Rev. Erudite Redneck, B.S., B.S., M.A., M.Div.

Sometimes, actually often, I just shake my head at specialist and their tunnel vision. As a geographer we are trained to see things in systems, interlocking and layered systems, spread out spatially over time. To look for answers you most often have to see the whole picture outside of the specialty. Enigmas often dissolve when seen from a broader visual. Most disciplines won't let their practitioners out of their academic closets, much less outside the house.

It wasn't any theology or philosophy that allowed the reformation. The thoughts of the reformation had bubbled up in one form or another for over a thousand years. There were active reformers, in the Anabaptist and Cathars and Bogomils to name the most visible. But these were small bubbles of resistance and could be suppressed, isolated, or theological cleansed by a crusade from the establishment Literal Church.

Look around a bit and you will find that two underlying technological items make this reform bubble too large for the Church to contain or burst.

One was the printing press invented by Gutenberg in 1450 and well perfected by the early 1500's.
The other was the manufacture of paper driven by the need to print books on something and supplied by the fad of 1500 of wearing new linen underwear. The underwear was worn until, well, it shouldn't be anymore and discarded. Thus it became the rags, the raw material for the brand new paper industry.

So by 1516 when William Tyndale, the real long term spiritual leader of that particular reform movement, translated the Bible into a usable Latin/Greek version and printed in a paper book and circulated it widely there was something to print it on and something to print it with.

This time when the Church tried to squash it and burn all the copies there were too many and they were too well distributed for it to be effective.
The Bible was no longer literally chained to the cathedral pulpit.
It had escaped the control of the Church. It was in the hands of all of the clergy and many of the literate people.
Then a year latter, just one year, Luther posted his list on the Wittenburg door.
Powerful thing the written word.
There had been other German Bibles printed before Luther's, but in 1522 he opened the flood gate even more with his version. In 1525 we have the Tyndale English Bible being printed and giving King Henry fits because everybody was now their own theologian.

The reformation wasn't really much of a "new" theological shift as it was a successful theological shift due to an new information shift.

Knowledge moved from what you were told and could see in images, to what you could read.

Luther and Calvin etc. killed as many heretics as the Church. They went about killing the Anabaptist with the same zeal as the Church. In the end they just became a slight variation of the thing they reformed against. They had their own armies and princes and governments and wars and inquisitions and established their own Literalist repressions. Actully they were better at it than the Church.

What made the Reformation of the 1600's possible?
Think printing press and dirty underwear. Now if that doesn't prove that "God moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform," nothing will.
 

Now ER that "specailist" critisim wasn't targeted towards you, I just remembered how sensitive the erudite side of your syzygy is. Sorry about the essay size of the post but you throw out so much bait that us little fish have to nibble a while on it.
 

Dude, I thought what you wrote was dead-on. I can't remember now whether McGrath even glosses over the advent of the printing press, but even even if he didn't I'm sure that tectonic shift underlied his thinking. It really is a good book. ... The Anabaptist *did* call Luther and his bunch "new papists." ... I've always admired Zwingli more than Luther, which is ironic, since Luther was personally all about thinking, although there were the Schmalkaldic (can never spell that) wars led by Lutheran princes, and Zwingli was all acting, and fighting, and warring, although there was a lot of thinking going down in the Swiss cantons, too.
 

But Osama bin Calvin, he was a real terrorist.
 

Aren't they all, after their fashion. Once you leave Love and Grace behind you are serving the wrong master.
 

When I was in seminary, the professor who taught the pre-Reformation history class was a UCC Calvinist, with a doctorate in late-medieval theology from the University of Tubingen, and taught from the perspective of Calvin's hope for the Church - Semper Reformata. We learned of the series of reforms and what spurred them on, including the last real big pre-Reformation movement, the Hussites in Bohemia.

McGrath's central thesis that the "intellectual origins" of the Reformation are sui generis is not supported by fact, by theory, or by anything else. McGrath, however, has written some pretty awful anti-Catholic stuff in the past, so to find roots of Reformation ideas in Catholic thought would be unthinkable. A good, perhaps even better, resource than Alister McGrath is Heiko Obermann (?), a scholar of the Reformation, late pre-Reformation, who has written a biography of Luther, a biography of Thomas Muntzer, and a collection of essays on the intellectual origins of the Reformation and the radical Reformers. Drlobojo is right that the Reformation was aided and abetted by the printing press, as well as German resentment of Italian (Papal) interference in its internal affairs, including the sale of indulgences (which was nothing more than a huge tax). At the level of ideology, however, the Reformation was, for the most part at the beginning, pretty modest. Only Roman intransigence radicalized the Reformers; an exchange between Luther and Erasmus shows that the cynical Catholic monk and the raging Reformer were both pretty conservative men; Erasmus was an institutional fellow who believed that change could only be wrought from within, while Luther thought Erasmus was kidding himself, compromising with evil as it were.
 

