Was he the reforming catholic he thought he was, or was he a heretic like the church thought? He asked himself, “Are you alone wise? Is everyone else in error? Have so many centuries been in ignorance? What if you have been wrong and dragged many with you into error and eternal damnation?
This is a really interesting period of time. Looking into the nature and causes of the Peasants War of 1525, it seems that poor behavior by politically acquisitive figures in authority guided by re-emerging bad law that inspired the worst among those under their stewardship which ultimately led to disaster about sums it up.
It turns out that many of the grievances peasants had leading up to the war were based on recent impositions of law by the nobility, which restricted the greater degree of freedom peasants enjoyed in prior ages. Interestingly these new laws were a resurgence of ancient Roman civil law, which led the nobility to claim sole ownership of property that was formerly held in trust between peasant and lord with mutual rights and obligations contained therein. Peasants were taxed unreasonably by Church and nobles, denied hunting and fishing rights on common land previously enjoyed, and when they died, their possessions (tools, cattle, etc) transferred to their lord, and not to the sons and daughters of the peasant. The new laws basically eradicated their rights of property, conditional though they were. This was all made explicit in the Twelve Articles document, which was printed and spread across Germany. In a way it was not a rejection of the Medieval feudal order, but a conservative reaction against the excesses of a politico-religious system that was transitioning away from it into the modern state system. For as Karl von Haller points out in his Restoration of Political Science, political theory began going off the rails due in large part due to a re-emergence of Roman civil law with its notion of popular sovereignty. I remember reading something similar in Fritz Kern's "Kingship and Law in the Middle Ages."
Of course, as with most revolts and revolutions, even those born of just causes, it went off the rails. This was probably aided by the breakdown of Church authority over the spiritual lives of the peasants during this time as well, and its complicity with the German nobles in advancing the new political arrangements. A spiritual and political revolution in tandem is a dangerous thing. It started with peasants plundering an Abby and then aggressively positioning themselves outside a town (Ulm) in order to attack it and likely plunder it. The nobles then fought back. Hard to say who is in the right.
Even though I sympathize with their grievances, I just cannot get behind the destructive and often murderous actions of the peasants. Like the Hussites a century earlier and the Jacobins a few centuries later, the German peasants' new envisaged political system would likely have been much worse. And of course, Marx and Engels would paint these German peasants as proto-communists struggling against an unjust and increasingly "capitalist" order, and perhaps they were somewhat right about both characterizations.
ATL, my knowledge of the details of the whats and whys behind the revolt and this reaction are not very good; you have a better grasp of this than I do. My struggle with Luther's comments: this is not how a Christian, especially a leader, should act.
Call for peace, pray for peace. At least that's how I see it.
I struggle with this. Was the Catholic Church right to put down violent heretics (like at Munster)? Or should it have allowed error to spread? Given what happened when the authority of the Church was splintered during the Reformation (rise of state system, subordination of Church to state, Enlightenment, death of Christendom, etc.), I can at least sympathize with the desire to maintain a unified spiritual order, though I may disagree with the means employed to achieve it.
Are we as Christians called to sue for peace even if the peace means subordination to our enemies or worse? I am not at all sure one way or the other what Christ wants for us in this regard. I want to think He authorizes us to use self-defense, and long standing Church tradition would agree, but that is not at all clear from his most important sermon.
The peasants had just grievances, at least from a libertarian perspective. But were their actions just? I think Luther was shocked by their brutality, and maybe he caught a glimpse of what Germany spiritually unmoored to the Catholic Church might look like. Still his words seemed harsh. I agree. I also have only done a cursory review of this period. I would definitely like to learn more, because it seems this period might have some clues as to where and why the feudal order went wrong and how it began transitioning into the modern state system of governance.
I do not intend a blanket statement. Perhaps I am reacting to Luther's horrendous rhetoric, even though there might have been a case on the merits (again, I do not know enough of this episode to say).
Luther sounded like many today (as noted at the other blog), including many Christian leaders, regarding the killing in Gaza - they are animals after all. This kind of language is not at all fitting for a Christian.
A Mighty Fortress Is Our God is a really good hymn.
It is a bit sad that Luther took such a strong stance against the peasants. But I also don't know how chaotic it got. Mass violence in the streets is very distressing as we saw in 2020.
This is a good point, and who knows what we will call for when our chaos, inevitably, grows much worse.
In any case, and not to justify it, but to explain it: Luther had only the princes of Germany to protect him from the pope. He would want to stay on their good side. But with this said, calling for slaughter is a bridge too far.
"Luther would continue his work, now against Erasmus. First, the topic of obeying the pope. Erasmus believed this was always required: Luther, only when the pope’s commands were just. Luther believed his primary allegiance was to preach God’s Word."
