This is a bible study forum, but I thought this might be the best place to create this thread because modern Christianity owes so much to the recorvery of truth by the reformers of the early 1500's, Luther being the foremost of them.

If bible prophecy is correct, the issue of whether Luther was lead of God will be revisited and we should expect to see Protestant history being assailed by Protestants and Catholics alike to an ever greater degree. So it becomes more importants to review our historical roots. On this thread, I don't plan to review doctine primarily. This thread is mainly to relate some of the most interesting facts on the development of Protestantism.
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One of the greatest miracles that God worked in the Reformation during it’s early years was the way in which it was preserved. In the fall of 1517 Luther, an unknown monk, first set his foot on the world stage by nailing his famous 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg chapel. Ten years later in 1527 the Imperial armies of Charles V sacked Rome and put to torture and death many of the leading church dignitaries. Charles spared Pope Clement VII however.

What is especially amazing about this is that the Emperor’s armies were composed of Spanish and Lutheran Germans. D’Augne tells us that the German Lutherans did loot and carouse but did not participate in the torture and executions. Who would have thought that Spain under a Catholic leader, where the Inquisition had reigned for almost half a century already would turn on the Papacy? The result of this was that it left the reform movement in Germany in peace for three years during which time it took deep root and when a frontal assault did occur in 1529, the fledgling church was grounded and organized enough to, with Divine aid, withstand it.

Correction: Charles V, not I. MS.

Will be interesting to follow this thread.

One of the interesting things I learned about the Spanish Inquisition recently is that its first victims were converted Jews who were suspected of reverting to Judaism. Many converted Jews were convicted. Some were probably innocent. It reminded me of Pilgrims Progress when Christian’s friend accompanies him for a while but then returns to his town, Destruction, when the going gets tough, and the parable of Christ about counting the cost. Even unbelievers will respect someone (often secretly) who is a ‘heretic’ but stands for a principle and they often have a low opinion of those who change ranks and continue to suspect those who capitulate to their point of view under pressure and threat.

"Some were probably innocent." This comment escapes me. What does it mean?

The words "some" and "innocent" are particularly interesting.

Mark,

You wouldnt be arguing that converting to christianity is a just cause for contempt by friend and foe, would you? I agree with Tom, that way of puting the words need some explanation.

What was happening in the case of the Spanish Jews was that some of them were genuinely converted to Catholicism. The Spanish nobility allowed the converted Jews of the 15 century to begin to hold important offices and to enjoy other privilages that unconverted Jews were barred from. Some of the leading Catholics began to suspect that some of the converted Jews were only converts outwardly. So they imported the institution of the inquisition (it didn't begin in Spain) into Spain as a means of purging the false Jewish converts from public offices that were only available to Christians. From what little I've read, it seems likely that some of the Jews that were found guilty of remaining closet Jews were falsely condemned.

I was trusting my past record on the forum would be enough to allow me to state the facts without explaining that I believe in the rights of Jews to worship and to hold public office whether they are Jews but closet Christians or Christians but closet Jews.

Before going on, I should give a little history of Europe and Germany before the Reformation. Modern Germany comprised the backbone of the ancient Holy Roman Empire that came into existence shortly before the close of the first millennium and continued for about a thousand years until it was dismantled by Napoleon at the turn of the 19th century. It’s territory covered essentially all of the Germanic states of central Europe as well as many other neighbouring states.

Regarding the Holy Roman Empire, Wikipedia states:
Most of the Empire's rulers and subjects were Germans. All of the Emperors were staunch Catholics. However, many of its most important noble families and appointed officials came from outside the German-speaking communities. At the height of the empire it contained most of the territory of today's Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Czech Republic and Slovenia, as well as eastern France, northern and part of central Italy, western Poland and western Croatia. Its languages thus comprised not only German and its many dialects and derivatives, but many Slavic languages and the languages which became modern French, Dutch and Italian. The Emperor's Catholicism did not preclude large numbers of other religious groups - Jews and Eastern Orthodox - from living within its borders at various times. The Empire was also the birthplace of the Protestant Reformation.

Its division into territories ruled by numerous secular and ecclesiastical princes, prelates, counts, imperial knights, and free cities made it, in the early modern period at least, far less cohesive than the emerging modern states around it.

For most of its existence, the Holy Roman Empire was more akin to a confederation of sovereign states than a state in and of itself. The concept of the Reich not only included the government of a specific territory, but had strong Christian religious connotations (hence the holy prefix). Until 1508, German Kings were not considered Emperors of the Reich until the Pope had formally crowned them as such. The Emperors upheld themselves as continuing the function of the Roman Emperors in defending, governing and supporting the Church. This viewpoint led to much strife between Emperors and the Papacy. . . .

