Reformation and Counter Reformation

Church History — Steve Gregg

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Reformation and Counter Reformation

Church HistorySteve Gregg

In this talk, Steve Gregg discusses the Reformation and Counter Reformation in Europe during the 16th century. He highlights the attempted reforms of the Roman Catholic Church and the rise of Protestantism, especially in the Netherlands and Scotland. He also discusses the influence of figures such as John Calvin and the impact of the Jesuits in promoting Roman Catholicism and resisting Protestantism. Throughout the talk, Gregg emphasizes the lasting effects of these movements on religious piety and the internal godliness of believers.

Transcript

This evening, I didn't know right up until the last minute whether I was going to teach tonight because my voice has been on the verge of disappearing for two days, actually a little longer than two days. And generally, it's good when a person's voice is in the condition mine is in right now. It's good for them not to speak too much publicly.

But I did go to the trouble of preparing this talk, and I felt falling behind enough in our attempt to get through Church History in a timely fashion that I thought we better not let another night go by without doing it. So my voice will be like this probably through the remainder of the lecture, and I'm sure you'll get used to that. Tonight I want to talk about the Reformation in the Netherlands, also known as Holland, and in Scotland, and also in the Roman Catholic Church, because the Roman Catholic Church also had a Reformation, believe it or not.

There was the Protestant Reformation, and there was the Roman Catholic Reformation. The Roman Catholic Reformation went sort of the opposite direction of the Protestant Reformation, and sometimes it's called the Counter-Reformation. But before we look at that this evening, I would like to talk a little bit about what happened in the Netherlands and in Scotland.

Now we could also talk about what happened in Bulgaria and some of the other European nations, but we just don't have time to look at everything that happened in the 16th century. But what happened in the Netherlands and in Scotland are significant enough to warrant our looking at them somewhat before we move along to the 17th century. In the early 16th century, the Netherlands was a larger country than it is now.

It included not only what we call Holland, but also Belgium, Belgium being to the south. But the entire country was ruled by the king of Spain. And Spain is one of those countries in Europe where the Reformation never really had a chance.

There just was a very zealous king in Spain who was zealously Catholic and refused to give any quarter to any moves toward Reformation. There were some reform attempts, but persecution brought them to a close, and to this day Spain has remained a very staunchly Roman Catholic country. The Netherlands probably would have remained so also, had it not been for the events which we're going to talk about tonight.

Now, in the early days of the 16th century, there were some Lutherans in the Netherlands, but they were greatly persecuted and martyred. And when the Reformation emerged later on, it was not Lutheran in character. There were Lutherans martyred in Holland as early as 1523, although from 1525 till about 1540, the Anabaptist movement gained a very strong following in Holland and supplanted the influence of the Lutheran Reformation there.

After 1540, the Anabaptist style of Reformation was replaced with a Calvinistic style of Reformation, and to this day the Netherlands is largely a Calvinistic country. In 1555, King Philip II of Spain instigated the Spanish Inquisition in the Netherlands. Had he not done this, there might have been no war, there might have been no succession from Spain of the Netherlands, but it enraged the Dutch people that the King of Spain would intrude such harsh measures of persecution into their religious lives, and therefore there was tremendous hostility toward the Roman Church, at least in the northern part of the Netherlands.

The Spanish Duke of Alba, who had been appointed by the King Philip as the regent of the Netherlands, was said to be responsible for the deaths of a hundred thousand, excuse me, ten thousand Protestants between the years 1567 and 1573. One book I read actually did say a hundred thousand, although that seemed like an incredibly large number to me, and another book said ten thousand, so I chose the smaller number as the more likely number. In just a few years' time, just six years' time, for a hundred thousand Protestants to die in the Netherlands seemed to me less likely than ten thousand, but still that's quite a bloodbath in so short a time, and that was part of the Catholic attempt to repress all attempts at Reformation in the land there.