Yes, especially: "Roman intransigence radicalized the Reformers."

All they set out for, initially, was more of a renovation of the church.

But, the Protestant Renovation doesn't have quite the ring.
 

The very terms Protest-ant and Reform-ation declare that they are refering to something pre-existing that is being protested and reformed. How much new thought is needed here?
 

Well, wouldn't a good, thoughtful Protestant Reformer say that he was Protesting aberrations? And reforming the church to the original? Ergo, not much "new" thought would be needed.

Ya know, people scoff at the old Baptist-are-not-Protestants "Trail of Blood" argument. I don't.

It might be overstating it to say that any modern Baptists can trace an actual lineage to the earliest believers; but, that's the point: The Church of Jesus Christ is one thing, Christian religion is another.

Read "The Trail of Blood":

http://www.exchangedlife.com
/trail_of_blood_booklet.htm
 

Yeah, I used to talk about the First Baptist Church of Ephesus my self.
Having taken a hard look at Paulian Christianity, unless the Baptist are claiming to be Gnostic Christians I don't think they would want to claim anything prior to the middle of the second century. Given their Literalist history I don't think Gnosticism is in their past. As far as continuity, the Roman Church itself could be said to have been reconstructed at least four times since the second century.
 

Now, drlobojo, Calvin may not have been the nicest guy in history, but it isn't historically accurate to make the claim that he killed as many people as the papists. Other than Michael Servetus (who had it coming) who else did he kill? And anyway, Calvin argued against Servetus being burned alive ... he wanted Servetus beheaded, so cut the guy some slack!

(full disclosure, I'm a Calvin College alum) :)
 

Allan,
I've run into examples of his intolerance and tendency to execution several times over the years. Most come during his theocratic rule of Geneva.

Just for witchcraft in one year he :"...1545 twenty-three people were burned to death in Geneva under charges of practicing witchcraft and attempting to spread the plague.."

In another example he had a six year old beheaded for striking his father and mother.

Most biographers dismiss these kind of acts because "it was the practice of the times" but it wasn't. The Reformation ushered in this behavior that had been supressed for the two centuries before.

Intolerance breeds death.

I'm sure that somewhere out there is a non-apologist biography that shows his bloody side.
 

Perhaps, but I'm not sure Wikipedia is the best source for such information, either. ;)

Anyway, as far as I've heard, Servetus was the only heretic Calvin killed. The rest were just witches, and if they weren't witches, clearly they wouldn't have been convicted. (We all know there are indisputable scientific means by which to identify witches.) Plus 20-30 witches is still 10's of thousands short of a papist Inquisition.
 

Comparing body counts is a fool's game.
 

Calvin had his chance to practice what he preached. So how did he do?

In Geneva……"The death penalty against heresy, idolatry, and blasphemy, and the barbarous custom of the torture were retained. Adultery after the second offence, was likewise punished by death.
"These were prohibitive and protective laws intended to prevent and punish irreligion and immorality......Watchmen were appointed to see that people went to church. The members of the Consistory visited every house once a year to examine into the faith and morals of the family. Every unseemly word and act on the street was reported, and the offenders were cited before the Consistory to be either censured or warned, or handed over to the Council for severer punishment." (HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH , Phillip Schaff, Page 490-491, Volume 8)

"Most of his arguments are directed to showing that the church has the right and calling to exercise discipline not simply moral, but also physical. The civil administration exists only for the defense of the church. It belongs to the state to carry out the regulations of the church, to prevent idolatry, sacrilege, heresy, etc…Calvin virtually made every sin a crime, and so did not hesitate to make use of the civil power for the execution of church discipline…. The rigor with which Calvin’s ordinances were executed soon called forth a storm of protest. No mercy was shown to the enemies of the theocracy. New methods of torture were introduced, and the obstinate were given to understand that unless they yielded, "They would end their days in such torment". …. During the years 1542-1546 fifty-eight executions occurred and seventy-six were banished. During the pestilence of 1545, thirty-four women were burned or quartered on suspicion of spreading the plague by magical means. (Albert Henry Newman, A MANUAL OF CHURCH HSITORY, pp. 219-220, Volume II)

