Church and Theology in the Modern Era: From the Reformation to the End of the Eighteenth Century

By Ferdinand Christian Baur, Peter C. Hodgson and Robert F. Brown

Church and Theology in the Modern Era covers the period from the Reformation to the end of the eighteenth century and is based on lectures delivered by Baur in the 1840s and 1850s. It was published after his death as the fourth volume of his church history. The first and last volumes (Christianity and the Christian Church of the First Three Centuries and Church and Theology in the Nineteenth Century) have appeared in English translation from Wipf and Stock. This book contains a wealth of information, not only about the well-known figures of the Reformation and its aftermath, but also about other important persons who are often overlooked. It attends to both Protestant and Catholic history and shows that this is the most turbulent period in church history since the early years of Christianity. Ecclesiastical and political controversies are often intertwined, and momentous decisions are made that affect the modern world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Aug 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666768404

Ferdinand Christian Baur

Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792-1860) was Professor of Theology at the University of Tubingen and the greatest historical theologian of the nineteenth century, writing seminal studies in the history of religions, New Testament, church history, and history of doctrine. Peter C. Hodgson is Charles G. Finney Professor of Theology Emeritus at the Divinity School of Vanderbilt University. He has specialized in works by Baur and Hegel, as well as in contemporary issues of constructive theology. Robert F. Brown is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of Delaware. He has specialized in the history of philosophy and the philosophy of religion, with a focus on German idealism.

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Church and Theology in the Modern Era

From The Reformation to the End of the Eighteenth Century

Ferdinand Christian Baur

Edited by Peter C. Hodgson

Translated by Robert F. Brown

CHURCH AND THEOLOGY IN THE MODERN ERA

From the Reformation to the End of the Eighteenth Century

Copyright ©

2023

Peter C. Hodgson and Robert F. Brown. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers,

199

W.

8

th Ave., Suite

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, Eugene, OR

97401

.

Cascade Books

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199

W.

8

th Ave., Suite

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www.wipfandstock.com

paperback isbn: 978-1-6667-6838-1

hardcover isbn: 978-1-6667-6839-8

ebook isbn: 978-1-6667-6840-4

Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Names: Baur, Ferdinand Christian,

1792–1860

, author. | Brown, Robert F.,

1941

–, translator. | Hodgson, Peter Crafts,

1934–

, editor.

Title: Church and theology in the modern era : from the Reformation to the end of the eighteenth century / Ferdinand Christian Baur ; translated by Robert F. Brown and edited by Peter C. Hodgson.

Description: Eugene, OR: Cascade Books,

2023.

| Includes index.

Identifiers:

isbn 978-1-6667-6838-1 (

paperback

). | isbn 978-1-6667-6839-8 (

hardcover

). | isbn 978-1-6667-6840-4

(ebook).

Subjects: LSCH: Church history—

16

th century. | Church history—

17

th century. | Church history—

18

th century. | Theology—History. | Theology, Doctrinal—History. | Reformation.

Classification: BT

21.2

B

29

2023

(paperback). | BT

21.2

(ebook).

03/08/23

Translation of Ferdinand Christian Baur, Kirchengeschichte der neueren Zeit, von der Reformation bis zum Ende des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts, edited by Ferdinand Friedrich Baur (Tübingen: Verlag und Druck von L. Fr. Fues,

1863

).

Table of Contents

Title Page

Editor’s Foreword

Preface

First Period: From the Beginning of the Reformation to the Beginning of the Eighteenth Century

Part 1: The History of the Reformation

1. Introduction

2. Humanism

3. The German Reformation up to 1521

4. The Imperial Diet at Worms in 1521

5. Luther at Wartburg Castle and the Proceedings in Wittenberg

6. The Diet at Nürnberg, 1522 and 1524; Pope Adrian VI; Pope Clement VII; the Regensburg Agreement

7. The Peasants’ War; Thomas Müntzer; Karlstadt

8. The Reformation in Switzerland

9. The Controversy about the Lord’s Supper

10. The Reformation in Germany 1525–1530

11. The Reformation Spreads

12. The Diet of Augsburg, 1530

13. The Schmalkaldic League;145 the German Reformation up to 1546

14. The Reformation in England until 1542

15. The Schmalkaldic War

16. The Interim

17. Elector Moritz and the Religious Peace, 1555

Part 2: The History of the Catholic Church

1. The Council of Trent

2. The Jesuit Order

3. The Persecution of Protestants in Catholic Lands

4. Religious Controversy in Germany since 1555; The Thirty Years’ War

5. The History of the Theological Framework, Theological Controversies, and the Theological Sciences in the Catholic Church

6. The History of the Cultus and of the Christian Life in the Catholic Church

7. The History of the Hierarchy

Part 3: The History of the Lutheran Church

I. The History of German Protestantism in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

1. Lutheran Controversies Prior to 1555

2. German Protestantism from 1555 to the Formula of Concord

3. Syncretism; Calixtus

4. Pietism; Spener

5. Protestant Mysticism

6. The History of Lutheran Dogmatics and Theology

II. The Cultus and the Ethical Conditions in the Lutheran Church

III. The Governance of the Lutheran Church

Part 4: The History of the Reformed Church

1. The Swiss Reformation after the Death of Zwingli; Calvin

2. The Reformed Church in Germany and the Netherlands

3. The Reformed Church in Scotland and England

4. The History of the Theological Framework, the Theological Controversies, and the Theological Sciences in the Reformed Church

5. The Cultus and the Ethical Life of the Reformed Church

6. The Governance of the Reformed Church; Calvinist Church Discipline and Moral Propriety

Part 5: The History of the Smaller Sects

I. The Sects Related to the Reformed Church

1. The Collegiants

2. The Quakers; Fox; Penn

II. The Smaller Sects not Closely Related to the Lutheran Church or to the Reformed Church

1. The Anabaptists and the Mennonites

2. The Unitarians and the Socinians

3. The Sects and the Churches

Appendix: Attempts to End the Divisions within the Churches

Part 6: The History of the Spreading of Christianity throughout the World

Appendix: Christianity vis-à-vis Unbelief and Philosophy

Second Period: The Eighteenth Century

Part 1: The History of the Catholic Church

1. The History of the Papacy up through Clement XIV

2. The Papacy in Conflict with the Modern State in the Era of Emperor Joseph II, and in Conflict with the French Revolution; Pope Pius VI

