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The effects of the Protestant Reformation
The key impacts of the protestant reformation on european and world history
The effects of the Protestant Reformation
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Religion and opinions are both products of humans. Our intelligence gifts us with the freedom of thought and capability to apply it to our views on deep life questions. Intelligence provides us the right to believe in any sort of God, afterlife, or way of living. Brad Gregory describes the Protestant Reformation’s effects on the present society’s Christian qualities in a book he wrote titled “The Unintended Reformation.”1 (After my awareness of the outcome of the western history of the Protestant Reformation, I gained an opinion on today’s religious views that do not completely agree with Gregory’s valuation.) The Protestant Reformation was vital to the progress in the knowledge about the Christian faith.
Brad Gregory argues that the lack
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Gregory never states that he wishes hyperpluralism to be vanished, but he is so negative about the concept. He teaches the events of the Western hyperpluralism as though it was a destruction of unity. To me, the Reformation should be viewed as an optimistic series of events. The Reformation allowed Christians evolve into the people they wanted to be instead of being told who to be. In Martin Luther’s “Freedom of Religion,” he explains the commandments from the Old Testament. He is saying that the commandments are meant to teach humans to know themselves and that they allow humans to accept that they are not perfect.1 (Luther) He makes a point that Christians do not need the church to reach the grace of God. This gives them freedom to accept who they are as individuals on their own. Their minds were able to open to secular views and it also allowed freedom to be a part of their religion. There is no right or wrong answer to an opinion.
I disagree that a variety of opinions of scripture are to be frowned upon. The secular interpretations are what defines Christianity in the 21st century. I view the immense number of ideas as the creativity that is essential for mankind. Everyone’s life is different and the environments in which people lived throughout their life will change their point of view on
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(113) Sola ratio is the idea that reason alone is the definite authority for Christian faith. It is a secular, repeated problem that stemmed from sola scriptura, according to Gregory. (126) I think as humans, we are creatures of intelligence. We seek reasons for events that occur in everyday life. It can trouble people when the meaning is incomplete or hard to identify. I disagree that sola ratio is a corrupt solution. We should not be punished by taking the freedom to seek reason to have faith away. There is no shame in looking to philosophy for reason when answering the life questions. Faith takes a large role in many people’s lives. When there is a reason to believe, people use it to guide them in how to live. If we all had the same answers to the life questions, would be living as a nation of people following the same path to
A. “The Church in the Age of Enlightenment and Revolution”. Verbal Conscience. March 2012. Web. The Web.
The Reformation debate letters from John Calvin and Jacopo Sadoleto illustrate the religious controversy of the sixteenth century. Sadoleto’s letter was addressed to the magistrates and citizens of Geneva, pleading them to come back to the Catholic church, as they had fallen to the ways of the Reformers. In his letter, Sadoleto painted the Reformers as ‘crafty’ and ‘enemies of Christian peace’ (30), never directly addressing them. Calvin does, however, address Sadoleto’s insinuations directly in his response. The two letters disagree when it comes to justification, Sadoleto believing that it comes by faith and works and Calvin, more so along the lines that faith is what really matters. Calvin successfully argues against Sadoleto’s premise and presents influential points, making his argument more convincing than his opponent’s.
Martin Luther inspired another thinker of the time that questioned the Church’s beliefs. That man was John Calvin. The Catholic belief during the Renaissance and Reformation was that one’s good deeds hel...
" Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 21: 60-67. Print. The. Spitz, Lewis William. The Protestant Reformation.
Prior to Enlightenment the colonists, like the Europeans, were guided by their fear of God and rulers. They followed their church’s teachings blindly, as many of them could not read the scripture themselves. As the colonists began to educate themselves, they found that their interpretation of the readings did not always match what was preached to them in Sunday’s sermon. Even with the vamped up services and revivals during the Awakening many continued to question organized religion and separate from the Catholic Church. Many smaller denominations resulted from these breaks caused by the Awakening, leading to the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther even wrote entire doctrines based on his differences of opinion which would eventually form the basis for the Lutheran Church. The colonists also questioned the authority of their European rulers. Many believed that God himself had put their rulers in charge, but with all the political disasters and condemnation they were seeing they began to question their...
Religion commanded a central and varied role in European politics, society, culture, and thought, from the late 16th century to the Enlightenment.
The church’s robust grip on religious expression shattered as medieval society transitioned into a period known as the Reformation. Characterized by the rejection of common ideology, the Reformation sparked religious curiosity. Reformers such as John Calvin and Martin Luther offered interpretations of the Bible in direct opposition to the Catholic Church’s teachings, forcing Europeans to examine and formulate their own beliefs. This style of thinking was foreign to European society because up to this point in history Europeans were passive absorbers of Catholic Church ideology. Hence, it was natural that an era considered the Age of Enlightenment followed the period of rejection and questioning known as the Reformation.
