Professional Documents
Culture Documents
1
In the controversies of the late Middle Ages, it was frequent to assert the
supremacy of ecclesiastical power over the civil authority. Against this pretended
supremacy reacts OCKHAM, all authority comes from the Scripture and from the
universal Church, and not from the Roman pontiff. MARSILY OF PADUA
conceives a universal ecumenical and democratic Church, based on the supremacy
of Scripture as a source of authority, which should only be interpreted by councils in
obscure cases. These same ideas, are found in the fourteenth century by WICLIF
and HUS: simony and ignorance have diverted the spirit of the Church. (Tavard,
Ecriture or Eglise, Paris, 1963, in particular pp. 10 and 133, 53 ff.). According to
SKINNER (The foundations of modern political thought, Cambridge, 1978, II, 11),
LUTHER repeats the idea of medieval heretics (Waldenses, Wiclifitas) who
identified the papacy with the antichrist. From another perspective it is emphasized
that the Reformation was an essay of return to the Augustinianism in the High
Middle Ages, against a new rationalism triumphant by scholasticism, in the context
of the schism of Avignon, and the corruption of some Roman Popes. LUTHER,
writes NIETZSCHE, "was indignant at the rebirth of Rome, instead of
understanding, with the deepest gratitude, the extraordinary event which had taken
place: the defeat of Christianity in its own headquarters." (Antichrist, Madrid, 1982,
119). NIETZSCHE, considers LUTHERO a German fool who does not understand
the refinement of the Roman Church.
2
Nominalism, with its radical voluntarism, had come to the notion of a capricious
God, a tyrannical God, despot, remote and distant, who saved for unknown reasons.
This vision of God shakes LUTHER ( MATEO SECO, Martin Luther: on slave
liberty, Madrid 1978, 11). LUTHER is presented as a tributary at this point Of
medieval mysticism. On the theology of the Cross: GARCIA VILLOSLADA
Martin Luther, Madrid, 1973, 1, p. 363; GHERARDINI Theologia crucis l`heredita
de Luther nell'evolutione teologica della Riforma, Rome, 1978, 399. Protestantism,
as a religious phenomenon, is based on the notion of sin, as a radical corruption of
Human nature; by sin man is radically estranged from his God (Deus absconditus)
and deceived by his reason. The invincible concupiscence is ussualy identified with
original sin (GARCÍA VILLOSLADA, p. 361)..
According to LUTHER, man is directly and individually related
to God, and the Catholic Church, ruled by priestly breed, is the
Babylonian Captivity of the people of God, who imprisons and
enslaves the believer. The Gospel is the truth and foundation of
Christian freedom; and by the truth (authentic faith) the righteous can
judge Popes, Holy Fathers and doctors.
to bring fire to the synagogues or schools, and "to bury and cover with dirt
everything that we do not set fire to, so that no man will see them again stone or
ashes", "if the authorities are reluctant to use force and contain the diabolical
indecency of the Jews, the latter should be expelled from the land and sent to their
land and their possessions in Jerusalem". And Luther plants in the German soul a
deep anti-Semitic seed (L. KAENNEL, Luther, était il antisémite?, Genève 1997),
presents the Scripture of Luther in the context of his Biblical readings and in spirit of
his time, and refers to the failure of the Dialogue between Lutherans and Jews in the
earliest times of the Reformation, which radicalizes Luther's discourse, which
changes his first affective and hospitable declarations regarding the Jews.
LUTHER's alleged responsibility in German anti-Semitism (WL SHIRER, The Rise
And Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, New York, 1960, p.236).
10
The protagonism of masses in the political arena is another novelty of modern age.
LUTHER creates a new style of religious preaching that will serve as model for the
Protestant preacher and the political demagogue (simple, rude and direct sermons,
full of images, with popular and often vulgar texts and terminology seeking a
Familiar and emotional treatment). Manipulating the masses makes theology, a
theatral activity. The printed books and press opens the doors to propaganda.
Probably LUTHER ideas would not have spread without his indisputable bestsellers
1.3 Calvin and the Christian Reformation.
From the Lutheran principles of sola Fide and sola Scriptura, the
decisive event for the institutionalization of the Reformed Church is
the rupture with LUTHER, which occurs at the Marburg colloquium
in 1529. CALVIN refuses to accept literally "This is my body", which
underlies the sacrament of the Eucharist, a sign of the Church.
CALVIN does not place the accent on the Church as the presence of
the body of Christ, and maintains that the sacrifice of Christ is a
unique and unrepeatable historical event; Christ is seated at the right
hand of the Father and not in the Eucharist, as a bodily presence. The
humanist jurist of the Renaissance. After his conversion he flees the Catholic France
and it sits in Strasbourg. Called to Geneva as pastor, it culminates the most
ambitious and prestigious of Christian reforms. See GANOCZY (Calvin, Theology
de l'Eglise et du Ministère, Paris, 1964). CALVIN, in 1536 he completes, at only
twenty-seven years, the first edition of his Christian Institution. This is explained, of
course, by CALVIN's extraordinary intelligence, capacity for work and personality,
but also because his theology is closely inspired by LUTHER, which he adapts
through his jurist's eyes. (See BIELER, La pensée économique et sociale de Calvin,
Genève, 1959, p. 130 et seq.). It seems to me that since the first edition of the
Christian Institution CALVIN attempts to reconcile Lutheran theology using
"common sense", in the face of the disorder and dogmatism of the first reformer.
CALVIN is not a monk tortured by the presence of God, but a jurist, who attends to
practical problems of social identity of the dogma and organization of the Church.
