INTRODUCTION
We are continuing with our study, looking at the history of the Lord’s church, and seeing what happened to the Lord’s church following it’s establishment on the Day of Pentecost, seeing how shortly after the 1st Century and into the 2nd Century and beyond that there was a movement away from the organization, from the doctrine—the apostolic doctrine regarding the church—and the worship of the church, and so on. We have moved up, now, to the period of the 17th and 18th Centuries. We finished up in our last lesson looking at the period of the Reformation in the British Isles—in England, in Scotland—and that takes us up to the period that follows. As you have seen, we’re basically going along with world history, seeing the events which have taken place, and noting how that religion, in many of these events, have played very much of a key role.
Well, the great religious evils that we have examined recently in the past couple of lessons, known as the Reformation, really proved to be something of a watershed, as regards the history of what is broadly referred to as “Christendom.” The “religious unity” that existed in Western Europe through the period beginning in about the 6th Century and going through the period of the Middle Ages—and of course, this so-called “religious unity” was based upon the development and the power that emerged known as the Roman Catholic Church; the Roman Catholic Church was “the” church, at least the church that had the predominance, that had the power politically, militarily, and so on, for many, many hundreds of years. But that was somewhat shattered with the Protestant Reformation. The Roman Catholic Church has become, now, many separate organizations. There were different religious bodies that came out of this Reformation.
So, what we are beginning to see here in the 17th and 18th Centuries is something of the struggle which will take place. That central organization, the Roman Catholic Church, is still there, but it is no longer, shall we say, “king of the hill” in many respects. And so, what we see are these emerging denominations, these emerging groups who are looking for their place; looking for their power base; looking for constituents; looking for how they would fit into the geography where they were. And this, we will see, is not really a period of peace and tranquility which emerges, but rather, more a period of more evil—more fighting; more warfare, and the like.
And so, what we’re going to do is to look at, not a complete history, but look at a number of key events. They are historical events, and we will see how the struggles of the day will contribute to these, and how much a part of these historical events these religious activities really were. The history of the “Christian” religion in the 17th and 18th Centuries deals in large measure with the struggles among several denominations, adjusting themselves to the situation in which no single one could assert its predominance as the Roman Catholics had done previously.
THE THIRTY YEARS’ WAR
The Background of the War
The first historical event we will look at is the Thirty Years’ War. All of us, no doubt, studied European History in high school—I think it was somewhere around our Junior year, maybe Senior year in high school. Perhaps some you studied history beyond that level, but certainly, the Thirty Years’ War was a period of extreme unrest, of extreme bloodshed, in Central Europe.
Again, what started this, and what perpetuated this war, which lasted for thirty years—oh, by the way, that’s where the title comes from—really has to do with the balance of powers in Central Europe among the Roman Catholic Church and some of these emerging denominations, looking for who was going to be in control of particular regions. Last week, we talked about the Civil War that had convulsed England, as well as other bloodshed which had taken place in the British Isles, as part of their Reformation. Well, there’s some background, though. We’re back on the continent of Europe now. There is some background here that we want to look at that leads up to this Thirty Years’ War.
You remember that there had already been a good bit of fighting, a good bit of bloodshed, which had taken place between the Catholics and the Protestants in the Central part of Europe, primarily in the southern part of Germany and Switzerland, and parts of Austria, and what not, going back into the latter part of the 15th Century and into the 16th Century. There was something that we mentioned briefly a few weeks ago as we were talking about that period of time. It was called The Peace of Augsburg which was agreed to in 1555. It had brought something of a truce, albeit an uneasy truce, to these religious wars that were going on in Germany that had come in the wake of the Reformation. However, The Peace of Augsburg was really nothing more than a truce—one side didn’t win over the other, but there was an agreement, there was a truce that was made. That truce was really a truce between the Catholics and the Lutherans. It really didn’t represent a permanent settlement. It established, among other things, the principle that the religion of the ruler would be the religion of the people who were under his rule. And so, if you lived in a region where the ruler was Catholic, then you were Catholic. If you lived in an area where the ruler was Lutheran, then… You recall from our study of that, there were many of the elites, many of the rulers of the day in Central Europe at that time, who were converted to Lutheranism. And so, if you lived in a region where the ruler was Lutheran, then you were Lutheran.
