Mere Christianity: The Prequel

 

In the classic Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis, the most important writer of the 20th century, explores the common ground upon which all of those of Christian faith stand together.

Lewis sums up this common ground:

The central Christian belief is that Christ’s death has somehow put us right with God and given us a fresh start.

The “somehow” part often causes great difficulty.  Lewis continues:

There are three things that spread the Christ-life to us: baptism, belief, and that mysterious action which different Christians call by different names – Holy Communion, the Mass, the Lord’s Supper.

Each one of which has proven, throughout history, to be a minefield.

As is well-known, such controversies have plagued Christians from the beginning.  The Apostles Peter and Paul had a falling out, and it doesn’t get much earlier than that.  The earliest official Church split came after Chalcedon, on a point so nuanced, I suspect few adherents of one side or the other could articulate it using words available to human beings.

This all was supercharged in the Reformation.

Fatal Discord: Erasmus, Luther, and the Fight for the Western Mind, by Michael Massing.

We move forward to John Calvin and the case of Michael Servetus.  By this point, Calvin had already approved or consented to the beheading of Jacques Gruet – for having put a placard on Calvin’s pulpit, calling him a “puffed-up hypocrite,” for mocking the authority of Scripture, and for appealing to France to intervene in Geneva.  After being tortured twice daily for thirty days, bringing on his confession, Gruet was beheaded.

More damaging to Calvin’s reputation at the time was the case of Servetus.  Referred to as “an eclectic theologian from Spain” by Massing, he held what are described as maverick and even unbalanced positions.  He would write against Calvin’s views in the Institutes, for example, rejecting predestination and original sin, and that infant baptism was diabolical.  He further deprecated the Trinity.

An exchange of letters between Calvin and Servetus ensued. With Servetus finally announcing that the Archangel Michael was preparing himself for Armageddon, and that he, Servetus, would be his armor-bearer.  Calvin sent these letters to the Catholic inquisitors in Lyon, and Servetus was arrested – but escaped a few days later.

Servetus would wander for three months in France.  Inexplicably, he decided to turn up in Geneva, and even more confounding, he would attend Calvin’s lectures the day after his arrival to the city.  Although disguised, he was recognized and Calvin had one of his disciples file capital charges against him.  He was then tried and sentenced to death.  His request to be beheaded rather than burned was denied; he took a half-hour in the flames to die.

Calvin approved.  “God makes clear that the false prophet is to be stoned without mercy… We are to crush beneath our heel all affections of nature when his honor is involved.  The father should not spare the child, nor the brother his brother, nor the husband his own wife or the friend who is dearer to him than life.”

Among humanists, this execution caused a storm.  And this is where the author to the prequel of Mere Christianity comes in.  Sebastian Castellio was a professor of Greek at the University of Basel, and he felt compelled to speak out.  Concerning Heretics, Whether They Should Be Persecuted is assumed written by him, and is considered the first modern defense of religious tolerance. 

From an essay regarding Castellio’s book, by Marian Hillar:

The book contained extracts promoting toleration taken from the writings of some twenty-five Christian writers, ancient and modern, including Luther and Calvin himself.

It seems toleration and pecking order are inversely related; as it was for the Church, so it now was in the Reformers.  In fact, Castellio was first attracted to Calvin’s Reformed tradition, seeing in it a way out of the intolerance of the Church.  Calvin had previously even offered Castellio the position of teacher and rector at the newly organized academy of Geneva. 

They would slowly have a falling out, as Calvin sensed too much of an independent spirit in this underling – differing views on the sacredness of the Song of Solomon and on Christ’s descent into hell.  He would be hounded by Calvin the rest of his life.  This affected his health, and he would die at the age of forty-eight.

From Hillar, paraphrasing Castellio:

Who would wish to be a Christian, when he sees that those who confessed the name of Christ were destroyed by Christians themselves with fire, water and the sword without mercy and were more cruelly treated than brigands and murderers?  Who would not think Christ a Moloch, or some such god, if he wished that men should be immolated to him and burned alive?

Making Slaves of Freed Men

 

NB: The Reformation was likely inevitable, with or without Luther, when one considers the financial and ethical corruption in the Church and the reality of the printing press.  The official Church certainly did Christianity no favors at the time and in the years preceding.  At the same time, Luther didn’t exactly wrap himself in noble cloth either.  This post will examine one of Luther’s more egregious acts.

As usual, the post is about the history, not about the theology.  That I personally find sympathy with certain of the Church’s positions and at the same time certain of Luther’s is irrelevant, other than to suggest, perhaps, that I am a confused Christian.

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Fatal Discord: Erasmus, Luther, and the Fight for the Western Mind, by Michael Massing.

