The Birth of an Empire of Two Churches: Church Property, Theologians, and the League of Schmalkalden (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Luther Decade on Reformation and Politics
SAGE Open, 2016
Luther's mission in the treatise on temporal authority (TA) was to give advice to his Christian princes on good governance. This treatise can be used as a guide on church and state relations. This article is motivated by the 2014 theme of the Luther Decade: "The Reformation and Politics," which offers opportunities for the study of the impact of the reformation on the politics of the then German in particular, Europe and the world in general. In this article, I retrieve and reread Martin Luther's treatise on TA, which is the basis of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Zimbabwe's (ELCZ) understanding of the role of the church in politics.
2022
The history of the Church and countries with a majority Christian population is dotted about with good or bad opinions on the role of the Church in relation to the government or the State. Sometimes the Church is accused of interfering with the government or local authorities over issues that should be only under the State jurisdiction. Some Christians would consider it a normality because they see God as a supreme King over the whole world, and therefore his will stated in the Bible should be made law and prevail in every country. On the other hand, secular people oppose such ideas and try to exclude any ties of the Church in politics, economics, and social life. From Constantine the Great to medieval Europe, there was a constant tension between the secular kings and the popes or the Church leaders. Some popes were able to make kings submit under the Church leadership. Should this be normality nowadays? Are there any models that can shine a light on that? During the Reformation, the tension between Church and State leaders and princes came to a new climax. This study focuses on comparing the Church-State relationship as seen by Catholics, Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and the Anabaptists during the Reformation. Did the reformers touch only the spiritual side of the European society or also its social, economic, and political side? So, is it worth letting or encouraging the Church to get involved in the affairs of the State? If yes, are there any models that our contemporary society should copy?
Good Government and Church Order:Essays on the Role of Secular Authority in the German Reformation
The essays in this volume, written over the span of five decades, are in most cases an exploration of the often unrecognized or poorly understood relationships among four reformers who were advocates of governmental responsibility for religious reform: Erasmus of Rotterdam, Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, and Johannes Brenz. Erasmus's long suspected but little investigated influence on the first generation of Protestant reformers is clearly documented in the cases of Philip Melanchthon and Johannes Brenz, both of whom made adroit use of Erasmian arguments, in conjunction with ideas taken from Luther, in their early appeals for government support of reform (1519-1530). Meanwhile, Luther himself, unwilling to concede to secular authority as such any responsibility in spiritual matters, had to address his appeals to Christian secular rulers in their capacity as participants in the priesthood of all believers who had a special obligation to come to the aid of the church in an emergency. Then, starting in 1530, Luther, Melanchthon, and Bremz, faced with potent criticism from Radicals, Spiritualists, and other religious dissidents who denied the right of Protestant rulers to impose religious orthodoxy, had to rethink and adapt their arguments.
2018
As Christians in America are increasingly marginalized and driven from the public square, questions concerning the proper relationship between church and state are in the forefront of the minds of the faithful. In such times, it is wise to listen to our forefathers and their testimony concerning the proper relationship between civil government and the Church. Martin Luther's On Secular Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed has been rightly viewed as a foundational expression of his thought on the distinction and relationship between civil and ecclesiastical authority. However, this work is often read without appropriately taking into consideration the particular circumstances surrounding the writing and the further development of Luther's thought. In 1523, there were still no explicitly Lutheran rulers in the Holy Roman Empire. Luther's confidence in the future gains of the Reformation was still high. The Anabaptists had not yet fully burst on the scene, and the Peasants War still lay in the future. After a brief historical background and review of the immediate circumstances, this paper will offer an analysis of On Secular Authority structured by the writing's three main divisions: a. the first section, where Luther grapples with medieval teaching on secular authority and Christian idealism; b. the second section, "the main part," according to Luther, where he lays out his overarching view of the two realms and two authorities; and, c. the third section, a Fürstenspiegel, a mirror for princes. The sectional will highlight both continuity in Luther's overall thought concerning the proper relationship between civil and ecclesiastical authority and subsequent refinement-particularly in regards to religious liberty.
Law and the Protestant Reformation
Heikki Pihlajamäki, Markus Dubber & Mark Godfrey, eds., The Oxford Handbook of European Legal History, 2018
The sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation revolutionized not only theology and the church, but also law and the state. This northern European reform movement, though divided into Lutheran, Anabaptist, Anglican, and Calvinist branches, collectively broke the international rule of the medieval Catholic Church and its canon law, and permanently splintered Western Christendom into competing nations and regions. The Reformation also triggered a massive shift of power, property, and prerogative from the church to the state. Protestant states now assumed jurisdiction over numerous subjects and persons previously governed by the medieval church, and they gave new legal form to Protestant teachings. But these new Protestant laws also drew heavily on the medieval ius commune as well as on earlier biblical and Roman jurisprudence. This chapter analyses the new legal syntheses that emerged in Protestant lands, with attention to the new laws of church-state relations, religious and civil freedom, marriage and family law, education law, social welfare law, and accompanying changes in legal and political philosophy.
The Legal Turn of the Reformation
Luther - 95 Treasures, 95 People, 2017
The Lutheran Reformation revolutionized both church and state, theology and law. This brief essay sketches the legal influence of the Reformation, building on Luther's opening call for religious freedom and his more complex theory of the two kingdoms.
This study offers a hypothesis that the two marks of the Church in the Calvinist Reformed tradition, together with its disciplinary power, restate the twin classical powers granted to the Church in Catholic tradition, namely the powers of order and jurisdiction. Unlike Luther, for whom the chief ecclesiastical power was the authority to preach and teach, Calvin not only acknowledges the teaching and sacramental functions of the Church, but also stressed a jurisdictional power {jurisdictio fori) with autonomous legislative and judicial competence. This jurisdictional dimension is the key to explaining the role played by Geneva-inspired Reformed churches vis-à-vis the State and differences from other other Protestant traditions.