing out from its treasures of things new and old. Sometimes that quickening has put new life into old forms and decaying institutions. Sometimes it has developed new institutions, and found expression in new forms of Christian devotion. All these features we can discern in the years just preceding the coming in of the sixteenth century.

Even before that, "reformation in head and members," which had been urged by great Councils of the Church, but which never came through that agency; mysticism, a deeper relation between religion and learning, new discipline and life, and new forms of devotion to the Lord and Head of the Church, all bore witness to the effective reformatory forces that were lodged in the Church, and to her capacity to meet the new demands made upon her in the period of the most urgent need of the times. For long periods, it is true, there were no very serious, and certainly no successful, plans for cleansing what was very properly called the "Augean Stable of the Papacy" ; but the forces capable of doing that much-needed work had been resident in the Church from the beginning.

I

By the Reformation we mean that great religious movement which had its origin in the grace of God, and which had been principally effected through the splendid mental and spiritual influence of His chosen instrument — that marvelous leader and reformer, Martin Luther. That movement restored to the Christian Church the true and pure doctrines of the Scriptures for the faith and practice of all believers.

We may speak loosely of this great Lutheran movement of the sixteenth century, as though it were a definite event. We ought, rather, to regard the overthrow of the papal supremacy and the restoration to the Church of the gospel, as set forth in the Pauline epistles, as the result of a number of causes, which had slowly, and through a long period of time, been gathering strength. "To divide history according to centuries is a difficult task. Great events do not cease with one and begin with the next; they dovetail into each other, and are lost gradually from sight when absorbed in the one paramount spirit of the age. We can see the leading characteristics of successive centuries without knowing their source or their results."

We are reminded of this reflection of Goethe when we are looking for a point or event from which we can definitely trace the history of the reformatory movement. When it was really precipitated was October, 1517; but at that point of beginning we stand, as it were, on one of the most significant of historical frontiers, with our glance backward over the centuries preceding the sixteenth, and forward from the theses, and yet discover no exact and easily determined boundary between the medieval period and the new and modern age.

Any great movement in history which has perpetuated itself in far-reaching consequences, permanent and widespread in their influence, has not been without antecedents. It can not be entirely traceable to the persons or the circumstances of the particular age which produced it. There must have beeen predisposing causes which were deeply rooted in the past. Any g^eat movement which has permanently affected the life of the Church or the progress of civilization is never solitary. It is not to be studied or interpreted in itself alone, or dissociated from preexisting causes or circumstances.

There were such antecedents in the case of this vitalizing movement. While it was distinctly a sixteenth century product, it is to be interpreted as the culmination of forces long at work, and the reassertion of isolated truths long neglected by the Church. For a right and adequate interpretation of that movement, it must be studied not only in the worked-out results of subsequent events, but also in the light of precedent conditions and causes. Not until this movement came was there a reassertion of vital truths and their proper co-ordination into a system that rendered a disruption of Western Christendom and a revision of Church doctrine inevitable. Whether we look at that movement with eyes that are prejudiced, or whether we occupy a sympathetic or hostile attitude — ^however much we may censure some of the purely incidental features of the movement, and with whatever condemnation we may see fit to disapprove any particular agent brought to the front in that great revolution, the movement itself, it cannot be successfully contradicted, was an historical fact of great magnitude, a religious and social agitation of fundamental importance.

Loud and urgent demands for the reformation of the Church had, in one form or another, been made from time to time. But these demands had, each in turn, been proven ineffectual in the succession in which they followed one upon another prior to that day when the brave monk of Wittenberg nailed his theses upon the church door — an event from which a new world of faith, ecclesiastical reorganization and Christian civilization has followed. The hierarchy had been practically unmoved, and by one after another of its chief representatives the cry for reform had been disregarded. But these, for the time, ineffectual protests and signs of revolt went on until at last the real reformation, proceeding upon the basis of great and fundamental Christian certainties, came forth in both the forms of revolution and reconstruction. That individualism which, in one way or another, had been unheeded in both the earlier and later forms of monasticism, now declared itself in the revolt and reaffirmations of Luther. He and his coadjutors asserted their independence, not by withdrawal from the world into the seclusion of the hermit and the monk, but by resisting the encroachments of the world on the Church, and by the restoration to the Church and the world of neglected truths which had originally been set forth by our Lord and in the epistles of the New Testament.