But, this arrangement failed to take into consideration the consciences of the people. The people, many of them, were not willing to accept this. It also didn’t take into account another group that emerged from the Reformation here in Central Europe also, and they were the Calvinists. Calvinism had spread into areas that were covered by this agreement, but under the terms of the agreement, under the terms of this settlement, this Peace of Augsburg, the Calvinists had no legal status. They simply weren’t recognized. They, in effect, didn’t exist.
Well, there was also a further unsettling factor, and that was the aggressive efforts that were being undertaken by the Jesuits to win Protestants back to the Catholic faith. You recall that the Jesuits were a sect, a group of Catholics who were very missionary-minded; they were very aggressive in some of their tactics, and so on. And it was also during this period in this region that they were putting a lot of pressure—doing a lot of things to force Protestants back to the Catholic faith. Well, through some behind-the-scene maneuvers, the Jesuits had, by 1600, come to exercise a considerable amount of influence on the political scene. This is setting the stage, now, for the Thirty Years’ War.
The Thirty Years’ War was really a series of conflicts, four…well, not distinct, perhaps, but somewhat different conflicts in different regions of Central Europe. The first was the Bohemian phase, and it went from about 1618 to about 1624; and then there was the Danish phase, which went from about 1625 to 1629; and then there was the Swedish phase that went from 1630 to about 1635; and then finally, the French phase, which went from 1635 to 1648.
The Course of the War
Religion was certainly the primary cause, the primary purpose, behind the beginning of the Thirty Year’s War, as we’re going to see. Historians tell us that it was not the only motive for this war. Other motives included a desire on the part of some, as we’ll see, to remove the royal family, known as the Hapsburgs, who were the royal family of Germany, the southern part of Germany at this time, for many generations. And the Hapsburgs supplied the rulers for many of these regions for a long period of time. Well, there were some who wanted to get rid of this ruling family. And then, there were also some, like France and perhaps Sweden to some degree, who were sort of looking to grab some land—they were looking to enlarge their territory at the expense of the Holy Roman Empire.
Let’s notice that the spark that was provided that began the Thirty Years’ War was the Protestants in the area called Bohemia, which is now modern-day Czechoslovakia. The Protestants of Bohemia refused to accept a Catholic ruler and instead chose their own Protestant ruler. Emperor Ferdinand determined that a Roman Catholic ruler would be maintained on the Bohemian throne, and so he sent his Catholic forces against the Bohemian Protestants. The Protestants were fairly handily beaten. After defeating them, Ferdinand set about attempting to eradicate Protestants from Bohemia. Moreover, he also directed an attack against some of the Protestant states—neighboring states—who had tried to assist the Protestant Bohemians, like Rhineland, for example, in the western part of Germany. And so, here we have the first phase of the Thirty Years’ War, starting in about 1618, as an attempt to whip these Bohemians into shape, to put a Catholic ruler on the throne of Bohemia, and then it sort of expanded from there.
The success of the Catholics against Bohemia, and then Rhineland and some other neighboring states alarmed Northern Germany and Denmark. They were outside of, not a part of, the Holy Roman Empire. But, as a result of their witnessing what was going on by the forces of the Catholic Church under Emperor Ferdinand, King Christian IV—and yes, that was his name, King Christian IV—of Denmark and Norway entered the war on the Protestant side, thus beginning the Danish phase of the Thirty Years’ War. The Danish forces weren’t much of a match for the forces under Emperor Ferdinand, either. And so, much of Northern Germany was overrun or threatened by the victorious Catholic armies. In the wake of all of this warfare, and all of these territories which had been defeated, and so on, the Catholics made stringent demands upon the Protestants, even these ones who were not within the area of the Holy Roman Empire.
