I believe it would be far more correct to say, "How the Reformation Led to the Renaissance"
FReegards!
Posted on 06/09/2010 11:00:51 AM PDT by OneVike
(This is the fourth installment of a five part series on the Protestant Reformation)
Art, Inventions, and Explorations
Art
It has been said that if a work of art dwells upon beauty, it will inspire the viewer to make that beauty a part of his life and their outlook on the world. In this sense the art of the Renaissance Age gave men a reason to reflect upon their place in the world more then their relationship with God. This new style allowed some men, known as the secular humanists, to see themselves as being separate and autonomous from God. Francis Schaeffer, in his book ''Escape from Reason'', describes this as man dwelling more and more on the nature of his reality and less on the spirituality of his soul. Then you had the religious humanist who would be influenced by seeing the true beauty of what God created. Michelangelo, said "I am only the tool God uses to release the beauty he has encased in the marble." These religious humanists felt like they were part of God's world not just a spectator that was in the way of the Churches ambitions.
I believe it would be far more correct to say, "How the Reformation Led to the Renaissance"
FReegards!
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How so?
The Renaissance was in full bloom long before Luther nailed his “95” grievances on the door of the Wittenberg church.
Did you even read the evidence in the articles that prove you are mistaken?
....we should not be surprised to find that the Calvinists took a very important part in American Revolution. Calvin emphasized that the sovereignty of God, when applied to the affairs of government proved to be crucial, because God as the Supreme Ruler had all ultimate authority vested in Him, and all other authority flowed from God, as it pleased Him to bestow it.The Scriptures, God's special revelation of Himself to mankind, were taken as the final authority for all of life, as containing eternal principles, which were for all ages, and all peoples. Calvin based his views on these very Scriptures. As we read earlier, in Paul's letter to the Romans, God's Word declares the state to be a divinely established institution.
History is eloquent in declaring that the American republican democracy was born of Christianity and that form of Christianity was Calvinism. The great revolutionary conflict which resulted in the founding of this nation was carried out mainly by Calvinists--many of whom had been trained in the rigidly Presbyterian college of Princeton....
....In fact, most of the early American culture was Reformed or tied strongly to it (just read the New England Primer). Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, a Roman Catholic intellectual and National Review contributor, asserts: “If we call the American statesmen of the late eighteenth century the Founding Fathers of the United States, then the Pilgrims and Puritans were the grandfathers and Calvin the great-grandfather…”
-- from the thread John Calvin: Religious liberty and Political liberty
Related threads:
John Calvin, Calvinism, and the founding of America
Calvin's 500th Birthday Celebrated: Critics and Supporters Agree He was America's Founding Father
AMERICA AND JOHN CALVIN
America's debt to John Calvin
Lessons to be learned from Reformation
Theocracy: the Origin of American Democracy
American Government and Christianity - America's Christian Roots
The Faith of the Founders, How Christian Were They
John Calvin: Religious liberty and Political liberty
The Man Who Founded America
The Puritans and the founding of America
Perhaps Puritans weren't all that bad
Who were the Puritans?
Bible Battles: King James vs. the Puritans
The Heirs of Puritanism: That's Us!
The real Puritan legacy
In Praise of a Puritan America
Are new 'Puritans' gaining?
Foundations of Faith [Harvard's "Memorial Church" and the university's Puritan roots]
Bounty of Freedom [Puritans, Yankees, the Constitution, and Libertarianism]
The Pilgrims and the founding of America
Thanking the Puritans on Thanksgiving: Pilgrims' politics and American virtue
New World, New Ideas: What the Pilgrims and Puritans believed, about God and man and giving thanks
Pilgrims in Providence
A time for thanks
Judge reminds: Faith ‘permeated our culture’ since the Pilgrims
In its 400th year, Jamestown aspires to Plymouth's prominence [huzzah for the Pilgrims!]
Rock of Ages and the rebel pilgrims [understanding the times re Augustus Toplady's famous hymn]
The Protestant Reformation and the Founding of America
Reformation Faith & Representative Democracy
A Moral Vision [Oliver Cromwell, the American Revolution, and Pluralism]
What about Jan Hus (c. 1372 - 6 July 1415) or John Wycliffe (c. 1324 – 31 December 1384)? Both were as much a part of "the Reformation" as was Luther (10 November 1483 – 18 February 1546) , William Tyndale (c. 1494 – 1536), John Calvin (10 July 1509 – 27 May 1564) and Ulrich Zwingli (1 January 1484 – 11 October 1531). et al.
Wycliffe and Hus were around a full 100-200 years before Luther, each inspired Luther and later Reformers at a time still considered historically to be the tail end of the "dark ages". Hus and Wycliffe in part ushered in the Reformation and the general Renaissance of thought which proceeded from that Reformation.
FReegards!
Some would argue that the Greek New Testament and the writings of Lorenzo Valla sparked both Renaissance and Reformation, but your smugness disallows meaningful debate.
One could say that the Christian era began before Christ was born because of the fullness of the times as Paul pointed out. (When the fullness of time came God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law. (Gal 4:4) Christ did not set things in motion when He arrived, yet He was the culmination of it all. Yet we give Christ the credit for it all, not John the baptist, nor the prophets before him who helped set things up.
So even though we can look back at the way everything was set in place for Christ to come, we give Him the credit. Now Christ is God, and as God He ordained it. The pieces may have been there, but it took Christ to make the puzzle complete.