It was, indeed, an age of transition in which all this occurred, and a period in which no one could exactly forecast what was coming. The old order had crumbled away, or was tottering to its inevitable fall, and the age of change was at hand. Feudalism, which had held in strong grasp the whole of society, was gone.

it having been rendered inoperative largely by the invention of gunpowder. The mariner's compass was pointing the way to new worlds awaiting discovery and presenting vast opportunities for adventure and enterprise. These, in turn, were certain to react upon the older civilizations of the medieval world, and upon the worked-out results of its mental activity. The invention of printing, too, which, hand in hand, had come along with the recovery of valuable manuscripts of well accredited ancient writings, was opening up the thought of the generations of literary culture and expression that were long past. The old ideas and conceptions on which the organization of Christian society had rested throughout the Middle Ages were no longer proving to be secure and practicable. The papacy had, in spite of its theories, its power, its antiquity and its elaborately articulated organization, lost caste by becoming of the earth earthy, and its old rallying cries were at last falling upon deaf ears.

A division in Western Christendom was inevitable — a division so considerable and far-reaching in its importance that all the schisms in the Church during the middle ages were, by comparison, insignificant. The process at work for a thousand years in the construction of the system of *'Catholicism," as the papal system presumed to call itself, was at last to be antagonized in all its crucial points and replaced by a new edifice to be founded and erected upon 'a new apprehension of the Gospel. The traditional basis of the old ecclesiastical system that had been building for a thousand years was to be impugned in widely separated circles, entirely replaced in some others, and a new order of things in the spheres of authority, doctrine, organization and life M'as to take its place.

A movement, not to be classified with pre-Lutheran reformatory efforts, was to introduce an entirely new phase in the development of Christianity. The reactionary forces of the primitive, spiritual idea of the kingdom of God, which were rooted in the Gospel, began more and more to assert themselves. Even inside the stately and imposing edifice of the medieval ecclesiastical system some of these forces were struggling for freedom, and were more and more showing their capacity to break down the wall that confined them. Christianity as gospel was ready to assert itself against Christianity as law.

The Catholic Church and the medieval papacy were the greatest of the creations of the first fifteen centuries of the Christian era. The evolution of the papacy is the central fact of the first thirteen centuries after Qirist. The time had now come when this great organization, which aimed to control the whole life of its subjects here, and to determine their eternal destiny hereafter, was forced to reckon with the incoming new forces that were to inaugurate the modem era. The great and transforming movement associated with the name of Luther, as with that of no other man or force, created the unmistakable line of division between the old and the new. An enlarging horizon, quickened intellectual life, new facilities for the acquisition and communication of knowledge, the growing consciousness of strength and personal rights, the bold declarations and lofty standards of great masters of both political and religious science, all proclaimed that the fulness of time had come for the Reformation.

The Qiurch, it may be recalled, had entered the Gentile world at the beginning of its history as a forbidden cult, had been subjected to fierce persecution, and had been largely identified with the less influential social classes. In contradiction of the spirit of the gospel and the announced principles of the kingdom of our Lord, and by the mere momentum of the social and political conditions dominant at Rome, the primitive Church had been rapidly transformed into a great worldly system, with a mighty organization, made after the pattern of that maintaining in the empire, with an elaborate and spectacular ritualism, rigid dogma and marvelous accumulation of wealth. All these factors in the life of the Church had grown up side by side.

In the Church there had come about a striking resurrection of that paganism which it had believed itself commissioned to overthrow. The parallelism between the constitution of the Church and the old imperialism was striking. In its dogmas, its worship, the place it assigned the Virgin, the saints, angels and archangels, we may discover an indisputable series whose steps correspond to the heroes, demigods, gods and goddesses of the older pagan days.