3. The History of the Catholic Church in Individual Lands

4. The Controversies in France about Papal Decrees

5. The History of the Jesuit Order

6. The Oppression and Persecution of Protestants in Catholic Lands

Part 2: The History of the Lutheran Church of the Eighteenth Century

1. The Controversies about Pietism at the Beginning of the Eighteenth Century

2. The Impetus that Eighteenth Century Protestant Theology Received from the Philosophy of Christian Wolff

3. The Enlightenment and Popular Philosophy

4. Lessing and the Wolfenbüttel Fragments

5. The Wöllner Religious Edict

Part 3: The History of the Reformed Church

1. The Character of the Lutheran Church and That of the Reformed Church

2. The Episcopal Church in England, and the Scottish Church

3. The Church in Geneva

Part 4: The History of the Smaller Church Bodies

1. The Older Sects

2. The Newly Established Sects

Appendix

Part 5: The History of the Spread of Christianity in the Eighteenth Century and the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century

1. The Missions of the Catholic Church

2. The Protestant Missions

Editor’s Foreword

Peter C. Hodgson

The fourth volume of Baur’s History of the Christian Church, which we are calling Church and Theology in the Modern Era: From the Reformation to the End of the Eighteenth Century , is a thorough work of 680 pages. ¹ Not only is there a detailed discussion of the Reformation and of the fundamentally new situation it introduced, creating a division in the church that could not be overcome; but also the Catholic Church itself and its changed circumstances are given due attention. Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792–1860, professor of theology at the University of Tübingen from 1826 to 1860) is a Lutheran Protestant who believes that the Reformation captured something of the radicalism of the New Testament and the early church, but he also recognizes that the Catholic Church continues to be a valid church with its own insights, institutions, and internal conflicts.

The Reformation would not have happened without Martin Luther. Here is an instance of how a singular, unique individual fundamentally altered the course of history. There were of course antecedents to church reform in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but these could never attain sufficient traction to bring about change. The church initially regarded Luther as another of those ineffective reformers, and dealt with him accordingly, including excommunication when he directly challenged the pope, but he could not be stopped. His forceful personality, gifts of communication, and strategic brilliance, plus unique circumstances and the ineptitude of the opposition allowed him to succeed where others had failed. He was also fortunate to have as a colleague in Wittenberg Philipp Melanchthon, who shaped the nascent Protestant Church after Luther’s death in essential ways; and to find in Switzerland sympathetic supporters, especially Ulrich Zwingli. (Baur’s affinity for Zwingli may be partly understood in light of the historical connection of Tübingen with the Swiss Reformation.)

Protestantism got planted in parts of Germany and Switzerland and then spread to neighboring lands. Baur’s account shows how improbable all of this seems, and a measure of luck played a role (such as the threat of the Turks in Hungary and Austria, which caused German princes to overlook disturbances in their own lands); but at the same time there is an apparent inevitability about it. Baur attributes this to the fact that the Reformers touched on an essential aspect of religion and advanced a self-understanding that deepened the human spirit, just as Jesus and Paul had done at the outset of the Christian movement. Baur refers to this as the Protestant principle, a principle of subjectivity and freedom. It realizes itself gradually and in different forms over the centuries covered by this book.

The sixteenth century was a remarkably consequential century, certainly the most important of early modernity. Baur’s account shows how both the Lutheran and Reformed Churches got established and began experiencing internal conflicts; how the Reformation spread to other parts of Europe and took on a distinctive character in Britain; how the Catholic Church adopted internal reforms and defense mechanisms, including the establishment of the Society of Jesus; and in general how much European history (and later, American history) was permanently changed. The seventeenth century essentially played out the consequences of the sixteenth, including the Thirty Years’ War; while the eighteenth was moving, despite Catholic resistance, toward transformations brought about by the Enlightenment and modern critical consciousness.

The First Period treats the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, while the much briefer Second Period does the same for the eighteenth century. Following the first part of the First Period, on the history of the Reformation, Baur turns to the history of the Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed Churches. Concerning the first, the Council of Trent made no concessions to the Protestants and laid the groundwork for an extensive struggle. The Jesuits became the shock troops of the established order and led persecutions of the Protestant heretics, although a political settlement was established in German lands by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The history of the Lutheran Church (of German Protestantism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) is quite detailed because Baur is writing from a German and continental European perspective. This may be unsettling for the Anglo-American perspective of many readers of this book in English translation, but it is good to be drawn out of one’s comfort zone and confronted by a different point of view and unfamiliar details, of which there are many. These details may seem trivial, and many of them are in the larger scheme of things, but they reveal the human propensity for argument, struggle, conflict, and resolution. We gain lessons about human nature from Baur’s details: think today about the political arena for analogous conflicts. The history of the Reformed Church includes Switzerland, the Netherlands, Scotland, and England, where the Episcopal or Anglican Church emerged as the chief alternative to Presbyterian systems of governance. Calvin is discussed and appreciated, but he is clearly not a Luther. As far as church history is concerned, Baur is much more interested in the Calvinist type of church governance than he is in Calvinist theology per se (other than on the Eucharist). But Luther is the main architect of the Protestant principle, which is the moving force behind so much of this history. The sectarian movement is not neglected, with appreciative attention directed to the Quakers, Anabaptists, Mennonites, Unitarians, and Socinians. Often the more pressing theological questions were raised by them, especially after Protestantism settled into a new orthodoxy and Lutheran theologians began arguing about minutiae related to the Lord’s Supper and other matters. The history of missions during these two centuries in Asia, the East and West Indies, and South America is an exclusively Catholic story. Protestants lacked the interest and resources, except in North America, where they established colonies.

