Reformation Figures

Figures of the Reformation

Luther: The personification of the Reformation?

Who was this person who stands so huge at the beginning of our period?

• https://prezi.com/yfmiihckhjj0/martin-luther-reformation/
• near contemporary = Columbus discovering new world
• as nominalist he taught that with help of grace we earn our own salvation
• Purgatory as a concept and related indulgences
• 95 theses
• Luther gained support from humanists (Renaissance) …; cf. Erasmus

Excerpts from Luther's "Freedom of a Christian"

• https://sites.google.com/site/relg317f15/
• http://richard-hooker.com/sites/worldcultures/REFORM/FREEDOM.HTM
• A Christian man is the most free lord of all, and subject to none, a Christian man is the most dutiful servant of all, and subject to every one.
• "faith has appeared to many to be an easy thing"
• "Man is composed of a twofold nature, a spiritual and a bodily."
• (recognizing that scriptural passages can be found to seem to support opposites perspectives)
• outward signs (vestments etc.) "profit nothing"
• "One thing, and one alone, is necessary for life, justification, and Christian liberty; and that is the most holy word of God, the Gospel of Christ."
• this faith can reign only in the inward man
• every Christian by faith if "lord of all things" but in "corporeal power" he is subject to the earthly powers
• the "outward man" … must not take his ease; … exercise, fastings, etc.
• enormous folly … when a man seeks, without faith, to be justified and saved by works…
• ceremonies are but "preparations for building or working" to be "laid aside."

Humanists

Thomas More:

• lawyer, noted humanist, and defender of the Catholic Church
• Utopia from Grk "ou" + "topos" (no place)
• This work epitomizes More as humanist – it recognizes that ultimately one's moral principles will come into conflict with social mores
• Martyred by Henry VIII for not supporting Henry's efforts to wrest control of the church from Rome

Erasmus

Several quotes to illustrate "Humanism"

• cf. http://oll.libertyfund.org/people/desiderius-erasmus
• need for a philosopher of the kitchen
• for peace and against war

Erasmus quotes

• There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other.
• By a Carpenter mankind was made, and only by that Carpenter can mankind be remade.
• Now I believe I can hear the philosophers protesting that it can only be misery to live in folly, illusion, deception and ignorance, but it isn't -it's human.
• He who allows oppression shares the crime.
• In praise of folly (in Latin a play on words dedicated to his friend Thomas More) Could be In praise of More
• Opening lines, spoken with dripping irony: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/30201/30201-h/30201-h.htm

Compare Luther & Erasmus

• Erasmus sought to clear away corruption and restore simple ethical Christianity
• Luther's conservatism on social issues

Radical Reformation

Who were they

• an "odd collection of pacificsts and violent revolutionaries, eccentric individualists and tightly knit communities, biblical literalists and those who followed the inner voice of the Spirit"
• anabaptists ("rebaptizers")
• the impact is more far-reaching than immediately significant, affecting society up to the present day