The seven northern provinces of the Netherlands formed a confederation in 1568, and they sent as their leader a man named William of Orange. He came to be nicknamed William the Silent, but William of the House of Orange had been a loyal Catholic under the previous Spanish King, who was Charles, and in fact William had been a very close friend of the Catholic King Charles, and was himself a Catholic, but when Philip instigated the Inquisition and used such harsh methods of intruding into the life of the Dutch people, William sided with the Protestants, and because he was a man of influence, he was made their leader. When Leiden in the Netherlands was besieged by the Spanish during a series of wars that took place between the Spanish and the northern territories of Netherlands, the city of Leiden became an important Calvinistic university center later.

It was besieged by the Spanish. The Dutch in the city, who were defending the city, were actually out of food. They were starving to death because of the siege.

At that time, William of Orange, their leader, cut the dikes, allowing the ocean to flood into the city. Most of you are aware that Holland has a series of dikes. A lot of the land is below sea level, and therefore it's necessary to have these big dams, as we would probably call them, holding back the ocean.

What happened when William broke the dikes and let the sea come in, when the sea rushed into the city, there were ships out in the bay there that had food on them, and they came right in through the gates of the city, and it saved the Dutch from starvation, and turned the battle to the Protestant side to a large extent. However, there was a long conflict between the Catholics and Protestants. Eventually, the Confederation gained independence from the Spanish crown, although the southern portion of the Netherlands, which is what we now call Belgium, remained Catholic and remained under the Spanish control.

So the northern part of the Netherlands became Reformed, and this was through a Calvinistic type of Reformation. The first Reformed Synod was held at Doort in Holland in 1574, and a Reformed University was established at Leiden the next year. The Dutch Reformed Church, as it is still called today, adopted the Heidelberg Confession and the Belgic Confession as statements of faith and practice, and the Protestant movement therefore became secure and established in the northern territories of Netherlands.

However, there was theological conflict that would arise among the Protestants there. This conflict centered around the teachings of a man named Jacobus Arminius, whose teachings, of course, are remembered today as Arminianism. And since Netherlands was a Calvinistic country, there was a problem when Jacobus Arminius, who actually had in his earlier life studied under Biza in Geneva.

Biza was the successor of Calvin to the leadership of the Reformed movement in Geneva, Switzerland. Well, Jacobus had studied under Biza and received an appointment as professor of theology at the University of Leiden in 1603, but he began to have his concerns about some aspects of the Calvinistic theology that he had taught and been taught. He felt that Calvinism, the way that Calvin taught it, made God the author of sin.

Now, most Calvinists today would say that God is not the author of sin, but Arminius thought that it is impossible to make the affirmations that Calvin made without rendering God the author of sin, because Calvin believed, and true Calvinism teaches, that God ordained all things. He ordained that Adam and Eve would eat the fruit of the tree. He ordained every man's life and destiny.

He ordained that some would be lost because of a life of sin and that some would be saved because they were predestined to be saved. And it is part of pure Calvinism to say that if God does not ordain everything that happens, then he is not God. He is not sovereign.

Now, Arminius thought that God could still be regarded as sovereign and still retain some free will on the part of man. And so he rejected the Calvinistic doctrine of unconditional election. He rejected the doctrine of irresistible grace.

He resisted the doctrine of the limited atonement. And he did not agree with the doctrine of perseverance of the saints either. The teachings of Arminius at Leiden University became very controversial.

Eventually, he was basically, well, he was badly treated by his peers at the university. And he was put under so much stress that he died actually quite young. I think he was in his 40s, if I'm not mistaken, when he died.

Yeah, he was 49. And his nine orphaned children believed that it was because of the treatment he received. He never really was burned at the stake or beaten or imprisoned for his views, like some earlier reformers had been.

But he was just badly treated by others in the profession. And he was made a lightning rod for criticism. And he was a peace loving man.

By all accounts, Jacob Arminius was a man who just all he cared about was the truth. He was not trying to start some kind of a fight. He believed that the Bible taught something differently than what Calvin taught.

And he felt as a man of conscience, he should teach what he found in the Bible. But in Netherlands in his day, open mindedness was not really in vogue. And therefore, he was driven from his position and eventually died at age 49.

Those who followed him were called remonstrants or remonstrants. And of course, the theological position that arose out of his teaching is today referred to as Arminianism. In our day, almost anything that is not Calvinism is usually referred to as Arminianism.