As LEONARD explains, CALVIN, twenty years younger than LUTHER, belongs to
the second generation of the Reformation, which does not have to create
Protestantism, but to consolidate and organize it (General History of Protestantism,
1, 1967, p. 294).
13
The Christian Institution is called the summa of Protestantism: C. HUNT, Calvin,
London 1933, p., 177. Calvin's work contributes to the formation of the French
language, just as the Lutheran translation of the Bible contributes to the formation of
the modern German language. Had sucesive editions, each of which extends the
previous one. Written in a characteristic language, with classic resonances,
especially of CICERON, clear, brief, simple (MC NEILL, Calvin, on the Christian
faith, Indianapolis, 1957, page XVII of the introduction) AUTIN, L'institution
chrétienne de Calvin, Paris , 1929, studies the successive editions and their
particular historical avatars, as well as Gillmont, Jean Calvin et le livre prints,
Genève 1997, page 63 et seq. AM MC GRATH, Reformation thought, 3 ed Malden
1999). The full text in English at http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/institutes.html. On
this website are digitaly published the main works of Calvin, in English, Latin and
French.
Eucharist, the reality of the Church, is not a material participation of
the body of Christ, but a mystical union (the elevation of the heart).
Calvin admits the true presence of Christ in the Eucharist, his death
and resurrection, but as a spiritual reality, not as a bodily presence. To
explain the sacrament of the Eucharist, as to explain the dogmatics of
the Church, the supremacy of Scripture over the flesh leads CALVIN
to deny Catholic transubstantiation or Lutheran consubstantiation14.
18
LUTHER has been seen as the awakening of the Germanic identity. The birth of
the Germanic spirit against the double and nuances of the Latin hipocresy,
represented in the refinement of the Roman court, and in the subtleties of
scholasticism. LUTHER has been frequently presented as the hero of German
nationalism, complexed in the face of the Latin and Roman world (R. SEEBERG,
Textbook of the history of doctrines, Eng. Grand Rapids, 1952, ALVAREZ
GUTIERREZ, Luther in History, " Revista Agustiniana, 75, 1983, p. 306). HITLER,
considered LUTHER ancestor of his movement. The Reformation hymn (letter and
music of LUTHER: our God is a solid fortress), in their version of BACH, were
indicative of the German special communiques in World War II. Before
reunification the German Democratic Republic, which had officially considered
Luther reactionary due to his position in the wars of peasants, changed official
doctrine on the occasion of the five hundredth anniversary of his birth, and
considered him progressive (for its struggle against the papacy ). The Reformation is
then presented by the German democratic authorities as the first battle of the
bourgeoisie against feudalism (see, T. EGIDO, Luther from History, "Journal of
Spirituality", 42, 1983, Page 383) SUBILLA, Interpretationi di Luther, "Protestant"
1, 1983, p. 17 ff).
19
Primary mystical or religious experiences contrast Religions periodically, and are
difficult to digest by constituted religious authority. Pietism, the most characteristic
heresy within Lutheranism, originated in the eighteenth century, and advocates a
more emotive religion. For its part, Lutheran orthodoxy emphasizes that anti-
dogmatism is destined to end in pseudo-millennial mysticism and indifferentism.
The Pietist movement is strongly influenced by the Spanish mystic of the golden age
and then influences the romantic movement and the poetic, literary and cultural
awakening of the German 19th century. It inspires also, in a decisive way,
Methodism in the Church of England. It reaches God fundamentally through
emotion (cf. SUMBILIA, il Pietismo, "Protestant", 1, 1963). By the strange principle
that an assertion is also the affirmation of its opposite, there are shocking affinities
between Pietism and the development of the philosophical trio of Wurttemberg:
Holdering, Hegel and Shelling. Pietism, in an unusual contradiction, coincides
historically with the development of the rationalist institutionalization of the great
German State, strong and reunified, national and xenophobic.
Briefly summarizing, it extends to Switzerland, Scotland, Holland,
England and France, and then decisively influences the formation of
American national identity. In the XIX developes an important
missionary activity, and extends in Latin America:
Since its first Synod in Paris, in May 1559, the French Reformed
Church formalizes a confession of faith, which would definitely be
fixed at the Synod of La Rochelle in 1571, taking the Geneva model,
and under the direct inspiration of Calvin24. After the general slaughter
of Huguenots on the night of St. Bartholomew (1572), freedom of
worship was recognized in France by the edict of Nantes (1598),
Calvinism becoming the most important religious minority.
22
G. MURDOCK, Calvinism on the frontier, 1600-1660: International calvinism
and the Reformed Church in Hungary and Transilvania, Oxford 2000.
23
The expression Huguenots seems due to their Catholic enemies, at the time of the
conspiracy of Amboise, because apparently in that region there was the legend of a
night ghost, and the protestants were considered ghosts that met for magical and
seditious practices (BENEDICT, p. 142). However, E. ISERLOH (Compendium of
History and Theology of the Revolution, trad., Brecia 1990, p. 195), refers to the
Germanic term Eidgenossen: conjured). From 1555, pastors were sent from Geneva
to serve Christian reform in France: KINGDOM (Geneva and the coming of the
wars of religion in France, Geneva 1956).
24
The Synod was presided over by Teodoro Beza, and the confession of faith was
signed by Juana III of Albret Reina de Navarra, and his son Enrique, future king of
France (see JM OLAIZOLA, History of Protestantism in the Basque Country,
Pamplona 1993, in Special page 155 et seq).
genesis of the legal categories of modernity, and very specially
religious freedom. Westmister's Confession of 1648 marked the
ephemeral triumph of the strictly Calvinist current in the Church of
England, and gave way to a popular, parliamentary, and secular
State25.