Interesting. We must always obey the Pope's commands vs. we must always obey the Pope, except for those times when his commands are unjust. This begs the question: when is a command "unjust" and who decides?
If we say that we can find those exceptions in our interpretation of Scripture, which might or might not (probably won't) agree with the Pope's, have we not imposed our own subjective version of "justice" on the issue and why is this any better (perhaps worse) than any other personal opinion? Why was Luther's definition of "just" warranted when it concerned the Pope and how did it perform on its own when the peasants revolted and were slaughtered at his insistence and with his blessing?
Even more interesting is that Luther's preaching of God's Word (his primary allegiance) was (probably) done from the perspective of his own vernacular translation of Erasmus' translation of the New Testament from the Greek. Who is to say that Luther's translation adhered to the original or whether his own preconceived ideas colored it? Considering how many "new" translations of "God's Word" are produced today, all of which are intended to enhance the common man's understanding, it is not surprising that we are floundering and sinking deeper and deeper into the "miry pit".
This brings to mind the instance noted in Acts 4, in which the apostles were hauled in front of the council and ordered to stop preaching God's Word (Jesus). What is instructive is the reply of Peter and John.
"Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you more than to God, you judge. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard."
Whether it is right to listen to Luther more than Erasmus or Charles Stanley more than the Pope, I will not judge. Nevertheless, I do know what I have seen and heard and I will not hesitate to speak of that.
"This begs the question: when is a command "unjust" and who decides? "
As a converted Roman Catholic, I find this hard to decipher myself, especially with the trajectory of the current hierarchy. Good Christian men like Archbishop Vigano and Bishop Strickland are punished or ignored completely, while the Pope is smiling and rubbing shoulders with people I consider enemies of all that I hold to be good and true. But I will not leave the Church that built the West - the Church of Tolkien, Aquinas and Ambrose.
Roger, you may not judge, but I suspect you certainly discern. We live in a time where we have this luxury, when it comes to which church to join, who to follow, etc. So we all discern.
As for Luther, on a handful of major topics, he was right to call out the pope and the RCC. Serious Catholic scholars and theologians (as opposed to talking heads on YouTube) would agree with this, even if they disagree with his leaving the church, his methods, etc.
Agreed. As Lord Acton put it, "the tide was moving fast" in the direction of political centralization prior to the Reformation, and I think the Church, or at least its human representatives, got swept up in the spirit of this movement away from the order of the Middle Ages. That is not to say that the Church of the Middle Ages was perfect or that the RCC during the reformation was all bad.
This is a really interesting period of time. Looking into the nature and causes of the Peasants War of 1525, it seems that poor behavior by politically acquisitive figures in authority guided by re-emerging bad law that inspired the worst among those under their stewardship which ultimately led to disaster about sums it up.
It turns out that many of the grievances peasants had leading up to the war were based on recent impositions of law by the nobility, which restricted the greater degree of freedom peasants enjoyed in prior ages. Interestingly these new laws were a resurgence of ancient Roman civil law, which led the nobility to claim sole ownership of property that was formerly held in trust between peasant and lord with mutual rights and obligations contained therein. Peasants were taxed unreasonably by Church and nobles, denied hunting and fishing rights on common land previously enjoyed, and when they died, their possessions (tools, cattle, etc) transferred to their lord, and not to the sons and daughters of the peasant. The new laws basically eradicated their rights of property, conditional though they were. This was all made explicit in the Twelve Articles document, which was printed and spread across Germany. In a way it was not a rejection of the Medieval feudal order, but a conservative reaction against the excesses of a politico-religious system that was transitioning away from it into the modern state system. For as Karl von Haller points out in his Restoration of Political Science, political theory began going off the rails due in large part due to a re-emergence of Roman civil law with its notion of popular sovereignty. I remember reading something similar in Fritz Kern's "Kingship and Law in the Middle Ages."
Of course, as with most revolts and revolutions, even those born of just causes, it went off the rails. This was probably aided by the breakdown of Church authority over the spiritual lives of the peasants during this time as well, and its complicity with the German nobles in advancing the new political arrangements. A spiritual and political revolution in tandem is a dangerous thing. It started with peasants plundering an Abby and then aggressively positioning themselves outside a town (Ulm) in order to attack it and likely plunder it. The nobles then fought back. Hard to say who is in the right.
Even though I sympathize with their grievances, I just cannot get behind the destructive and often murderous actions of the peasants. Like the Hussites a century earlier and the Jacobins a few centuries later, the German peasants' new envisaged political system would likely have been much worse. And of course, Marx and Engels would paint these German peasants as proto-communists struggling against an unjust and increasingly "capitalist" order, and perhaps they were somewhat right about both characterizations.
