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Protestant Tradition

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Introduction: Some Essential History

Mention the word 'Protestant' and what springs to mind? For many in Britain, with Northern Ireland so much in the news over the last quarter of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first, the immediate thought is of strident voices raised in bitter, sectarian conflict, of political marches – even of terrorist murder. And what, many would go on to ask, has that to do with Christianity? Not a lot, you might think. But organized religion, as a product of human thought and a pattern for human behaviour, owes as much to external social, cultural and political influences as it does to profound beliefs concerning 'life, the universe and everything', And society, culture and politics have, in turn, been profoundly influenced by organized religion. This is as true of Christianity as it is of, say, Judaism or Islam – and is as true today as it has ever been.

The story of the Christian religion over the last two thousand years is proof of this: born out of revolutionary religious ferment in first-century Palestine; adopted by Constantine as the state religion of fourth-century Rome, and caught up with the declining years of the Roman Empire; preserving classical culture during the 'Dark Ages' and then fundamentally shaping medieval Europe, giving divine authority to the claims of kings and emperors; inspiring the colonization of Africa, Asia and America; legitimizing wars and revolutions and influencing the science, art, philosophy and literature that is Western culture.

Of course, to speak of 'Christianity' as though it were a single coherent force and influence would be very far from the truth. The divisions, schisms and 'isms' of Christianity have had more influence on the shape of the history of the last two thousand years than any (mistaken!) notion of a single, united and harmonious 'community of faith'. And nowhere is this more true than in the case of the Protestant 'ism' of the last five centuries. The history of Christianity has been, amongst other things, a story of profound disagreements and of often acrimonious, sometimes violent, fragmentation. And this goes back to its earliest centuries.

Early Church History

As the towering might of Rome declined with the waning of the empire, various cities of the ancient Mediterranean world competed with each other for political influence. And religion was a major factor in this. The Church, and the bishop, of Rome claimed pre-eminence as the 'See of Saint Peter' and as the seat of the old empire, but other cities, notably Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem and, above all, Constantinople (where the seat of empire had moved in the fourth century) vied for power and influence.

Many of the early Christian debates about what was 'truth' and what was 'heresy' (out of which came the traditional 'creeds' of the Church) were often as much political as they were theological in origin. With the spread of Islam, some cities lost their influence over Christian affairs, others – Rome and Constantinople in particular – became dominant. They represented what was left of the 'Western' (Latin) and 'Eastern' (Greek) halves of the old empire. And in 1054 the two finally fell out with each other in an acrimonious division which still persists today, separating the 'Western' Church of Rome from the 'Eastern' Orthodox Churches – each claiming ancient apostolic authority for their beliefs and practices.

Our particular story continues with the 'Western' Church – the Church of Rome – which was, by then, inextricably caught up with the power, politics, society and culture of what we now call Western Europe. The Popes of Rome (with one or two notable 'hiccups') ruled as much as powerful princes as they did as pious prelates. Little could happen (they liked to think) in Western Christendom (as it was called) without their knowledge and approval. This, for example, was the time of the Crusades, which, while mainly directed at the Muslim occupiers of the Holy Land, also, on occasion, led to violent conflict with the Byzantine empire based in Constantinople.

A Time of Change

For nearly five hundred years the Church of Rome retained its powerful influence over Western Europe. But the world was changing. Constantinople fell in 1453, and the Muslim world was expanding, threatening the eastern flanks of European Christendom. Meanwhile, European explorers were reaching new shores in Africa, India, South-east Asia and China, and the Americas. On these fronts Europe was able to expand its political, cultural and, especially, religious influence.

Within Europe, new political concepts were also taking shape – princes and kings had aspirations to establish autonomous nation states. New alliances were being formed; new learning was questioning old ideas; new discoveries were changing people's lives – and, significantly, printing with movable type was prompting the growth of mass literacy. All of this meant that the way people thought was changing – and changing at an unprecedented pace. Clearly, this made for an explosive mixture. It was a German monk called Martin Luther who inadvertently lit the fuse.

The 'Protest' in Protestantism

The Bible

One common aspect of all forms of Christianity is the Bible – consisting of the 'Old Testament' Hebrew scriptures (or 'holy writings') and the Christian 'New Testament'. (Christians may like to think that the 'Old' Testament belongs to them too, but they must not forget that it was, and still is, the book sacred to the Jewish religion.) Just as Judaism, as well as Islam, are 'religions of the book', so is Christianity. The reading and study of the Bible are important, to varying degrees, to all Christian Churches. It plays its part in public worship, in private devotion, in education and in the formation of Christian thought. But, like any other book, what you find in it depends on what you look for and, because it is quite a long book, most people (and therefore most Churches) tend to be selective about which bits they concentrate on.

