The Protestant Reformation and the Orthodox Christian East by Fr. Panayiotis Papageorgiou, Ph.D. was the topic on Fr. Barnabus Powell's podcast (
Faith Encouraged) last night.
Fr. Panayiotis presented the paper in Germany on the Occasion of the 500-Year Anniversary of the Reformation.
It's a Historical Survey and Study of the Communications between the Reformers
and the Patriarchs Joasaph II and Jeremias II.
It's available on the
Faith Encouraged link.
You can hear the discussion and caller questions
here: Faith Encouraged Live.
Just sharing something I found interesting.
One of the things I think we have to remember is that Luther was very much different than others. And it makes a difference realizing that it was Calvin and
Zwingli, and not so much Luther that unfortunately, started all the craziness with attacking non-Protestant churches (and later attacking the Anabaptist), but these two and others to follow, basically made up their own versions of Christianity. It was HIGHLY deplorable what those individuals did.
Zwingli even went to war against Luther when he felt Luther didn't go far enough in his views with the Reformation..
Scriptures were heavily guarded and the ideas behind icons/images began to shift dramatically during the era of the Reformation. It was, according to Georg Kretschmar, Calvin w
ho "built up the most precise and radical position opposed to the icon theology of the 787 Council of Nicea - for Calvin seems to have assumed that in both the Old and New Testament worship of God was totally devoid of images:
What punishments do the prophets, apostles, martyrs, deserve, in whose days no images existed? (Institutes 1.11.16).
When one understands the radical shift in thinking that occurred in the Protestant Reformation, it can be easier to see why they allowed for such drastic iconoclasm to occur in the same manner as certain radical Muslims are doing today and have done with sacred places (more shared in
Clearing the Way for Reformed-Orthodox Dialogue on Icons | Orthodox-Reformed Bridge.
As
Dr.Philip Jenkins notes in
THE BREAKING OF IMAGES , commenting iconoclasm as central to the Reformation:
For anyone living at the time, including educated elites, the iconoclasm was not just an incidental breakdown of law and order, it was the core of the whole movement, the necessary other side of the coin to the growth of literacy. Those visual and symbolic representations of the Christian story had to decrease, in order for the world of the published Bible to increase.
In terms of the lived experience of people at the time, the image-breaking is the key component of the Reformation. In the rioting and mayhem, a millennium-old religious order was visibly and comprehensively smashed./... Modern Westerners are rightly appalled by such acts as desecrations of humanity's cultural heritage. But such outrage demonstrates a near-total lack of awareness of the West's own history. Nothing that the Islamists have done in this regard would cause the sixteenth century Protestant Reformers to lose a moment's sleep. They would probably have asked to borrow hammers and axes so they could join in.
Wahhabism, the extreme sect of Sunni Islam that is the state religion of Saudi Arabia, and the creed espoused by many contemporary Islamic radicals, has accomplished exactly what Protestant radicals also did. The ways many of the followers of Calvin and Zwingli went about burning down monasteries/Catholic parishes in the name of what Luther did was truly sad - and ironic when seeing that many of the followers of Calvin and Luther did exactly what many Protestants claim only Catholics did when it came to using state power to persecute others.
Although it is a bit sad to see what happened with Luther in his attempts to address what were abuses in the church, I do wonder if things would have turned out differently if the East was involved. There was access to the East that Luther had in some dialogues with others....but he didn't seem to value what the East had to offer enough to take significant action on it in practice (even though he never condemned the Orthodox in his writings). Even with others who seemed to have similarities with the East when it came to people within the Church who were against Calvin/Zwingli (as Erasmus did as an advocate for reform within the Catholic system/addressing the abuses without being extreme in condemning things that Calvin/Zwingli did later ), he often turned against his own supporters. ...and even things Catholics agreed with the Eastern Orthodox on would not be supported.
And when seeing the issue of the Renaissance that others were involved in and how Luther didn't support that due to his views of man being a sinner rather than having glorious things within them to be examined, it seems possible that he would have perhaps gone to war with the East since they have a fundamental difference in how they view man.