The influence of John Calvin had begun to be felt in English affairs. His books had appeared in translations in England. He was responsible in a measure for the demon of hate and fierce hostility, which the Baptists of England had to encounter. He advised that "Anabaptists and reactionists should be alike put to death". (John T. Christian, FRAUDE, HISTORY OF ENGALAND, p. 198, Vol. 1)

Want some more? I can keep this up. It is all over the web from well documented sources. But that’s not the point. As GKS says comparing body counts is not the game.


Calvin himself maybe only killed several hundred, but he inspired so much more.
If I had lived in Calvin’s Geneva believing what I do, I would be burned at the stake.
My ancestors in fact did live in nearby Zurich and finally fled to the Palatines area on the Rhine in 1650 and then to America in 1730.


The problem is that his influence still lives in the naegative way. There are so many drooling at the prospect of implementing a Calvin like government even today, that it is scary.
If it were just ancient history….. but it still lives…..

As I have said before, if you aren’t serving Love and Grace then you are listening to the wrong Master.
 

Again, still nothing like an Inquisition and I think some of that stuff is a bit overstated.

But this line, "There are so many drooling at the prospect of implementing a Calvin like government even today, that it is scary." is just patently false. Let's not mix up the drooling fundies and actual real live Calvinists, shall we?

But really folks, you need to lighten up. :) I'd say that it should be abundantly obvious that I was joking. Perhaps you all are too used to the fundies trolling your blogs to get a good joke anymore, eh? After all, I wrote, "And anyway, Calvin argued against Servetus being burned alive ... he wanted Servetus beheaded, so cut the guy some slack!" and you folks are taking me seriously?!

The Monty Python reference should have been a dead give-away, no?

*guffaw*
 

Allen said: "But this line, "There are so many drooling at the prospect of implementing a Calvin like government even today, that it is scary." is just patently false. Let's not mix up the drooling fundies and actual real live Calvinists, shall we?"

I won't if you won't.
Nothing I said was directed at "Calvinist", yet. But to think that NO Calvinist are droolers is probably short of the mark a bit in that they seem to be found in almost every denomination, religion, etc..

Time for Calvinist Humor?

You Might Be A Calvinist if.....

You might be a Calvinist if you think that J. C. stands for John Calvin instead of Jesus Christ.

You might be a Calvinist if you know god loves you and you think that he 'might' love me.

You might be a Calvinist if you know that Jesus died for you and you think that he 'might' have died for me.

You might be a Calvinist if you 'let wind' in a crowded elevator and believe that it was meant to be.

You might be a Calvinist if you have an overwhelming compulsion to burn me at the stake.

You might be a Calvinist if you frequently contradict yourself and complain that others don't understand you.

You might be a Calvinist if you actually believe that Reformed Theology 'might' be true.

---Anon
 

Re, "his theocratic rule of Geneva ..."

That alone is enough for me to want Calvin's title of "Protestant church father," or whatever, stripped away for good -- whatever his ideas.

And he had at least one good thought, in my opinion: If you don't know whether you're one of the elect, act like it anyway -- because God is still God, and you're not, whether or not you're one of the elect -- not to gain grace, but because God is God.

I like that.
 

Any thought with "the elect" in it is not a good thought.
 

Note I attributed that to Mr. C.

What I like is the idea of continuing in one's relationship with God whether or not one feels like it, wants to -- or even *believes*.

Commitment to commitment is the only thing there is sometimes -- not unlike rough spots in life friendships and marriages.
 

Hmmm... some of that Calvinist humor is actually funny. What's funnier is that the website they were taken from:

http://www.ritualabusefree.org/Calvinism.htm

clearly didn't mean them as humorous at all, particularly the last few. ;)

Oh well, as a Calvinist, I'm used to baptists checking me for horns and a tail when they talk to me. I just chalk it up as another example of their total depravity. ;)
 

One man's humor...:)

Do, you all, check out the web site:
http://www.ritualabusefree.org

Calvanism is only a part of what they have to comment on. You may find your own selves there.
 

Papist or Calvinist, whatever. Those are some damned cool hats. Where can I get one?