The old empire had not been Christianized, if it had been even baptized. Christianity had moved into the heathen temples, not so much to transform them as to give them its name. Speaking of this period as it influenced the Church, in his book, "The Sociological Study of the Bible," Prof. Wallis says: "The Roman Church appealed to the barbarians as the heir of a great empire which had long held sway over the world. The new peoples of the West were not converted in the sense in which we now understand that word ; and it is more exact to say that they were converted to the Church rather than to Christianity. The conquest of barbarian paganism by the religion of the Bible was at first the displacement of old state religions by a new state religion. The God of the Bible represented by the figure of Jesus (which had now acquired the religious value of God) was accepted by the new peoples of Europe almost on the basis of the paganism which they abandoned."

Speaking of the introduction of these pagan features into the life of the Church, Prof. Adeney, in his historical work on "The Greek and Eastern Churches," says that "Old heathen rites continued to be performed under the guise of Christian ceremonial, and saints' images, like idols, were carried around as a protection against fire^ illness and death. It was a change of name, but not of substanc^ Siegfried's dragon became the dragon of St. George, while the virtues of the old goddesses were transferred to the Virgin Mary." 'There was a growing approximation of pagan ritual in the ceremonials of the Church and the feelings of awe with which they were approached."

The emancipation of the Church from this paganizing alliance and thraldom was, accordingly, no inconsiderable task. The Church, as an organized body, had gone off into a wrong path, and to bring it back to the right ways of the Lord was the most urgent need of the times for the sake of both true religion and civilization.

The Lutheran movement of the sixteenth century, in view of all this, is not only the most important event of that deeply significant time, but one of the most important events in the history of the world. In its far-reaching importance this most vitalizing movement of modern times, which marks at once the close of the medieval age and the inauguration of the modem age, ranks with such historical events as the invasion of the Barbarians, the Crusades and the French revolution. It was not the work of one generation or of one school of thought, nor was it influential in but one phase of life. It was the outcome of ages in which various forces had been at work, the inevitable evolution of principles rooted in the history of the early Church, wide-stretching in its purposes and in its results, and soon became a potential influence in most human things. It marked not only a decisive turning point in the spiritual and moral life of the Church, as then organized, but served, also, as a great landmark in the intellectual, political and social development of mankind. For some hundreds of years certain forces had been gathering strength, until at last they broke in the revolt of a considerable portion of northern and western Europe against the Medieval Church and subjection and allegiance to its unauthorized claims and assumptions. When the papacy broke up and the division came in western Christendom it buried the world of the Middle Ages in its ruins, but with the hopeful result that the new forces that were introduced became free and effective.

If the essence of Christianity, if the gospel of the grace of the Son of God, was once more to be allowed free scope, if it was to readjust its relations to the world, or to acquire or generate new life, the all-powerful conception of the Church^then maintained must be shattered, or at any rate, deprived of its old-time strength. This was the primary requirement for an age of transition and reconstruction. Such a movement as that we propose to consider was necessarily complex. It was the work of friends and foes, of powers sometimes antagonistic and warring against each other, and sometimes, perhaps, unconsciously striving together for the same end. It was a movement which profoundly influenced European literature, affected social life, modified the political system of the civilized world, and altered the problems, the methods and the conditions of philosophical thought.

Thus the Lutheran movement, like all other impressive and influential movements in human history, sprang out of the concurrent operation of various forces of human thinking and activity. There were political, ecclesiastical, social, moral and religious influences combined in the antecedent conditions out of which it issued.

But after we have credited a due measure of importance to all these forces and influences, the real secret of that great and constructive event associated with the name and influence of Luther is to be found in the revival of the religious spirit. That had been forecast, and many preliminary forms of preparation had been enacted during an interval covering four hundred years. The long period of revolt in one form and another against the usurpations and abuses in the Church, the cultivation and expression of genuine piety among the dissenting monks and mystics, together with the awakening of the public conscience, had produced a powerful revulsion against the government, worship and doctrines peculiar to the Church of that time. The spiritual aptitudes of the people had been awakened, and their wills had been stirred to action. The leaders who came to the front in the movement not only made the Reformation a fact, but were in turn also largely made by it.

This great movement, that was at once revolutionary and reconstructive, came contemporaneously with the full splendor of the medieval renaissance, in an age when intellectual curiosity was awakening, when philosophy, the sciences, and the ancient literary treasures were studied with an increasing interest and a real critical enthusiasm. The change that passed over Europe in the sixteenth century is traceable primarily, as we shall see more and more as we study its leaders, its principles and results, to the development of new conceptions, political, intellectual and religious. These asserted themselves in a period of bitter conflict between contending forces and antithetical principles, religious and ecclesiastical.