Well, the Catholics might have made their victory almost complete had they not divided among themselves, and had other forces not entered the picture. In 1630, Gustavus Adolphus, the King of Sweden, who, by the way, was staunchly Lutheran, invaded Northern Germany, and he drove out the Hapsburgs, that reigning royal family. But, many of the Protestants in Germany were really un-desirous and unappreciative of the help from Sweden, not that they weren’t pleased that somebody had come to their aid, but because they had suspicions about what Adolphus’ purpose might be. They were afraid that he was wishing to claim the territory, to go all the way to the Baltic Sea, and thus expand the borders of Sweden. Adolphus won several victories over the Catholics, but he was killed in 1632, and without his able leadership the Swedes were unable to make further gains. They were never defeated, but a stalemate would ensue.
The fourth and final phase of the war came when France broke this stalemate in 1635. France was not really motivated to come and help the Protestants. They were largely Catholic themselves, but they entered the fray on the Protestant side with the motivation of not only protecting themselves, protecting their territory, but also a desire for territory. The fact that France was Catholic certainly illustrates the fact that there were other purposes, that there were other intentions that were at hand here, rather than just religion.
So, here we have this very long struggle which takes place in the central part of Europe, what we refer to now as Northern Germany, stretching up into regions to the north and all the way down into Czechoslovakia of today, and even in France. The long struggle would finally be concluded in 1648 by what is called the Peace of Westphalia. Westphalia was a region in the west-central part of Germany, and that’s where the parties met to draw up this peace settlement. The Peace of Westphalia stands today as one of the greatest peace settlements in European history.
Results of the War
What were the results of this war? Well, the first result was that neither side, neither the Catholics, nor the Protestants, won a clear-cut victory. The Peace of Westphalia was a compromise settlement. It was agreed that the areas that were Catholic in 1624 would remain Catholic; and the areas that were Protestant as of 1624 would remain Protestant. Also, the independence of the Netherlands and Switzerland was finally given formal recognition as a part of this settlement. And Calvinists were finally granted recognition. Those were some of the things which came out of this Thirty Years’ War. The compromise thus worked out seemed to be a fairly successful one, and it lasts—well, not in true measure to this day—but if one looks at the religious demographic of Germany in that part of the world today, it still largely falls out along those lines. The northern part of Germany is primarily (and I don’t know what the statistics are these days) principally Lutheran, and the southern part is principally Catholic.
The war was terribly costly, though. Can you imagine a war going on for a period of thirty years? It was one where the loss of life is unable to be accounted for. There was a great deal of property loss. There was, obviously, lower productivity. Some of the German states across which these contending armies would march back and forth for this thirty years lost half or more of their populations, and of course, their productivity, their farming, any productivity that they might have been able to produce, was minimized. And the war so demoralized the people that it took some of these areas literally hundreds of years to recover from its effects. And so, that is the Thirty Years’ War and a little bit about how it came about, and a little bit about how it played out.
RATIONALISM AND REVIVALISM
Changing Intellectual Climate
Well, there were some other things going on during this period of the 17th and 18th Centuries that were related to religion—Rationalism and Revivalism. There was a growing tendency toward being more tolerant. And this, we actually saw begin, really, all the way back in the Renaissance, in the 14th Century. In fact, some scholars would say that it really goes back to about maybe the 12th Century with Scholasticism and Monasticism, as we had talked about [Lesson 7]. Basically, it would be characterized where, instead of being very closely tied to spiritual things, being closely tied to the church of that day, the Roman Catholic Church primarily—those doctrines, those teachings, etc.—and a person living within, basically, the confines of those things, there began to be a certain amount of rationalism about life and the approach to life.
There would be sort of a changing intellectual climate. Again, the seeds, maybe, having been planted centuries before, but really beginning to sort of take root, to flower, if you will, during this period. People began to feel less of a need for God and for religion. Say, that almost sounds like we’re describing our day and age, doesn’t it? That was what was going on in this time period as well. During the Renaissance, humanists turned their emphasis from the things of God to the things of man, and most of them did this without consciously intending to do this. But, in effect, they were repudiating religion.
