Dark Freedom: The Rise of Western Lawlessness - Chapter Eight
by C.W. Steinle
Copyright 2015 by C.W. Steinle
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Part II - The Legacy of the Manmade Church
Protest, Reformation, and Peace
This is our last chapter on
Christian History. We simply cannot
appreciate where we are in the journey of lawlessness unless we know from whence
we have come. Western Christianity, on
the whole, is so far removed from the mindset of the Early Church
Protestant Christians are
generally aware of the theological arguments of the Reformation. But the political positions of the Reformers
are not so well known. The attitudes
toward civil and religious authority discussed in this chapter are drawn from
Christian sources. That is to say that
the men making these proposals, and stating their opinions, were all Christians;
and most of these men were clergymen. These
illustrations vary widely and are not meant to be cohesive. Although independent, each development has had
its own significance in shaping western thought. In effect, we are merely turning these puzzle
pieces right-side up so that a clear impression of the spiritual system of
lawlessness might begin to form in mind's eye of the reader.
Thomas More is known primarily for
his objection to the divorce and remarriage of King Henry VIII. More had desired to enter the ministry but
his father required him to pursue a career as a lawyer. More eventually became Lord Chancellor of England. He was sainted by the Catholic Church as a
martyr of the Reformation because of his stand against the Protestant
Movement. More was imprisoned and then
beheaded by Henry for his refusal to attend the king's wedding to Anne
Boleyn. Our chief interest with Thomas
More is a fictional book, Utopia88, which he
published in 1516 about a model commonwealth built on the imaginary Island of Utopia
"Utopia" has become a
common word for idealistic governments.
But this word coined by More carries a twofold meaning. Phonetically, Utopia can mean either a
"good land" or a "no-man's land." The word was probably concocted as a
whimsical reference to both as a type of pun, representing a good place - which
in reality did not exist.
More placed his imaginary island
somewhere in the New World ; but for
credibility he connected its discovery to one of the crew members of the actual
explorer Amerigo Vespucci. The Island of Utopia
Each city in Utopia had 6,000
household units. The households were
made up of 10 to 16 adults. The adults were
moved around the island from city to city and house to house when it was
necessary to maintain the fixed population quotas. But all adults were required to change houses
every ten years. In the event the island
was overpopulated, people were relocated to the mainland, but could be recalled
should the population fall below the ideal number. Citizens who were in good standing could
choose to leave the island. Likewise,
the mainlanders were welcome to move to the island within the specified limits
of the island's population.
The administration of Utopia was
managed by a prince, who was elected but then remained for life unless he was later
deposed. The prince could be removed
from office if he behaved too much like a tyrant. Every 30 households acted as a group to elect
a representative, resulting in 200 of these representatives per city. The prince was elected by these
representatives in a secret ballot.
 |
| Figure 7 - Title woodcut for Utopia by Thomas More89 |
There were no locks on the doors
because the people had no private property.
The wealth of the community was held in gold and jewels. The gold was used for sewage pots and for the
chains of the people who had become slaves due to misconduct. Using the gold for such dishonorable
utilities was intended to make gold an undesirable commodity. The jewels were worn by children and were passed
down as a sign of their maturity. Goods were
distributed to the people from public warehouses. Everyone on the island was required to work
for at least six hours each day. All of
the citizens were taught to farm, as well as learning a secondary trade such as
weaving or metalworking. The people were
encouraged to educate themselves in their spare time. Children who excelled in their studies were
segregated for special education so that they might become qualified for administrative
positions.
Immoral behavior was punishable
by slavery. People who were caught
without their passports were warned once and became slaves upon a second
offence. Premarital sex was punished by
lifelong celibacy and enforced by slavery if they failed to remain celibate. Utopia also provided free medical care and
other public welfare as needed. The
state also had the right to approve euthanasia.