Though this is, of course, not really a very exact way of labeling theologies. It is true that either man is unconditionally elected or he is not unconditionally elected. And since one of those views was espoused by Calvin and the other was espoused by Arminius, it is considered to be a way of simplifying the whole discussion of those theological issues simply by labeling someone a Calvinist or an Arminian.

But of course, Calvin himself had many views that Arminius himself would agree with. And many people who disagree with Calvin would not explain or express their disagreement in the same terms as Arminius did. It simply has become a convenient manner of labeling.

The Arminian views were condemned after Arminius died at the Synod of Dort in 1618 and 1619. And at that time, Calvin's followers, there are Calvin's true believers, formulated the Calvinistic theology into the five points that have become so well known today. The acronym or the acrostic TULIP, total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the Saints.

That formulation of Calvin's theology never was known by Calvin himself, nor did Arminius ever hear it in the TULIP form. That was put together by Calvin's followers a generation later at the Synod of Dort, where they condemned Arminius' views. Later in the same century, that is the 17th century, Netherlands became more tolerant of Arminian views, and it was respected or recognized as an official position in 1795.

So there are still remonstrant churches in Holland, which are followers of Jacobus Arminius. Now, there are others that were not Calvinist, like the Anabaptists. The Anabaptists were not Calvinist in their belief.

In fact, Luther was not really Calvinist in his beliefs, although he did share Calvin's views of the sovereignty of God and of divine election. But Anabaptists existed before the time of Arminius, and yet they did not hold Calvinistic views, and yet their views would be called Arminian on those issues of election. So much for the Reformation in the Netherlands.

More importantly, or more impressively, I should say, we have the story of the Reformation in Scotland. Now, most of us, being English-speaking people, can relate more with the things that pertain to the Reformation in English-speaking lands like England and Scotland. And when we get into the next few centuries, that is the 17th and 18th century, our attention will be largely focused on things that happened in England and in the British Isles in general.

Not entirely, but to a large extent, because so much of our own heritage and, of course, what America has done in terms of influence on the church around the world will be significant and of interest to us. At the beginning of the 16th century, the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland was very corrupt, as it was in many other places. The clergy were characterized by drunkenness, simony, greed.

They had concubines. By the way, that was not unique to Scotland. The clergy had these practices in many times and places during the Dark Ages.

But at the beginning of the Reformation era, there was tremendous corruption in the Scotland clergy of the Roman Catholic Church. The first influential reformer who came to or who had impact in Scotland was a student of Martin Luther. He had studied in Wittenberg under Luther, and his name was Patrick Hamilton.

He was burned at the stake in 1528, and so the Reformation in Scotland had that as its inglorious beginning. His work, however, was continued on by some other important people. George Weishart picked it up, picked up the torch, as it were, after Hamilton was burned, and Weishart himself was burned at the stake in 1546.

Following his lead and one who was somewhat influenced by Weishart was John Knox. John Knox lived a full lifetime and did not get burned at the stake. He was a very aggressive reformer in Scotland.

It was said at one time that the Scottish Catholic queen, Mary, Queen of Scots, said, I fear the prayers of John Knox more than all the armies of England. There were wars between Scotland and England in those days, and yet John Knox was a Scotsman, but he was not a Catholic, and Mary was. Mary was 18 years old when she became queen, and she was about 25 when she was forced to abdicate the throne.

During those years, she was a great opponent of John Knox. In 1547, John Knox was preaching to a garrison of Protestant soldiers in St. Andrews in Scotland, and the French invaded and took many captives, of whom John Knox was one. He was forced to be a galley slave on a French galley for 19 months.

Now, if you've seen Ben Hur, you know what a galley slave is. Those guys who are in the bottom part of the ship pulling the oars. And John Knox afterwards was to say that anyone who has endured 19 months as a galley slave has nothing left in his life to fear.

And he was fearless for afterwards in his opposition to the queen. He eventually was released from this slavery through a prisoner exchange, and he became the royal chaplain to Edward VI of England. Now, you might recall last time we were talking about Henry VIII had trouble producing a male heir, and the only surviving male heir he had when he died was six-year-old Edward VI, or nine-year-old, excuse me.

