The alleged Continuity between Bogomilism and Protestantism (original) (raw)
Related papers
BOGOMILS AND THE REFORMATION: crossroads and missing links
abstract: The year 2017 marked the 500 th anniversary of the Reformation, and it has been celebrated throughout Europe. In this paper, the author aims to examine the connection between beliefs of the Bogomils and the ideas of the Reformation. Controversially, the former have been called " the precursors of the Reformation " and even " the first Protestants in Europe. " These claims will be investigated here in the light of the subject of free will and the so called bogomilian dualism. Both the similarities and differences between Bogomil thinking and the ideas of significant reformers, such as John Wycliffe, Jan Hus, and Martin Luther, will be discussed. Based on textual sources, it is argued that there are shared beliefs between Bogomils and reformers, and that both have a strong will to reform the religious life, but we cannot say that there is clear evidence that ideas of the Reformation have been adopted directly from these early dissidents. We can conclude, however, that Bogomil ideas served as an eye-opener for protestant thinkers, though beliefs about free will changed throughout history. Whereas Bogomils believed in the free will of their Perfects, Pico della Mirandola, being inspired by the Gnostic tradition, adopted this, together with Humanists such as Erasmus, and early reformers of the Church, like Wycliffe and Hus. However, the instigator of the Reformation, Luther, changed his mind radically, and rejected the idea of a free will for human beings altogether in favor of the grace
Proceedings of the Ninth Days of Justinian I, 2022
This paper represents an outline of a more ample study in progress. The main issues addressed fall under the scope of a wider research area revolving around the question of how the Bogomilism evolved over time. This paper will try to delineate the outlines of the Bogomil-ascribed kaleidoscope of ideas and concepts, judging by the accounts from the sources ranging from the tenth to the fourteenth century.
Protestantism – the Origin and Essence of Its Teachings
Facta Universitatis, Series: Philosophy, Sociology, Psychology and History, 2019
The paper presents the following: 1) The factors which preceded the break of the unique Western Church (spiritual movements within the Roman Catholic Church, which requested a new kind of piety, a New-Century thought by most influential European humanists which was inspired by individualism, a changed political climate under the influence of the Humanism and Renaissance, the rise of the civil class and the invention of the printing press), 2) the founders of Protestant teachings (Martin Luther, Thomas Mincer, Philip Spener, Jean Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli) and 3) the rules of religious life among the newly converted (principles: Ecclesia reformata sed semper reformanda, Soli Deo Gloria, Solo Christo, Sola scriptura, Sola gratia, Sola fide, etc.).
Revista Teologica 99: 3, 2017
The goal of this study is to objectively investigate the real causes of the Protestant Reformation`s breakout in the West, and to discover the importance of freedom in the great reformers thinking, such as Martin Luther, Jean Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli. What are the consequences of this theological and social desid-eratum in their revolting and organizing action and to what extent the theological thinking and the entire Western culture are tributary to the thinking of these "new road openers"? The present text also tries to outline an exercise of freedom and to analyse this concept in the context of the Protestant Reformation, its causes and its effects. How and in what ways was possible for the great reformers of the sixteenth century to appear? What are the premises of their thoughts and orienta-tions, and what are the specific characteristics of their respective theology? What are the implications and what role has the notion of freedom played in their work and, above all, in their respective activity?
Review of Valeri, The opening of the protestant mind, History of European Ideas 2024
The phrase 'opening of the Protestant mind' brings to mind (no pun intended) Alan Wolfe's October 2000 Atlantic Monthly article 'The Opening of the Evangelical Mind,' which was itself a follow-up of sorts to Mark Noll's book from six years previous, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. 1 It might also evoke Allan Bloom's 1987 lament The Closing of the American Mind; to say nothing of more recent works pointing to the purported 'coddling' or 'canceling' of that mind. 2 Such 'minds'-described with the singular definite article, as if a monolithic entity were opening, closing, or scandalizing-might strike readers as problematic. Do such collective 'minds' really exist, in the singular fashion implied by that definite article? Is there really such a thing as 'the' Protestant mind (or 'the' evangelical or American mind)? What kind of rhetorical power move relegates certain thinkers to the margins while identifying others with 'the' Protestant mind? So it is a relief to encounter this book's more focused subtitle: 'How Anglo-American Protestants Embraced Religious Liberty,' and the careful delineation of its focus offered in its opening pages. Mark Valeri begins with a clear sense of his study's chronological, geographic, thematic, and conceptual parameters. We are not, thankfully, entering into an amorphous and singular 'Protestant mind,' but rather something much more specific: the transformation of an Anglo-American Protestant discourse, between roughly 1650 and 1765, regarding 'the ways Protestants in England and America described non-Protestant religions, as well as the nature of the choice of one religion or another, during the British colonization of America' (ix). Such a discourse appeared not only in the work of educated elites, but across a broad swath of 'middling intellectual culture' (6): travel narratives, sermons, dictionaries, encyclopedias and geographies of religion, and a range of associated media. Six substantive chapters trace this change in attitudes toward non-Christian religions, from a confessional one comprised of 'relentlessly pejorative accounts of non-Protestant religions' (21) that viewed them as 'illegitimate, dangerous, and demonic' (3) to a new approach reflecting an increasingly globalized perspective, which held out hope that 'whiggish moral virtues would unify the kingdom' (4). This transformed discourse de-emphasized doctrine, classifying religions not simply on the axis of 'true/false' but on their capacity to produce benevolence, utility, and civic virtue; as Valeri puts it, 'according to moral principles with political import, such as liberty of conscience, reasonableness, and civility.' (82) Valeri identifies the 1680s-1710s as a 'turning point' (97) during which, without jettisoning the notion of Protestant Christianity as the true religion, authors paid increasing attention to sensibility, politeness, and sociability as criteria by which to judge rival perspectives. He takes readers into the extraordinary world of an early modern British empire in which longstanding and deeply-held assumptions collided with new worlds, forcing (for some, at least) reconsideration of their fundamental views. Alongside such developments went a similar change in understandings of conversion itself, from 'a form of submission, compliance, even surrender' (65) to 'a choice among religious options … a voluntary act of allegiance based on moral persuasion' (199).
The Causation of Protestant Reformation: Lessons of History
IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 2013
To whom do we attribute the negative consequences of the Reformation to? Was the Reformation the outcome of Luther's rebellious spirit, or a culmination of multiplicity of factors? Who was Luther in the medieval church? These are some of the puzzling questions this paper has attempted to answer with historical insight. The study shows that the medieval church was ripe for reforms and that calls for reforms antedates the protest of Luther and other reformers in the sixteenth century. The research leads contemporary ecclesiastical historians into a multifaceted historical analysis on the causation and political forces that made the Reformation inevitable.
The Bohemian Reformation and Religious Practice Vol. 11
The Bohemian Reformation and Religious Practice Vol. 11, 2018
The volume contains papers selected from those presented during the Eleventh and Twelfth Symposium of the Bohemian Reformation and Religious Practice held from 18–20 June 2014 and from 15–17 June 2016, i.e. series of biennial conferences dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of the Bohemian Reformation.