The Not So Great Reformation

The guilt of sin was not enough for the forgiveness given through absolution by the priest. One who had ticked off god had to not only undergo the sacrament of penance, but to pay in order to reduce the punishment in purgatory, and so cancel the debt of sins. The spiritually hungry masses were sold a stone (indulgence) when asking for spiritual bread. In the words of Tetzel: "As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs"

A fed up Martin Luther “came to the rescue” and took on the “celibate” priests with their mistresses and the Lord knows what.

“I’m like a ripe turd and the world’s like a gigantic anus, and we’re about to let go of each other,” (Martin Luther, Table Talk, in LW 54:448).

The anti-semite did not see himself as breaking from the Catholic Church. Neither did his followers see themselves starting a new denomination, but as the rightful heirs of the Western patrimony and, therefore, the True Catholic Church. And so Luther defied the Protestant – the Pope (the Pope protested against the Apostolic Church). And the Reformers have ever since been their own pope.

In the name of Sola Scriptura Luther disproved of the books of Hebrews, James, Jude and Revelation. He referred to the Epistle of James as “straw not worthy to be burned in my oven as tinder.” Tobias, Judith, Tobias, Sirach (i.e., Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, and 1 and 2 Maccabees was“Judaizing nonsense,” and became the Apocrypha.

Be that as it may, as Augustine said: "Ecclesia semper reformanda est" (the Church always needs reform). Or as Vatican II put it, “The Church, embracing in its bosom sinners, at the same time holy and always in need of being purified, always follows the way of penance and renewal” (Lumen Gentium 8). The Catholic Church was in dire need of a reformation.

Martin Luther appealed to the Orthodox Church in support of claims against the Church of Rome. “The Greeks [Orthodox] . . . are not heretics or schismatics but the most Christian people and the best followers of the Gospel on earth,” he said (Martin Luther (1999). Vol. 32: Luther’s Works, vol. 32: Career of the Reformer II (J. J. Pelikan, H. C. Oswald & H. T. Lehmann, Ed.) (59). Philadelphia: Fortress Press.)

What the Reformers found instead was that the Orthodox were too much like the Papists, and the Orthodox found the Lutherans too much like the Papists.

In Switzerland Zwingli came to prominence by eating sausages, breaching the rules of fasting during Lent. His reforming efforts were in full swing in 1524 and at the order of the Magistrates the churches of Zürich were purged of pictures, relics, crucifixes, altars, and candles.

Then came John Calvin. He broke from the Catholic Church, although he still held to Catholic ideas. He for example approved of bodily mortification. If I could give him any credit, Calvin managed to come up with a theology worse even maybe than the Catholic one.

In his Institutes of the Christian Religion he claimed that divine sovereignty predestined not only the damned, but the fall of mankind itself. God in his hatred toward the damned created them to be the objects of his hatred.

"God not only foresaw the fall of the first man, and in him the ruin of his descendants", he said, "but also meted it out in accordance with his own decision.”

Though "man falls according as god’s providence ordains", John Calvin claimed that "he falls by his own fault," and this he called "most just". These non-elect, "thieves and murderers, and other evildoers, are instruments of divine providence, being employed by the Lord himself”.

Furthermore, god predestined the eternal death of infant children, and for his own pleasure arranged their ruin. ”Because it so pleased God," non-elect infants who die will suffer fore-ordained "eternal damnation.” They were born "doomed from the womb to certain death, and are to glorify him by their destruction."

Calvin, in telling us that hell is populated with infants, reminds us that the choice to worship Calvin's god rather than the devil is at most a matter of discipline.

The biblical claim that “God is love” must be accounted a definition not of God in himself, but only of God as experienced by the elect (toward the damned, God is according to Calvin, in fact hate).

The cross for John Calvin, was not simply God’s self-outpouring love, but chiefly the outpouring of his wrath. But this act of substitution turns out to be one of a peculiarly miserly kind, since its appeasements avail for only a predestined few. An eternal hell is still required for the vast majority, in order to reveal the “glory” of divine sovereignty. And so, the sin that God so much hates, will continue forever.

Since the time of Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Anselm of Canterbury, the west has seen Christ chiefly as the Victim, rather than the Victor. The cross has since been understood in penal and juridical terms, as an act of satisfaction designed to appease the wrath of a bipolar god.

Thomas Aquinas for example asserted that the vision of the torments of the damned will increase the beatitude of the redeemed. Martin Luther insisted that the saved will rejoice to see their loved ones roasting in hell. But John Calvin put their theology on steroids. He put the cherry on top of the cake when overseeing the murder of his theological opponent Servetus, and thus established himself as an unquestionable pope.