Taking to heart Luther’s idea of the priesthood of all believers, the Orlamünders had become confident exegetes….

This is a story of what happens when the cat is let out of the bag, and when the one who opened the bag believes he is the only one qualified to be so set free….

The peasants were growing restless.  The Orlamünders were after images, and they were moving fast.  Luther offered that all that was commanded was that images not be worshipped; there was no prohibition regarding images as images.  Luther was, therefore, accused of being among the damned: “…get out, in the name of a thousand devils.”

These townspeople had been taught directly by the living voice of God; what use did they have for Luther?  Sounds rather Lutheran.  Luther would warn the princes; an uprising was at hand.  By this time, the early 1520s, it spread from the Upper Rhine valley to Alsace in the west, to the Black Forest in the east, and all the way to Lake Constance and Upper Swabia.  Basically, the southwestern corner of Germany was a tinderbox.

Massing lays the main blame on a unique understanding of capitalism, which he describes as landlords usurping many of the rights to which small farmers and others had been previously entitled under feudalism.  Common lands, previously used for sheep and cows, were closed off; forests – for firewood, thatch, and nuts, were declared off limits; streams and ponds were no longer accessible; taxes and fees were increasing.  Penalties for violations could even include execution.

As an aside, this behavior should be kept in mind when one considers what has been labeled as the Wars of Religion.  Wars too simply blamed on the division between Catholics and Protestants.  These wars are more appropriately labeled wars of state and state-building.  As we see even here, the issue is not religion (and certainly not capitalism, as Massing claims).  The issue is aggrandizement of power at the expense of rights long-held via tradition and custom.

Returning to Massing: the peasants were using Luther’s own words to defend their right: no pope or bishop has the right to impose any law on the laypeople without their consent; every Christian is a free lord, subject to none.  The priesthood of all believers allowed all to hold to their own understanding.  Luther, after all, defied all such external authority.  Was this freedom only allowed to him? 

Adjacent Switzerland was not spared: Zwingli stressed the right of the community to recall secular authorities who failed to rule in a Christian manner – an idea foreign to Luther.  On June 15, 1524, images from all Zurich churches were removed – all pictures, statues, saintly images, etc. 

The Eucharist became another point of contention – with Luther holding to a position much closer to the Catholic than to that held by many Reformers.  Luther, seeing himself as the only proper authority for properly interpreting Scripture, now had as enemies both the Church and the unleashed priesthood of believers.

Luther would respond as he often did: vehemently and abusively.  His awareness was growing as to the spirit he unleashed, discovering that Scripture might be interpreted differently than how he believed it ought to be understood.

The first major revolt occurred just nine days later, some forty miles north of Zurich, across the Rhine and in Germany.  The local count’s wife demanded the peasants take time away from their own crop to gather empty snail shells for her spooling.  It was just this kind of abuse that drove the peasants to revolt.

Meanwhile, aggrieved peasants in what is today Bavaria began to form in military bands.  Multiple thousands would join.  The put their grievances to the Swabian League – an association of princes and barons.  From here they were told to go to the Imperial courts, but the peasants held no faith in this course.  Eventually their grievances would become known as The Twelve Articles – perhaps the first written set of human rights in Europe.

Each community should have the right to elect its own pastor; the tithe should be used only for the local pastor and needy poor; the lords’ must no longer treat us as serfs as we are free in Christ.  The peasants would gladly withdraw any articles that were shown to be contrary to Scripture.  As can be seen, Luther’s teachings and arguments were clearly on display.

The Critical Juncture in the West

 

Fatal Discord: Erasmus, Luther, and the Fight for the Western Mind, by Michael Massing.

It is difficult to avoid writing about this book, given the topic covered.  I do suggest: for anyone interested in the time and events, it is a valuable resource and an easy read.

In my last post, I wrote of what seemed to clearly be the sticking point for the Church: Luther’s questioning on indulgences.  In this post, I will offer brief snippets of events in the subsequent years.

Jan Hus

Yes, I know this was prior to Luther; Hus is in the story about one century earlier.  But the story of Luther cannot be told without Hus.  It was at the Leipzig Disputation in the summer of 1519 where Luther was compared to Hus, because of a) Luther raised many of the same objections, and b) Luther said that on many points, he agreed with Hus.

Of course, Luther knew little of Hus at the time he made these statements; until this point, he had not read any of Hus’s works (probably difficult to come by, given they were deemed heretical).    Hus, like Luther after him, would condemn the papacy (an Antichrist if he lived contrary to Christ) and supported offering the cup to the laity.  These, among other positions, did not sit well in Rome.