And Edward actually was going to make John Knox a bishop in England. Now, remember, England and Scotland are different countries, and John Knox was from Scotland, but there was reform in England, and there was not in Scotland at this time. And so he went to England after he was released from slavery and received a position as chaplain to the king of England for a while there.

However, when King Edward VI died, Mary Tudor, who we know as Bloody Mary, became queen and began persecuting Protestants. John Knox at that time fled from England, and he went to Frankfurt, Germany, where he became the pastor of a group of English refugees in that country. Later, he went to Switzerland and went to Geneva, where he studied under John Calvin himself and became very impressed with John Calvin personally and with his theology.

While he was there on the continent and before he went back to the British Isles, John Knox wrote two books, one called Predestination, and the other was called The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women. He obviously did not always choose the same style for his titles. One title has only one word in it, and the other has a lengthy clause.

This reference to the monstrous regiment of women was directed against the queen regent in Scotland. You see, Mary, queen of Scots, was an infant when her father died and when she became queen. So her mother was the queen regent and ruled until 1560, when the queen regent died.

At that time, Mary was 18 and became queen in her own right. Well, John Knox was opposed to female rulers. He said it was against nature and against scripture for women to rule a nation.

He thought that it was contrary to the things necessary for good order. So he wrote a document against the queen regent of Scotland and also against Mary Tudor, Bloody Mary in England. You can see it at that particular time, both England and Scotland had female rulers, and that's why he called it The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women.

He returned to Scotland from Europe in 1559, and he fearlessly attacked Catholic idolatry. The mass, he said that the mass was idolatry because the wafer was viewed to be Christ himself. And he opposed the papacy, the popes.

After the death of the queen regent, that is the mother of Mary, in 1560, Knox was opposed by 18-year-old Queen Mary of Scots, who had him arrested for treason, but he was acquitted by the court, so he was released. He would have been burned, of course, if the court found him guilty of treason. Knox consolidated the Reformation in Scotland by drawing up several books and documents for the church there.

He became the most aggressive and most influential leader in Scotland after Mary, Queen of Scots, was forced to abdicate. Knox lived to be very old, and he did not experience much persecution after that, but simply preached and taught and spread the Reformed faith. Among the things that he wrote was a Confession of Faith, and the Confession of Faith written by John Knox remained the official statement of faith for the Scottish churches until the adoption of the Westminster Confession in 1647.

He also wrote a book of Discipline about church order in 1561, also a book of Common Order, which was a new liturgy for the church to replace the Catholic liturgy, and he also translated Calvin's Catechism, which of course was a teaching curriculum for new converts. And so it was that Calvinism became dominant both in Netherlands and in Scotland. We will not look anymore at the Protestant Reformation itself.

We've spent several weeks on the Reformation period, but before we move along to the 17th century, which we will do next time, I'd like to talk to you about the Catholic Reformation, sometimes called the Counter-Reformation. The Roman Catholics call it the Catholic Reformation. The Protestants call it the Counter-Reformation.

And the word Counter-Reformation suggests, of course, that it was in reaction to the Protestant Reformation, that it was intended to counter the works of Luther and so forth, and to a certain extent that's true. At least it took its shape that way. However, it's not fair to view the Catholic Reformation strictly as a reaction to the Protestant Reformation, because there were elements of Reformation that arose within the Roman Catholic Church about this time, that arose independently, and even before Luther's Reformation came.

So we could argue that had Luther never nailed the 95 Theses on the church door in Wittenberg, there may well have been a Reformation of sorts in the Roman Catholic Church anyway. But there is a tremendous difference in the nature of the Catholic Reformation from the Protestant Reformation. The Catholic Reformation was simply a Reformation of morals and church order.

There was no attempt to challenge Roman Catholic doctrine. And this is why it was not the Protestant Reformation. Luther and Calvin and Zwingli and all those people, the Anabaptists, they all challenged the doctrines of the Catholic Church.

