scholarly journals Luther and Erasmus: The Central Confrontation of the Reformation

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 65
Author(s):  
JEAN-MARC BERTHOUD
Keyword(s):  
The Reformation ◽  
Sovereign Authority ◽  
The Will ◽  
Two Kingdoms

Abstract: One of Martin Luther’s lasting achievements is his confrontation with Erasmus on the freedom of man’s will. After first absorbing the nominalistic semi-Pelagian synthesis consensus, Luther revolted against the intellectual and spiritual mediocrity of that prevailing system of thought by using Ockham’s logical razor and recovering biblical realism. The Bondage of the Will is the first confessional statement of the Reformation. Two opposing visions of reality emerge: Erasmsus’s skepticism and semi-Pelagianism versus Luther’s realism and the sovereign grace of God in salvation. However, there is a major breach in Luther’s magnificent dogmatic achievement: in his doctrine of the two kingdoms the order of creation is abandoned to the initiative of man’s thinking apart from the sovereign authority of Scripture.

scholarly journals The Romanian language in Habsburg Bukovina from the institutionalized bilingualism perspective

Diacronia ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana-Maria Prisacaru
Keyword(s):  
German Language ◽  
Power Relationships ◽  
The North ◽  
Communicative Functions ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Foreign Occupation ◽  
Sovereign Authority ◽  
State Organization ◽  
Administrative Structures ◽  
Linguistic Phenomenon

From the perspective of the power relationships manifested in a territory under foreign occupation, institutionalized bilingualism involves the differentiation between the languages coming into contact and their hierarchization according to the communicative functions they are to fulfill within the new state organization governed by a sovereign authority. A linguistic phenomenon that proves to be unbalanced as far as the interfering languages are concerned, this type of bilingualism imposed the German language in Habsburg Bukovina as the only language used in the “administrative structures of the country”, officially declared as such in Northern Moldavia in 1784. The fact that the communication functions of the Romanian language were almost exclusively limited to the colloquial register is the result of an intense policy of linguistic “leveling” (Ausgleichspolitik), implemented by the Court of Vienna in all its imperial provinces in order to reduce national specificity by means of imposing the use of the German language. The cohesion and uniformity of all Habsburg territories was only possible through the reformation, according to the Josephine principles, of the institutions responsible with the preservation of the national identity of the subjugated nations. In Bukovina, the juridical-administrative, church and school sectors were targeted, being affected by the Germanization process especially after the North of Moldavia was incorporated into the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria.

scholarly journals Las prácticas funerarias de los hugonotes (siglos XVI-XVIII)

Revista Trace ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 51
Author(s):  
Yves Krumenacker
Keyword(s):  
Radical Change ◽  
Funeral Rites ◽  
Social Standards ◽  
Xvith Century ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Will

La instauración de la Reforma, en el siglo XVI, provoca un cambio drástico en los rituales funerarios a raíz de la transformación radical de las creencias sobre el más allá: la desaparición del Purgatorio y la salvación o condena del alma inmediatamente después de la muerte. Los ritos deben ser simples y el lugar de la sepultura indiferente, como lo estipula también la ley francesa; por lo tanto, los funerales se reorganizan en función de las normas sociales y de la voluntad de preservar la pertenencia a la comunidad.Abstract: The advent of the Reformation in XVIth century brings a total upheaval of funeral rites due to a radical change of the belief in the hereafter: disappearance of Purgatory, salvation or damnation of the soul immediately after death. Rites must be austere and burial’s site makes no difference, as stipulated also by French legislation. Therefore, burials are reorganized according to social standards, and to the will to continue belonging to the community.Résumé : L’avènement de la Réforme, au XVIe siècle, a provoqué un bouleversement total des rituels funéraires chez les protestants, en raison d’une transformation radicale des croyances sur l’au-delà : disparition du Purgatoire, salut ou damnation de l’âme tout de suite après la mort. Les rites doivent être simples et le lieu de sépulture indifférent, ce qu’exige aussi la loi française. Les funérailles se réorganisent donc en fonction des normes sociales et de la volonté de préserver l’appartenance à la communauté.

Enchantment in Times of War: Aby Warburg, Walter Benjamin, and the Secularization Thesis

2009 ◽  
Vol 105 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane O. Newman
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
World War ◽  
Deep Roots ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Two Kingdoms ◽  
Aby Warburg ◽  
Working Out

This article reads Aby Warburg's and Walter Benjamin's work on the astrological movements of the Reformation era in dialogue with the theory of relations between the spiritual and the temporal developed in Protestant "war theology" during World War I. War theology developed themes already present in historical Protestant doctrine, notably Luther's Two Kingdoms theory (Zwei Reiche Lehre). Warburg and Benjamin were wrestling with the challenge of living at a time of great conflict in a highly sacralized——rather than secularized——world with deep roots in early modern Lutheranism. Max Weber was working out his ideas about magic, Calvinism, and secularization at the same time. The article thus also suggests the need to reassess his theses about the emergence of a secular world purged of irrationalism in dialogue with Warburg's and Benjamin's work.