In October 1414, Hus was called to the Council of Constance.  He traveled there with a safe-conduct granted by the emperor, but within a month it was decided that such a heretic deserved no safe return.  By the next summer, he was told: recant or else.  He would not.  On July 6, 1415, Hus was burned alive.

Erasmus

He was in a tough spot.  He agreed with much of what Luther wrote and said, and Luther felt – at least early on – that Erasmus could be an ally.  But, fighting the Church openly was not his style or desire.  In fact, fighting at all openly was not in his sights.  When he wanted to attack, he would author a pamphlet anonymously.

Erasmus would write plainly and openly: he had not desire to speak against Rome or the Pope; in no way would he want to be a martyr.  The pressure slowly turned up into one of those “if you’re not with us, you’re against us” climaxes.

Luther

He could be a nasty sort; he relied on the notion that Christ came, not to bring peace, but a sword.  Those who wrote against him were “doctrinal asses,” “ignorant and wicked,” “swarm of parasites,” “The ‘Holy Roman See of Avarice,’” “the monsters of this age,” “a licentious den of thieves,” “notorious godlessness.”

He even wrote a pamphlet, mimicking a papal bull, entitled “Why the Books of the Pope and His Disciples Were Burned by Doctor Martin Luther.”

To the extent he received admonishments of various sorts from Rome, there was offered little, if any, rebuttal beyond leaning on the authority of the Church.

The Printing Press

Millions (yes, millions) of copies of Luther’s work were printed, spreading throughout Germany and Europe – not only in Latin, but also in the common tongues.  Absent the printing press, Luther may not have achieved any better result than that which came to Hus.

Worms

The Diet at Worms, 1521; Charles and the Church confront Luther.  An event as meaningful to the history of the West as was the day when the Estates General convened in France in 1789.  For Luther, finding himself in the company of the emperor, many esteemed nobles, bishops, etc., was a new and strange experience for such a lowly and haggard man.

Indulge Me

 Fatal Discord: Erasmus, Luther, and the Fight for the Western Mind, by Michael Massing.

I know that I said I was not planning to write on this book the last time I wrote on this book…but some parts are too important to pass up.  Luther’s Reformation is one of the most important events in the history of the West and in Christendom.  A brief examination of his views at the time – along with a look at what Erasmus was writing at the same time – is worthwhile, if for no other reason than the history.

In the summer of 1516, while Luther was lecturing on the Epistle to the Romans, Luther received a copy of Erasmus’s Novem Instrumentum: New Instrument, or New Testament.  Reading Erasmus’s unfavorable notes on the practices of the clergy when compared with the exhortations of the Apostle Paul, Luther’s own notes would become ever more stinging.

He would bring special attention to the sale of indulgences.  In this, he was criticizing not only the pope, but also Frederick, his protector.  Regarding the pope, if had the power to deliver souls from purgatory, why does he not deliver them all?  Why base it on a payment?

In 1517, a new indulgence would be offered, preached by the Dominican friar, Johann Tetzel on behalf of the pope.  Tetzel was an expert at this practice, sending an advance crew weeks before his arrival to prepare the people for this opportunity.  Songs, flags, candles – it was a big show.  He was expert at preying on the guilt of his audience:

Don’t you hear the voices of your wailing dead parents and others who say, “Have mercy upon me, have mercy upon me, because we are in severe punishment and pain.  From this you could redeem us with a small alms and yet you do not want to do so…. You let us lie in flames so that we only slowly come to the promised glory.”

And with this, coins would clink into the box; Tetzel would hand out the certificate, proof of salvation from this torment.  Luther would preach against this practice on February 24, 1517.  He closed his sermon:

Oh, the dangers of our time!  Oh, you snoring priests!  Oh, darkness deeper than Egyptian!  How secure we are in the midst of all our evils!

A nice close, but his sermon had little effect.  What did have effect: when his parishioners refused to refrain from adultery, usury, and other vices, they would just show Luther their indulgence letters.  Luther refused to honor these, sending the parishioners back to Tetzel to complain. 

This indulgence had an additional complication behind it: the funds were to be used to continue the construction of the new St. Peter’s in Rome.  The German nobles had little desire to continue sending such significant treasure to Rome.  Yes, it was offered by the people, but it was still wealth transferred out of the region.

Julius II, the prime mover of the project, died in 1513.  His successor, Leo X, did not have the same commitment to the project.  One could say that he was not the ideal pope for the project or for the time.  This son of Lorenzo de’ Medici inherited his father’s taste and cultivation without the drive.

He was made a priest at the age of seven, an abbot at eleven, and a cardinal at thirteen.  He was thirty-seven when elected pope.  In this, he could easily serve his self-indulgent nature: “Let us enjoy the papacy, since God has given it to us.”  Perhaps apocryphal, but certainly capturing the spirit.