The pope's crowning of Charlemagne as Imperator Augustus in 800 formed the example that later kings would follow: it was the result of Charlemagne having defended the pope against the rebellious inhabitants of Rome, which initiated the notion of the Reich being the protector of the western church.

Becoming Emperor required becoming King of the Romans (Rex romanorum/römischer König) first. Kings had been elected since time immemorial: in the 9th century by the leaders of the five most important tribes: the Salian Franks of Lorraine, the Riparian Franks of Franconia, and the Saxons, Bavarians, and Swabians, later by the main lay and clerical dukes of the kingdom, finally only by the so-called Kurfürsten (electing dukes, electors). This college was formally established by a 1356 decree known as the Golden Bull. Initially, there were seven electors: the Count Palatine of the Rhine, the King of Bohemia, the Duke of Saxony, the Margrave of Brandenburg, and the Archbishops of Köln, Mainz, and Trier. End of Wikipedia. (Widipedia material is 'copyleft', that is, governed by a free licence to copy so long as credit is given. See their GNU Free Documentation License.

The reason I’ve highlighted the last sentence is to show that at the time of the Reformation, the Duke of Saxony, Luther’s protector, and the Margrave of Brandenburg, both Protestant were two of the most powerful men in Europe, not only Princes of their respective states, but also members of the elite group of seven peers who elected and placed the crown on the Emperor. And these were only some of the German nobility who accepted the gospel of Luther. There were several other princes who did not have electoral privilages.

Within a year or two of the sack of Rome in 1527, Charles V reconciled with Pope Clement VII and renewed his resolve to reunite the empire under the Catholic religion and put down Lutheranism. After cementing his relationship with Clement by treaty he convoked a Diet (a parliament or official government meeting of the empire) at Spires in 1529 and directed that the princes of the empire should revoke the religious liberty that had been approved at the last Diet, three years earlier.

But the passage of time and the enjoyment of religious liberty by the people and their Lutheran princes had strengtherned their resolve not to give up their new found faith and freedoms. The Protestant princes were nevertheless in the minority and things came to a pass when the majority in the Diet issued a decree that on the surface appeared to allow the Protestant princes and states a considerable amount of religious freedom but essentially openned the door to the re-establishment of Catholicism and intolerence. The decree purported to maintain the status quo in the Protestant states but prohibited them from admitting new converts or allowing any other ‘innovations’ into their religious practises.

People of lesser nobility and principle would have accepted the offer and avoided placing their subjects, their wealth and their titles at risk, but not the Lutheran German princes. What is all the more remarkable today when the leading democracies of the world actively promote the notion that self-determination by the majority is the only civilized method of government, is to realize that the very freedom of self-determination that is the Protestant legacy is based not on majority rule but on the sovereignity of the enlightened conscience bound by the invisible ties of faith to the word of God.

After studying the decree of the Diet where they had just been outvoted, the Protestant princes said to each other: “Let us reject this decree. In matters of conscience, the majority has no power”. They register their protest against the decree in written form a day or two later and from that event the reformed church became known to history as Protestant. Few today however remember that the protest of the German nobles was directed against not merely Roman Catholicism’s claim to be the corrector of heretics, but also and especially against the tyrany of the majority in matters of conscience. Memory or no, this is the true legacy of Luther and the Protestant princes.

Mark,

Thank you for the informative post. Especially interesting to note that political subterfuge was practised then as now: "...issued a decree that on the surface appeared to allow the Protestant princes and states a considerable amount of religious freedom but essentially openned the door to the re-establishment of Catholicism and intolerence." So the Protest was not confined to the Church, but crossed into the civil realm, for church and state were mingled. As it will once more come to pass. I feel your final paragraph here deserves amplification and an application to last day events. What wisdom can we draw from this lesson? The majority (& Catholic) use doublespeak to enter a law in which the Protestants detect a hidden or covert threat to religious liberty. They reject the decree and thus receive the brand 'Protestant'.

Gordon

On the one hand it is true that the decree did offer some surprising concessions, so 'double speak' would be too critical a term I think. The catholic princes were open about what they wanted. What the Protestants detected in the decree though was that it forced them to disobey the Gospel commission of Christ and they were open to the conviction of the Holy Spirit that to yield that point was to yield the evangelical faith. Catholicism had used this method in the past with other groups almost invariably with success. Those who bound themselves in the past soon found before long that they had abandoned their faith and had become Catholic rather than evangelical.