Take that point and look at the fullness of times that set things in place for the reformation. God ordained it by allowing instances that took place before hand through men and instances that happened long before he was born. Yet it took Luther to stand up to the Pope and the church at the fullness of time. The pieces may have been there, but it took Luther to make the puzzle complete.
Thus we give credit and always have given credit to Luther for beginning the reformation. However, even in my thesis I name many of the pieces to the puzzle, and so the timber was set in place, and all that was needed for the conflagration was a match, and that match was Luther.
As John Huss told those who were leading him to the place he would be burned at the stake.
"You are now going to burn a goose, but in a century you will have a Swan which you can neither roast nor boil."
I see then that it is you that says that the Reformation began with Luther and no one else necessarily. You have ignored too many of Luther's contemporaries, never mind his progenitors who were at least as influential, scholarly, and prolific in their writings as was Luther, and they happened to reside in England, Scotland, France, Spain, and Switzerland. You ignore them at the peril of your thesis premise. It is simply incorrect to assert that the Renaissance led to the Reformation.
I'll say it again: The Reformation did not begin with Luther. It actually began as far as 400-500 years before Luther. Foxe's Book of Martyrs, first published in 1563 might be worth a read.
From the section entitled: "Persecution of the Waldenses in France" we read the following:
Popery having brought various innovations into the Church, and overspread the Christian world with darkness and superstition, some few, who plainly perceived the pernicious tendency of such errors, determined to show the light of the Gospel in its real purity, and to disperse those clouds which artful priests had raised about it, in order to blind the people, and obscure its real brightness.
The principal among these was Berengarius, who, about the year 1000, boldly preached Gospel truths, according to their primitive purity. Many, from conviction, assented to his doctrine, and were, on that account, called Berengarians. To Berengarius succeeded Peer Bruis, who preached at Toulouse, under the protection of an earl, named Hildephonsus; and the whole tenets of the reformers, with the reasons of their separation from the Church of Rome, were published in a book written by Bruis, under the title of "Antichrist."
By the year of Christ 1140, the number of the reformed was very great, and the probability of its increasing alarmed the pope, who wrote to several princes to banish them from their dominions, and employed many learned men to write against their doctrines.
You will note from the text as I have bolded it that the term Foxe uses in 1563 to describe those who led this opposition to the Pope are referred to as "the Reformed" in the context if this activity as far back as 1000 - 1140 AD.
Sooooo, I'll say it again: It is simply incorrect to assert that the Renaissance led to the Reformation. "The Renaissance" was no where to be found 200 years before you yourself have said it began to emerge in the mid-1300's, and certainly not as Foxe -- writng a mere ~50 years after Luther's theses, describes the activity of those he termed, "the reformers" and "the reformed."
One could say that the Christian era began before Christ was born because of the fullness of the times as Paul pointed out. (When the fullness of time came God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law. (Gal 4:4) Christ did not set things in motion when He arrived, yet He was the culmination of it all.
I'll go one further. It has never NOT been the Christian era, because as John 1: 1-5 is clear, Jesus Christ is the Creator Himself. "In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was with God and the WORD was God, the same was in the beginning with God ... and He is before all things, and by Him all things consist."
FReegards!
Very interesting take.
However, It is not just my take about when the reformation began, but that of 90% of all evangelical scholars agree that the reformation began with Luther. That is a matter of fact and you can disagree all you like and I do respect your effort and time you put in to show me otherwise, but in three words, “You are wrong”.
However, as I said I do find your take somewhat interesting, if for no other reason then it will force me to investigate your theory.
I always enjoy a good investigation, because even if I never end up agreeing with you I would have definitely learned something new along the way.
If your facts are correct as you just stated it there, then 90% of evangelical scholars are simply wrong. But you know, I think that 90% thing was just a throw away line and most accomplished evangelical Christian scholars didn't just learn about Foxe's Book of Martyrs on a FreeRepublic thread for the first time.
It's like saying 90% of all scientists out these believe in AGW, so it must be true and the science is "settled," because Chris Matthews and 90% of the media says so. Same with evolution. Different day, different premise, still just as flimsy as it surrounds itself with an inflated, patently unverifiable cloud of presumed percentages in an attempt to import a fictitious credibility to one's statement.
That is a matter of fact and you can disagree all you like and I do respect your effort and time you put in to show me otherwise, but in three words, “You are wrong”
I'll let you take that up with Foxe.
However, as I said I do find your take somewhat interesting, if for no other reason then it will force me to investigate your theory.
It's there in black and white and from a then near-contemporary source written as close to the time of Luther's theses as were the writing of the Gospels to the Life of Christ Himself. We don't typically speak of the writing of the Gospels in the context of "theory," with respect to the originality of the account. Why then should Foxe's word choice and usage be merely "theoretical" especially as borne out by the fact that context is completely established?
Foxe called them "Reformers." As a scholar of such things myself, I suspect he knew what he was writing about, and I wouldn't think that Queen Elizabeth I, who was known to have read his book (as have most subsequent English monarchs), upon reading his tome would have disagreed with his word choice.
Have you published/defended this work yet? Assuming that this is for academic credit somewhere, and you are getting a first read/critique on it prior to doing so, you might want to be prepared to answer someone who will bring up Foxe in your cross-examination.
Happy thesis revision!
FReegards!
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