Examples of this enjoyment were easy to find: his inaugural procession was the most splendid since the time of the Roman emperors; he would lose eight-thousand ducats a month at cards; he would distribute bags of gold to those who would sing with him; he kept a menagerie of the most exotic animals; under him, the papal household grew from 200 to over 700 people.

He would spend a month every summer to hunt – but not really to hunt, as he couldn’t see very well.  When a boar was snared in a net, he would go in with a spear and a magnifying glass for the kill.  Dinners were most elaborate:

Leo loved vulgarity.  He also enjoyed theatrical pieces, the more indecent and farcical the better.

Meanwhile, the chief architect for St. Peter’s died.  A well-known artist with no architectural skills was named to replace him.  Costs skyrocketed, designs changed, controls were lacking, money was squandered.

Translation Transformation

I have been reading a book by Michael Massing, entitled Fatal Discord: Erasmus, Luther, and the Fight for the Western Mind.  I have not been writing on it, as it would turn my reading into a huge burden.  The book is terribly long – over 800 pages before getting to a hundred pages or more of endnotes; further, it reads like a friendly biography – actually, dual biographies.  So, I wanted to take this book “off” when it came to the blog.

There have been a couple of times that I read something and thought it would make for a good post, but decided to keep going in my simpler path.  Until now.  The subject is the New Testament of Erasmus, his Novum Instrumentum.

Right off the bat: he called it a New Instrument, not a New Testament.  I will come to the why of this in due time.  What most interested me and moved me to write about this episode was the backstory of the translation, the speed at which it came together, its influence over many centuries, and especially the errors.  Although I won’t call these errors, because the word implies that I am more qualified than I actually am.  Let’s just call these “controversies,” and I will leave it to better minds to parse out the issues (which certainly has been done in the intervening 500 years, albeit I am quite certain many controversies, old and new, remain).

And to this end, I want to be clear about my purpose: in my presentation, I don’t intend to take one side or the other on several controversial aspects of his translation.  My intention is merely to offer something of the difficulty had by Christendom in getting it right.  I want to look at it strictly from the historical perspective – combining this time and place, the new technology of printing, the crash of the Renaissance and humanism, and the time just before the Reformation that finally took the name.

With this said: This translation was not really a translation; Erasmus wanted to offer a Greek New Testament, a New Testament in its original language as opposed to the Latin used in the West.  He would also include a Latin translation, the two languages in parallel columns on each page and further explanatory notes, etc.  With this, he was to correct what he saw as errors in Jerome’s Vulgate – a task certain to arouse displeasure.

And this displeasure would begin even before publication.  He would receive a letter from Martin Dorp, a twenty-nine-year-old lecturer in philosophy – a letter that Erasmus was certain was written at the urging of more powerful individuals:

What sort of business was this, he asked, “to correct the Latin copies by means of the Greek”?  the Vulgate “contains no admixture of falsehood or mistake.”  It was not reasonable that the whole Church, in using this edition, “should for all these centuries have been wrong.”  Nor was it probable that all the Holy Fathers and all the saintly men who had relied on it “should have been deceived.”

If the Latin varied from the Greek, Dorp would bid the Greek goodbye.  Not because the Greek might be more corrupted than the Latin, but because he couldn’t be persuaded that the Greek could not be less corrupted than the Latin.  In other words, both might have faults.

Erasmus did not take kindly to the veiled warning:

Such men, he observed, “poke fun at Greek and Hebrew and even Latin, and, though stupid as pigs and not equipped with the common feelings of humankind, they suppose themselves to hold the citadel of all wisdom.”

Further, why the attack on the Greek Scriptures?

The same people who considered Greek exegetes renegades had turned the pagan Aristotle into an unassailable authority.

This was Erasmus the humanist writing of the Thomistic Scholastics.

Would someone abandon Christ merely because it was come to be known that long ago someone scribbled some error in haste?  Erasmus thinks not…but this seemed not to be the concern coming from the other side.

It wasn’t as if Erasmus followed all of the best practices of translation himself.  For example, if the Greek text was unavailable to him, or the translation was unclear (at least in fifty occurrences, plus the last verses of Revelation), he would often translate from the Vulgate to the Greek! 

Other, more controversial, alterations would follow; keep in mind: I am not taking one side or the other.  I am merely demonstrating the differences on topics that were certain to cause major controversy in the Church.

For example, the Latin would use the word sacramentum regarding the sexual union of a man and a woman; hence, a sacrament as far as the Church was concerned.  Erasmus would find the word to be properly understood as mysterium – a mystery.