(S. SILVA GOTAY, Protestantism and Politics in Puerto Rico, San Juan 1997, pp.
55 ff) . A different view of American society gives us R.E. PYLE (Persistence and
change in the Protestant Establishment, Westport 1996), which presents the image
of an America still controlled by a Calvinist elite, more liberal and adapted to the
new times, that perpetuates itself.
27
SIKH. Sheveschewski (1831-1906), born a Jew and a convert to Protestantism, a
missionary in China, translated the Bible into Manadarin (1875), and was appointed
bishop of Shanghai in 1877. AIKMAN, D., Jesus in Beijing ,. Washington, DC,
2003. DUNCH, R., Fuzhou Protestants and the Making of Modern China, 1857-
1927, New Haven, 2001. BAYS, D. H., Christianity in China: from the Eighteenth
Century to the Present. Stanford, 1996. G.GRAHAM, Gender, Culture and
Christianity: American Protestant Mission in China (1880-1930), New York 1995.
28
MARTIN D. Tongues of Fire: The explosion of Protestantism in Latin America,
Oxford 1990. E. E. BRUSCO, The reform of machismo: evangelical conversion and
gender in Colombia, Austin 1995, The different churches do not seem to have
precise doctrinal profiles and are allied in their conflict with a majority Catholic
body, some undefined currents appear to have imposed themselves with peculiar
success, in particular the Pentecostalism, which emphasizes the direct manifestation
of the Holy Spirit, in the gift of tongues, prophecy, healing, etc. And that contested
by the traditional Protestant denominations, we consider Protestant by courtesy.
Pentecostalism, born in the United States, a continuation of the city of Sion, founded
in 1900 by John ALEXANDER DOWIE, is presented as the action of God by his
Holy Spirit that broke into Pentecost in the first century of Christian history (Acts 2-
4, Luke 24:49, Joel 2: 27-32) and who seeks to experience the Christian life in its
foundational essence (see GERLACH, L. Pentecostalism: Revolution or Counter-
Revolution, in Irving's "Religious Movements in Contemporary America"). The
exponential growth of Protestantism in Central America in the 1990s seems to have
stopped. In addition to its lack of dogmatic identity, the problem of desertion is one
of the More worrying for evangelicals in some countries (see in detail, HALLUM
AM, cit., P. 61 et seq, cites a study by Keller that finds in an adult group in Costa
Rica a continuous dropout of 8.1% in the first year which rises to 12.1% three years
3. The Anabaptist Churches.
be from Max Weber: The Believers' Church, The History and Character of Radical
Protestantism, Scottdale, 1968, IX). The first communities seem to have formed in
Switzerland, northern Germany and Holland. Later in Moravia they were known like
Hutterianos, by the extraordinary influence of Jakob Hutter; and in the Netherlands
from 1545 they were known as Mennonites, taking the name of one of the foremost
reformers of their time, Menno Simons. Anabaptists formed major congregations in
Germany, Switzerland, Central Europe (Moravia in particular), Holland, England
and southern Russia, massively emigrating to the United States and Canada, where
there are important congregations (especially in Pennsylvania, Ontario and
Mannitoba), some Very picturesque for their dress and customs, as the Amish. There
is also an important Mennonite group in the Chaco, Paraguay (constituting
independent groups: Menno, Fernheim, Friesland, Volendam, and Neuland).
31
The defense of freedom against predestination leads them to maintain the personal
resurrection at the end of time, unlike Calvin, who does not dogmatically support the
resurrection of all, but only of the elect (BALKE, Calvin and the Anabaptist
Radicals, Grand Rapids 1981). It can be said that the general basis of his theology is
generally antitrinitarian. In many Anabaptist streams the ceremony of washing of the
feet emphasizes hospitality as a special virtue of Christians and acquires special
relevance and is associated with the Lord's Supper (WOPACKULL, An Introduction
to Anabaptist Theology, "The Cambridge Companion to Reformation Theology
"Cambridge 2004, p. 194).
32
The Anabaptists intend to break with the duality Church State and the corpus
christianum, which they say maintain Catholics and Protestants, and affirm the
freedom of conscience, and the total emancipation of the Christian of the political
organization. Making Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire in Constantine's
time was the great historical betrayal of the Gospel, as Christ did not interfere with
the princes of his time. More in Detail: WENGER, Compendium of Mennonite
History and Doctrines, trans. Esp., Buenos Aires, 1960; G.H. WILLIAMS, The
radical reform., Trad. Esp., 1983, p. 440; PACKULL, Hutterite beginnings,
Baltimore 1995; H.G. GOERTZ, Radical religiosity in the German reformation, in
"The reformation world", Oxford, 2004.
spiritualistic or utopian movements, as the peasant revolution 33. In
order to organize the "Church", the Anabaptists generally adopt a
model similar or analogous to the presbyterial form of Church, with
offices of pastor, elder and deacon34. And the Anabaptist Churches
usually defend the ecclesial character of marriage, monogamy, and
indissolubility of marriage in terms often even more rigorous than the
Lutheran or Calvinist churches, admitting only divorce for adultery35.
