What if the Protestant reformation never happened?

[mark kennedy]

Ugh. This thread is depressing. It's such an interesting question and so quickly became Catholics screaming "better!" and Protestants screaming "worse!"

I'm just taking something I gave some thought in context, not really nursing an opinion in favor of Catholic or Protestant views.

I agree at the very least with those that say something had to happen in the sixteenth century. Considering that Luther and Zwingli began their reformations in Saxony and Zurich at about the same time completely independent of each other, you'd either have to assume a conspiracy from some future Catholic fundamentalist going back in time and murdering all the early reformers (which would be a fun novel), or only be able to take out one of the reformations, not all of them.

I can't help but wonder if the discovery of the new world was not a much bigger influence. Spain had gotten fabulously wealthy by plundering gold when Martin Luther was brought before the Diet of Worms. One thing is for sure, we would not have ever heard of Martin Luther had it not been for the printing press and the same could be said of Galileo.

The Scientific Revolution would probably also have proceeded apace and perhaps quicker, since the Roman Inquisition may not have been set up and may not have prosecuted Galileo.

I find it hard to believe they mistook Galileo for a Protestant, I think Pope Urban was just a little too paranoid.

One area, however, in which things could have been far worse is in the long term settlement of North America and the development of early modern political thought. Without the independence of the United Kingdom from papal censure, England (like France) would have been severely stunted in its pursuit of North American colonies. The Treaty of Tordesillas would have remained in force. Moreover, without the Reformed wing of the Protestants, Puritan political theory would have never undermined absolute monarchy as it did. No English Civil War, no beheading of Charles I, no John Locke. No Mayflower Compact. No English Bill of Rights. No American Declaration of Independence and Constitution and Bill of Rights.

I tend to agree but 8 of the colonies in North America were signed by William and Mary, Catholics as I recall. I don't think there was anyway North America was not going to be settled but it did bring about the one thing you need most for a democracy, people. Because of the upswing in food production populations in Europe soared, in some places it tripled.

Well, maybe. But I don't know why I should bother if this is going to be an exercise in ecclesiastical flag waving rather than an interesting discussion on alternate history. Sorry, Catholics, I just hold you all to a higher standard.

I think the Scientific Revolution would never have happened if not for the Protestant Reformation and the reason is Aristotelean Scholasticism. For quite some time they had tried, the Medieval Catholics I mean, to update and revise it but those like Galileo said we have to scrap it. There are a lot of reasons that giving up a unified theory was painful but when it came to physics the way it was developing, it seems few alternatives were available.

Grace and peace,
Mark

 

[hagios24]

Martin Luther was German, I wonder if that had something to do with his rebellion against Rome and the Spanish Emperor who judged him at the The Diet of Worms 152.

You know they pit the germanic descendent Afrikaaners against each other. Then they made sub-factions and sub-factions. They even got two brother generals to fight each other. Martin luther was certainly not every german. The goths likewise persecuted the romans. Im not saying he was bad, but im not saying that he wasnt subtly co ordinated by higher less friendly powers either. Two currents flow from germany the bible giving out the gospel to the world and the papal transformation into a mega power. Technically speaking every single christian whether heretic or not is still considered catholic under the inquisition which was not repealed or destroyed but namely silence (for a time)

Classical humanism isn't opposed to God, it's simply the idea that humanity is perfectible. I would agree in principle except that it's impossible by human effort.

Sure, but it was the change in focus from what can we do for God to what can we do for man that helped feul more subversive and hidden agendas such as breaking the gold standard obliterate the whole idea of freedom.

The medieval Catholics were not big on democracy, they had a kind of constitutional republic. It's modeled after Plato's Republic and it did what Plato said it would do, it lasted a thousand years.

I'm not disagreeing entirely but Caesaer and his generals tended to sway more towards Machievelli besides politics is never reduced to a two party system. Thats far too honest.