Treatment of the eighteenth century includes sections on each of the major churches (Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, sectarian), and ends with a history of missions that continues on into the nineteenth century (see F. F. Baur’s comment on the latter). The history of the Catholic Church shows how it, and the papacy in particular, came into increasing conflict with political movements and secularizing forces, which led finally to the French Revolution and radical attempts at secularization. Fairly early in the eighteenth century a renewed belief in miracles became widespread, with reports of supernatural healings and experiences especially in France. The Jesuits, who effectively created a state within the state, played an active role in mission work, but their political ambitions caused them to be expelled from Portugal and France, then other countries, until the Order was abolished by Pope Clement XIV in 1773 for abusing its privileges (it was restored in 1814). Protestants continued to be persecuted and suppressed in Catholic lands, especially in France with draconian measures. (People do not seem to learn, Baur remarks at one point, that religious persecution is largely fruitless and counterproductive.) The history of the Lutheran Church during this period focuses on the Pietistic controversy at the beginning of the century,² then the influence of the philosophy of Wolff, the Enlightenment and popular philosophy, and Lessing and the Wolfenbüttel Fragments. Very little is said about the Reformed Church, but the new sectarian movements are discussed (Herrnhuters, Methodists, Swedenborg), as well as efforts at church union (Leibniz).

Baur’s final section contains a detailed discussion of missionary activity at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. (His information here, as elsewhere, is encyclopedic.) Baur seems to regard such activity as an unalloyed good and is not sensitive to how it might also be seen as a projection of imperial power by the European states (especially Britain). Baur assumes that Christianity is the one true and universal religion (having subsumed and perfected Judaism), to which there are no contemporary rivals, except perhaps Islam, which is scarcely mentioned.³

The work concludes with unusually personal remarks about the significance of history, the critical study of it, and the way in which the divine Spirit is revealed through the historical process. According to F. F. Baur, these remarks are only contained in the first delivery of the lectures, in 1827–28 (shortly after Baur’s arrival in Tübingen), and were intended as a conclusion to the entire sequence of church history. The remarks predate the controversies Baur later became embroiled in, and have an appealing directness and simplicity. They show the influence of Schelling (and perhaps Schleiermacher), not Hegel (whom Baur first encountered a few years later). Baur is convinced that historical science is not (for Protestant Christians) a threat to faith but provides an undergirding for it. He warns against the one-sided views of a disinterested intellectualism that has no clue about the depths of Christianity, and of a shallow fideism that smoothes over all differences.

Robert Brown has translated the text and I have typed it into the computer. Our editorial work has consisted mainly of providing explanatory footnotes (marked as [Ed.]), of breaking up long paragraphs, of inserting headings and subheadings from the table of contents into the text,⁴ of adding occasional clarifying phrases to the text in square brackets, and of silently completing information on the names and dates of the many figures and authors mentioned by Baur.

1

. It is based on a lecture manuscript that Baur used in the

1840

s and

1850

s, and that was published posthumously by his son in

1863

. Baur himself was able to publish only the first three volumes of his church history.

2

. Baur’s discussion of Pietism is interesting because he seems to endorse its central conviction. In comparing Pietism and orthodoxy, he writes: This was the point on which Pietism most successfully cornered the orthodox system and so strikingly spelled out its consequences. In order to separate being religious from doing theology, orthodoxy had to segregate theological knowledge as such from the practical life of someone who is reborn. But since theological knowledge has the Word of God for its contents, orthodoxy would have lapsed into the Pelagian heresy had it agreed that there is a knowledge of God’s Word obtainable via purely natural powers. If one accepts and understands it as the orthodox theologians must presume to, then this inner presence of what they accept as a means of grace is on no account sheerly the work of natural powers; instead it is the operation of the prevenient grace that necessarily must precede one’s conversion and rebirth—because God in fact has conversion and rebirth take place via this teaching within one. Baur also warns that Pietism is one-sided, focusing on only the subjective element in religion. An existential engagement in religion is essential, but also a critical distancing from it on the part of scholarly science.

3

. Baur writes that, while force of arms did not succeed against Islam, now Christianity uses the quietly effective power of the word and of instruction to win the day against all of the religions contrary to Christianity, and it is coming closer, bit by bit, to its conquest of the world. This assessment must be called into question in light of subsequent events. Christianity is only one among several great world religions, and it in particular has been challenged by the secularism of recent times.

4

. Only major divisions are found in Baur’s manuscript. The headings and subheadings in the table of contents are in all likelihood provided by F. F. Baur. We have retained these (sometimes with slight modifications) and have added them to the text as well.

Preface

Ferdinand Friedrich Baur

It is very gratifying to be able to complete the publication of my late father’s church history and bring the whole work to a conclusion, by filling the gap left open between his church history of the Middle Ages and that of the nineteenth century. This fourth volume covers the modern era from the Reformation up to the end of the eighteenth century.

For this purpose I had at my disposal the manuscript for these lectures on church history, most carefully worked out and furnished with numerous and continual improvements and additions, some of which date from the last years of the author’s life.

Only a few years ago my father completely reworked a number of the larger and more important segments, and it may be of interest to identify them here. This affected all or part of these passages:

FIRST PERIOD. Part 1: 1, Introduction. 2, Humanism. 9, The Controversy about the Lord’s Supper. 16, The Interim. 17, The Religious Peace of 1555. Part 2: 2, The Jesuit Order. 3, Persecution of Protestants in France. 4, Religious Controversy in Germany since 1555. 7, The Gallican Church under Ludwig XIV. Part 3: I. 2–6, German Protestantism, etc. II, Cultus and Ethical Conditions of the Lutheran Church. III, Its Governance. Part 4: 4, Calvin’s Doctrines of the Lord’s Supper and of Predestination. 6, Zwinglian and Calvinist Church Governance. Part 5: II.1,The Anabaptists.

SECOND PERIOD. Part 1: 5, The Jesuit Order, Suspended by Clement XIV. Part 2: The History of the Lutheran Church in the Eighteenth Century. Part 4: 2.1, The Herrnhuters. 2.2 ,The Methodists. 2.3, Swedenborg.

My editorial work was made very much easier by the excellent condition of the lecture notebook. Most of the text was directly ready for the printer. My efforts needed only to comprise the external elements of editing and the placement of supplementary material, by fitting together components from earlier and more recent revisions, and creating special headings to enhance the book’s clarity. Where more recent revision of a section has passed over much in the older manuscript, in order to condense the ever-growing material for the sake of the lectures, I have taken the liberty of reinstating this material from the earlier version.