They said that the very religious, the theological concepts of the church were heresy. Now, the Catholic Reformation happened among those who did not have any problem with the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, but found intolerable the moral laxity and just the disorganization of the church. And so there arose this Reformation of sorts.

The Roman Catholic Church was reformed, and the effects of this Reformation lasted for 400 years. The Catholic Church, in other words, changed in many ways because of this. Remember, in the Dark Ages, as we call them in the medieval period, there was tremendous laxity.

Popes were immoral. I mean, popes were sometimes, they had mistresses. They were very much involved in activities of greed and power struggles and things.

There just wasn't really any evidence that the popes were Christians, nor bishops, nor priests in many cases. There were exceptions. Back in the 13th century, there were people who separated from the church, like St. Francis of Assisi, and others had done so.

But, for the most part, the Catholic Church in the medieval period was corrupt through and through. And, what may seem surprising to us, it was never thought that it should be otherwise. Because the church was so secular that popes and bishops were just like political rulers.

And there was no expectation that they would be spiritual. The Catholic religion was merely a religion of liturgy. It did not require any sincerity or spirituality.

And that has changed a great deal since the Catholic Reformation occurred in the 16th century. Because today, of course, while perhaps you will find as much corruption in Catholic clergy as you will in Protestant clergy, it is not approved. It is not thought to be okay.

And so, during the Catholic Reformation, definitions of what the church should be like and its leaders should be like were called into question and were altered permanently. For the better, though unfortunately the theology was not changed. There are three aspects of the Catholic Reformation I'd like to talk about before we're done tonight.

One has to do with the renewal of actual spirituality or piety. Piety is that religious affection of the heart toward God. Actual internal godliness.

As I say, for a long time the Roman Catholic Church largely interpreted its role as a liturgical role to administer the Mass. People were not really expected to live holy lives. The clergy were not really expected to live holy lives.

Everyone just had to say the Mass or take the Mass. And that covered all sins. But there were always some in the Roman Catholic Church, even considerably earlier than the 16th century, who felt that people ought to get right with God.

And this was before there were Protestants to give an option from the Catholic Church. Everybody before the 16th century either tried to find renewal within the Catholic Church or else went off with some group like the Waldensys or the Albogensys and were branded heretics and burned at the stake. But there were some who within the Catholic Church sought to reform without really changing Catholic doctrine.

Just trying to bring back a better quality of spiritual life. John Wycliffe is one that we've talked about in the past. John Hus in Bohemia was another.

There were certain mystics, as they're called. Very famous ones like Meister Eckhart and Thomas Akemthus who wrote of the imitation of Christ. These men labored within the Roman Catholic doctrine and attempted to find spirituality and get closer to God within that communion.

Also in the early 16th century, Erasmus of Rotterdam was a humanist Catholic scholar. He had an influence on almost all the reformers. He himself called for reform within the Catholic Church, though he never became part of the Protestant Reformation.

It seems that almost all of the reformers, Calvin, Zwingli, many of the Anabaptists, you name it, Erasmus. But he never went so far as to repudiate Catholic doctrine like they did. But he attempted to call the Church back to the Bible and back to the practices and teachings of the earliest Church Father.

And so these influences were in the Catholic Church before the Reformation came along. In 1517, which is the same year that Luther nailed the 95 Theses on the church door and officially started what we call the Protestant Reformation, the same year there formed in Rome a group of committed Catholic leaders, about 60 of them, who met together for worship and for mutual edification. They called themselves the Oratory of Divine Love.

And although they were few in number, they exerted an influence over the Roman Catholic Church of the time disproportionate to their number. There's a reason for that. Because later on, a pope appointed a council of nine or a commission of nine men to look into the state of the Church and to make suggestions for Reformation.

And almost everyone on that commission of nine had been a part of this Oratory of Divine Love. So these men, though few in number, became very influential in the life of the Catholic Church. They were committed to personal reform and expressions of dedication like the establishment of orphanages, hospitals.