Christianity makes converts everywhere it spreads, the message is to whosoever will. One of the reasons Rome adapted Christian theism is that they made converts of the barbarians, especially the followers of Alaric the Great who sacked Rome in 410. Had Rome not Christianized it would have fallen.

Then you tactically weave mysery religion into their education to de-emphasise their understanding of holiness so that christianity again fades away.

That's why Constantine move his capital to Byzantium, Turkey was the key to international commerce at the time.

And the Qey to the hearts of the people to help create a new religion based in the east built on the papal roman mindset to help consolidate massive power for what they predicted modern locomotive and mechanical technology among other things.

You lost me there.

Since the constitution and its wise ammendments are absolute, what does that make democracy, which lawyers and politicians and judges use to repeal that very same document to bypass the debt ceiling cheques and balances?

If your talking about Protestant and Catholic political ideologies you could look at the Civil War in England and the Thirty Years War. Did you know John Locke was a Protestant Whig? Do you know why that is important to the founding of the US Constitutional Republic.

The whole idea of secracy is repugnant in a free and open society.

I think the Dark Ages should be famous for the books they preserved and I don't just mean the Christian canon of Scripture.



I remember them.



If you mean the rise of public authorities I would agree they are a shadow government but their not really in control of much.



The ancient Greeks are famous for their being driven by emotion, the point seems moot.



Fifty years before the Inquisition started you could not seize the property of heretics so it didn't happen much. When it stopped it was because Rome had decided to take away the seizure laws. The Salem Witch Hunts of 1692 were over political intrigue and everyone accused of witch craft was subject to seizure. There's a simple explanation here if you look clearly at it.



I never really understood what all the fuss is about Jerusalem in the first place, it's not much of a city. God likes it for some reason which has a lot to do with it's history.



You lost me again but overall, an interesting take on the topic.

Grace and peace,
Mark

sorry i will answer your post better when i get home using mobile

 

[GratiaCorpusChristi]

William and Mary weren't Catholics. They were brought in specifically to replace the Catholic James II who was turned out in the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89.

 

[Erose]

During that time period rebellion was in the air. No body seemed to like their situation and people wanted changed, and they didn't care where it came from... come to think about it, it sounds a lot like the current environment does it not?

 

[Standing Up]

What would society be like today?

Worse.

 

[Tangible]

In my opinion, I don't think that the Catholic Church would have reformed on their own. There were many a monk and other clergymen that promoted reformation to no avail for a few centuries prior to the reformation.

One big difference in the timing of the Protestant Reformation that sets it apart from other reformers and reformation movements was the availability of mass communication made possible by the printing press.

 

[hagios24]

Martin Luther was German, I wonder if that had something to do with his rebellion against Rome and the Spanish Emperor who judged him at the The Diet of Worms 152.

Sure, you could probably say the same thing about the Spanish ancestors before they became Roman. The thing is, the Germans were not the only ones with an axe to grind with ther Romans, Italians and Spanish. And really to be a Roman is to be apart of something much bigger. But you know even Germany persecuted the Jews for hundreds of years hundreds of years before the Holocaust. And heretics were treated equally like garbage. They used to call our ancestors witches, as if being kjv only is heretical. But the thing is they get us to rationlise things on a national basis. Germany has its own fair share of skeletons. Forcing Jews to Latvia and Poland being one of them. I'm not saying Luther was a bad guy, but I'm not saying he was perfect either. I believe he was looking at the bigger picture and wanted to help spread the Gospel.

Classical humanism isn't opposed to God, it's simply the idea that humanity is perfectible. I would agree in principle except that it's impossible by human effort.

Yeah, but my point is look at the logic they used to justify the shift of focus - the Christians are killing each other therefore the Christians must research and develope science to persecute each other even further but must make it look like the will of the people meanwhile the will of the people is simple stop this barbaric public killing just stop killing each other. At the end of the day we have to wonder witch Christians had to gain from Humanism (a) the ones being called heretics and beaten to death, (b) or the ones beating them to death to simply sieze their land and wealth and centralize power? And once all the power had been gained, the old caste system could once again be implemented on society peasant tradesman nobility and royalty, and christianity done away with. And society is pretty much all the way of being a cashless society built upon debt to financially castrate cheques and balances and to make anyone who steps out of line into a crook. And your economy is totally ruined by forced open borders against the will of the people. Humanism gave a leg up to more sinnister plots socialism and evolution and death culture which people embrace today.