Liberalism Without Transcendence

1997 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
William R. Marty ◽  
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Western Thought ◽  
Gradual Decline ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Will ◽  
The One

John Hallowell's seminal study, originally published in 1943, treats modem Western thought since the Renaissance and the Reformation as, in its core, liberal, and its foundations as based on an uneasy synthesis of potentially warring elements: On the one hand, the primacy of the will as embodied in the autonomous individual; on the other, the ability of these autonomous wills to bind themselves together freely, by contract and consent, on the basis of their acknowledgment of transcendent moral truths discoverable by reason. Conscience, then, enabled independent wills to acknowledge and submit to justice as found by reason or revelation. But Hallowell described also the gradual decline in the confidence in reason to find transcendent truths, and the subsequent decline in the ability of autonomous individuals to find grounds for genuine community. Where will alone reigns, all standards collapse, and increasingly the arbiter between wills becomes force. Western civiltation, even as it approaches becoming world civilization, increasingly manifests symptoms of dissolution and an inability to provide the foundation for genuine communities.

Limes Germanicus—Bridge and Frontier

1939 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 444-456 ◽  
Author(s):  
Goetz A. Briefs
Keyword(s):  
German History ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The World ◽  
The Will ◽  
Made In

THE PENDULUM of dynamic subjectivism swings from a faithful, dreamy, or thoughtful absorption in the world to an aggressive, defiant protest against the world. German history proves it abundantly from the days of the Cimbers and Teutons to the days of the Reformation and up to our present age. Or is it a mere accident that German thinkers formulated that man is obsessed by the will to the infinite, or, as Nietzsche put it: “that man could not tolerate God to be unless he be himself God?” We may well ask if Luther was not expressing a German truth by his word that the soul finds his way to his door by swaying to and fro. Is it a mere accident that dialectic philosophy and dialectic theology were made in Germany and actually acquired reputation only there? Is it not a characteristic self-analysis to assert with Hegel that religion and thought develop in permanent self-contradictions and antagonism and move by such antagonisms to ever higher and higher forms? Is it not a distinctly German appreciation and interpretation of history to say that it is nothing but a sequence of wars? The German mind evidences a clear imperialism interrupted by periods of a self-forgotten devotion to the world, but even in the imperialistic phases there remains some of this self-forgotten devotion—just as in the selfforgotten devotion there surges some of this imperialism. A wellbalanced equilibrium obviously is very hard to attain; it does not even lie in the intention of the German mind because it would entail the recognition of and submission to an ontological order, to form and law.

scholarly journals Martin Luther’s Influence on Legal Reforms and Civil Law

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Witte
Keyword(s):  
Church And State ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Marriage And Family ◽  
Legal Reforms ◽  
State And Society ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Original Message ◽  
Two Kingdoms ◽  
German Cities ◽  
The Church

The Lutheran Reformation transformed not only theology and the church but law and the state as well. Beginning in the 1520s, Martin Luther joined up with various jurists and political leaders to craft ambitious legal reforms of church, state, and society on the strength of Luther’s new theology, particularly his new two kingdoms doctrine. These legal reforms were defined and defended in hundreds of monographs, pamphlets, and sermons published by Lutheran writers from the 1520s to 1550s. They were refined and routinized in hundreds of new reformation ordinances promulgated by German cities, duchies, and territories that converted to the Lutheran cause. By the time of the Peace of Augsburg (1555)—the imperial law that temporarily settled the constitutional order of Germany—the Lutheran Reformation had brought fundamental changes to theology and law, to church and state, marriage and family, criminal law and procedure, and education and charity. Critics of the day, and a steady stream of theologians and historians ever since, have seen this legal phase of the Reformation as a corruption of Luther’s original message of Christian freedom from the strictures of human laws and traditions. But Luther ultimately realized that he needed the law to stabilize and enforce the new Protestant teachings. Radical theological reforms had made possible fundamental legal reforms. Fundamental legal reforms, in turn, would make palpable radical theological reforms. In the course of the 1530s onward, the Lutheran Reformation became in its essence both a theological and a legal reform movement. It struck new balances between law and Gospel, rule and equity, order and faith, and structure and spirit.

WAS MARTIN LUTHER AN APOLOGIST OF THE AUTOCRATIC STATE?

