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Essay on Reformation: Its Religious And Educational Impact
| Date: |
09-24-99 9:49pm |
| Subject: |
History |
| Word Count: |
1369 |
| Page Count: |
5.48 |
Reformation: Its Religious And Educational Impact
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Carlos A. Alvarez Veroy
Mr. and Mrs. Alvarez
10th Grade Research Project
6 June 2001
Reformation: Its Religious and Educational Impact
Throughout the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries a movement called the Reformation took place in Europe. But merely being more than just another religious movement, the Reformation was the moment in history in which God showed His great power and Salvation to the world through the lives of men like John Wycliffe, John Huss, William Tyndale, Martin Luther and John Calvinmen which were determined to die if it was necessary for the Lord’s causea moment in which two distinct forcesthe desire of learning and the rebirth of the Word of Godmade it possible for people to believe in the Bible as the only absolute source of wisdom and truth, putting it as the final authority over man and church. As stated in World History and Cultures by George Thompson and Jerry Combee, the story of how the Protestant Reformation began is a story of how brave men in a world dominated by the Holy Roman Empire “desperately searched for the truth about salvation and found it in the Bible and how they were willing to step out on the sole authority of God’s Word, even if it meant to stand alone for what is right”(246). I think that Martin Luther clearly expressed this thought when he said,
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“Unless I am refuted and convicted by testimonies of Scripture, my conscience is bound in the word of God: I cannot and will not recant anything. I cannot do otherwise. Here I stand. God help me, Amen.”
Before the printing press was invented, books and Bibles were very rare, and people thought that the Roman Catholic Church held the final authority concerning religion and God. The Catholic Church not only possessed the few Bibles available, moreover they were the only ones who could interpret them since they were written only in Latin and Hebrew and only monks and highly educated people could read those languages. They even set a law which prohibited to everyone but the church to have Bibles, and if anyone else wanted to translate it, he had to translate it from the Catholic manuscripts and not from the original Hebrew or Latin texts. As I said before, books were not very abundant and making one was not an easy task. Edith Simon writes, “The making of a book was a slow, expensive process that had improved but little in a thousand years. The professional scribe might spend four or five months copying out a 200-page text; even more costly than his labors were the 25 sheepskins needed to make enough parchment for a book of that length”(134). Therefore, if you wanted to have a Bible of your own, you did not only had to pay a lot for it but had to know how to read Latin or Hebrew and since in those days education levels were so poor and
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expensive, only a small number of people could afford it, making it for anyone a great privilege to read and write.
However, in 1450, Johann Gutenberg invented the printing press and by 1501, there were printing presses in 110 European towns and cities. This made literature available to all class levels, opening people’s minds and encouraging them to study and educate themselves in any field of education that they wanted. This invention became later one of the key tools God used to carry the Gospel to all parts of the world. Throughout all this time the Roman Catholic Church dominated almost every social aspect of the European life, including politics, economy, religion and education, but once men realized the great teachings the Bible possessed, there was nothing that could stop the truth from coming out.
Some might say that the Reformation began many decades before Martin Luther lived but the thing is that none of them had so permanently influenced the world as he did. He was born in Eisleben in 1483 to a middle-class family. All through his life, he tried to live according to the church’s teachings but it seemed like nothing was sufficient to save him from eternal judgment. He tried to do everything in his strength to obey what the church told him a Christian ought to do, yet he never experienced a sense of forgiveness in his soul, only guilt and condemnation. Fortunately, one day, while he was studying the Bible, he came into
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a passage (Romans1: 16-17) which made it to him clear that Salvation was by faith and not by good deeds. By the time he discovered this, he was a very respected monk, who soon realized that the church didn’t teach this and that many things the Catholic church did, including the selling of indulgences (papal certificates that excused a person from doing penance and shortened the required stay in purgatory before going to Heaven) were not in accordance to what he had read in the Bible. The more he read, the more he convinced himself about the lies and worldliness, which existed in the Roman papal court. Few years after, he, and his followers were excommunicated and persecuted by the Roman Catholic Church, but he kept preaching and spreading his belief. He taught that everyone had the right to be educated no matter his or her social position since God made us equal. He constantly encouraged Christian families to train their children in the ways of the Lord and effortlessly persisted throughout Europe the important need of more schools with a strong foundation in God. During his lifetime and after his death he inspired other men such as John Calvin and William Tyndale to follow his example. After Luther’s death the Protestant leadership shifted towards John Calvin. John Calvin further studied the Bible and made a more comprehensive ecclesiastical basis for the church of the new Christian faith, teaching that everything existed for the glory of God and that they should reject papal and state absolutism, appealing rather to God’s sovereignty as absolute. Gary J. Moes says,
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“The Calvinistic understanding of the world as created and governed in every detail by God contributed much to the rise of modern science. Europeans inherited from the Reformation a desire for a serious pursuit of truth and knowledgenot only in the area of salvation, but also in every area of society and culture”(2-3).
“The Reformation doctrine of the priesthood of all believers is often cited as the spark of democracy and individualism in Western culture”(Moes 51). As expressed by Dr. Ellis L. Knox, when Martin Luther died, “…his prestige among reformers was great, but his actual influence had much declined. His greater influence, however, can hardly be underestimated”(Luther’s Later Years). Because of the persecution and discrimination Christians suffered in Europe, they had no other option than to escape to the new discovered continent (America) and to establish themselves in that different, yet big location and begin to construct a new nation based upon the Lord, in which men would have freedom of expression and religion. It would be a nation in which democracy and patriotism would play the key roles that made Americaand later South and Central Americaa free country and a world example of liberty. “Even so, Luther and Calvin had brought the people into disputes that in earlier ages had been left to scholars and priests; thus they opened the way for democracy, for once men began to voice opinions about religious faith, they moved on to make themselves heard in government as
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well”(Simon 170). I will conclude saying that there is much more into the Reformation than what we could ever realize since it changed the world in so many different ways we don’t even know, but something is sure, standing for what’s right and believing in what you say is all it takes to make the difference. How can we apply this to our lives? Sharing God’s gift of salvation to every person we know, no matter what they might say or think since the gospel is God’s power for salvation, and if we are totally sure about that, then why should we keep it a secret? Surely, your message will not return empty.
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