The Church Reformation
(1517-1648)
As medieval mankind came to advocate humanism, he resisted
the formal religious ceremonies and rules; he went against
the feudal system of classes and papal authority which repressed
his autonomy and as he pursued the external desire of his
original nature he also came to pursue the internal desire
of his original nature.This he did by advocating the restoration
of the early Christian spirit in which the people centering
on the apostles were very earnest in following God's will.
The movement to restore the early Christian spirit was called
the Great Religious Reformation.
Because of the rapidly changing
trends, the Church was left behind in all aspects of the
onward sweep of progress. Many protests were made during
the pre-Reformation period, but none was effective until
Martin Luther in 1517 A.D. nailed his famous 95 Thesis on
the door of the Wittenberg Church in Germany. His thesis
were a detailed attack on the Papcy for selling indulgences.
This act ignited a religious revolution which immediately
swept across the entire European continent beginning in
Germany and then spreading to other countries. God used
Luther as an instrument to spark the Protestant revolt.
Besides Luther there were many other champions of God (Zwingli,
Calvin, Farel, Knox) who rose up to spread this Protestant
reform across the Christian world.
The international conflict
which burst out around the Protestant movement continued
for more than 100 years until the fight between the old
and new religious sects was settled by the "Thirty
Years War". This war was waged centering on Germany
and finally ended in 1648 with the Treaty of Westphalia.
The struggle ended with Protestantism the victor in Northern
Europe centered on Germany and Roman Catholicism maintaining
control of Southern Europe centering on the Latin speaking
people. However due to the attack of the Protestants on
the Catholic Church, Catholicism revised it's practices
and experienced an internal reformation. This war did not
end up as a simple religious fight, but it also became a
political civil war which decided the existence of the German
Empire.
The 2nd Religious Reformation
(1648-1789) Struggle & Confusion in Religion and Ideology
This period lasted for approximately 140 years, beginning
with the Treaty of Westphalia and ended with the French
Revolution. These 140 years were ones of bitter religious
struggle and confusion as the liberated Christians sought
to express themselves in their newly found religious freedom.
Because the direction the Christians would follow had not
been firmly set, their freedom from traditional dogma plunged
them into the worst religious turbulence ever seen in history.
Mass persecution and martyrdom scourched the whole of Europe.
Numerous divergences of dogma arose which divided the Church
into many different sects and denominations.
Yet throughout this chaotic
situation God was gradually molding the thought of humankind
into two major ideologies (that known as Cain thought and
Abel thought) which today has matured into the atheistic
philosophy known as Communism and the God-centered ideology
of Democracy. After Adam fell God separated the newly established
evil within Adam from the good contained nature by giving
him two sons (Cain & Abel) who respectively contain
relative evil and relative good. Later we find the Jewish,
Christian, and Islamic Kingdoms were divided into two parts
representative of the Cain and Abel positions. This separation
of relative good from relative evil has continued to the
recent world division of Communism and Democracy.
Cain Philosophy and the
Foundation of Communism
The anti-medieval movement of the Renaissance called humanism,
born as a reaction to the hyprocrisy of Christian leaders,
made light of a person's conversion to God or his dedication
to religion. It abandoned the medieval view of life under
which people regarded nature and the physical body of man
as base and sinful. It even took the opposite view of life,
exhalting the value and dignity of these things. Mankind
and nature came to be recognized through rational criticism
by reason, experience and through demostrative analysis.
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