It is curious that the
Chancellor of English Finance would be so obsessed by the notion of
communism. Plato had proposed a Golden
Age with communal property. Although,
Aristotle had argued that personal property enhanced virtue by necessitating
responsibility. More's contemplation of
communal property could be attributed to two sources. Sir Thomas was accepted by the monks of a
nearby monastery and participated in their worship. His observation of monastic life may have
triggered his interest in communal living.
England
was also in a transitional stage between allowing open range for common grazing
and the restriction of these pastures by the landowners. This privatization was not isolated to the British Isles , but was causing the same problems among
the peasants on the Continent. So now we
will turn our attention back to the Reformation of Europe, where these social
changes were in full swing.
The German peasants were the beasts of burden for society,
and in no better condition than slaves.
Work, work, work, without reward, was their daily lot, even Sunday
hardly excepted. They were ground down
by taxation, legal and illegal. The
rapid increase of wealth, luxury, and pleasure, after the discovery of America ,
made their condition only worse. . . The peasants formed, in self-protection,
secret leagues among themselves: as the "Kasebroder"
(Cheese-Brothers), in the Netherlands ;
and the "Bundschuh," in South Germany . These leagues served the same purpose as the
labor unions of mechanics in our days. Long
before the Reformation revolutionary outbreaks took place in various parts of Germany ,
- A.D. 1476, 1492, 1493, 1502, 1513, and especially 1514, against the lawless
tyranny of Duke Ulrich of Wutemberg. But
these rebellions were put down by brute force, and ended in disastrous failure.90
Thomas Muntzer was a German theologian who became an organizer in Germany
Muntzer chose the city of Muhlhausen
The next year, in 1542, Muntzer returned to Muhlhausen with a modified plan
which included some of the old council members.
This time he was successful and an "Eternal League of God" was
established. Muntzer then took over the
council by violence and began to create his own communistic utopia. But the nearby cities took up arms against
Muhlhausen in order to topple Muntzer's new stronghold. Even with the enlistment of 8,000 peasants,
Muhlhausen was defeated by Frankenhausen.
Muntzer was tortured, executed, and then dismembered; his body parts
were then displayed on the Muhlhausen city gate. (It is interesting to note
that his banner was a rainbow flag.) Friedrich
Engels, co-author of the Communist Manifesto, wrote a book on the Peasant Wars
in which he insinuated that Muntzer had used biblical language in his socialist
experiment only because it was familiar to the German peasants. Philip Schaff offers the following account of
Muntzer's campaign.
Thomas Muntzer, one of the Zwickau Prophets, and an eloquent
demagogue, was the apostle and travelling evangelist of the social revolution,
and a forerunner of modern socialism, communism, and anarchism. He presents a remarkable compound of the
discordant elements of radicalism and mysticism. He was born at Stolberg
in the Harz Mountain
(1590); studied theology at Leipzig ; embraced
some of the doctrines of the Reformation, and preached them in the chief church
at Zwickau ; but
carried them to excess, and was deposed.
After the failure of the revolution in Wittenberg , in which he took part, he labored
as pastor at Altstadt (1523), for the realization of his wild ideas, in direct
opposition to Luther, whom he hated worse than the Pope. Luther wrote against the "Satan of
Altstadt." Muntzer was removed, but
continued his agitation in Muhlhausen, a free city in Thuringia, in Nurnberg, Basel , and again in
Muhlhausen (1525).
He was at enmity with the whole existing order of society,
and imagined himself the divinely inspired prophet of a new dispensation, a
sort of communistic millennium, in which there should be no priests, no
princes, no nobles, and no private property, but complete democratic
equality. He inflamed the people in
fiery harangues from the pulpit, and printed tracts to open rebellion against
their spiritual and secular rulers. He
signed himself "Muntzer with the hammer," and "with the sword of
Gideon." He advised the killing of
all the ungodly. They had no right to
live. Christ brought the sword, not
peace upon earth. "Look not,"
he said, "on the sorrow of the ungodly; let not your sword grow cold from
blood; strike hard upon the anvil of Nimrod [the princes]; cast his tower to
the ground, because the day is yours."91
The Swiss cantons had their own standing armies of
trained militia. These soldiers were
hired, primarily by France ,
as mercenaries to help fight in the battles of the Holy
Roman Empire . Some of these
mercenaries hired themselves out for service.