33
MENNO SIMONS, and in general the great Anabaptist reformers, affirm respect
for the constituted order. Some Anabaptist currents (such as the Hutterites) place
particular emphasis on the idea of sharing goods and organizing "communist"
congregations; others in charity and hospitality; Others in the spiritual character of
the divinity of Christ, adopted by the father; others in the silent suffering of the
Christian, the practice of forgiveness and the offering of the other cheek, which
should preside over the renewed life of the convert, etc., See J. STAYER,
Anabaptists and the sword, Lawrence, 1972. However, certain Christian radicals
deny authority, property and marriage, and generate dangerous and destructive
social, political and pseudomistic experiences. For example, in 1534 in the name of
Anabaptism the kingdom of Sion was founded in Munster. Property was abolished,
marriage of women over 14 years old was ordained, legally establishing polygamy.
His king Jan van Leyden marries 16 women. Thousands of Anabaptists converge in
Munster until the city is surrendered by treason in 1535 (in detail S. HAUDE, In the
shadow of Salvage Wolves: Anabaptist Munster and the German Reformation,
Boston-Leyden-Cologne, 2000). Because of polygamy, the kingdom of Sion of
Munster is often excluded from Anabaptism (although some claim to be genuine
Anabaptists such as STAYER, Anabaptist and the Sword, Lawrence, Kansas, 1976).
Also the Charitatis family, called Nicolaitans, when founded by N. NICLAES
(1502/1580), advocates the mystical union with the Lord, by which the converts are
free from sin, and practice free love and communication of goods, a sect to which
the famous Spanish humanist Benito Arias Montano allegedly belonged, and which
seems to have spread with peculiar force among the English Baptists (R. De
MATTEI, A sinistra de Luther, Rome 1999, p. 51 ff.). The famous friends of blood
(Blutsfreunde aus der Wiedertaufe), Thuringia, considered that the true sacrament of
marriage was the collective and carnal exchange of brothers and sisters.
34
Anabaptists are inspired by the Calvinist organization of the Church, but they
usually emphasize, in the face of Calvinist organization, the radical principle of the
free choice of pastors for each Christian community. See the Ministry Ministry in
"Mennonite encyclopedia", 1957, vol 3 Page 699 et seq. Also now: Global
Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online:
http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/M9ME.html. The Baptist Churches in
the British colonies of New England adopt the Westminster Confession and the
congregational forms of organization, differing from the Congregationalists mainly
on the theme of adult baptism and refusal to be a state religion (WS HUDSON- J.
CORRIGAN , Religion in America, 6 ed. Upper Saddle River, 1999, p. 43). The
Congregationalists themselves debate at length about the respective value of baptism
A peculiar Christian movement, closely linked to Puritanism and
Anabaptism, closes the historical cycle of Anglosaxon Christian
Protestants. It was founded by George FOX (1624-1691). Snapped up
by mystical experience, he stresses the importance of seeking the inner
light of the living Christ, for the Scriptures are to be understood in the
same spirit in which they were revealed, and the message of the gospel
has been corrupted by its institutionalization, religious and secular.
The risen Christ is present in the believer soul. FOX forms a new
congregation that rejects all the sacraments, like rites without content:
in the Spirit we are baptized, not in water. Quakers also refuse to pay
tithes (Gal 5: 4), to take oaths (Mat 5: 33-37), to bow or to be revealed
to authorities who do not represent God (James 2: 1-4). They have a
special concern for social justice, and were radically abolitionist in the
American civil confrontation36.
and faith, establishing the baptism of children but conditioning it that faith is
formally confirmed in adulthood as a sign of conversion, which gaves the convert
the fullness of rights in the Church. But faith and baptism are in difficult
equilibrium, for if the baptized were not confirmed, they could not be excluded from
the Church, nor denied baptism to their own children (ibid., P. 65). The Baptists are
thus placed in the Calvinist tradition; The number of Baptists was very small among
the early settlers, but they multiplied rapidly after the conversion of the mythical
Roger Williams (ibid., P. 68). When the Puritans in Massachusetts organized
Congregationalism as a state religion, they expelled Roger Williams as a
nonconformist, who founded a new Baptist Church in Rhode Island, which in 1647
proclaimed religious freedom (G. Mac GREGOR, Corpus Christi. Of the Church
According to the Reformed Tradition, Eugene Or, 2004, page 17, GAUSTAD, ES,
Liberty of Conscience: Roger Williams in America, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids,
1991). As in Calvinism, the exercise of excommunication comes to represent the
central point of the exercise of authority in the Church, although Calvinists are
usually characterized by their exaltation of the importance of music in coherence
with a emotional religion. In the United States many Baptist churches are
characterized by their exaltation of music (For example, see B. B. PATERSON, The
Sound of the Dove: Singing in Appalachian Primitive Baptist Churches, Urbana, Ill.,
1995)
35
It is affirmed that the union of man and woman reproduces the natural state prior
to the fall of Adam and Eve and therefore is indissoluble. In the Confession of
Schleitheim (1527) divorce is admitted only on grounds of adultery, sometimes for
the privilege of faith at the time of converting the proselyte, although it can not be
generalized, since the privilege of faith is denied in a treaty of the Dutch Mennonites
of 1527, in the 5 Hutterite articles of 1547 and in the Mennonite resolution of
Wismar in 1554; allowed separation but the spouse had to keep fidelity (chastity)
until The infidel would die or adulterate (R. PHILLIPS, Putting Asunder, A History
of Divorce in Western Society, Cambridge, MA, 1988, p..
Alongside these four basic streems of Christian reform
(Lutherans, Calvinists, Anabaptists, and Church of England), many
other Churches, sects, and congregations have emerged in the
Christian West in the heat of faith alone. It is striking how the
evolution of Protestant history seems to show us a continuous dialectic
of reform, which simplifies the theology of the Church and the
sacraments, until radically denying it. Only the faith in Christ and the
Gospels, interpreted according to their own inspiration, are left to the
Quakers, to their left begins the denial of both Christian pillars.