The history of missions presented here extends beyond the bounds of the Second Period and into the nineteenth century, and so forms a partial expansion of volume 5. It treats the status of the missionary enterprise to the end of the third decade of the nineteenth century. The writer went no further than this because, with an ever-increasing expansion of other parts of the lectures into later times [i.e., the nineteenth century], these parts on missions added to the size of the text. Nevertheless I did not think they should be omitted, since several reviews of the nineteenth-century volume have regretted the absence of this material.

The explanation for the disparate sizes of the two periods is to be found in the remark on p. 557, in the introduction to the Second Period, which treats the eighteenth century. Dogma and its history are not included and treated to the same extent and as fully as is the case in the three volumes of the previous history of the church. The reason for this is that this period is replete with so much material about church history itself, about ecclesiastical-political and cultural-historical issues. I set aside the idea I initially favored, of including additional sections from my father’s Vorlesungen über die christliche Dogmengeschichte,⁵ because that would have meant enlarging this into more than a single volume. However, the main reason is that doing so would have altered the form the writer gave to this part of his church history, by his selection and delimitation of its material contents.

This volume concludes publication of all five volumes of Baur’s church history,⁶ which is the fruit of a lifetime of labor, an eloquent monument to the multifaceted and tirelessly diligent research of its author, who for long after his death is still esteemed in equal measure in learned circles as he was in his lifetime through his lectures. It is the product of those lectures, in which he was known to stimulate and captivate his audiences.

Tübingen, March 1863

Ferdinand Friedrich Baur

5

. [Ed.] Subsequently edited and published by F. F. Baur,

4

vols. in

3

(Leipzig,

1865

–

67

).

6

. [Ed.] Vol.

1

: Das Christenthum und die christliche Kirche der drei ersten Jahrhunderte (Tübingen: Fues,

1853

,

1860

). ET: Christianity and the Christian Church of the First Three Centuries, trans. R. F. Brown and P. C. Hodgson (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2019

). Vol.

2

: Die christliche Kirche vom Anfang des vierten bis zum Ende des sechsten Jahrhunderts (Tübingen: Fues,

1859

). Vol.

3

: Die christliche Kirche des Mittelalters, ed. F. F. Baur (Tübingen: Fues,

1861

). Vol.

4

: Kirchengeschichte der neueren Zeit, von der Reformation bis zum Ende des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts, ed. F. F. Baur (Tübingen: Fues,

1863

). ET: Church and Theology in the Modern Era: From the Reformation to the End of the Eighteenth Century, trans. R. F. Brown, ed. P. C. Hodgson (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2023

). Vol.

5

: Kirchengeschichte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, ed. E. Zeller (Leipzig,

1862

,

1877

). ET: Church and Theology in the Nineteenth Century, trans. R. F. Brown and P. C. Hodgson (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books,

2018

).

First Period

From the Beginning of the Reformation to the Beginning of the Eighteenth Century

Part 1

The History of the Reformation

1

Introduction

At no point in the history of the Christian Church is it as necessary as it is here to get our bearings regarding the general circumstances that are shaping the character of this new period. The momentous factor giving its name to the new period is the reformation of the church. Hence what connects the new period with the preceding one can just consist, above all, of the fact that what people had previously striven for so often and in vain, had then been obtained and realized. Therefore the church is then freed of the defects and abuses from which it previously suffered, and we embark upon the period on whose threshold we stand, a new state of affairs in which we behold the church as restored from its great decadence, and renewed.

But a reformation in this sense has certainly not happened. The church was not reformed, but instead was just internally divided and bifurcated. From the one church there were now two churches related in such a way that, whereas in one of them everything remained for the most part as it was before, in the other church everything it had been became something entirely different so that a wholly new church emerged in place of the former one. Thus the momentous factor in the new period can simply be recognized as a new principle entering into life. Although this new principle could have had its basis and origin simply in the idea of the Christian Church, and supposedly consisted simply of returning to what the church had originally been, this principle was nevertheless essentially different from what was foundational for the course of development the church had taken until then.

If we can just think of the meaning of the Reformation in conjunction with what results from historical reforms, then we can also understand the possibility of the Reformation from this perspective alone. For how can one conceive of the possibility of a reformation if the church finds itself in such a corrupt condition that, where the idea of Christianity¹ ought to have been realized, one could only see the opposite? How so, when even the church itself, instead of educating and preparing people for true Christianity, has instead done everything it could have to estrange them from true Christianity, with the result of its degenerate Christianity being simply a completely demoralized condition? The only way to escape from this condition was by going back beyond all that Christianity had become in the church—back to the point at which the church had first taken such a direction contrary to its own idea—so that what Christianity was originally can be separated as precisely as possible from what in the course of its history the church had first made out of Christianity. Yet even this return to original Christianity was only possible when religious consciousness in itself already stood at such a stage of its development that it knew, when it comes to religion and Christianity, how to clearly distinguish what is essential from what is nonessential. Also, only when it had sufficient energy to cut itself loose from all it had recognized as being untrue and incorrect, and to hold alone to what provides the greatest satisfaction to human concern for blessedness.

Yet at this point the next question must be: How is this possible in a church whose corruption can only result in weakening and killing religious feeling rather than strengthening and enlivening it? Such a possibility would not even be comprehensible if the substance of historical life were only located in what occurs in the external course of history, in the series of events in time; not comprehensible if there were not some human spirit to be differentiated from all external appearances of these events, indeed an immanent spirit but also one standing above these events and relating itself freely to them, a spirit always self-same among all the changing forms. While history so often hardly befits the essential nature of this spirit, the entire contents of history nevertheless always just serve for this spirit to mediate itself with itself, to become clear about itself, and to elevate itself to a higher level of its own spiritual consciousness. First and foremost, the period preceding the Reformation surely can be considered from just this perspective. In the entire state of the church, and in all the circumstances of ecclesiastical life, Christianity was so profoundly degraded, with the consequence that a different, a far purer and nobler, shape of the church emerged from this profound degradation. So while all this extreme decadence of the church seemed to proclaim that the spiritual power developing within the church had become undermined, instead in no other period as this was the spirit so inwardly strengthened within itself as to become conscious of its own spiritual power and freedom. This is a clear proof that the spirit had to carry out its own development throughout this period too, in order for it to assimilate this period as a moment of its own spiritual life, and in turn to dismantle this self-created form as soon as it no longer needed it.