The Orthodox Church, for example, is influenced especially by the writings of St John, traditionally regarded as the apostle who was closest to Jesus. Powerful images may be found in the metaphors and mysteries of the gospel, letters and 'Revelation' that bear his name. For example, the divine Logos ('Word'), 'the Light of the World' and 'the Lamb of God' are all significant images drawn from John, and they, amongst others, are central to the language, liturgy (formal patterns of prayer and worship) and art of Orthodoxy. This reflects, perhaps, this Church's close historic links with Asia Minor – the eastern end of the old Roman Empire – which has strong traditional connections with the apostle John.

The Church of Rome, on the other hand, had its own founding apostle – St Peter, traditionally regarded as the first 'bishop' of Rome. While his writings may not have amounted to much, his status as the original 'Rock' upon which Jesus was to build his Church and to whom the 'Keys of Heaven' were given (according to Matthew's gospel) gave him a unique authority, and gave Rome a unique position (as it claimed) of pre-eminence.

It is perhaps appropriate that a 'second generation' version of Christianity should find its inspiration from a 'second generation' apostle – St Paul (the one who saw the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus, some months after the first resurrection appearances to Peter, John and the other original apostles). Unlike the mystical poetry of St John, and the brief (and rarely read) epistles of St Peter, St Paul has left us with a significant chunk of our Christian scriptures through his powerful and carefully, and relentlessly, argued letters or epistles. St Paul offers us an incisive critique of both religion and society, with the clearly stated claim that Jesus Christ is Saviour and Lord of all the world, and further that faith in, and obedience to, Jesus is what constitutes God's purpose for humanity. In the light of this, all human beings, and all human systems and institutions (including 'religion') fall far short of the ideal. This argument, put forward most forcibly and systematically in his Letter to the Church in Rome (usually referred to as Romans), follows on from Paul's understanding of the gospel – the message of good news about Jesus to a world that desperately needed to hear it.

Martin Luther

It is little wonder, therefore, that this apostle, and this letter in particular (addressed, after all, to the 'Church in Rome') should provide the biblical authority for a theological protest against the status quo in the Church and in society. Which brings us neatly back to Martin Luther.

Martin Luther was an Augustinian monk as well as a university teacher. That he was a monk is significant because, as such, he was already part of a 'protest' movement. Despite the inevitable abuse and corruption of the intentions of their founders, the monastic orders of both the Roman and the Orthodox Churches (and the oldest orders predated their division by several centuries) represented a desire for a simpler and more authentic way of being Christian.

The monastic movement first grew in the deserts of the Middle East and North Africa as a reaction against the growing complacency and compromise of the churches of the cities, with their wealth and privilege, as Christianity became comfortable and respectable in the late Roman world. (Interestingly, the monastic movement derived much of its theological impetus from St John.) Monasteries became places of great learning and scholarship, as well as of self-denying devotion, and over the centuries they attracted some of the most able thinkers and theologians of their day. And, as monks, they stood somewhat apart from the institutional Church, with its wealth and politics.

So in Martin Luther (1483–1546) we have a literate, scholarly man who, by all accounts, had a somewhat persistent and perfectionist personality. He was given to what we would call introspection and self-criticism. And it was this, first, that made him look for an answer to a nagging problem. Try as he might, he could not shake off a feeling of failure and guilt. He was a good monk; he did all that was required of him, and more. He performed all the required devotions, he prayed, he subjected himself to all the prescribed disciplines of his monastic order – he even went on pilgrimage to Rome. But nothing could lift his acute self-awareness of guilt and failure. The traditions of the Church could do nothing for him. The elaborate theology of Rome had no answer to the very personal question that Luther was asking.

But St Paul did! As Luther read Paul's Letter to the Romans he felt he was listening to a kindred spirit. He heard Paul agonizing (or so Luther thought) over the same issue of unresolved failure and guilt (have a look at Romans chapter 7 for the flavour). He thought that the shortcomings which Paul seemed to identify in the institutional Jewish religion of his day highlighted the same problems that he, Martin Luther, had encountered in the inability of the Church of Rome to meet his deepest needs. No amount of pious religious observance or agonized self-discipline could help Paul (or, rather, Saul of Tarsus as he was previously known) – any more than it could help Martin Luther. A religion based on pious 'good works' and strict obedience to ritual rules could not address a deep personal awareness of guilt in the eyes of God. Only God could do that, and his grace, Luther learned from Paul, was totally unearned and undeserved. It was the gift of Christ, not of the Church, and to be received by faith.

Now, it has to be said that the earlier part of this argument was probably not quite what Paul meant. Paul, we should remember, had a very high opinion of his own Jewish faith, and he never rejected his fundamental Jewish beliefs. He preached a profoundly Jewish message to the pagan world of his day – but it was a Jewish message with a huge difference, namely that it declared that Jesus Christ is the Messiah and Lord of the whole world, not just the Jews, thus redefining the 'people of God' to include Gentiles as well as Jews. This was the 'seismic shift' prompted by Saul's remarkable experience on the road to Damascus. But what I described earlier was certainly how Martin Luther understood Paul – medieval Catholicism was, for him, much the same as first-century Judaism, and this idea has stuck for five centuries in many Protestant circles. So for Luther it was as though, as for Saul of Tarsus, scales had fallen from his eyes. The answer to his question was to be found in scripture, not in the institutional Church, and that answer was the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ.