The Deists
During this period, the 17th Century specifically, modern science really had some of its beginnings, some of its origins. Frances Bacon laid the philosophical groundwork for the Scientific Method. Galileo, building upon the earlier work of others, would challenge, during this time, the belief, the understanding, that the earth was the center of the universe. Later, Isaac Newton worked out some careful formulas that seemed to indicate that the universe was a complicated machine that operated in accordance with certain unchanging laws. Well, it was not long before some men began to assert that one could apply reason and rational thinking and empirical methodology and data, and so on, to work out a natural religion that needed no revelation.
There was a group that emerged during this period of time. They were called the Deists. They basically came up with a theory that goes like this: The god envisioned by these rationalists was often likened to a watchmaker who made a wonderfully complicated watch, made the laws that governed its workings, wound up the watch and set it in motion, leaving it to run, and it would eventually run down.
Well, two things in that regard. First of all, its interesting to think about that theory on the heels of Dr. Bert Thompson’s lectures here [at the Northeast church of Christ] just a few days ago, where he talked about this very theory. And, these ones who began in the 17th Century, who call themselves “deists,” are still with us today, are still among us. Oh, I don’t mean those original ones from the 17th Century, but there are people today who maintain… Now, this theory, or this understanding, is one that is widely accepted and understood. Not everyone who understands it, not everyone who embraces it, is a “deist,” but indeed, there is a group worldwide who call themselves “deists.” The reason I mention that is, because I have a little bit of a dialog going on with one person right now who considers himself to be a “deist.” Interestingly enough, this one made contact with me through our web site as a result of one of the advertising flyers that we had sent out, and had scattered around in various places for our seminar with Dr. Bert Thompson [of Apologetics Press, Inc.]. So, that is where some of what sounds like some modern-day thinking really had some of its origin.
The Revival in Great Britain
So, we have this period of rationalism that we see beginning during this time. But then, we also see, beginning at this time, something of a “revival,” which has some activity in Great Britain. It also has some activity on the continent.
We won’t spend a great deal of time with either one of these, except to mention to you that there is one whose name that you will know and know something about, who is connected with the revival in Great Britain. His name is John Wesley. He was the son of an Anglican minister. The Church of England became the Anglican Church, as we had talked about in a previous lesson. He was the fifteenth of nineteen children in his family. He was educated for the Anglican ministry at Oxford University, where he, along with his brother, Charles, was active in a student group. And this student group sought a more spiritual life than was the current teaching and practice that was espoused by the Anglican Church itself and by Oxford University.
This group was sometimes referred to by their fellows, by their classmates, and whatnot, as the “Holy Club,” or also as “The Bible Moths.” Because of the methodical way that they went about their prayer life and Bible study, they picked up a name that was associated with this methodical process that they went through, and that name was the “Methodists.” That little title, of course, would stick.
John Wesley was ordained to the Anglican ministry. I was not aware of the fact that he actually journeyed to the New World in 1735, and he would spend some time in the colony of Georgia. But, he would return back to England, and he would continue his attempts at this more methodical view of religion. It is said that Wesley, during his lifetime, traveled nearly 250,000 miles on horseback, and he preached nearly 42,000 sermons, and wrote more than 50 books. An ambitious fellow.
Wherever he went in these travels, Wesley established these Methodist societies, as they were known in that time—groups that met together to study and worship. Wesley himself lived and died as part of the Anglican Church, and he, like many of the Reformers of his day, really had no intention of establishing a new religion, or establishing a different church. Well, he, Luther, Calvin—their desire, their intention, was to make reforms from the inside out, but after his death, Wesley’s followers would continue to meet in these Methodist societies, and, of course, this would spawn what we know now as the Methodist Church.
Religion of the Inner Light
The 17th and 18th Centuries put increasing emphasis upon reason. Yet, in contrast to this general intellectual trend, this period also saw a flowering of mysticism. Mystics, referred to as the “Religion of Inner Light,” believe that they can, by contemplation and devotion, have more or less direct communion with God. Mystics usually feel no need to justify their position by an appeal to reason or revelation. Perhaps the best known of these groups are the Quakers, or Friends. The Quakers came into existence during the Civil War in England.