If we compare the beginning of the Reformation period with the previous era of the Middle Ages, and do so entirely irrespective of the Reformation itself, we can simply be astonished at the endlessly great progress the spirit of humanity has made in this phase of its development. Only we must not confine our attention merely to matters of religion and church here, but instead must look first of all at the general circumstances that shape people’s spiritual lives. For good reasons we cite the time preceding the Reformation in order to designate the intermediary role it intrinsically plays in its locus between the ancient world and the modern world.² How much the spirit of humanity therefore had behind it as soon as it has once reached the end of the Middle Ages, where it then saw itself within a wide and free domain! How much it had cast off that previously restricted and suppressed it! And how much of an epoch-making character for all following times took place in this very period of transition from the Middle Ages to the modern era! Here we see the discovery of the New World, a discovery that endlessly extended the scope of our worldview. Also, many other discoveries and inventions of the most important sort, ones that completely revolutionized the circumstances of everyday life and, as especially in the case of the printing press, opened up new avenues for intellectual communication. Thus many new forms of knowledge entered into general circulation, and ideas that provided the most fruitful building-blocks and enrichment for a spirit stimulated in so many ways. All this was of course not directly linked to the Reformation itself, although there was a close connection inasmuch as the Reformation can be regarded, in the context of all these phenomena, as also simply the product of a time engaged in making the greatest advances. It is a very basic point that, at a time in which there has been so much progress in society’s general enlightenment and education, a progress that has made such a deep impression on people’s lives, the condition of a church still bearing the stamp of the Middle Ages could not remain unchanged. In this case even the church had to undergo the upheaval demanded by the spirit of the time. The greater the significance all this had for religion and Christianity, the more deep-seated and consequential such a change taking place had to be.

Of course we are now just attending to the general circumstances that make the Reformation as such possible. But how did the Reformation actually come about? Why did it occur in the German people,³ and in this definite way with this specific character? Why, in similar circumstances, had a reformation so often been sought in vain, whereas now it first appears in real life as what it was supposed to be according to its true nature? There is no explanation for this unless a new element be added to the mix, namely, the personal factor. Nowhere else do we see, as in the Reformation, such an intertwining of these two elements that are, as such, the factors of every very significant historical event, the general factor and the individual factor. How do we explain it when a concern for a reformation that is not merely ecclesiastical, but religious in nature, fails to produce any actual reformation, even given all its concern to do so? It is because this concern is always still too weak and powerless, and this lack of energy itself can only be based on the fact that the elements in which it manifests itself are still too disparate. It is because the endeavor has still found no central point in which it could coalesce as a vital unity; the concern as such has still not become something directly personal, has not found an energetic embodiment.

While so many general factors contributed to the Reformation, we must always go back to the personal traits of the German reformer [Martin Luther]. Here is where we find the actual source of the religious life newly awakened by the Reformation. What makes him the reformer is that for him the Reformation had become most especially a matter of his own heart; that he understood it as a matter of the purest religious concerns, apart from all merely extraneous motives; that for him it involved nothing else but the cause of the gospel and its salvific power as he had experienced it for himself in his inner struggle for assurance about the forgiveness of sins. By first authentically expressing this purely religious concern, he gave voice to what moved so many people inwardly but they were unable to express clearly. He became the central point and instrument of a shared awareness that grew out from him in its full power and strength. What people had long considered to be the goal of a reformation, namely a purely religious standpoint, he had now, for the first time, attained for everyone. He made understandable and clear so much that people heretofore had not yet known how to sort out, and keep separate, in such a precise way. All those abuses and grievances people had so long complained about, and yet forever did nothing about, were now felt to be so pressing that one could no longer bear them.

The Reformation was not so much just a matter of a single issue; certainly in no way just about some particular dogmatic definition, nor even about dogma as such. Nor was it just about the readily apparent defects in church governance. Instead what had to make it a popular movement was the most general kind of religious interest that was of immediate, practical importance for each and every individual. This popular character is what gave the German reformer, Martin Luther (1483–1546), such strength from the outset. He had seized upon the undertaking of reformation at a point where it had to promptly gain a firm foothold in the consciousness of the German nation. In all this we see how very important the personality of the German reformer was for the cause of the Reformation. We surely must recognize this importance when we reflect on how easily such an enterprise could have taken the wrong course. It was not just a matter of courageously and energetically taking up the cause of reformation. Once such a movement had begun, the one who started it also had to continue as its master and leader, to control it so that it did not deviate from its intended purpose. Since there had for a long time already been so many combustible factors present, how easy it would have been for events to take a sheerly destructive, purely negative direction, had there not been established, right at the outset, something of a firm and positive nature to which people could hold to with complete conviction.

Luther himself has spoken about this is a very noteworthy way, by making it quite clear how much this factor depended on the personal character of the reformer in the circumstances at that time. In a letter written in 1529, Luther says:

Since there were so many and such great abuses, and no changes were made by those who ought to have so easily done so, they began to occur of their own accord everywhere in German lands, and the clergy were despised because of it. But when unskilled writers sought to defend and uphold such abuses, and could not come up with any honest answers, they made the evil even worse, so that folks regarded clergy everywhere as uneducated, incompetent, indeed pernicious people, and derided them. Such a decrease and decline in abuses was already under way in several quarters before the arrival of Luther’s teaching, for all the world was weary of, and hostile to, the clerical abuses. So care was taken that Luther’s teaching would not be disseminated; that the people were instructed to believe in Christ and to obey the authorities. They said a wretched corruption would have come about in German lands if one no longer wished to suffer the abuses and have the changes right away. Thus the clergy did not want to give in or give way, for there would be no resistance. It would have been a disorderly, stormy, dangerous shift or change like the followers of Thomas Müntzer⁴ began, where no enduring doctrine would have played a role, and doubtless the entire religion would have collapsed and Christians become nothing but Epicureans.⁵

With this, Luther has very aptly designated himself the distinctive figure of his Reformation, the one who personally shaped it. For he never lost sight of the purely religious interest. So he could never tear down without at the same time building up. Because of the religious knowledge first developing within him, he gradually became aware himself of the full scope of his task. Therefore in carrying out his work he also just proceeded gradually, one step at a time. Since in this fashion he always just built further upon a foundation already laid, his work also could not fail to advance, because it was securely based on the inner thrust of the matter itself, and for that reason it won the confidence of others.

