Random (but not really)

Protesting Reformation

Something that has never been clear to me, is the source of the Protestant Reformation.

Yes, I know that Luther was the first to make the split, although that was not his intention. What has never been clear to me is whether Luther was the first, and the rest of the Reformation followed his lead, or whether it was only an accident of timing that he was first, and that the Reformation was going to happen, regardless of who made the first move.

The intellectual climate in Europe had been steadily changing, which is what led me to believe that the Reformation would have happened whether Luther was around or not, but we also need to consider the fact that for centuries there had really only been one major split that survived, and that was between the Eastern Orthodox and the Roman Catholics, and that split stemmed from doctrinal difference that had been inherent from the beginning. This makes the Protestant Reformation very different from the Orthodox/Catholic split.

I suppose it might be a more valid question to ask whether it was simply that the time was right for the split to last. After all, there had been plenty of differing groups within Christianity, such as the Gnostics, but these groups ended up disappearing or coming back into the mainstream Christianity.

So perhaps that is the answer—revolutionaries had existed all along, but it was not until the 16th century that the political and sociological climate was right for the revolution to spread.

But I’m not entirely convinced this is so, and am willing to be convinced otherwise.

Posted by Michelle at December 8, 2003 08:15 AM | TrackBack