The Birth of an Empire of Two Churches : Church Property
The Birth of an Empire of Two Churches: Church Property, Theologians, and the League of Schmalkalden CHRISTOPHER OCKER ID THE CREATION OF PROTESTANT CHURCHES IN GERMANY during Luther’s generation follow someone’s intentions? Heiko Oberman, appealing to a medieval DLuther, portrays the reformer as herald of a dawning apocalypse, a monk at war with the devil, who expected God to judge the world and rescue Christians with no help from human institutions, abilities, and processes.1 This Luther could not have intended the creation of a new church. Dorothea Wendebourg and Hans-Jürgen Goertz stress the diversity of early evangelical movements. Goertz argues that anticlericalism helped the early Reformation’s gamut of spiritual, political, economic, and social trends to coalesce into moderate and radical groups, whereas Wendebourg suggests that the movements were only united in the judgment of the Counter Reformation.2 Many scholars concede this diversity. “There were very many different Reformations,” Diarmaid McCulloch has recently observed, aimed “at recreating authentic Catholic Christianity.”3 But some intention to form a new church existed, even if the intention was indirect. Scholars have identified the princely reaction to the revolting peasants of 1524–1525 as the first impetus toward political and institutional Protestantism.4 There was a 1Heiko A. Oberman, Die Wirkung der Reformation: Probleme und Perspektiven, Institut für Europäische Geschichte Mainz Vorträge 80 (Wiesbaden, 1987), 46; idem, Luther: Man between God and the Devil (New York, 1992), passim; idem, “Martin Luther zwischen Mittelalter und Neuzeit,” in Die Reformation: Von Wittenberg nach Genf (Göttingen, 1987), 189–207; Scott Hendrix, “‘More Than a Prophet’: Martin Luther in the Work of Heiko Oberman,” in The Work of Heiko A.
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