But the governments of the cantons also contracted to engage their own
citizen armies in foreign conflicts. Theologically,
Zwingli is remembered for his unyielding opinion that the Eucharist elements
embody only the spiritual presence of Christ.
But as a countryman, Zwingli was just as adamantly opposed to the Swiss
being enlisted to the fight for France and the Empire. He would rather that the Swiss cantons turn
their military efforts to enforcing the freedom of Protestant preaching. But Zwingli was unable to establish a
consensus sufficient to override the Catholic resistance. He was able, nevertheless, to secure Zurich Zurich
 |
| Figure 8 - The murder of Zwingli by Karl Jauslin92 |
Zwingli, provoked by the burning of Kaiser, and seeing the
war clouds gathering all around, favored prompt action, which usually secures a
great advantage in critical moments. He
believed in the necessity of war; while Luther put his sole trust in the Word
of God, although he stirred up the passions of war by his writings, and had
himself the martyr's courage to go to the stake. Zwingli was a free republican; while Luther
was a loyal monarchist. He belonged to
the Cromwellian type of men who "trust in God and keep their powder
dry." In him the reformer, the
statesman, and the patriot were one. He
appealed to the examples of Joshua and Gideon, forgetting the difference
between the Old and New dispensation.
"Let us be firm," he wrote to his peace-loving friends in Bern (May 30, 1529),
"and fear not to take up arms. This
peace, which some desire so much, is not peace, but war; while the war that we
call for, is not war, but peace. We thirst
for no man's blood, but we will cut the nerves of the oligarchy. If we shun it, the truth of the gospel and
the ministers' lives will never be secure among us."93
Martin Luther was keenly aware
that all authority is established by God.
Luther was compelled to object to the will of the papacy where that will
contradicted God's Word and God's ways; but he was not willing to discount the
authority vested by God in the civil magistrate. Luther distanced himself from the liberal
Reformers. He was more interested in
correcting the errors of One Holy Catholic Church than in blazing a new trail
of faith. If John Hus and his Bohemian
followers had not already influenced the princes of Northern
Europe to show tolerance toward the Protestant Movement, Luther
would surely have been handed over to suffer execution under the Papal
Bull. Had this been the case, Luther,
like Socrates, would likely have accepted the sentence of the State without
resistance.
Even so, Luther did recognize
certain God-sanctioned limits on civil authority. In his 1523 essay, Temporal Authority: To What Extent it Should Be Obeyed,94 he wrote; "God
has ordained two governments among the children of Adam, - the reign of God
under Christ, and the reign of the world under the civil magistrate, each with
its own laws and rights. The laws of the
reign of the world extend no further than body and goods and the external
affairs on earth. But over the soul God
can and will allow no one to rule but himself alone. Therefore where the worldly government dares
to give laws to the soul, it invades the reign of God, and only seduces and
corrupts the soul." Luther also rebuked
King Henry for overreaching the limits of his earthly authority.
He defends here the divine right and authority of the secular
magistrate, and the duty of passive obedience, on the ground of Matt. 5:39 and Rom.
13:1, but only in temporal
affairs. While he forbade the use of
carnal force, he never shrank from telling even his own prince the truth in the
plainest manner. He exercised the
freedom of speech and of the press to the fullest extent, both in favor of the
Reformation and against political revolution.