They fasted, they prayed for the sick, they gave alms, they made pilgrimages. Probably sort of a more medieval version of what Mother Teresa did at a much more modern time within the realm of the Catholic theology. Though the Oratory was dispersed when Rome was sacked by the Emperor Charles V in 1527, several of its former members were selected by Pope Paul III to be on the commission of nine to investigate the Church's condition and recommend reform.

The commission reported back in 1537 of the scandalous conditions of the Church and recommended sweeping administrative and moral reform. Pope Paul III was a Pope that was interested in reform. Although he himself had been a scandalous fellow earlier in his life, even as Pope, he had three illegitimate children, but later in life he felt the need for moral reform in his life and in the Church, which is why he appointed the commission of nine to look into this.

One of the men who was on this council of nine and who had also been one of the founding members of the Oratory of Divine Love was a man named Gaspar Cantarini. He was a peace loving man by nature, but he sought to reform the Church through humanistic channels a little bit like Erasmus had done. He sought reconciliation between the Protestants and the Catholics.

This was something that was not done very much in those days, nor for some centuries afterward. He even worked together with Melanchthon, who was Luther's friend and helper and who later became Luther's successor in the work in Germany. Melanchthon and Gaspar Cantarini worked together on a statement of justification by faith that both of them approved of and they thought perhaps they could bring the Protestants and the Catholic Church back together.

However, Luther and the Pope didn't agree with the statement. So even though Melanchthon and this brother Cantarini found a statement of faith that they could approve of, Luther didn't agree with Melanchthon and the Pope didn't agree with Cantarini and so he died a disappointed man, this Cantarini. He didn't see any reform take place.

Another of his partners there on the Commission of Nine, who had also been a founder of the Oratory of Divine Love, was a man named Giovanni Carrafa. He later became Pope Paul IV. This man also advocated reform, just as Cantarini did, but through different means.

Cantarini had wanted to reform by a reconciliatory peacemaking effort and by negotiation. Carrafa, Pope Paul IV, wanted to do so by the Inquisition. He sought to bring about reform through force.

And so he headed up the Inquisition and advocated strict punishment for all heretics, which meant, of course, Anabaptists, Reformers, and so forth. He made a list of forbidden writings that Catholics were not allowed to read and if those books were found, they were burned. This list was called the Index of Forbidden Books and some of you may be old enough to remember this index because it continued to be updated until 1966.

I remember when I was in junior high, in 1966, I had Catholic friends who could not go to certain movies and could not read certain books because they were listed on the Index of Forbidden Books. Now, given the corruption of the movies, we might think that's a very good suggestion. Maybe Protestants should have certain lists of movies that Christians shouldn't go to as well.

However, this Index of Forbidden Books was actually not very good for Catholics. It kind of kept them backward. It kept them from reading the more forward-thinking writers of their time, anyone who thought anything different than the Pope.

Of course, all the Protestant writings were on it, but even Erasmus' writings, who was a Catholic, were on it. Erasmus had put together a Greek New Testament from which, later on, the King James Version came, the Textus Receptus, but Erasmus had published the Greek New Testament next to the Latin Bible in two columns. He did this for the benefit of Catholic scholarship so they could compare the Greek New Testament with the Latin New Testament because the Church had used the Latin only.

And yet, this book by Erasmus was on the Index of Forbidden Books because the Catholics found too often that when they read the Greek New Testament next to the Latin Version, the Latin Version was inaccurate and, therefore, it caused people to lose confidence in the integrity of the Church. So, this Index of Forbidden Books was part of Pope Paul IV's or Giovanni Caratta's influence toward Reformation of the Catholic Church. And so, we had this renewal of interest in purification in the Catholic Church.

In addition to that, and perhaps more influential than any of those things, was the conversion of Ignatius Loyola and the formation of the Society of Jesus, which is also called the Jesuits. Did you people see the movie, The Mission? You will recall that those missionaries on The Mission were Jesuits. The Jesuits became the militant arm of the Catholic Church to stamp out the Protestant Reformation.

Ignatius Loyola was their founder, but before he was really in that line of work, he was a Spanish nobleman and soldier and in a battle against the French, he sustained a really gnarly leg injury through cannon fire and he had to be taken from the battlefield to recuperate. It was a very painful and long time recuperating and during that time of recuperation, he read some classic books. One was on the life of Christ and one was on the life of some of the early saints.