In addition to denying the right of the majority to legislate in matters of conscience at Spires, the Protestant princes also made a legal argument that the Diet, a political body, was going beyond it’s jurisdiction by attempting to pass a religious law and so they appealed to the Emperor to convoke a general council of the church that would have jurisdiction and also so that they could present their position before it. Their faith had been maligned by their enemies and they genuinely craved an opportunity to be heard in the hope that some of the false and extreme views they were accused of could be addressed, and that the decree might be amended.

The Catholic clergy were alarmed and opposed the request. They anticipated the results would be detrimental to their cause, but Charles overruled them and the spring of 1530 saw them all meet at Augsburg, princes, clergy, nobles and the Pope’s personal representative, the Legate who had power to make decisions on the Pope’s behalf.

But, I need to back up. About nine months before that occurred one of the German nobles, Philip of Hesse, a Protestant noble convoked a meeting of the Protestant theologians because he had concerns that the cause of the gospel would be lost in the upcoming convocation if the deep divisions between Zwingli and Luther continued to divide the new church. In May, 1529 at Philip’s castle, Luther and Zwingli met face to face, I think for the first time, and soon they were down to business, along with several other Protestant pastors and leaders on both sides discussing and debating the issue of whether Christ’s body and blood are physically present in the emblems of the Lord ’s Supper.

The protest of the German princess at Spires in 1529, their refusal to abandon the principles of the evangelical faith, still further increased the indignation of the papal adherents; The Emperor and the Pope worked together now to rally the other princes of Germany and the west around the mother church. It became clearer to the Protestant princes with the passing of each day that maintaining the protest of Spires would be a formidable task.

Several of the Protestant princes, who we should remember were skilled and valiant warriors and not strangers to war and self-defence, were inclined to form alliances with one another. Luther however opposed this trend vigorously. He repeatedly exerted all of his influence to discourage the princes from forming alliances that placed trust in human strength and that would have been viewed by the Catholic princes as treason against the Emperor and the empire. While he did not oppose the rights of the princes to defend their own territory from aggression, he knew that the gospel would be best served by winning the hearts and minds of the people peacefully and that these alliances would hurry the political powers of the empire towards civil war.

The elector Frederick, Luther’s protector, had been succeeded by his brother John and after Spires Luther felt compelled to remind Prince John many times to resist the overtures of the other Protestant princes to form alliances quoting him the scripture ‘In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength.’

Philip of Hesse was the most active at this time in urging the princes to present a united front to the world. He was a godly man and a man of action, willing to suffer everything for the cause of Christ, but at this point in his life, too inclined towards political solutions. To his credit though, he felt a deep need for doctrinal unity among the reformed churches of Germany and Switzerland and was distressed at the tendency among the Lutheran Germans to withdraw the hand of fellowship from their Swiss brethren. At Spires in 1529 the Catholic party had almost succeeded in driving a permanent wedge between the reformed churches of Germany and those of Switzerland. Hesse correctly saw that the Swiss were by no means inferior in their theology and that the main issue that divided them – the symbolism of the Lord’s Supper – was not an issue of salvation. It appears though that he overlooked what Luther clearly foresaw in the Swiss at this time - the trend to rely on the civil power to advance the gospel, a trend that would cost the Swiss Reformation dearly a short time later. In my next post I’ll look at the historic conference of Marburg, 1529 when, under the hospitable castle roof of Hesse, Luther and Zwingli and their respective parties vigorously debated the issue of transubstitution - the physical presence of the body and blood of Christ in the bread and wine.

After the protest of Spires, Philip the landgrave (a title and estate similar to a marques – a rank of German nobility below a duke, in other words, about two levels below a king) invited the two reformers to his castle to seek unity. Luther and Melanethon resisted the invitation. They did their best in several ways to excuse themselves from the meeting but did attend very unwillingly. But even when they agreed at last to attend, they advised the landgrave “If the Swiss do not yield to us, all your trouble will be lost”!

Unfortunately the same closed-mindedness characterized Luther’s conduct during the meeting as well. The record of the meeting that has been passed on to us shows that Luther was unwilling to yield anything on this point to sound biblical evidence, while Zwingli, when he saw that Luther and the others in his party would not be convinced made every effort to place this difference in perspective as a secondary point. Luther however was inclined to think that transubstition was a pillar of the Christian faith. He did not stop there. He repeatedly asserted that his Swiss brethren were ‘not of the same spirit’ implying they were not worthy of the hand of fellowship. These repeated assertions wrung the hearts of the Swiss and I believe the heart of Christ.