2019 ◽  
pp. 297-305
Author(s):  
Yuriy Ivonin
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The People ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Early Modern Times ◽  
Two Kingdoms ◽  
Secular Power

In the History of Germany the role of Martin Luther as the prophet of autocratic State had already been prepared to the First World War. However, it became reality in the 1930-s. The development of territorial states was the main result of the Reformation. Luther’s Institution of the secular power was a part of his theory of two Kingdoms: the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of the Earth. The discussion about the strengthening of the role of the state and its control in all spheres of the society took place in the 1720-s – 1740-s. This situation was connected with the conflict between the princes and estates or commons. Luther was afraid of civil commotions, he was deeply conservative in relation to secular powers and persistently supported the Idea that the people needed to be subordinate to the secular power. Luther’s movement was a decisive step on the way to the formation of the early Modern Times Statehood. Luther’s first activities supported the commons’ self-government or the idea of communalism, but later, especially after the Peasants’ War 1524–1526, he feared the situations when princes and magistrates could not support the Reformation and therefore, he led the concept of the territorial State of the Early Modern Times and he could not become an apologist of the autocratic state.

Martin Luther and the Theology of the Two Kingdoms

2020 ◽  
pp. 82-103
Author(s):  
William Bain
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Political Order ◽  
External Relations ◽  
The Will ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
Way Of Knowing ◽  
Two Kingdoms

This chapter explores the nominalist orientation of Martin Luther’s separation of sacred and secular, signified by his two kingdoms framework. The aim is to show that his thinking about the nature of God, character of creation, and authority of Scripture resonates with the theory of imposed order. Luther gives priority to the will, as against reason, which follows from his preoccupation with God’s freedom and power. This points to an inner unity in Luther’s thought, whereby his theology informs a parallel understanding of reality that emphasizes the contingency of singular things, a system of external relations, and explanation in terms of efficient causes. Luther’s importance in this context is not discerned in what he contributes to political theory; he transmits the nominalist way of knowing and explaining reality that others would use to theorize political order. Consequently, his separation of the earthly kingdom and the spiritual kingdom does not de-theologize politics as much as signal the ascendency of the theory of imposed order and its theological commitments. In this respect, he contributes indirectly to a way of thinking and speaking about political order that stresses the nominalist vocabulary of will and artifice.

Renaissance, Reformation, and the Road to Westphalia

2020 ◽  
pp. 57-81
Author(s):  
William Bain
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Revolutionary Change ◽  
Crucial Step ◽  
The Road ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Will ◽  
Interpretive Frame

The purpose of this chapter is to challenge the ubiquitous narrative that portrays the transition from medieval to modern as the start of the progressive secularization of international relations. Setting the emergence of the modern states system against the backdrop of medieval institutions and practices privileges evidence of change, while concealing evidence of continuity. The discourse of Westphalia provides the dominant interpretive frame of this narrative. This chapter recovers threads of continuity, without denying the significance of change, by explaining the transition from medieval to modern in the context of change within inherited continuity. It examines the role of the Renaissance and Reformation, events regularly portrayed as harbingers of revolutionary change, in carrying ideas associated with the theory of imposed order into the modern world. The main contention is that the boundary that separates medieval and modern is less fixed and more porous than most theorists of international relations seem to realize. Neither the Renaissance nor the Reformation inaugurate a turn away from religion. Both emphasize the primacy of the will, consistent with the theory of imposed order, which is given to imagining political order as a construction born of word and deed. Recovering the threads of continuity that connect medieval and modern is a crucial step in advancing the larger argument of this book, namely that modern theories of international order reflect a medieval inheritance that can be traced to nominalist theology.

scholarly journals From Gospel to Law: The Lutheran Reformation and Its Impact on Legal Culture

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 271-291
Author(s):  
John Witte
Keyword(s):  
Church And State ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Marriage And Family ◽  
Legal Reforms ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
State And Society ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Original Message ◽  
Two Kingdoms ◽  
The Church

The Lutheran Reformation transformed not only theology and the Church but also law and the State. Despite his early rebuke of law in favour of the gospel, Martin Luther eventually joined up with various jurists and political leaders to craft ambitious legal reforms of Church, State and society on the strength of his new theology, particularly his new two-kingdoms theory. These legal reforms were defined and defended in hundreds of monographs, pamphlets and sermons published by Lutheran writers from the 1520s onwards. They were refined and routinised in equally large numbers of new Reformation ordinances that brought fundamental changes to theology and law, Church and State, marriage and family, criminal law and procedure, and education and charity. Critics have long treated this legal phase of the Reformation as a corruption of Luther's original message of Christian freedom from the strictures of all human laws and traditions. But Luther ultimately realised that he needed the law to stabilise and enforce the new Protestant teachings. Radical theological reforms had made possible fundamental legal reforms, which, in turn, would make those theological reforms palpable. In the course of the 1530s and thereafter, the Lutheran Reformation became in its essence both a theological and a legal reform movement. It struck new balances between law and gospel, rule and equity, order and faith, and structure and spirit.

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