1

. [Ed.] The idea of Christianity or of the church is one of Baur’s central church-historical concepts. At its basic, this idea is that of the reconciliation and unity of God and human beings in Christ. This idea is imperfectly realized in a variety of historical shapes or forms, which define the distinctive periods of church history. See Baur’s discussion of the idea of the church in Die Epochen der kirchlichen Geschichts­schreibung (Tübingen,

1852

), ch.

7

(ET: Ferdinand Christian Baur: On the Writing of Church History, ed. and trans. Peter C. Hodgson [New York,

1968

],

241

ff.).

2

. [Ed.] Baur regards the modern world (die neue Welt) to have begun with the Reformation of the sixteenth century. The question as to when modernity began in Europe is much debated, with some scholars pushing it back to the fifteenth century and others pushing it forward to the seventeenth century. Are the Reformers to be understood as still principally belonging to medieval culture or to something new? Despite profound differences between early and late phases of modernity, Baur’s emphasis is on the continuity between the Reformers and the modern Protestantism that emerged in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

3

. [Ed.] This expression (deutsche Nation) does not refer to a nation state but to a complex of territories that shared a common linguistic and historical heritage under the umbrella of the Holy Roman Empire. In the sixteenth century it included the Netherlands and Switzerland as well as Germany and Austria. Baur speaks of all of it as Deutschland. He writes from a Germanocentric perspective, but he does attend to developments in other countries as well.

4

. [Ed.] Thomas Müntzer (

1489

–

1525

), radical preacher who opposed both Luther and the Catholic Church and led the Peasant’s Revolt of

1525

.

5

. [Ed.] We cannot locate this letter in Luther’s Works, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan, Helmut T. Lehmann, et al.,

55

vols. +

20

vols. St. Louis, Philadelphia, and Minneapolis,

1955

ff.). Vol.

49

contains the letters from

1522

to

1530

. Not all of Baur’s references can be found in this edition of his works.

2

Humanism

If we look back once more from the person of the reformer to the general circumstances at that time, ones that were the conditions for the possibility of the Reformation, and for its success, then the Reformation incontestably had its most important foothold in the general enlightenment and culture of the time. But what tied this element with the Reformation, and served as the link between them, was the movement known as humanism. On the one hand we see clearly how much what were requisites for the purposes of reformation lay in the general circumstances of the time; on the other hand we also see how such elements hardly contained the actual reforming principle, as they paved the way for the Reformation and cooperated with it. For they could just as well also take a direction that averted it and worked against it. So here too the personal and individual factor had to enter the picture along with the general features.

Humanism in Italy and in Germany; Epistolae obscurorum virorum

The study of classical literature had never completely ceased in the West. It still flourished under Charlemagne and in the Carolingian Age, only to be suppressed by the scholasticism that became dominant.

However, the study of classical literature reappeared rather suddenly, first of all in Italy, where the naturalistic incentive for it had been present. Through the efforts of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, humanistic studies had already made such great progress in Italy, in the first half of the fourteenth century, that they were considered to be an essential requirement of higher culture. Humanism was the natural enemy of scholasticism. But since it ridiculed scholasticism as tasteless and laughable, humanism quite readily switched over to an irreligious and anti-Christian tendency. Italian humanism hardly had any reforming element to it. We see this clearly from the fact that since the middle of the fifteenth century the popes themselves were among the most enthusiastic patrons of classical literature. As such, they were representatives of a tolerance or indifference that, with no reservations whatsoever, combined the freest views of religion and Christianity with the strictest grip maintained on the ecclesiastical system.

Things were different in Germany, where the humanistic tendency was very closely tied to the religious outlook from the outset. Examples are the Brethren of the Common life, and individuals such as Thomas à Kempis, Johan Wessel, and Gaeler von Kaisersberg.⁶ Especially after the introduction of classical literature to Germany by Aeneas Sylvius,⁷ humanism made such great advances in such a short time that it must quite correctly be reckoned among the most characteristic phenomena of that time, and as standing in the closest relationship with the Reformation. Ranke says:⁸

It is a universal-historical occurrence that, after so many disruptive, popularly-based movements in which the Old World had long since perished, all the elements of the Old World were transplanted with new subject matter, the relics of its spirit that could now have nothing but a formal influence. People sought as never before to emulate this spirit. Its influence became widespread; people studied it and imitated it.

The schools now turned back to their original calling. The task at hand was instruction, the naturally purer education of the youthful mind and spirit that has remained the foundation of German scholarship. The hierarchical worldview that had once been so splendidly constructed, but could not possibly continue on forever, was directly interrupted by this new education. Hutten⁹ exclaims: O century! Studies flourish, minds awaken, there is a desire to live! The joyous feeling of life expressed itself so directly here that all those filled with it were overcome by the fresh spirit of the new age.

Like the Reformation, humanism had the task and the urge to free spiritual consciousness from an oppressive feeling weighing on it. The Reformation was the reestablishment of the pure, original Christianity, and humanism was also a reestablishment. It is usually referred to as the reestablishment of the sciences. In what directly preceded it, in the empty, cumbersome formalism of scholasticism, humanism too saw an intervening period taking a false path, an outdated jumble that had to be cleared away in order to go back to the pure, simple, original sources of human thinking and perceiving. It was as though now, for the first time, one could breathe freely and be revived, after having gotten rid of this oppressive feeling. Thus humanism shared with the Reformation an opposition to the old system. All the humanists were declared opponents of the clergy and monks who had already enjoyed very little respect, and now were also held up to public scorn and ridicule in a number of witty satirical writings, as the representatives of all the scholastic ineptitude.