The humble advances of the Swiss at reconciliation seemed to be useless but finally, towards the end of the conference, there was a glimmer of hope. Philip of Hesse, hoping to salvage some good from the meeting, urged both parties to at least draw up the articles of their faith that they could agree on and the Lutherans reluctantly agreed they would do that much. Luther himself was appointed to draw up the document on behalf of both sides and he did this within a day or two and then read it in the hearing of all the assembled Protestant theologians. Both parties were relieved and satisfied with Luther’s work and immediately all signed it and agreed to have it published.

Merle D’Aubigne, my main historical source, gives his surprising opinion that it was probably best for the reformed church that neither Zwingli nor Luther gave way to one another and that both opinions were maintained because in D’Aubigne’s opinion, they are different aspects of the same truth! Adventism of course is soundly Zwinglian in its view on this point, but perhaps D’Aubigne is right that we can learn something from the transubstitutionalist view.

Besides the need for balance in assessing what is and isn't essential to the Christian faith, an important lesson from Marburg is the overruling providence of God. If Luther had yielded the point on transubsitution and abandoned the doctrine, there would have been no further barrier between the reformed Swiss and German churches and it is very likely that they would have formed a confederation of reformed churches. But if that had occurred, the reformed churches would have been easily overpowered by the temptation to place confidence in their augmented political and military strength. The Swiss under Zwingli made just this mistake later, and the far-sighted Luther saw it coming. It may have been as much Luther’s insight into Zwingli’s mistaken tendency in his final few years to mix religion and politics as the doctrinal issue that caused Luther to draw back from full fellowship with the Swiss.

Luther’s concerns over the tendency in the Swiss to place the state at the disposal of religion were soon born out. The Marburg conference ended in October of 1529. In the same month only two years later, 1531, Zwingli lay dead on the battlefield near Zurich at the age of 48. In the war many reformed women of Zurich were widowed, parts of Switzerland lost their right to religious liberty for many, many decades, the Gospel was brought into disrepute and many reformed pastors died in the battle at Zwingli’s side. D’Aubigne, a Swiss himself, laments, “There has, perhaps, never been any battle in which so many men of the Word of God have bitten the dust.” If Luther and the reformed German churches had been allied with the Swiss at that time the great victories of faith apart from the sword would have been short-lived. The church at this stage had more lessons of faith to learn and faith usually only grows strong where is must be exercised. The reformed churches, the Swiss and Zurichers especially learned a costly lesson that stayed with them for years to come.

News of Zwingli’s death reached soon reached Luther and the rest of the reformed churches in Germany. D’Aubigne recounts, “Zwingli and Oecolampadius [another great Swiss reformer at Basle who had died shortly after Zwingli from the Plague] had fallen. There was a great void and a great sorrow in the Church of Christ. Dissensions [between the Swiss and German churches] vanished before these two graves, and nothing could be seen but tears. Luther himself was moved. On receiving the news of these two deaths he called to mind the days he had passed with Zwingli and Oecolampadius at Marburg and the blow inflicted on him at their sudden decease was such that many years after, he said to Bullinger; “Their death filled me with such intense sorrow that I was near to dying myself.”

What is the transubstitutionalist view? And what is Zwinglis view?

Zwingli's view on the bread and wine of the Lord's supper is that they are only symbols. Luther's view was that they do become the body and blood of Christ. I'm not clear on whether he believed they become that physically or only spiritually but if the latter, it would raise some questions - what does it mean for the bread and wine to be Christ's spiritual body. Luther's view differed in some ways from Catholicism. He believed that faith was essential in the believer whereas Catholicism says that the priests create the body and blood of Christ regardless of the faith of the believer. I may not have these finer points exact.

So the protestant churches are divided over the communion bread?

That was the first division. Other divisions came later. Often it was the result of futher reforms that only a part of the existing Protestant churches were willing to accept. For example, the Baptists accepted the scripture on baptism being by immersion rather than by sprinkling and being for those who were old enough to make a personal decision for Christ. Other Protestants unfortunately didn't accept that.

The Puritans and then the Wesleyans are other examples of reform-minded Christians who brought new life to Protestantism but were forced by the established Protestant churches to form new denominations when their reforms were rejected. Adventism is a continuation of that pattern.

Just to clarify, Adventism in the sense of William Miller's movement is a continuation of the pattern. SDAism is a bit different.

Care to explain further Tom?

Yes, Tom, can you elaborate on your last post?