Denomination, New York, 1962 (the first edition is from 1929) notes within
Protestantism that what begins as a radical sect, evolves over time into a comfortable
denomination, at peace with the world around it, and which normally blesses the
socially and economically well-placed characters of the local society on which it is
based, while assuming a social responsibility and political responsability beyond the
religious denomination itself. The very diversified Baptist denominations, by their
localism, are classified according to social and economic origins, national and of
races. C. REDEKOP, SC AINLAY, R. SIEMENS, Mennonite Entrepreneurs,
Baltimore 1995, present to the Mennonites sacralizing the property of the land,
attached to it, and with strict authority (paternal and ecclesial) in guarantee of a strict
social morality, but then, as in Germany and Holland, where they enjoy greater
freedom, when urbanized, they face a process of strong secularization and loss of
religious identity, with its own principles and values, usually adapting to new needs
and greater laxity than that of its ancestors (p. 235).
ability to form and survive as minority groups, sometimes despite a
fierce persecution of established or majority confession. After years of
clashes and religious wars, it is clear that none of the Christian beliefs
can prevail in an absolute way on the European stage.
1. Two kingdoms.
39
The deep fall of man, opens an insurmountable abyss between man and God,
between reason and faith. God is unknowable and beyond the natural capacity of
man. LUTHER despises reason, the "whore of the devil," the deceiver of man,
deformed by sin. Man is related to God exclusively by faith (I believe because it is
absurd). For Luther the fallen nature of man requires a firm authority to defend true
faith against Rome, to brake the rebels, to punish the Jews, and to subject heretics.
The sharp separation between reason and faith is characteristic of nominalism and its
conceived conception of God.
40
GARCÍA VILLOSLADA, op., Cit., II, P. 128. B. GHERARDINI, Creatura verbi.
The Chiesa nella teologia di Martin Luther, Rome 1993, page 314 emphasizes that
Luther denies the right of resistance to secular authority unless it compels the gospel
to be condemned (page 314). See in detail the main political texts of LUTHER
published by J. ABELLAN (Martín LUTHER. Escritos políticos, Madrid 1986).
respect and obey the offices or institutions that the Lord has instituted
for the social order. The government of the world is realized according
to LUTHER through states (Stände), also called "orders",
"institutions" or "trades", diverse contents called Ordnungen:
Gottesvater, Landesvater and Hausvater. The State, family and
professions serve as craftsmen and servants of God, with autonomy in
their own foundations and ends41.
3. Staatspositivismus.
50
J. CALVEZ, Politique et histoire en Allemagne au XIX siècle, Paris 2001.
51
O. JOUANJAN Carl Friedrich Gerber et la constitution d'une science du droit
public allemand, en “La science juridique française et la science juridique allemande
de 1870 à 1918”. Strasbourg 1997. SOSA WAGNER, cit., Pág. 157.
and legality. Justice and administration, incarnation of the rationality
of power, act in the name of the emperor, holder of sovereignty52.
52
. But authority in JELLINEK is no longer the same monarch as an individual,
because sovereignty survives the monarch; The monarch represents sovereignty, it is
not sovereignty. The notion of representation transforms the titular institution of the
sovereignty of monarch into monarchy. (LUCAS VERDU, prologo a la obra de
Jellinek, Reforma y mutación de la constitución, trad. esp. Madrid 1991, Pág. XXI,
nota 31 bis). P.C. CALDWELL. Popular Sovereignty and the Crisis of German
Constitutional Law, Durham, 1997.
53
JELLINEK (Teoría general del Estado, trad. esp. translated from the second
German edition, Buenos Aires, s. d.) The state as a people is a confused theory (p.
108). JELLINEK wondered What is before: the monarch, the people, the territory...?
None of them is the State although they are all part of the State. The State exists
because it is sovereign (authority) and justified by its aims: its primary purpose is to
create the legal order for the defense of the community and its members (life, liberty
and property) in a territory (it is the function of justice), The secondary purpose: to
promote culture and to promote solidarity interests (health, science and art) and to
encourage social and economic progress (it is the function of the administration of
the revolutionary liberal state, JELLINEK State is the very guarantor of the Life,
property and individual freedom, vanguard and banner of political, economic and
social reform.
It is striking that if the political law of the Anglo-Saxon world is
written, when Congregationalists and Huguenots, formerly persecuted,
return from exile, and conceive the State as a place for peaceful
coexistence of different religions; the main authors in the nineteenth
century German constitutionalism and positivism, (STAHL,
LABAND, JELLINEK, KELSEN) seem to come of authors with
Jewish roots, who adopt religious tolerance in a Regime of German
identity, specifically secular and authoritarian55.
4.1. Kulturprotestantismus.
56
ZAHRNT, Au prises avec Díeu, La theologíe protestante au XX’ siecle, París,
1969, Page. 11 y sigs. GOMEZ HERAS, teología protestante, Madrid 1972, Pág.
128 y sigs. GONZALEZ MONTES, Religión y nacionalismo, Salamanca 1982, Pág.
45 y sigs. T.A. BRADY Luther and the State: The reformers teachings and its social
setting, en “Luther and the modern state in Germany”, Kirksville, 1986..
57
DILTHEY, The Schleiermacher biography, Selected Scripture, trad. ing.
Rickman, Cambridge, 1976, Pág. 38 y sigs. In his work Die christliche Sitte
proposes SCHLEIERMACHER a unitary vision of the family and society, the State
and the Church (BOF, pp. 202 ff.). A. GINZO FERNANDEZ, considers him the
father of Kulturprotestantismus, because he wanted to elaborate a religious
dogmatics and a philosophy between which there would be no contradiction.
