The “Reformation” was a Revolution insofar as it departed from passed-down Christian Tradition

Medieval Catholic Corruption: Main Cause of Protestant Revolt?

BY DAVE ARMSTRONG

What does medieval corruption have to do with the abolition of five of seven sacraments, the move to sola Scriptura as the rule of faith over against an authoritative Church and councils and apostolic succession and episcopacy (and including a papacy as well), or the ending of the sacrifice of the mass, or the move away from transubstantiation, or the ditching of purgatory or the end of baptismal regeneration among many Protestants and even infant baptism in some camps? What does it have to do with the cessation of the notion of the communion of saints and intercession of saints, and much of Mariology, and forensic, imputed justification vs. infused?

What does it have to do with the removal of seven previously accepted books from the Bible or the Lutheran and Calvinist drowning of Anabaptist heretics, or the mutual anathematizing of Luther and Zwingli over the issue of the Eucharist? What does the corruption of the medieval Church have to do with Luther’s adoption of double predestination and utter rejection of free will, or Calvinist iconoclasm or the suggestion from the highest Protestant quarters to Philip of Hesse that he lie about his bigamy? Or the widespread early Protestant antipathy to philosophy and science and art?

Etc., etc., etc.

To act as if the Protestant Revolt would not have happened but for medieval problems of schism and corruption is to ignore a host of other factors, as if they were non-contributors. It’s historically ludicrous. No Catholic who knows history at all will deny that corruption of certain popes and bishops was a major factor, but to claim that some reforms of the papacy and/or the Church would have prevented the so-called “Reformation” is a position which is well-nigh unprovable, given all that occurred during that turbulent time, and how many traditional Christian doctrines were ditched by the Protestants. There was far more going on here than merely the usual intrigues of church politics and power plays.

What does getting rid of the papacy and episcopacy and apostolic succession have to do with a corrupt papacy? In other words, how does corruption lead to a conclusion of utter worthlessness, such that something can be discarded? Something is either intrinsically bad and evil or unbiblical or it is not. If it were intrinsically a bad thing, then it wouldn’t take corruption to want to get rid of it (as an evil thing is already “corrupt” anyway). If it is not intrinsically bad, then the proper response is to reform it and get it back to where it should be, not banish and abolish it. Either way, it makes no sense. So why, then, was the papacy abolished in Protestantism? This is nonsensical, incoherent reasoning.

The “Reformation” was not that (it is a misnomer), but rather, a Revolution insofar as it departed from passed-down Christian Tradition, as I am demonstrating in a roundabout way. It was a Christian movement, but not a “reformation” of some so-called pure early church, because such an animal never existed (i.e., the early church did not remotely resemble any brand of Protestantism, which claimed to merely be restoring it — the literal meaning of “Reformation”). One can’t re-form something which never existed in any form.

The Catholic has as much right to call what happened a Revolt as the Protestant has to call it a Reformation. I don’t choose terms of historical epochs based on partisan concerns. I would argue that “Revolt” is much more neutral, whereas “Reformation” presupposes in its very use and literal meaning a Protestant outlook. We deny that what Protestantism brought the world was a return to the early Church, so how can we use the term? It has become a standard term just as Enlightenment has, but note how the latter is also thoroughly biased. Protestants and Catholics can agree that what happened in the 18th century was no “enlightenment” — a big light that went on in culture because Christian tenets were being rejected and the goddess of “reason” put in their place.

Many things could have been different if we had acted against various corruptions sooner. No one disputes that. Of course, I don’t place the onus nearly as highly on papal and Church corruption (sins and sinners in the high ranks). I see infinitely more “tyranny” in Luther and his princes or stuff like the destruction of cathedrals and Christian art (due to iconoclasm), or the massacres of Henry VIII and wholesale theft of the monasteries in England. Few scholars will underestimate or dismiss those things, but plenty will assert that the Inquisition has been greatly exaggerated and distorted.

.................

Read more: www.patheos.com