The Epistolae obscurorum virorum (Letters of Obscure Men)¹⁰ serve as the most noteworthy product of this kind. The first part of them appeared in 1516. For a long time people were unsure as to their author. The only thing known was that Ulrich von Hutten had played an important part. Now the main author is shown to have been Crotus Rubianus (Joseph Jäger of Dornheim, in Thuringia, who from 1515 was professor in Erfurt). These Epistolae were allegedly written by partisans of the old system, to a certain Ortinus Gratias, professor of philosophy and theology in Cologne, one of the most important of Reuchlin’s opponents. The alleged authors express themselves here entirely in their narrow-minded, blatant ignorance, and tell of their controversies with the Reuchlinists. As Ranke describes them, the letters are a caricature on the model of a loutish, dissipated German cleric limited by his stupid wonderment and fanatical hatred—someone who, with foolish intimacy, discloses the manifold repugnant situations in which he is involved. The tone of these obscure men is so fitting that, from the outset, they themselves take great delight in supposing that this is no satire, for it is all meant seriously and is to their credit. The letters were very influential, and the papacy had reason to ban them. Naturally the humanistic opposition in such writings had to have a different tone and character from the religious opposition to come from the Reformation. However, it was already a prelude to the serious battles that soon were to begin. It awakened and sharpened the spirit of opposition. It not only concurred with the public’s view as to higher spiritual concerns, for it also gave that view a direction, by which everything having to do with the same opponents ought to count in advance on the approval of a large part of the public.

Reuchlin: His Controversy with the Theologians of Cologne; Pirckheimer and Ulrich von Hutten

To gain a more concrete picture of how humanism stood in relation to the cause of the Reformation, we must take a somewhat closer look at humanism’s two main representatives, Reuchlin and Erasmus. They were equally distinguished and they stood out from the multitude of humanists at that time. Both were admired and revered by their contemporaries, and people called them the two eyes of Germany.¹¹ Even today, in speaking of the humanism at that time, people do not name one without the other, even though they are distinctly different individuals.

Johann Reuchlin was born in Pforzheim on 28 December 1455. His father was not, as usually alleged, a common messenger. Instead he was an administrator in the service of the Dominican Order, to which Reuchlin himself was also later attached.¹² He was educated mainly in Paris, and studied jurisprudence in Orleans and Poitiers. Although a lawyer, he was chiefly a humanist and one of humanism’s principal founders. After returning from the French universities he made Württemberg his home. Beginning with 1481, he matriculated in Württemberg as a licentiate, and as a privatdocent he lectured on the Greek language, spending most of his time in Tübingen or in Stuttgart. Count Eberhard im Bart [Eberhard 1] thought highly of Reuchlin, made him his own private secretary and advisor, and took him along on his trip to Rome in 1482. After a long interlude, Reuchlin resumed lecturing in 1520 at the local university [Tübingen], on the Greek and Hebrew languages. But he died the next year, in Stuttgart.

In addition to his efforts on behalf of the Greek language and literature, Reuchlin, to his great credit, supported the study of the Hebrew language, primarily via his Hebrew grammar (De rudimentis hebraicis libre III, Pforzheim, 1506). He himself called it a monumentum aere perennius (an enduring monument in bronze). He had learned a great deal of Hebrew from a Jew who was the personal physician of Emperor Maximilian I, a person he came to know on a trip to Linz; and he was able to make further progress in Hebrew because of his own tireless diligence. For him, Hebrew especially had to do with the secret wisdom of the Kabbalah, from which he expected to gain important information. It is clearly obvious how much he made his Hebrew studies serve the cause of the Reformation, for its purpose was certainly to go back to scripture as the authentic source of divine revelation.

But what is especially noteworthy for us here is the controversy that Reuchlin got involved in with the theologians of Cologne, here too as an expert in Hebrew and Rabbinic literature. Johann Pfefferkorn (1469–1523), a baptized Jewish convert who was strongly backed by the Dominicans of Cologne and, in the usual manner of an apostate after his conversion, publicly displayed his attitude of hostility to the Jews, had disseminated his accusation against the Jews. He said that their writings contain the most abominable slanders against Christianity. Based on this, the Cologne theologians demanded an investigation directed against the Jews and their blasphemous books. In 1509 the emperor instructed Pfefferkorn to proceed with it. When Pfefferkorn asked for a new mandate said to give him the authority to destroy all the books of the Jews except for the Old Testament, the emperor handed the matter over to the arch-chancellor, the archbishop of Mainz, and had him obtain the expert opinion of a number of universities and of individual scholars who were versed in Hebrew writings. The list included Reuchlin, who in 1510 then issued his Recommendation as to whether all the books of the Jews should be seized, disposed of, and burned. In it he spoke, in a very broadminded way, in the interests of science and of Christian humanity, and in opposition to such an overbearing measure.

However, Pfefferkorn was so enraged by this that he issued forthwith a libelous document, his Handspiegel,¹³ in which he accused Reuchlin, among others, of having been bribed by the Jews. Reuchlin replied, in 1511, in an equally vehement document that he called Augenspiegel, that is, eyeglasses. But then the Dominicans in Cologne took the matter into their own hands, and the fanatical inquisitor of heretics and enemy of the humanists, Jacob Hoogstraten, threatened to have his tribunal take up the issue. Reuchlin was at first indeed so alarmed by this that he wrote a very submissive letter. However, he saw that doing so accomplished nothing, and it was even demanded of him not only that he should recant but also that he should compose a document of his own in opposition to his books. Thus in 1513 he composed a written defense in response to the defamatory statements from Cologne, a defense in which he attacked them most fervently and without any reservations. Then Hoogstraten summoned Reuchlin to Mainz, to have him defend his Augenspiegel against the charge of heresy. Reuchlin appealed to the Roman See. Despite that, a tribunal was assembled in Mainz, consisting of doctors from the university and officers of the archbishop. However the archbishop did not let it come to a trial, and the Roman Curia entrusted the investigation of the affair to the bishop of Speier. In 1514 the tribunal in Speier ruled in Reuchlin’s favor, and assigned the court costs to Hoogstraten.