58
on line: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/harnack/christianity.html. (RUMSHEIDT,
Revelation and theology: An analisis of Barth-Harnack Correspondence of 1923,
London, 1972).
This movement produces a progressive radicalization of the
political involvement of religion. On the eve of World War I,
transformed into a Christian cultural movement, the famous manifesto
of the German intellectuals, is signed by outstanding Lutheran
theologians, wich support the warlike policy of the German emperor
William II.
On the eve of World War II, under the auspices of the Nazi
regime, we assit to the creation of a German National Church, which
seeks to overcome religious denominationalism. The German people
live in a progressive exaltation of the alliance between religion and
authority. And there are theologians trained in this culture of
exaltation of the German nation that celebrate the arrival of Hitler in
the context of the theology of the two kingdoms, emphasizing the
importance of the notion of Christian community, and the particular
responsibility of the German Christian to sustain and participate in the
regeneration of the German nation61.
59
D. LLAMAZARES FERNANDEZ, Sacramento, Iglesia y derecho en el
pensamiento de R. Sohm, Oviedo 1969. CHODOROW, Christian Political Theory
and Church Politics in the Mid-Twelfth Century. The Ecclesiology of Gratian's
Decretum, Berkeley y Los Angeles, 1972.
60
And it will be subject to a close criticism by the most modern Lutheran theology,
which re-elaborates the concept of Church and accuses SOHM of being a
responsible of the national-Lutheranism. In particular the thinking of H. DIEM,
related in detail by GONZALEZ MONTES, (Religión y nacionalismo, cit., Págs.
123 y sigs.), o TROELTSCH (cit., Pág. 145 y sigs.).
The Nazi regime tries to organize a genuinely national Protestant
Church of the German people (Volkskirshe) or even the State Church
(Landeskirshen), whose model is the Church of England and its
doctrinal diversity. The guidelines of 1932, which disregard any
denominational dogmatism, seek to lay the foundations of this unity,
affirm Luther's German character, and from the Lutheran theory of the
orders of creation, define "race, people and nation" As living orders
instituted by God62. The unity of these churches founded on faith in
Christ seems to be defined in opposition to Jewish "ritualism" 63.
61
A. GONZALEZ MONTES, religión y nacionalismo, cit., Págs. 64 y sigs.; Pág. 79
y sigs, y nota 113).
62
B. REYMOND, Une Eglise a croix gammée? Le protestantisme allemand au début
du régime nazi, Lausanne 1980.
63
D. BOUREL, Moses Mendelssohn. La naissance du judaïsme moderne, Paris
2004, presents the atmosphere of tolerance to religious minorities in late-eighteenth-
century Berlin that would lead to aufklarung and haskala. However, anti-Semitism in
Germany seems to run parallel to the integration of Jews, and increased significantly
in the nineteenth and early twentieth, and also infects the Protestant world.
64
R. P. ERICKSEN, Theologians under Hitler: Gerhard Kittel, Paul Althaus, and
Emmanuel Hirsch, New Haven, 1985, H. VALL, Iglesias e ideología nazi,
Salamanca 1976, en particular Págs., 34 y sigs.
of the Church and the State 65. And in fact lacked practical usefulness
and did not last66.
67
It is striking that prestigious authors within the new evangelical church confess,
today, claim an authentic autonomy of the Church against the secular political order,
and the importance of law in the Church (in particular WOLF). They appear to
distance themselves from the first Lutheran interpretation of the integration of
religion into a single Christianum corpus, or from a personalist and fideist view of
religion. And in general, within this process of autonomy of the Church and
rejection of interference by the State, we can speak of a revival of the study of canon
law in the evangelical Church. The Evangelical Church also moves away from
Lutheran claims about the Jews, assuming a painful responsibility in the genesis and
development of anti-Semitism.RAYMOND, Entre la grâce et la loi. Introduction au
droit ecclésial protestant, Genève 1992, pags, 55 y sis. y pag. 74. WITTE, Law and
Protestantism, Cambridge, Mass. 2002, Pág. 53 y sigs..
CHAPITER III: CALVINIST POLITICAL THEORY.
1. Dogmatic.
68
According to K. BARTH, the most famous of contemporary Reformed
theologians, the discovery of the connection between theology and ethics is Calvin's
merit, in the face of a Luther, who has only discovered the God who judges and
forgives (The Theology of John Calvin , Translated by Grand Rapids 1995, p. 98).
CALVIN is recognized as the father of a new ethic of action outside the cloisters, of
realization in the lay professional life. Also TAVARD, Ecriture ou Eglise, París,
1963, Page. 146. GANOCZY, Calvin, théologien de l’Eglise et du ministère, París,
1964, Page. 48. TROELTSCH, El Protestantismo y el Mundo moderno, trad. esp.,
México, 1951, Pág. 49.
dispenses the sacraments, and is the protagonist of the providential
meaning of history.69. CALVIN admits the authority and also tradition
of the visible Church, when it has scriptural support and is ancient,
and CALVIN relates tradition with grace and the sacrament70.
69
CALVIN in the face of the danger of doctrinal anarchy represented by the
Anabaptists tends, through the influence of BUCERO and the Strasbourg Reform, to
emphasize the visible Church and its principles of organization. In the Latin edition
of the Christian institution of 1543, a consistent ecclesiology has already been
developed (D. CROUZET, Calvin, trans. Barcelona 2001, p. 112), Theology On the
Eucharist also evolves parallel to the theology of the Church (TOSTO, Calvin punto
di convergenza. Simbolismo e presenza reale nella santa cena. Roma 2003, Pág.2,).