ATL, my knowledge of the details of the whats and whys behind the revolt and this reaction are not very good; you have a better grasp of this than I do. My struggle with Luther's comments: this is not how a Christian, especially a leader, should act.
Call for peace, pray for peace. At least that's how I see it.
I struggle with this. Was the Catholic Church right to put down violent heretics (like at Munster)? Or should it have allowed error to spread? Given what happened when the authority of the Church was splintered during the Reformation (rise of state system, subordination of Church to state, Enlightenment, death of Christendom, etc.), I can at least sympathize with the desire to maintain a unified spiritual order, though I may disagree with the means employed to achieve it.
Are we as Christians called to sue for peace even if the peace means subordination to our enemies or worse? I am not at all sure one way or the other what Christ wants for us in this regard. I want to think He authorizes us to use self-defense, and long standing Church tradition would agree, but that is not at all clear from his most important sermon.
The peasants had just grievances, at least from a libertarian perspective. But were their actions just? I think Luther was shocked by their brutality, and maybe he caught a glimpse of what Germany spiritually unmoored to the Catholic Church might look like. Still his words seemed harsh. I agree. I also have only done a cursory review of this period. I would definitely like to learn more, because it seems this period might have some clues as to where and why the feudal order went wrong and how it began transitioning into the modern state system of governance.
I do not intend a blanket statement. Perhaps I am reacting to Luther's horrendous rhetoric, even though there might have been a case on the merits (again, I do not know enough of this episode to say).
Luther sounded like many today (as noted at the other blog), including many Christian leaders, regarding the killing in Gaza - they are animals after all. This kind of language is not at all fitting for a Christian.
A Mighty Fortress Is Our God is a really good hymn.
It is a bit sad that Luther took such a strong stance against the peasants. But I also don't know how chaotic it got. Mass violence in the streets is very distressing as we saw in 2020.
This is a good point, and who knows what we will call for when our chaos, inevitably, grows much worse.
In any case, and not to justify it, but to explain it: Luther had only the princes of Germany to protect him from the pope. He would want to stay on their good side. But with this said, calling for slaughter is a bridge too far.
"Luther would continue his work, now against Erasmus. First, the topic of obeying the pope. Erasmus believed this was always required: Luther, only when the pope’s commands were just. Luther believed his primary allegiance was to preach God’s Word."
Interesting. We must always obey the Pope's commands vs. we must always obey the Pope, except for those times when his commands are unjust. This begs the question: when is a command "unjust" and who decides?
If we say that we can find those exceptions in our interpretation of Scripture, which might or might not (probably won't) agree with the Pope's, have we not imposed our own subjective version of "justice" on the issue and why is this any better (perhaps worse) than any other personal opinion? Why was Luther's definition of "just" warranted when it concerned the Pope and how did it perform on its own when the peasants revolted and were slaughtered at his insistence and with his blessing?
Even more interesting is that Luther's preaching of God's Word (his primary allegiance) was (probably) done from the perspective of his own vernacular translation of Erasmus' translation of the New Testament from the Greek. Who is to say that Luther's translation adhered to the original or whether his own preconceived ideas colored it? Considering how many "new" translations of "God's Word" are produced today, all of which are intended to enhance the common man's understanding, it is not surprising that we are floundering and sinking deeper and deeper into the "miry pit".
This brings to mind the instance noted in Acts 4, in which the apostles were hauled in front of the council and ordered to stop preaching God's Word (Jesus). What is instructive is the reply of Peter and John.
"Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you more than to God, you judge. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard."
Whether it is right to listen to Luther more than Erasmus or Charles Stanley more than the Pope, I will not judge. Nevertheless, I do know what I have seen and heard and I will not hesitate to speak of that.
"This begs the question: when is a command "unjust" and who decides? "
As a converted Roman Catholic, I find this hard to decipher myself, especially with the trajectory of the current hierarchy. Good Christian men like Archbishop Vigano and Bishop Strickland are punished or ignored completely, while the Pope is smiling and rubbing shoulders with people I consider enemies of all that I hold to be good and true. But I will not leave the Church that built the West - the Church of Tolkien, Aquinas and Ambrose.
Roger, you may not judge, but I suspect you certainly discern. We live in a time where we have this luxury, when it comes to which church to join, who to follow, etc. So we all discern.
As for Luther, on a handful of major topics, he was right to call out the pope and the RCC. Serious Catholic scholars and theologians (as opposed to talking heads on YouTube) would agree with this, even if they disagree with his leaving the church, his methods, etc.
At least that's how I "discern" it!
Agreed. As Lord Acton put it, "the tide was moving fast" in the direction of political centralization prior to the Reformation, and I think the Church, or at least its human representatives, got swept up in the spirit of this movement away from the order of the Middle Ages. That is not to say that the Church of the Middle Ages was perfect or that the RCC during the reformation was all bad.