The medieval Catholics were not big on democracy, they had a kind of constitutional republic. It's modeled after Plato's Republic and it did what Plato said it would do, it lasted a thousand years.

I really should read Plato, but I have picked up information on him here and there. He and socrates and later guys like divinci were masters of many fields including political science. I have a couple works by Machievilli that I must still read also. It's not that much but I have found that the fall in morality was made possible by Machievillis new ideas on social engineering and basically destroying an empire and countries to dissolve that wealth into other companies to bypass the history of corruption. Democracy is the idea that the people have the say. If you employ social engineers into the state it might be easy to see how democracy as a preferred system is then bypassed by subterfuge of the older less fair systems. Democracy is a very nice front. Do all democrats think like Democrats. I'm sure Kerry and Hillary would have us believe that Democrats are 100% perfectand would never secretly rig the voting ballads even though they've collectively sold out the one true democratic nation to the world and done nothing to stop that little debt ceiling and turned America over to poverty fromwhat used to be the worlds richest middle class. And the medical industry kills more than it cures.

 

[ChristsSoldier115]

What would have happened if the great shism between east and west churches never happened and the eastern church dominated?

I need to read up on church history again, because I am perplexed on how one bishop in Rome ended up dominating all the other churches in the west. Maybe it was just general compliance after one of the councils or something.

 

[Hentenza]

One big difference in the timing of the Protestant Reformation that sets it apart from other reformers and reformation movements was the availability of mass communication made possible by the printing press.

Absolutely. Literacy rates were growing considerably during the 16th and 17th centuries.

 

[hagios24]

Christianity makes converts everywhere it spreads, the message is to whosoever will. One of the reasons Rome adapted Christian theism is that they made converts of the barbarians, especially the followers of Alaric the Great who sacked Rome in 410. Had Rome not Christianized it would have fallen.

Yeah true - Im interested in knowing what kind of relationship peoples like the Barbarians had with Ghengis Khan his succesors and predecessors. Perhaps Asia has been pulling the strings all this time. Russia and China practically have the same form of Government and treat their environment and people with the same amount of disgust and distrust. The market is totally cornerred by the Chinese and the world recognises that Russia is not particularly the bringer of good news. Not to mention... That army of two hundred million.

That's why Constantine move his capital to Byzantium, Turkey was the key to international commerce at the time.

Create a new religion to force the heretic infidel out to steal their wealth and land for the empire. Viva revolution. Pretend that religion created itself while the commander kisses the holy book. Kill anyone who critisizes that book or notices that it came from the inquisition not some polygomist who liked killing and drinking blood. Us thats what real men do. I'm being sarcastic of course, but its hard to talk seriously about a place that has hardly changed and still publically beheads and rapes christian children. Sorry to sound so graphic but i spend quite a lot od time on the persecution website and its just disgusting what you find there. Its almost as if christian persecution never ended but is like a torch immortalised and passed onto one generation of belzebub worshipping reptilian shape shifters to the next. Really you have towonder if these people arent from a distant galaxy from the way they act.

You lost me there.

If the people are socially engineered through frued, darwin, jung, marx and kant - people are going to become inherently stupid sad to say. Then democracy just doesn't. I believe people desire good don't get me wrong i just don't believe most of us have what it takes to understand this tide of evil. The constitution is turned over in court. It doesn't matter what the people think if the new aristocrats are cover democrats.

If your talking about Protestant and Catholic political ideologies you could look at the Civil War in England and the Thirty Years War. Did you know John Locke was a Protestant Whig? Do you know why that is important to the founding of the US Constitutional Republic.