The Reformation elevated the state at the expense of the freedom of the
church; while Romanism lowered the dignity of the state to the position of an
obedient servant of the hierarchy.95
From the time of Wycliffe and throughout
the Reformation, the pope or his papacy were accused of being the antichrist of
John's Revelation. Most Protestants
retained this opinion well into the nineteenth century. John Wesley's Commentary on Revelation
Chapter Twelve reads: "Now, all the countries in which Christianity was
settled between the beginning of the twelve hundred and sixty days, and the
imprisonment of the dragon, may be understood by the wilderness, and by her
place in particular. This place
contained many countries; so that Christianity now reached, in an uninterrupted
tract, from the eastern to the western empire; and both the emperors now lent
their wings to the woman, and provided a safe abode for her. Where she is fed - By God rather than man;
having little human help. For a time,
and times, and half a time - The length of the several periods here mentioned
seems to be nearly this: The little time = 888 years, The time, times, and half
a time = 777, The time of the beast = 666.
And comparing the prophecy and history together, they seem to begin and
end nearly thus: The non - chronos extends from about 800[AD.] to 1836[AD.],
The 1260 days of the woman from 847 - 1524, The little time 947 - 1836, The
time, times, and half 1058[AD.] - 1836[AD.], The time of the beast between the
beginning and the end of the three times and a half."96
The tradition that the Book of
Revelation was an account of the history of the Christian Church continued
through the lifetime of Charles Spurgeon, who wrote; "It is the bounden
duty of every Christian to pray against Antichrist, and as to what Antichrist
is, no sane man ought to raise a question. If it be not the popery in the Church of Rome
there is nothing in the world that can be called by that name. If there were to be issued a hue and cry for
Antichrist, we should certainly take up this church on suspicion, and it would
certainly not be let loose again, for it so exactly answers the
description."97
Martin Luther, Calvin, and the
other Reformers also believed they were living during the time of the
fulfillment of Revelation. The
pre-tribulation rapture theory was not considered by the Protestant Church temple of God
At the same time, Luther continued the careful study of
history, and could find no trace of popery and its extraordinary claims in the
first centuries before the Council of Nicaea.
He discovered that the Papal Decretals, and the Donation of Constantine,
were a forgery. He wrote to Spalatin,
March 13, 1519, "I know not whether the Pope is anti-christ himself, or
his apostle; so wretchedly is Christ, that is the truth, corrupted and crucified
by him in the Decretals."98
"I can hardly doubt," he [Martin Luther] wrote to
Spalatin, Feb. 23, 1520, "that the Pope is the Antichrist." In the same year, Oct. 11, he went so far as
to write to Leo X. that the papal dignity was fit only for traitors like Judas
Iscariot whom God had cast out.99
In his controversy with the Anabaptists (1528), Luther makes
the striking admission: "We confess
that under the papacy there is much Christianity, yea, the whole Christianity,
and has from thence come to us. We
confess that the papacy possesses the genuine Scripture, genuine baptism, the
genuine sacrament of the altar, the genuine keys for the remission of sins, the
true ministry, the true catechism, the Ten Commandments, the articles of the
Creed, the Lord's Prayer. . . . I say that under the Pope is the true
Christendom, yea, the very elite of
Christendom, and many pious and great saints."
For proof he refers, strangely enough, to the very passage of
Paul, 2 Thess. 2:3, 4, from which he and other Reformers derived their chief
argument that the Pope of Rome is Antichrist, "the Man of Sin,"
"the Son of Perdition." For
Paul represents him as sitting "in the temple of God
Lastly in our investigation of
the authority question during the Reformation we will review two groups of
deviants. These factions were the
enemies of John Calvin in Geneva . Calvin's political structure in Geneva is so widely known as a Protestant enclave that we need
not cover Geneva
as part of this study. Suffice it to say
that Calvin's Church ruled over the civil government to the extent allowed by
the people.
Calvin's opponents draw our
interest because they represent two reactions to Bible-based government. The so-called Patriots were irreligious and
the Libertines were the followers of a Gnostic cult. The latter is a typical example of the fruit
of the Gnostic religion, which always boasts of knowing God but is rarely accompanied
by the fear of the Lord. Because the
fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, the Libertines obviously had
not known Him. Whatever else they might
have known, they did not know the God of the Bible.