Luther was not the first to query the theology and practice of his Church, and to suggest instead that the Bible itself held the answer to what we would call 'the big questions of life'. Over the centuries, no doubt in part because of widespread illiteracy, the Church hierarchy had kept to itself the task of reading and interpreting the scriptures. It claimed that its authority and its practices were derived from its own traditions and earlier teaching, as well as from its interpretation of scripture. (All Churches do this, in fact – it was just that the Church of Rome was honest about it.) And so the interpretation of scripture was strictly the preserve of those who: a] had the authority of the Church to do it; b] did it in line with existing teaching; and c] could read (in Rome's case, Latin).

Protest

The move towards a more self-determined and 'Bible-based' religion can be traced back to people such as John Wyclif (1329–84) in England and John (Jan) Hus (1369–1415) in Bohemia. Both wanted to translate the Bible into the common spoken language (the vernacular) of the ordinary people. Ulrich von Hutten (1488–1523) and his friend Crotus Rubianus queried the value of the Church's elaborate rules and practices, as well as the power of the clergy to hold the people in fear while they themselves profited from the system (these, of course, are timeless protests!). A near contemporary of Luther, Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536), a Dutch scholar, poured scorn on the complexities of the Church, urging instead a simple life based on a careful and informed reading of the Bible.

But Luther was the man for the moment. Yet he might have stayed in enlightened obscurity if it were not for politics and Church economics. One of the practices that had disillusioned Martin Luther was the profitable idea that the Church could offer time off from purgatory (the unpleasantly laxativesounding period of purification between death and heaven – a non-Biblical but nonetheless powerful concept!) in return for a cash payment. This was called an indulgence – and a profitable business was to be had, not least if you owned some holy relics (fragments of the 'One True Cross', the bones or teeth of a saint, and so on) and could charge the faithful for the privilege of viewing them as the means to earning an indulgence.

Luther lived in Wittenberg, Germany, and the local prince, Frederick, had a lucrative relic collection. A particularly auspicious day for viewing relics was All Saints Day, 1 November. In 1517, the newly appointed Archbishop of Mainz, with large bills to pay and an eye to the Pope's favour (St Peter's basilica was being built in Rome, and a generous donation would not go amiss) sent his own 'relic road-show' to Wittenberg for All Saints Day. Frederick, fearing financial loss ('new' relics would divert the crowds from his) was more than happy to support Martin Luther's objections to this. Luther said that such exploitation of the religious fears of the people was quite wrong, that the Pope, if he had the control over purgatory that he claimed, should not use it for profit; and that, anyway, relics had little to offer compared to scripture. The last objection may not have thrilled Frederick, but it was too late to argue because, in time-honoured academic fashion, Luther added (for good measure) another ninety-two theological arguments (or 'theses') to the list and nailed all ninety-five to the church door!

Reformation

And that, in essence, is where the 'protest' in Protestantism comes from. (Strictly speaking, the term itself dates from 1529, when the German princes issued a 'Protest' against the political authority of the Pope.) One thing rapidly led to another, as much for political reasons as for theological, given the resentment, in Germany especially, of the Pope's interference in internal political and economic affairs. Despite banishment by the Emperor, and Rome's threat of excommunication, following the wonderfully named 1521 Diet of Worms ('diet' = imperial council, at a place called Worms), Luther stuck to his cause, aided by the recent invention of cheap mass printing which meant that his ideas spread around Europe in a very few years. His vernacular Bible followed quickly after, and became a classic of early German literature. And what was subsequently called the Reformation was under way.

Luther continued to follow his convictions, with a free conscience guided, he would have said, by the Holy Spirit. He began to query the traditional, and very powerful, role of the priesthood, questioning not only celibacy (non-marriage of clergy – Luther himself married in 1525) but also priestly authority, versus that of the Bible and of the conscience of the individual before God. In many respects Luther was a conservative, though – he retained some of the traditional views of the Mass, for example, arguing that while it was not a 'sacrifice' as such, the bread and wine were certainly changed into the body and blood of Christ. And he accepted the place of 'godly princes' in the order of things (perhaps because he had one or two friends in high places!). Others, however, seized the opportunity to go further. Some, more politically radical than Luther, sought social equality for the peasants. Others, more adventurous theologically, overturned many traditional readings of scripture, arguing for a more critical approach.

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Excerpted from Protestant Tradition by David Rhymer. Copyright © 2008 Bravo Ltd. Excerpted by permission of Bravo Ltd.
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