It would certainly give democracy fairer ground to work on, right? I mean, nothing against Catholics this has to do with the symposium of inquisitorial laws which are simply overrid by other laws. They havent been destroying. So technically those could be reinstituted if a certain horseman clothed in white garments decided to kill a third of the world here little there a little. Likewise I'm not sure most lanchestarian bluecoat style christians realise that we have our own club of rome freemason demons lurking behind our heads with gillatine and all. Nice chaps these globalists. Im being sarcastic again of course.

I think the Dark Ages should be famous for the books they preserved and I don't just mean the Christian canon of Scripture.

Well, from a wider view, I would have to say the authorized although this was not from the dark ages but there were other great biblical works about i think tyndale was one such author of a cannon. Didnt they crush his bones to dust for translating it to english or was that knox. We wouldn't understand half of what these books mean. Till this day the James version still carries its weighty title as the greatest english literary work, dare i say greatest piece of literature in human history to date. I say this for the simple reason that the language of its pages are used for international commerce. And the modern translations are a far cry from powerful english with their omitting kill from the ten commandments and replacing with murder to make the christian God look stupid. Also, I don't have a problem with science or art. My whole point is that if you get treated like a heretic for being king james only then the system need not create atheism to exterminate all the heretics thats a little extreme. Oh yes and then of course call the heretics extreme for saying that killing is wrong while chopping off their heads and laughing. I'm using dark satire obviously but the dark ages are unsuprisingly depressing.

 

[hagios24]

I'm pretty sure that the blessed revelation says something along the lines of and im summary paraphrasing here the fallen angel horsemen would have killed everyone on earth if that time of persecution had not been shortened for our sakes. Ann Bolin is a good exampe of how decadance and slobberycan also destroy the powerful and the educated. Ultimately no one is immune to the evil that is let loose on the land by killing the innocent like wild dogs of hell running in the streets. I remember listening to a prophetess talking about the demons she saw flying across the sea before 911 then there are of course the demons people saw in the smoke. And I don't think that is make believe but that's just me.

As much as the reformation was hijacked for collonialism, crime don't pay. God will never let the devils agendas go on unexposed

 

[food4thought]

What would have happened if the great shism between east and west churches never happened and the eastern church dominated?

Well, the Eastern church was under the thumb of the eastern emperor a lot more than the western part. The emperor had a lot more control over the naming of bishops/patriarchs, and he also managed to get his way in many of their later councils/synods. Also, the Greek speaking east was much more prone to theological/philosophical exploration, and they produced quite a few of the doctrinal conflicts that required further definition of the faith, particularly in Christology. The Latin speaking west generally had a more practical bent, and would have been content with the Nicene creed, or even previous creeds that were less narrow. At least that is what I have gathered from my Church History class thus far. The texts for the class are The Story of Christianity: Volumes I and II, by Justo L Gonzalez. I recommend them highly, they are a good introductory source that provides a solid overview of Church history.

I need to read up on church history again, because I am perplexed on how one bishop in Rome ended up dominating all the other churches in the west. Maybe it was just general compliance after one of the councils or something.

The primacy of the Bishop of Rome in the west was something that developed over time due to tradition and circumstance. From very early times, the Bishop of Rome was recognized as an authority of the highest rank, along with the Bishops of Antioch, Byzantium (later Constantinople), Alexandria, and perhaps a few others. All of these were large, influential cities that could claim (rightly or not) Apostolic origin. Over time, the primacy of Peter amongst the Apostles gave rise to an increasing respect for the Bishop of Rome. Another factor was the power vacuum left in the west when the capital of the empire was moved east to Constantinople. Over time, the empire's deteriorating organization and power in the west left the church, whose leaders were often highly regarded by the people, to take an ever increasing role in government. Since Rome was the capitol city of the western empire, this might have also played a role in the increasing authority of the Bishops of Rome. The Bishops of Rome began taking a more authoritarian stance as the final word on orthodoxy largely due, among other reasons, to it being the largest major western city in the empire, and the ever increasing doctrinal controversies springing up in the east, and also as a counterbalance to the authority of the eastern emperor who had too much authority (in many people's eyes) over the church in the east.