70
CALVIN uses tradition on dogmatic subjects like the baptism of the children or to
explain the trinitaria nature of God (against the unitarianism of SERVET,
GANOCZY Ibidem, Page 406). Also, in the delicate but crucial subject of fixing the
canon, he accepts the tradition WENDEL, Calvin, sources et évolution de se pensée
religieuse, París, 1950, Page. 10.
71
Cf. BUSHMAN, From puritan to Yankee, Cambridge, Mass, 1967. cfr.
BERCOVITCH, The puritan origins of the American self, New Haven, 1975, por
ejemplo, Page. 80).
resorts)72. In his works and sermons CALVIN presents a positive will
to return to the charismatic Church, and does not wish to break with
the Church, but to reform it and free it from the abuses introduced by
what it regards as papist idolatry. Without specifying when and why
the Roman Church separates from this ancient Church, and from when
the tradition ceased to be binding73.
80
BENEDICT, page 337.
81
ENGAMAMARE, Calvin a prophet without a prophecy “Church History”, 1998,
en particular, Págs. 648 y sigs, y 655 y sigs.
Calvinist theological schools82. The sympathy of the Jews of Spanish
origin towards the Reformed Church and the crypto-Jewish
component of some Reformed has also been repeatedly emphasized83.
82
PARADOWSKI, Sociología del Protestantismo, Cáp. IV, «Verbo», 168, 1978,
Pág. 119 y sigs.). In Holland, the iusnaturalistim, GROCIO and PUFENDORF in
particular, claims to be admirer of the Jews, and are called (H. KÜNG, El judaísmo,
trad. esp., 3 ed, Madrid 2001, Page. 184). On K. BARTH (E. BUSCH, The Great
passion. An Introduction to K. Barths Theology, Grand Rapids/ Cambridge, 2004,
en particular Page. 154 y sigs.).
83
Cfr. REDONDO, Luther et l’Espagne de 1520 a 1536, «Mélanges de la casa de
Velázquez», París, 1965, págs. 159-161; MARTÍN HERNÁNDEZ, Influencia de
LUTERO en España durante el siglo XV «RA», 75, 1983, página 357. DE
MADARIAGA (El ocaso del imperio español en América, Buenos Aires, 2. ed.,
1959, Pág. 308 y sigs). G0ÑI GAZTAMBIDE, La imagen de LUTHER en España;
su evolución histórica, «Scripta theologica», 1983, Pág. 470.
84
The Puritan era brought about a radical change in the treatment of the Jews in
England, Rome was now considered the incarnation of the Antichrist, the Jews
ceased to be accused of being Christ's murderers. John LIGHTFOOT, one of the
inspirers of the Westminster confession, had studied especially the Jewish works,
and is considered a Hebraist, his main work Horae Hebraicae et Talmudicae,
published in 1658, Avihu ZAKAI, From Judgment to Salvation: The Image of The
Jews in the English Renaissance in "Westminster Theological Journal," Vol. 59: 2,
p. 213-4. John Owen, an eminent Puritan, Vice Chancellor of Oxford wrote: "The
Jews will gather from all parts of the world where they are now dispersed and will
return to their land before the end of time" (DL LARSEN, Jews, Gentiles and the
Church, Grand Rapids, 1995, p 126). M. W. KARLBERG, Reformation Politics:
The Relevance of Old Testament Ethics in Calvinistic Political Theory, in "Journal
of the Evangelical Theological Society," Vol. 29: 2, June, 1986, pp. 188-189. Karl
Marx himself, writes that the English people had borrowed from the Old Testament
the words, passions, and illusions to make the bourgeois revolution. Some English
Puritans also claim the direct application of the Mosaic law and even that adultery
be punished with death (INGRAM M. Church Courts, Sex and marriage in
England, 1570-1640, Cambridge, 1987., p. 151). T. CARTWRIGHT, the famous
Puritan leader, advocated direct rule by the Bible (PDL DAVIS, The Church in the
Theology of the Reformers, London 1981 , P. 46). Even the mythical Milton seems
to be decisively influenced by the reading of the Jewish religious texts (J. S.
SHOULSON, Milton and the Rabbies: Hebraism, Hellenism, and Christianity, New
York, 2001)..
CALVIN's proposal of renewed covenant between man and God
─with a political sense and reminiscences of the covenant with Moses
on Mount Sinai, or in Nehemiah’s reconstruction of Israel─ has been
repeated in the Covenant of the Scottish Calvinists or in the covenant
of the pilgrim fathers in their exodus to the new world. Puritan
preachers (in general, Calvinist Protestant pastors) inherit the
grandiloquent and effectual style of the prophets addressing Israel, on
corruption and idolatry, anguished petition of collective repentance,
and closeness to the final judgment85. But where the preaching reaches
the supreme tones of eloquence is in the curse of the Queen of
England (the new Jezebel), in proclaiming the idolatry of papist
enemies, servants of the antichrist, and in announcing the inminnet
destruction, by their vices, of the new Anglican Babylon 86. It is
repeated insistently that Christ did not come to abolish the law, but to
complete it. Old Testament arguments sustain the right of resistance
against Catholic authorities, and the lawfulness of divorce and second
marriage87, and the Puritans feel identified with the wandering Jews88.
2. Predestination.
The denial of free will has two main grounds: the lack of merit
due to the radical perversion of man by original sin; and man's
freedom as incompatible with God's foreknowledge, God's
sovereignty, and God's immutability91.
