16th Century Christianity Term Paper

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By the 16th century, Europe was in the midst of a great upheaval that was as social and political—and even economical—as it was religious. Religion was woven into the fabric of society to such an extent that it informed each of the other sectors; but they in turn also had an impact on the new concepts and strains of religious thought that were being explored. This paper will discuss some of the examples of these thoughts from men of the time: Erasmus, Luther, Las Casas and Foxe, and show how their writings are evidence of the new era of re-examination of self, society and God—a re-examination that had one foot in the rise of humanism, one foot in the traditional teachings of the Church, and another foot in the camp of rebellion against this same religious authority.

Proper Christian belief and the duties that Christians owed to one another was characterized by many at the time in very different ways. The Protestant Movement had ushered into Europe an entirely new way of thinking about God, self and society. A great deal of personal interpretation of the Word of God was relied upon in order to effect new systems of religious thought. Luther, for example, developed an approach to Christianity that differed radically from what the Church taught—as did John Foxe: each viewed the Church and its representatives as tyrannical and essentially un-Christian. Las Casas and Erasmus held more to the traditional concepts promulgated under official Church doctrine, though each of them also had a unique orientation: Erasmus was inclined to humanism and felt that the more that people understood one another the less inclined they would be to revile one another; and Las Casas was touched by the plight of the Native Americans in the West and felt compelled to defend them from acts of cruelty committed by his fellow Spanish countrymen.

For Luther, the concept of being a proper Christian was based on his own personal interpretation of the Bible. He rejected the Church’s teachings, and, having rejected the teaching authority of the Church, he asserted himself as the teaching authority for his fellow readers. In his preface to the New Testament, he states that “many unfounded [wilde] interpretations and prefaces have scattered the thought of Christians to a point where no one any longer knows what is gospel or law, New Testament or Old.”[footnoteRef:2] While this generalization hints of exaggeration (surely many in the 16th century could distinguish the New from the Old Testament), and its focus on gospel and law hints of novelty, Luther implies that he alone has the power to guide his audience to the correct understanding of the Word of God that the people of 16th century Europe are in need of. [2: Martin Luther, “Prefaces to the New Testament,” in Word and Sacrament, p. 357.

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Luther saw righteousness as springing from one’s connection to Christ—for Christ is the ultimate source of righteousness, and any righteousness that a person achieves is only to be seen as an effect or cause of Christ’s grace flowing through the person.[footnoteRef:3] The self could not be viewed as a thing that was good by itself but that rather depended entirely upon God’s grace. A person united to God could do good works in society and for others and, ultimately become zealous—but only after growing in maturity and grace. Luther justifies his appreciation for zealots by indicating that the Scriptures praises the zealots, that Christ Himself was zealous in whipping the money changers and that Paul took the tone of a zealot, for example, in his letter to the Corinthians.[footnoteRef:4] In other words, Luther draws support for his beliefs from his own view and reading of the Bible, and he distances himself from any traditional or institutional teaching, as he himself had rejected the Institution of the Roman Catholic Church when he left his Order. [3: Martin Luther, “Two Kinds of Righteousness,” in Career of the Reformer, p. 301.] [4: Martin Luther, “Two Kinds of Righteousness,” in Career of the Reformer, p. 306.]

Foxe took a similar perspective when he conceptualized proper Christian beliefs and the responsibilities that Christians owed to others. Foxe likewise rejected the teaching authority of the Church and believed that true saints were those witnessed to the religious faith of the Protestants. He “inflamed Protestant fervor against the pope and the Church of Rome by attaching partisan comments to his narratives.”[footnoteRef:5] For Foxe, one’s duty as a Protestant was to hold firm in the Protestant faith even in the face of persecution—which is why Foxe wrote The Book of Martyrs with stories like those of Driver and Gouch. Driver, in particular, echoes Luther’s sentiment in that one’s faith should be based solely on Scripture and that the concept of the Blessed Sacrament as taught by the Church is therefore to be rejected (apparently in spite of Mark 14:22-24 or Luke 22:14-20). Thus, Foxe records….....

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