That's the way I understand it so far... hope it helped.

 

[Root of Jesse]

Well, at least it would open up the possibility that there might not be a sinful, fallible man claiming that he and his predecessors are/were infallible in certain pronouncements...

If the Reformation hadn't happened, you wouldn't have Protestants, as a group. You'd have dissidents, but not Protestants. Maybe.

 

[Root of Jesse]

If not Luther, someone would have said/done something. The time was ripe for a significant upheaval in the social and religious landscape of Europe.

As it stands, not everything that happened during the Reformation was necessarily of the Reformation. The Reformation itself was more-or-less the catalyst that set off a powder keg in Europe that was already ready to blow anyway.

It's simply, in my mind, unlikely that the 16th century wouldn't have seen something happen.

I might even posit that without the rather sober minds of Luther, Melancthon, Calvin (etc) who were willing to engage diplomatically with the powers that be (both ecclesial and secular) the ordeal could have been a far, far more violent one (and it was already pretty violent with the Radicals spurring on the Peasant's Revolt and fanning the flames of fanaticism and rebellion)

-CryptoLutheran

Truth is, the Church Christ created was in a state of reformation from the day of Pentecost...

 

[Hentenza]

If the Reformation hadn't happened, you wouldn't have Protestants, as a group. You'd have dissidents, but not Protestants. Maybe.

There are no protestants as a group but there are groups of protestants just as there are groups of Catholics and groups of Eastern Orthodox, etc.

 

[Root of Jesse]

There are no protestants as a group but there are groups of protestants just as there are groups of Catholics and groups of Eastern Orthodox, etc.

The Catholic Church stands as one body. There are groups within Catholicism-the Franciscans, the Dominicans, the Carthusians, and so on.

I know you don't care for the term "Protestant", so let's call it "non-Catholic Christians" or as we would say "Separated brothers and sisters"?

The truth is that, since Jesus ascended to heaven, there have been people falling by the wayside. There hav been major and minor heresies, schisms, and branch-offs. So just because of Luther/Calvin/Henry, no. It was happening anyway. It's still happening-the number of denominations is growing, and the number of those who aren't in communion with the true Church is growing, but so is the number of those who try to be in communion with Christ, happily enough.

 

[Hentenza]

The Catholic Church stands as one body.

lol Been to OBOB lately?

There are groups within Catholicism-the Franciscans, the Dominicans, the Carthusians, and so on.

Sure

I know you don't care for the term "Protestant", so let's call it "non-Catholic Christians" or as we would say "Separated brothers and sisters"?

Fine. I will then consider Catholics "separated brothers and sisters" also.

the true Church...

All mainstream churches are true churches. Yours is one.

 

[Root of Jesse]

lol Been to OBOB lately?

Yup, like any other family.

Sure



Fine. I will then consider Catholics "separated brothers and sisters" also.

Fine, but inaccurate. If you chop the arm off the body, which is the "separated"?

All mainstream churches are true churches. Yours is one.

[/quote]Nope Christ didn't create churches. He created Church. I won't deny that you're part of that Church, even if not perfectly, but that describes all of us. Have a nice day.

 

[yogosans14]

Yup, like any other family.

Fine, but inaccurate. If you chop the arm off the body, which is the "separated"?

Nope Christ didn't create churches. He created Church. I won't deny that you're part of that Church, even if not perfectly, but that describes all of us. Have a nice day.[/QUOTE]

What Church are you people speaking about?Jesus didnt mean church as a building with a cross on it. Ugh we have been blinded by the American term of church these days .......

 

[New Legacy]

in what sense?I know the dark ages was a great time for Christians

What on Earth are you talking about? The Dark Ages which was caused by the fall of the Roman Empire was saved by monasteries preserving knowledge and providing a center for communities.

We'd be living in the Dark Ages if it weren't for Catholicism.