And he had within him a spiritual awakening and he committed himself to become a soldier of Jesus Christ. But to him, of course, a soldier of Jesus Christ meant in the context of the Roman Catholic Church. When he had recuperated from his injuries, Loyola traveled to the Benedictine Abbey at Montserrat where he hung up his sword and took vows of chastity, poverty and service.

While he was in this early stage of his religious life, he wrote a book called Spiritual Exercises. This book actually was to become one of the most famous and influential books in the world. It is still recommended by the Catholic Church for all people going into holy orders and many other Roman Catholics read it with profit.

The book Spiritual Exercises actually lays out a four-week spiritual program when people would join his organization later on, Loyola would have them take a four-week retreat and do the spiritual exercises. It had to do a lot with using the imagination, with thinking and with meditating and things. And the first week was spent contemplating on the subject of sin.

The second week was contemplating on the life of Christ. The third week was contemplating the death of Christ and the fourth week contemplating the resurrection of Christ. And apparently many Catholics have found his Spiritual Exercises to be very spiritually helpful.

He wrote these in his early time after his conversion. After studying at several universities, he ended up at the University of Paris. Interestingly, he was studying at the University of Paris at the same time that John Calvin was studying there.

And yet, both of these men became very important movers and shakers of their time. John Calvin headed up the Reformation or became the most influential figure in the Reformation. Loyola became the most influential figure in the Catholic Reformation.

It is not known whether these men ever met each other at the University of Paris, but it's rather ironic that they were both there studying at the same time. In 1533, Loyola banded together with six like-minded men to form the Society of Jesus or the Jesuits. These Jesuits took vows of chastity, poverty, missionary work, and absolute obedience to the Pope.

It's this last vow that set the Jesuits apart from other holy orders from the Benedictines and the Franciscans and so forth. A lot of the other orders had been formed just for personal piety to draw near to God. But Loyola felt convinced that the Pope was God's representation on earth and his Jesuits had to take oaths of absolute obedience.

They were set up like a military hierarchy because he had been a soldier before. He brought in a lot of his ideas about organization from his experience as a soldier and he set it up where they would take vows of absolute obedience and they would bear the sword of the Pope. And their views about the Pope were rather extreme, to say the least.

They believed that the Pope could do no wrong and that if anybody, even a king or a queen, resisted the Pope that that person, it was justifiable to assassinate them. As a matter of fact, they tried to assassinate Queen Elizabeth of England, the first, because she resisted the recapitalization of England and so there was a Jesuit attempt to assassinate her. They also became the leading figures in the Inquisition.

They were the most fanatical supporters of the Pope there were. They instituted two policies that certainly are questionable in their ethicalness. One of them was that they believed that Jesus would approve of anything or that they should act as if Jesus would approve of anything so long as there was a good possibility that he might or that there was any argument that could be made that he possibly might.

And therefore they could do many things that Christians otherwise would not do because, although not in the sense of immoral things like we think of but in terms of intrigues and things they did in warfare against Protestants because they didn't know for sure that Jesus wouldn't approve. Another thing they developed was the idea that you could lie in order to promote the interests of the pathosy. You might recognize that doctrine.

It exists today among the Jehovah's Witnesses. They call it theocratic tact. The Jehovah's Witnesses have a doctrine that they can lie to people that they're witnessing to about certain matters of fact if by doing so they can more readily secure a conversion from that person.

And the Jesuits actually had a policy that they could lie, they could deceive if it was in the interest of the church. In fact anything that promoted the interest of the Pope was justifiable. They took vows of loyalty and obedience to the Pope that were so great that they said that Loyola said in his spiritual exercises that if the Pope says something is white even if it seems to you that it is black it is white.

And so basically their view was that you should not consult conscience, you should not consult scripture, you should consult the decrees of the Pope to know what is right and wrong. And that was the policy of the Jesuits. The Jesuits became the Roman Church's radical arm of resistance to Protestantism.

