The Legacy of the Reformation

I was recently asked to "briefly" discuss the legacy of the Reformation, and that is just mean. Asking a historical theologian to describe the significance of the Reformation and its legacies briefly is a cruel and unusual punishment. Whether speaking of the general scope of “secular” history or specifically in reference to historical theology, the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century is one of the most significant events in all of the grand story of humanity. It was at one and the same time a great retrograde revolution which sought to turn back the clock and an integral moment in the creation of the modern world. Its legacies include both the good and the bad, the heroic and the villainous, the social, political, artistic, economic, and philosophical make-up of the Western world. Then, through the subsequent European conquest of much of the globe, it helped to shape the course of history since its time.

While there are a myriad ways to approach so overwhelming a topic, there is one moment which exemplifies so much of the era and all that flowed from it. In April 1521 Martin Luther was called before the Diet of Worms. There, he stood before the powerful man in the world and said, “No.” He had already been condemned by Pope Leo X, the spiritual head of Western Christianity. Now he told Charles V, king of Spain, Austria, the Low Countries, vast swaths of the Americas, and Holy Roman Emperor that he was wrong and Luther was right. In contrast to the inertia of human society which puts great weight in the consensus of numbers, Luther declared that he was willing to die for his beliefs unless he could be convinced by Scripture or simple reason. Echoing the words attributed to Athanasius so many centuries before, Luther stood against the world.

So very much of the Reformation and its legacies, both good and bad, are encapsulated in this moment. This is the manifestation of the previous few decades of protest against church corruption. This is the culmination of humanist tradition challenging the weight of custom by looking back before the prior few centuries. This is the declaration that the gradual accretion of church traditions could not overrule the Word of God and that there was a standard by which to judge all human institutions, whether church or state. This is the archetype of the bold individual standing for truth against all authorities, decades before Galileo was even born.

From this inspiration came the great explosion of protests against political and religious powers and a constellation of sometimes allied, sometimes warring Christian entities. Within the decade the German speaking world had Lutheran, Anabaptist, and Reformed denominations. Within three decades the French speaking world was fractured into Calvinist and Catholic factions and the British Isles were seesawing between Rome and Geneva. By the end of the century this second great schism of Christendom was recognized as permanent.

European society was shattered, and the age of religious wars that had begun in Luther’s day would not come to an end until 1648. Yet this story of division was not the only one to come out of the Diet of Worms. There was also the story of political liberty which, although it took quite some time and many wars to become realized, had its antecedent that one moment of defiance. In the following decades Puritans, Huguenots, Jansenists, and Dutch rebels would lay the intellectual foundation for liberty of conscience a century before Voltaire or Jefferson.

This focus on the Bible as the supreme authority had its great social and even effect in the breaking of the dichotomy of life into sacred and secular spheres. Suddenly butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers were possessed of as much dignity as any prince or prelate. Extra-biblical restraints on financial activities were removed and cash flowed and news means of production were implemented. The elevation of commoners in art begun with the Renaissance in Italy continued among the Dutch of the Reformation. The idea that consensus of the majority was not coextensive with the truth greased the wheels of the Scientific Revolution and set the stage for the technological advancements of the Industrial Revolution.

The power of the individual to stand against authority had its great and positive effects and also its great and negative effects. The epistemological crisis sparked in part by the Reformation and the wars which followed led to the skepticism and overconfidence of the Enlightenment. Rather than standing against the world on the basis of Scripture and simple reason, now people stood against others and the universe itself on the basis of their flawed perceptions and limited perspectives. In our day this principle had devolved into the Magisterium of the transient moment, where all values and truth-claims shift as quickly the latest clothing fad, and the Protestant doctrine of the priesthood of all believers has mutated into the demand for all individuals to create God, the universe, and their own selves in their own image of themselves.

And yet, even with such dour results as some of these, the overall legacy of the Reformation is positive, indeed. In the 1950s movie on the life of Martin Luther, there was a scene where the then-monk Luther was speaking to his fellow Augustinians about the glories of the grace of God even as he was coming to an awareness himself. After he longs that the common people of the world could see such divine grace, a superior chides Luther, asking what would happen if all ordinary believers had the Bible in their own hands to interpret for themselves. Luther then broke into a broad grin and enthusiastically replied, “Why, then we might have more Christians, Father!” Through the efforts of Luther, Calvin, and many others, the gospel of Jesus Christ was set free and salvation came to many around the world who would otherwise have remained lost.