The protestant reformation of 16th century had both: immediate and long term effects. Thus, we can see that it was a revolution of understanding the essence of religion, and of what God is. The protestant reformation is said to a religious movement. However, it also influenced the economical, political and social life of people. The most global, short term effect of the reformation was the reevaluation of beliefs, and, as a result, the loss of authority of the Holy Roman Empire. The long term effects were: the emergence of new heretical movements, the declining of papacy, thus the reevaluation of people’s view on the church and life values.
Humanists had been calling for reform in the Catholic Church long before Martin Luther penned his Ninety-Five Theses. Humanism was an intellectual and cultural movement of the Renaissance that emphasized the expansion of mans’ capacities. “[Humanism] was an attempt to discover humankind’s own earthly fulfillment. . . [it] developed an increasing distaste for dogma, and embraced a figurative interpretation of the scriptures and an attitude of tolerance toward all viewpoints” (Sporre 310). This perspective could not differ more from the Church’s strict reliance on tradition. People’s outlook on the world changed, but the Church continued on with what had previously worked. It soon became clear that reform in the Church was not in the foreseeable future, so people decided to take matters into their own hands. As humanism spread throughout Italy and northern Europe, more and more people agr...
Netherlands in the 17th and 18th century, as opposed to the decline of Spain and Italy, to their Protestant faith. This is the essence of the Reformation: Man is in his very nature destined to be free. In fact, the weightiest import that the bible has become the basis of the Christian Church: henceforth each individual enjoys the right of deriving instruction for himself from it. and of directing his conscience in accordance with it. These results are robust to a wide array of alternate specifications, and are confirmed by an instrumental variables strategy.
A reformation is often defined as the action of change for improvement. The Protestant Reformation is a movement that began in 1517, which split the unity of the Western Church; and later established Protestantism. The three main factors that impacted the reformation were political, sociological and theological. Martin Luther and John Calvin, two protestant Reformers who reformed Catholicism, strived to define salvation and impact the church as a whole. How do Martin Luther’s reforms compare to John Calvin’s through their struggle to define salvation, how people viewed them, and how the church was affected as a whole? Martin Luther and John Calvin both had a huge impact on the reformation and were both regarded with great respect; however, Martin Luther’s strive for salvation and the reformation of the church was more successful than Calvin’s.
Proving to be the paramount of the conflict between faith and reason, the European Enlightenment of the eighteenth century challenged each of the traditional values of that age. Europeans were changing, but Europe’s institutions were not keeping pace with that change.1 Throughout that time period, the most influential and conservative institution of Europe, the Roman Catholic Church, was forced into direct confrontation with these changing ideals. The Church continued to insist that it was the only source of truth and that all who lived beyond its bounds were damned; it was painfully apparent to any reasonably educated person, however, that the majority of the world’s population were not Christians.2 In the wake of witch hunts, imperial conquest, and an intellectual revolution, the Roman Catholic Church found itself threatened by change on all fronts.3 The significant role that the Church played during the Enlightenment was ultimately challenged by the populace’s refusal to abide by religious intolerance, the power of the aristocracy and Absolutism, and the rising popularity of champions of reform and print culture, the philosophes, who shared a general opposition to the Roman Catholic Church.
The Reformation was a decisive period in the history not only for the Catholic Church, but also for the entire world. The causes of this tumultuous point in history did not burst on the scene all at once, but slowly gained momentum like a boil that slowly festers through time before it finally bursts open. The Reformation of the Church was inevitable because of the abuses which the Church was suffering during this period. At the time of the Reformation, a segment of the Church had drifted away from its mission to bring Christ and salvation to the world. Throughout the Middle Ages, the Church had gradually become weaker because of abusive leadership, philosophical heresy, and a renewal of a form of the Pelagian heresy.
...s did not have to be run by a religious leader or Monarchist and that a person’s life did not have to be centered on religion or the afterlife. If it were not for the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, the world we live in now would be a much different place. The Protestant Reformation was a major building block of history, and some would say our country.
O. Henry’s short story, “A Retrieved Reformation”, starts with a criminal being pardoned from jail. Jimmy Valentine used to go around cracking safes, and as soon as he is released, he starts up right again. But then Jimmy moves to a different city, changes his name, and on his first day there, he sees a girl -- the banker’s daughter -- falls in love, and decides to start a new life. One lesson this story indicates is how a change of scenery and meeting different people can change someone for the better.