We must distinguish two parties among Calvin's enemies - the
Patriots, who opposed him on political grounds, and the Libertines, who hated
his religion. It would be unjust to
charge all the Patriots with the irreligious sentiments of the Libertines. But they made common cause for the overthrow
of Calvin and his detested system of discipline. They had many followers among the
discontented and dissolute rabble which abounds in every large city, and is
always ready for a revolution, having nothing to lose and everything to gain.
1. The Patriots or Children of Geneva (Enfants de Geneve), as they called themselves, belonged to some of
the oldest and most influential families of Geneva, - Favre (or Fabri), Perrin,
Vandel, Berthelier, Ameaux. They or
their fathers had taken an active part in the achievement of political
independence, and even in the introduction of the Reformation, as a means of
protecting that independence. But they
did not care for the positive doctrines of the Reformation. They wanted liberty without law. They resisted every encroachment on their
personal freedom and love of amusements.
They hated the evangelical discipline more than the yoke of Savoy .
They also disliked Calvin as a foreigner, who was not even
naturalized before 1559. In the pride
and prejudice of nativism, they denounced the refugees, who had sacrificed home
and fortune to religion, as a set of adventurers, soldiers of fortune,
bankrupts, and spies of the Reformer.
"These dogs of Frenchmen," they said, "are the cause that
we are slaves, and must bow before Calvin and confess our sins. Let the preachers and their gang go to the
----." They deprived the refugees
of the right to carry arms, and opposed their admission to the rights of
citizenship, as there was danger that they might outnumber and outvote the
native citizens. Calvin secured, in
1559, through a majority vote of the Council, at one time, the admission of
three hundred of these refugees, mostly Frenchmen.
The Patriots disliked also the protectorate of Bern , although Bern
never favored the strict theology and discipline of Calvin.
2. The Libertines or Spirituels, as they called themselves,
were far worse than the Patriots. They
formed the opposite extreme to the severe discipline of Calvin. He declares that they were the most
pernicious of all the sects that appeared since the time of the ancient
Gnostics and Manichaeans, and that they answer the prophetic description in the
Second Epistle of Peter and the Epistle of Jude. He traces their immediate origin to Coppin of
Ysel and Quintin of Hennegau, in the Netherlands ,
and to an ex-priest, Pocquet or Pocques, who spent some time in Geneva , and wanted to get
a certificate from Calvin; but Calvin saw through the man and refused it. They revived the antinomian doctrines of the
mediaeval sect of the "Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit," a
branch of the Beghards, who had their headquarters at Cologne
and the Lower Rhine , and emancipated
themselves not only from the Church, but also from the laws of morality.
The Libertines described by Calvin were antinomian
pantheists. They confounded the
boundaries of truth and error, of right and wrong. Under the pretext of the freedom of the
spirit, they advocated the unbridled license of the flesh. Their spiritualism ended in carnal materialism. They taught that there is but one spirit, the
Spirit of God, who lives in all creatures, which are nothing without him. "What I or you do," said Quintin,
"is done by God, and what God does, we do; for he is in us." Sin is a mere negation or privation, yea, an
idle illusion which disappears as soon as it is known and disregarded. Salvation consists in the deliverance from
the phantom of sin. There is no Satan,
and no angels, good or bad. They denied
the truth of the gospel history. The
crucifixion and resurrection of Christ have only a symbolical meaning to show
us that sin does not exist for us.
The Libertines taught the community of goods and of women,
and elevated spiritual marriage above legal marriage, which is merely carnal
and not binding.102
The doctrines of the Libertines
are strikingly similar to the teachings of a nineteenth century cult misnamed
Christian Science. This so-called
science simplifies the spiritual realm to accommodate human reasoning. Gnosticism denies the heaven and angels of
God's creation and replaces them with a metaphysical abstraction which is
nothing more than the opposite of matter.
This "scientific" reasoning cannot distinguish between the
Holy Spirit and demonic spirits because the Gnostic "spirit" only
exists as a logical place-holder representing everything outside the visible
realm. The lusts of the flesh can never
be held in check by the fear of a theoretical god.
