The Ways of the Worldviews (Part 31): The Protestant and Secular Revolutions (1500-1700)–A Short Introduction

In most overviews of Western civilization, the typical progression not only incorrectly lumps over one thousand years of culture and history under the umbrella of the “Middle Ages,” it also tends to then portray both the Italian Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation as simultaneous events that both stemmed out from the Middle Ages. This is precisely what Francis Schaeffer did in How Should We Then Live. The problem with such a portrayal, as we have already seen, is that it fails to acknowledge that the Renaissance was, in fact, the result and full-flowering of the numerous achievements of the High Catholic Age. Ironically and sadly, the very same time that the High Catholic Age had achieved the cultural and philosophical heights of the Renaissance also witnessed such deplorable corruption at the papal level that led to various revolutions, both religious and secular.

A better and more accurate understanding of Western civilization is to see that, beginning in the first part of the 16^th century, a bifurcated revolution erupted in Europe that was both religiously and anti-religiously motivated. The religiously motivated branch of this revolution came in the form of the inaccurately-named Protestant Reformation. But let’s be clear—it was no reformation. It was a thorough rejection of over a thousand years of Church practice and tradition, an attempt to “get back to the original Church.” It was, if you will, an attempt to reinvent the ecclesiastical wheel, the only problem being that it had thrown away all the spokes and was left with only the hub and the rubber tire. The results of the Protestant Revolution proved to be deeply problematic and destructive. That is not to say that much good came out of the Protestant Revolution; but we must be honest—it was no reformation.

Despite what Martin Luther may have originally desired or intended, the fact is that the movement he started was nothing short of a complete religious revolution against the Catholic Church. Anyone familiar with history would readily admit that the Catholic Church at that time was in dire need of reformation. But whereas men like Desiderius Erasmus sought to truly reform the existing Catholic Church, men like Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Henry VIII and their successors saw the Pope as nothing less than the Antichrist himself, and boldly declared that the entire structure of the Catholic Church was to be torn down. The “Reformers” were revolutionaries—and the revolution they gave Europe lasted for a hundred years. The result was a complete fragmentation of the Church into thousands of pieces. “Church unity” was something that was never truly achieved for the first 1500 years of Church history, but it was something that was constantly being striven for. But after the Protestant Revolution, “Church unity” wasn’t even prized, and thus one of the greatest failures of the Protestant Revolution was it rejected a fundamental teaching regarding what “the Church” was.

The anti-religiously motivated branch of this revolution started subtly in the works of men like Machiavelli, and grew up side by side the Protestant Revolution, often working within supposedly Protestant movements, and in fact undermining many of the good intentions of many well-meaning and godly Protestants. This subtle undermining of the Protestant Revolution eventually led to the disenchantment of all things “religious,” and ultimately to the bloody carnage of the decidedly and openly anti-Christian age, deceptively called the “Enlightenment.”

Finally, in response to these two intertwined revolutions, the Catholic Church set about an attempted reformation itself, led by the likes of Erasmus.

In any case, by the end of this period of the simultaneously-happing Protestant Revolution, secular Enlightenment, and Catholic attempt at reformation, there had happened a massive shift in worldview from the previous 1,000 years.

• Politically, individual kings established their own “religions,” to be the official faith of their political kingdoms, be it Lutheran, Presbyterian, Catholic, etc. And when that happened, religion (specifically various brands of Christianity) became the tool of the State to support the power of individual rulers.
• Philosophically, especially as a result of the Enlightenment, there was a complete “re-paganizing” of philosophy. Yearning for Roman virtue, the “state of nature” became the basis for morality. There was a growing denial of God, and Christ as His revelation into history. The aim was to subvert the power and authority of the Catholic Church.
• Religiously, debates regarding the Christian faith were divorced from the Tradition of the Church its guide, and began to focus on “Enlightenment” categories of what constitutes “truth.” Simply put, the “arena” in which to debate the Christian faith was changed from the witness of Church Tradition to secular categories of science and reason.

Over the next few posts, I will attempt to give a general overview of the Protestant Revolution and the way in which it changed the religious landscape of Christianity in the West. There will be a few posts about Martin Luther, others about the Radical Reformation, John Calvin, the cultural contributions of Protestantism, as well as the subversive secular revolution that grew up side by side the Protestant Revolution, and that can be seen in the works of Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Spinoza.

I believe these posts will be an important step in beginning to understand the current “culture wars” that we are witnessing today in our current society. In order to understand where we are and how we got to the place we are, we need to understand the flow of history. Everything up to this point (yes, the first 30 posts in this series!) has laid the backdrop. From here on out, what I’ll be discussing should be more readily applicable to understanding today’s society.

So it should be an interesting couple of weeks at resurrecting orthodoxy!