Free thinkers has always been a problem for those in authority. Back when the thought existed that the King was divine or the closest to it, any contrary thought was typically squashed. In time when the free thinkers did get traction, they too would tend to quash any public rebellion to tyrannical leadership, whether religious, state or both.
Bionic Mosquito has had a series of posts on a book by Gerard Casey called ‘Freedom’s Progress?: A History of Political Thought‘ and shares clips from it in his post on “The Reformation”. Here are some quotes to consider:
It is better that all of the peasants should be killed rather than that the sovereign and magistrates should be destroyed, because the peasants take up the sword without God’s authorisation. – Martin Luther
So the leader of the 1517 movement toward reforming the church was still resolute in thinking that the common man needed a ruler and needed to be restrained. Even free thinkers prior to this like John Wycliff focused his message of freedom towards the church itself but not the state in the 1370s. His recommendation that pope and the church were second in authority to Scripture earned him an early death. Wycliff also questioned indulgences and confessions at that time BUT it was out of the box thinking that common man could even own their own property according to Wycliff.
Basically, Bionic points out that where people start from usually restrains them in their own revolutionary thinking:
As you will note from the opening quote from Luther, Augustine’s unfortunate interpretation of Romans 13 was influential; Luther, after all, began his religious life as an Augustinian.
“As Ellen Meiksins Wood puts it, ‘there hardly exists in the Western canon a more uncompromising case for strict obedience to secular authority; and this…belongs to the essence of Lutheran doctrine.’”
John Calvin too started out as a lawyer, so there is no doubt there are limits to where freedom SHOULD* be limited in his mind to as we will see in his role in governance over Geneva, Switzerland.
[NOTE: SHOULD is a word I try to avoid, I recommend that friends not SHOULD on their friends .. to honor them as unique individuals created in God’s image, COULD is a better suggestion ]
This is an important rabbit trail for me as I was raised in a religious environment, that while it had plenty of good in it, it also had plenty of guilt trip traps along the way. I find this with any controlling authority whether it be religious or the state. Try taking a knee these days and you will find out, blind obedience is mandatory at some points, you can’t make it look like authority does not have total control of you “in public” (or now with the NSA, in private either)
I like how Wayne Jacobson lays it out in this article at Lifestream where the difference between religion and relationship is revealed:
There’s nothing about real love that can be made into a weapon. But that doesn’t keep people from trying, especially scared parents and religious people.
They turn their twisted view of love into a weapon. When you’ve done enough, especially the things they think you should do, they will love you. When you don’t, they will not only withhold affection from you, they’ll resort to whatever means they have at their disposal to get you to change. They’ll give you the cold shoulder or disapproving glance. They will gossip about you with other family members. That will rant and rave until you conform to their desires. They will should all over you thinking that increasing levels of obnoxiousness will endear you to their point of view.
This is where the early reformation leaders went, they did not like attributes of the Catholic church they were rebelling against and yet they could not release the “control” of common people to their exercise of natural rights. Religion at some point demands obligation and obedience.
As Bionic shares again from Gerard Casey’s work:
“It is worth noting the prevalence of a popular but mistaken belief that the Protestant Reformers, in contrast to the repressive Catholic Church, were the apostles of liberty.”
“The Reformation was many things but by no stretch of the imagination was it the result of a clamour for religious liberty or, indeed, for liberty more broadly construed.”
In fact, it ushered in perhaps the most intolerant period in Christian history.
If anyone has the interest and the time, there is a lot of information on the Reformation period that proves that freedom did not always advance. Like I mentioned before about John Calvin and his actions in Geneva where he and four other pastors and 12 lay elders ruled the city. While his written works ( ‘Institutes of the Christian Religion‘ ) contained great thoughts on how the Catholic church focused on things wrongly, his actions to me speak louder than words. At the end of the day, I am not a fan of John Calvin.
Not all what happened during the Reformation is gloomy, there were bright spots as well in those that followed Luther and Calvin and even those in Scotland as they would give future generations hope in what real freedom and liberty is all about:
Eventually, the idea of private resistance to the prince would gain some traction, more by those who followed Luther and Calvin than in the two leaders themselves – driven by the fact that the secular leader was removing privileges previously granted to the Protestant communities. Where the secular leaders were unsympathetic to Protestant views, private resistance was seen more favorably – and Biblical interpretation would therefore evolve according to this necessity.
Further, in Calvinist communities of Scotland, for example, the idea of private resistance had traction almost from the beginning. Hey, they are Protestants…to each his own! But without the medieval Church and its recognized authority to sanction the prince, such resistance had little power or authority behind it.
Out of this period came other free thinkers that gave the Dutch Republic, a confederation of seven provinces from 1581 – 1795, ..
.. as well as the American confederation of thirteen colonies from 1776 – 1787 (under the Articles of Confederation)
… a fair amount of written works on liberty and freedom.
We too, stand on the shoulders of all those who went before us, in terms of seeking freedom and liberty from any external controlling human force whether it be religion or statism. It is imperative that each person research as they are convinced toward, and be convicted of their own thoughts and principles in their own mind.
“… one person thinks that some days should be set aside as holy and another thinks that each day is pretty much like any other. There are good reasons either way. So, each person is free to follow the convictions of conscience ..” Romans 14:5 in the paraphrase The Message
I leave you with this inspiring song based on German 13th century written works of Walther von der Vogelweide on the freedom of one’s thoughts and later in the 1780s became five stanzas in distributed leaflets and later put to music called “Die Gedanken Sind Frei”
Enjoy the rest of your Sunday y’all!
-SF1