The philosophy of the period preceding the Reformation was but little more than mere school logic, derived at second or third hand from Aristotle. The science was a somewhat grotesque amalgam of empiricism and tradition. There was a superstitious and uncomprehending reverence for ancient Rome, at once the great imperial and ecclesiastical capital, but which had also become the center of spiritual apostasy. Here the papacy had become a great political institution. The spiritual significance of the Church, the body of Christ, had here been merged with worldly magnificence and imposing pageantr>^ The time had come when a man was needed whose feet should be shod with iron and brass, who could trample upon the impostures and heresies of the day; who should have the courage to defy popes and princes, bound together, frequently, in an unholy and unscriptural alliance. A man was needed ; not a mere saint, who could by his holiness do no more than kindle spiritual aspirations among the masses of the people. For such a man the times were waiting and urgently calling.

The new century, too, in which this movement was inaugurated was pre-eminently aggressive in its constructive and destructive work. It showed but scant courtesy to that which was ancient if it had no other ground for its justification than antiquity. That "elegant pagan pope," as Leg_X was called, dominated as he w^as by aesthetic rather than religious ideals, might attempt to restore the vanished glories of the age of Augustus, with such an el^;ant gentleman as himself to fill the place of Augustus. But the age was becoming too earnest to any longer spend its energies in worshiping painted virgins or sculptured Venuses, even though the one was the creation of the pencil of Raphael and the other of the chisel of Michelangelo. The real cry of the times was for those abiding spiritual realities that could alone satisfy soul and conscience.

The Church of this period had accumulated a multitude of relics and wonder-working images that had thrilled the hearts of the believing and quickened among the superstitious anticipations of miraculous deliverance from a long catalogue of ills. These had been made a source of unholy profit and unblushing imposture.

Indulgences, which had originally been invented to induce spiritual tranquillity for the troubled, to assuage the anguish of a despairing conscience, or to add to the joyous devotions of the pious, had been at last made a substitute for all real religion. The peoples, and their dependents at Rome, found this indulgence traffic a very profitable one, and, as was openly said, tried to make as much money as possible out of "the sins of the Germans."

Upon the papal see itself were discernible the strains of the most degrading vices, and the palatial abode of the pope, the medieval darkness was drawing to its close, while its most depressing aspects were innumerable signs of ecclesiatical disorganialleged vicar of the Lord from heaven, not infrequently exhibited the spectacle of a pagan court without the redeeming virtue of pagan sincerity in paganism's better days. The long night of zation, corruption and decay. Blind faith, countless bogus miracles and childish legends had all been so persistently pressed upon popular attention, and so exalted by the popular imagination, that in consequence there had been produced a condition of benighted ignorance and unreasoning credulity that is almost inconceivable in our time. Monasteries, once the scenes of the most marvelous and even revolting displays of ascetic self-abnegation and piety.

became the seats of disgraceful revelry, scandalous sensuality and worldly avarice.

II

The darkness of the two centuries that followed the end of Charlemagne's reign was little short of the densest in history. It was at that time that the Holy See had sunk to the lowest depth of its degradation and impotence, when eight popes in as many years were elected and overthrown, and weak emperors struggled for the rent mantle of the great Charles, while over all a deluge of barbarism swept in recurring waves of Saracens, Huns and Normans. Dean Church has well pointed out that by the end of the tenth century Christian preaching had been almost hopelessly corrupted. The traditions of society at large were still the traditions of undiluted heathenism. In the conflict which ensued with the barbarians who had overrun the degraded Latin civilization, the Church had conquered, 'tis true, although at times it might seem as though the chief result had been to make barbarism more superstitious and cruelty more ingenious. From the times of Leo the Great and Gregory the Great on through the times of Gregory VII and Innocent III the internal government of the hierarchy had developed into an oppressive and arrogant absolutism. No priest, however good and wise and faithful, was to think and act for himself in the name of the one Lord Jesus Christ. For him, as well as for the laity, there was a great ecclesiastical lord over

the conscience and the reason, while an enforced and arbi-