They also did a lot to advance education, Catholic education of course, to help turn back the tide of Protestantism and they were extremely involved in missionary expansion. They were much more missionary minded than any other group in the Roman Catholic Church at the time. They went all over the place.

As the movie The Mission shows they were down in South America. The first missionaries in the United States were Jesuits and they were martyred by the American Indians. Many of them were terribly treated and burned at the stake by American Indians as they came to evangelize.

There was one Jesuit leader in particular who had been a roommate of Loyola when he was I guess at the university. His name was Francis Xavier. This man is considered to be one of the world's greatest missionaries.

We're talking about back in the 1500's. This man evangelized in 51 different countries especially in the Far East. He ministered, he did evangelism in India, in Vietnam.

What is today Vietnam? Of course it wasn't Vietnam then. What is today? Malaysia, Ceylon, Hindustan, certain parts of China and Japan. He labored for three years in India but probably the most lasting work he accomplished in his lifetime was in Japan.

Xavier started a church which is still functioning today 400 years later from the same church. This man was a pioneer missionary. He went where Christianity had never been before.

That was sort of the Jesuit zeal. The Jesuit order attracted these men who were more than ordinarily fanatical toward the Pope and toward the advancement of the Roman Catholic cause. There's one other factor in the Catholic Reformation I want to briefly touch on and we'll be done.

That was the Council of Trent. The Council of Trent was held in three main sessions beginning in 1545 and ending in 1563. There was a session in 1545-47.

There was a second session about four years later that's 1551-52 and then again ten years later the third session, 1562-63. The Council of Trent did more to shape the structure of Roman Catholicism in modern times than any other single thing. The Council reflected a new militant stance of Rome.

It was of course dominated by Jesuits. The Jesuits basically set the agenda at the Council of Trent. And to make a long story short the Catholic Church reaffirmed its commitment to all its medieval doctrines and condemned all the doctrines of the Protestants.

The Protestants were teaching sola fide which means by faith alone justification by faith. The Council of Trent condemned that doctrine. As they say, anathematized it.

They said let anyone who says that a man is justified by faith alone be anathema you might remember the Apostle Paul used that term in Galatians when he said if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than that which I have preached to you let that man be anathema even if it's an angel from heaven let him be anathema it means curse to the lowest hell and so the Council of Trent cursed to the lowest hell anyone who would declare the doctrine of justification by faith alone also the same of the doctrine and also of course the doctrine of sola scriptura which was the Protestant doctrine that scripture alone is the final authority for all matters of faith and practice the Council of Trent reaffirmed the Catholic idea that scripture and the tradition of the church, that is of the Catholic church hold equal weight in determining faith and practice this is still the position of the Roman Catholic Church what they mean by tradition is a decision that is made by the College of Bishops and the Pope whenever they have a special council to discuss or determine theological matters and the decision that the College of Bishops and the Pope come up with is official tradition whatever the ecumenical council came up with the Council of Nicea for example because it is an official tradition of the church at the Council of Trent this council also reaffirmed essentially all the Catholic medieval doctrines of the Pope's supremacy and the seven sacraments the sacrifice of the mass the confession to a priest and the sale of indulgences all of these things of course were practices that the reformers had written against and spoken against and had rebelled against so the Council of Trent established firmly and militantly for those who had remained Catholic all of these Catholic distinctives and condemned all the Protestant distinctives the Jesuits carried out and enforced these decisions driving Protestants largely out of France to a certain extent and to a certain extent driving Protestantism backward in places like the Netherlands and many other parts of Europe they were considered to be the shock troops of the Roman Catholic Church and of course they were greatly feared because they controlled the Inquisition but this is how the Catholic Church reacted to the Protestant Reformation it would be a later time after the 16th century before Protestantism and Catholicism would learn to live side by side without trying to stamp each other out of course there are new efforts by Evangelicals to try to find common ground with the Roman Catholic Church there are many Evangelicals who oppose this because the basic doctrines of what we consider the Gospel are different between the Catholic Church and the Protestant Church which is why so many Protestants so many Reformers died rather than recant their views they believed that nothing less was at stake than the Gospel itself so next time go on into the 17th century and meet some new encouraging people to know