The Patriots represent a general
type of the world's demography that is unbelieving and wants nothing to do with
God and His laws. The Protestant
Movement was not isolated to the theology and authority of Church. The Reformer's break from the Roman Church
validated in the minds of non-Christians a sense that they should be extended
the same freedom to break away from the Church and God's laws altogether. Thus the hope of religious freedom by the
God-fearers was countered by the hope among the ungodly that they might be free
from the restrictions of Christian morality.
Though at the time of the Reformation, only a small minority would have
been willing to confess they were Atheists.
The spread of Protestantism in various regions of Europe led to the question of how to determine a nation's
religion. Germany Europe had a greater problem with
establishing national and intra-national religions as a continent, due to the fragmented
control of her multiple rulers. Control
of the Holy Roman Empire of Charlemagne had by 1438 been assumed by the
Hapsburg Dynasty. The Holy Hapsburg Empire
was divided geographically by the independent nation of France
 |
| Figure 9 - Thirty Years' War103 |
The Peace of Westphalia was a
pact among the kings and princes agreeing that they would respect each nation's
sovereignty. Until this point in world
history it was expected that successful rulers would expand their kingdoms. The treaties resulting from Westphalia made
some redistribution of territories, and formed alliances to balance the powers
of Europe in order to inhibit acts of
aggression. The resulting Westphalian
Sovereignty established a model for later international law. It is worth noting that the House of Hapsburg
continued (officially) into the eighteenth century. And although some regions of the Holy Roman Empire gained sovereign status under the
treaty, the Empire was not completely dissolved until the beginning of the
nineteenth century.
The coexistence of multiple
Christian faiths was accomplished by adopting Germany 's
treaty of Augsburg . This method had succeeded in Germany
by allowing the rulers of each sovereign state to choose which denomination
would be supported under their administration.
Denominations other than the official state religion would be able to
hold services at prescribed times, and to worship at all times in private. By attaching religious affiliations to
independent religions, a spirit of patriotism was woven into the fabric of
Protestantism. God and country were
bound together in one allegiance - in one faith.
As for the climate, the
seventeenth century marked the middle of the Little Ice Age. The civil unrest during the time of the
Thirty Years' War was exacerbated by the famine, pestilence, and extreme
weather conditions caused by a two hundred year solar minimum cycle. History shows that nearly the whole northern
hemisphere was engaged in war during these centuries. Some countries had three major national wars
accompanied by internal civil wars all within a single century. Two and three year consecutive crop failures
caused mass migrations, invasions, and pillaging. The countries of Europe
were so expended of resources that soldiers were not paid, but were expected to
survive on looting and extortion.
Farmers feared their own troops more than they dreaded their enemies.
Secular accusations that
Christianity was responsible for these wars of Europe
are simplistic at best. But the Church
did cause immeasurable bloodshed from the Middle Ages until modern times. The problem caused by the unchristian
doctrines and practices of the Roman Church called for protest and reform. The Apostle Paul warned that it was possible
to preach to others and afterwards to be personally disqualified. The Roman Church disqualified itself from its
God given ministry. And Rome was never qualified
by God to rule nations of the earth. However, raising individual authority to an equal
position with properly established authority became a faulty and unstable
foundation for the Protestant faiths.
God bless those Reformers who
made their good confession standing on God's Word alone. Obeying God rather than man is always the
right thing to do when God has given His direct revelation. That revelation is most reliably discerned
from the Bible, but is sometimes imparted in a personal way that is
unmistakably clear. The instruction of
God, however imparted, is the only basis for standing in opposition to
authority which God has ordained.
Meanwhile, the desperation of
the Little Ice Age inflamed the spirit of individualism by turning daily life
into a fight for survival. Productive
fields where parched, flooded, or frozen, sending their inhabitants to
flight. This age of "every man to
himself" shattered the community paradigm, giving further appeal to the
philosophical arguments for individualism promoted by Humanism.
Christians rejected the
authenticity of the Roman Church and longed to return to the Early Church
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