In Cologne, Hoogstraten did indeed have Reuchlin’s writings burned, and everything was done to get the theological faculties of the most renowned universities to issue verdicts condemning Reuchlin’s books. This happened in Paris, London, Mainz, and Erfurt. But the papal commission sitting in Rome did not rule against Reuchlin. It simply withheld its findings in deference to the Dominicans. Only when the new conflict with Luther also shed a dubious light on the controversy over Reuchlin, did a papal brief follow in summer 1520, one that set aside the ruling in Speier and condemned Reuchlin’s book. At that time, however, the victory decidedly went to Reuchlin’s side, and the victory won by the power of public opinion encouraged the humanist faction, or the Reuchlinists as they are now called, so very much that they assailed their spiritless opponents in a number of writings using all the weapons of wit and ridicule. The Epistolae obscurorum virorum that I already mentioned owe their origin mainly to this controversy. Their satire took its most powerful features from it, especially with reference to the ever-recurring complaint in them that the humanists, the poetae seculares et juristae (secular poets and jurists), always gain the upper hand and make the ancient, true theologians and philosophers out to be far too malicious.¹⁴

Taking Reuchlin’s side were two prominent men: Willibald Pirckheimer in Nürnberg, and Ulrich von Hutten. Pirckheimer (1470–1530) was one of the most important figures at that time. He took the greatest interest in Reuchlin’s cause, and published an apologetic for Reuchlin in 1517. In it he expressed his own profound contempt for the shamelessness and wretchedness of the scholastic opponents, and clearly and conclusively set over against them the viewpoint of the more modern direction taken in religion and theology.

About the same time Ulrich von Hutten, with all his fervor and passion, wrote about Reuchlin’s victory: He cried out, ‘Now then my companions in the battle, the tide has turned. The prison walls are breached, the die is cast, we can no longer go back to it! I have laid the trap for the obscure men. We are the victors!’ Since even the supporters of the old system could not fail to respond, the friends and the foes of the light increasingly formed two large and mutually opposed parties.

This was of course not without significance for the cause of the Reformation. This affair became a battlefield on which anyone who was not opposed to Reuchlin’s position could only be in favor of it. Hutten, Reuchlin’s boldest defender, also ventured to expand the controversy to another and larger domain, by attacking Rome itself. From his perspective he knew the state of affairs in Rome well enough to feel that not doing so was detrimental to his German sense of honor. In 1517, when he learned in Italy of Laurentius Valla’s essay on the Donation of Constantine,¹⁵ he was so overjoyed that he decided to publish it. He dedicated the publication to the pope himself, but only in order to declare to him, in the preface in this form, the most plainspoken truths about the depravity of the earlier popes.¹⁶

Erasmus; His Writings; His Relation to the Reformation and to Luther

In Reuchlin and the humanists associating themselves with him we are presented with the freshest, most robust, most aggressive form of humanism. All those combatants who gathered around Reuchlin were, with the same courage and interest, just as ready to fight for any others who gave them the signal for a new battle against the supporters of the old system.

In Erasmus we see a different side of humanism’s relation to the Reformation. He is the second face of German humanism, and yet no one else has done as much to prepare the way for the work of reformation. Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, born in either 1465 or 1467,¹⁷ was the son of two lovers who were not allowed to marry because their families had destined them for the monastery and cloister respectively. Thus as his enemies said, Erasmus was ortus a scorto (a bastard), and because of that, pede torto (headed for hell), no matter how abundantly nature had outfitted him with all the spiritual qualities. After he had extricated himself from the unfavorable outward circumstances of his early years, he went to Paris where, entirely on his own, he first made his way in the world by teaching, and then began to devote himself to writing. From Paris he went to London, where he became known not only to the most learned men there but also to the royal court. Later on he traveled to Italy. When already at the pinnacle of his fame, in 1514, he came to Germany, where in 1520, after an interlude spent in Louvain, he chose Basel as his place of residence. Here, in a circle of the most distinguished men aside from Reuchlin, he formed the most renowned focal point for the new endeavors.

No one had yet gained such world renown by simply a literary route as Erasmus did. He had the most extensive and illustrious connections, and enjoyed the greatest reputation in all of Europe. People who came in contact with him counted themselves fortunate. Also no one was as knowledgeable as Erasmus about the literature of his own time, and no one had such a splendid talent in capitalizing on it. Hagen¹⁸ characterizes Erasmus as someone who unified the different directions taken by the literature that played a role in the great universal tendencies at that time. He united them within himself as a focal point, and in doing so he most decisively paved the way for a new epoch. Classical literature was the foundation for all his efforts. He did not merely adopt its form, for he also made his own the spirit and essential nature of the ancients as found in their worldly wisdom and practical philosophy.

As he did with classical literature, Erasmus also wanted to restore Christianity to its original purity and dignity. For this purpose he not only arranged new editions of the church fathers, but also directed his efforts mainly to a better, more linguistically accurate, understanding of the New Testament. The most important feature of these efforts is that we are indebted to him for the first Greek edition of the basic text of the New Testament scriptures. All these efforts raised him head and shoulders above his contemporaries. Erasmus belonged to a movement closely related to the Reformation, and so the same opposition of humanism to the old system had to find decisive expression in him. Erasmus made it his principal task to commend what is simple and natural, what is intelligible to sound reason in all things, as the best and most correct method; and the topics he treated he knew how to express in the most agreeable fashion, with the greatest elegance of his Latin style. So quite naturally the whole orientation of such a cultured man could only form the greatest contrast with, and antithesis to, all that the scholasticism and monasticism of his day involved.

This opposition in which Erasmus was fully invested found its expression and distinctive form in irony, in humor, in wit of an authentically Lucian-like nature. He seized upon everything wrong-headed and objectionable in his day, as foolishness making itself the target of irony. Especially typical is his 1508 work Encomium moriae (In Praise of Folly), an ironic examination of all of human society.¹⁹ Folly appears here as the sovereign of the world. She praises herself as the one human beings alone have to thank; that, with all the awful and nonsensical things they do they nevertheless feel so fortunate, for things would have been completely different if they had been wise so as to know what they are doing. In this fashion folly pervades all the social classes in order to charge them with their more characteristic features, their foolishness and irrationality, but with which they are at the same time so happy. About the theologians, folly says that she does not know whether it is not better to pass over these exalted divines in silence, and not to mention this pestilential seat or to leave this noxious weed alone. That is because these kinds of people are very arrogant and prone to anger, lest hordes of them attack me with thousands of inferences and deductions, and force me to recant. Or, if I will not