89
The puritan origins of the American self, New Haven, Londres 1975, page. 223,
nota 43. SPINI, Autobigrafia della giovene America, Turín, 1968. W. S. HUDSON-
J. CORRIGAN, Religion in America, 6 ed. Upper Saddle River, 1999, Page. 129.
90
HOLTROP, The Bolsec controversy on predestination, from 1551 to 1555,
Lampeter 1993). STEINMETZ, The theology of John Calvin, en “The Cambridge
companion to Reformation Theology”, Cambridge 2004, Page. 119.
91
I would dare to point out two fundamental sources of the Protestant position are
the opposition of St. Augustine to the Pelagians; And second, the nominalist
conception of God. CADIER, Calvin, París, 1967, Pág. 38; WENDEL, op. cit., Pág.
92 y sigs. WERNICKE, Los agustinos y la Reforma, «RA», 1983, Pág. 333;
ATKINSON, LUTHER y el nacimiento del Protestantismo, trad. esp., Madrid, 1980,
Pág. 31 y sigs. The great objection to predestination is the problem of evil: If God
has predestined everything, how can evil be explained? It is common in this sense to
interpret Lutheran thought as a continuation of medieval thought (OBERMAN,
Forerunners of Reformation, the shape of medieval thought, Nueva York 1996)
controversy between LUTHER and ERASMUS. ERASMUS
rediscovers the stoic, republican image of the virtuous man; LUTHER
despises man, his reason, his nature, his virtue. Both radicalize the
duality between faith and reason92.
92
MATEO SECO, Martín LUTHER: sobre la libertad esclava, Madrid 1978,
También KOLB, Bound Choice, Election and Wittemberg Theological Method,
Grand Rapids 2005.
93
FARRELLY, Predestination, Grace and Free will, Londres, 1964, pig. 133.
MIEGGE, Ética protestante e mundo moderno, en «Protestantismo e capitalismo de
Calvin a Weber», Turín, 1983, Pág. 52. The ultimate consequences of
predestinationist theses are supralapsarian theology (predestination is still prior to
sin), formulated by CALVIN and developed by BEZA, extraordinarily difficult to
understand for those who hold the creation as an act of love of God, and will be the
Point of criticism of Arminians and Anabaptists, and is also at the basis of the
natural tendency of Presbyterianism to evolve towards Congregationalism and
Baptism.
Predestination is also the same scripture as the word of God, as
the constitution of the one and unchangeable covenant between God
and man, because God does not change his mind (II, 11, 2). The
Church for CALVIN testifies the living Scripture, because the will of
the Creator is the fulfillment of Scripture, which is realized through
the Church. As the end of man and history is the glory of the Lord
(Soli Deo Gloria), the Church witnesses the triumph of good and truth,
and to stage that triumph the Lord chooses the elect. Predestination
manifests history as the theater of the Lord's providential will94.
But where the History of the polemic has more interest by its
political transcendence, is in England, where predestination becomes
the doctrinal center of social conflict. In 1552, in the Book of
Common Prayer prepared by CRANMER, Calvinist organization and
94
MC NEILL, The History and character of calvinism, Nueva York, 1954, page.
142; WALTZER The revolution of the saints, Cambridge 1965, page 55 y sigs.
95
BENEDICT, pag 212. The most famous of modern Reformed theologians, Karl
BARTH, accepts the doctrine of election, but not condemnatory predestination
( BOYER, cit., página 124).
ritual are implanted, as well as predestinationism; and CALVIN
personally manifested his approval and delight in this predestinationist
theology. However, when the politics of glorious comprehensiveness
returns, in the 1559 prayer book, dogmatic claims about predestination
are carefully avoided96. Faced with the policy of the official
Elizabethan Church, CARTWRIGHT, who was the intellectual father
of Calvinism-Puritan, emphasized the doctrine of predestination as the
foundation of the Church for three reasons: divine supremacy, erases
any idea of human merit, and avoids the mistake of believing that the
difference between a believer and a non-believer is despicable97.
99
Cromwell's triumph failed to consolidate the presbyterial unity of the Church of
England, but it definitively modeled the Presbyterian stream of the Church of
England, and will have a decisive influence on the conformation of the Presbyterian,
Congregationalist and Baptist churches of the United States HE AHLSTRON, A
Religious History of the American People, New Haven 1972, p. 131.
100
L. SCHUMMER, l’ecclésiologie de Calvin a la lumière de l’ecclésia mater, Bonn
1981, Explains that in Calvin's thought the pastoral office has been instituted by
Christ, and bases its authority on the very authority of writing (symbolizing the
union of Christ with his Church), while the offices of elders and deacons are
established by the church
101
This organization is inspired by the reform carried out by BUCERO in
Strasbourg, in which CALVIN participated actively during its exile of Geneva.
BUCERO had organized in Strasbourg a non-hierarchical government of the
Church, an aristocratic-clerical government, with the separation of four functions:
doctors, pastors, rulers and deacons, and CALVIN seems inspired in BUCERO.
According to GANOCZY (Cit., P. 371), doctors, although specialized, are
functionally assimilated to pastors. Neither the corporate organization of the Church
in Geneva, nor the separation of functions within that Calvinist Church, were
understood as dogmatic, and as we shall see important changes in the Geneva model
are admitted in the various national Churches. In fact there are no doctors in the
Elders and deacons are ecclesiastical functions that have not
been devoted to the ministry of the word (IC, IV, III, 8). Discipline
must be assumed by lay people outside the ministry but distinct from
civil society: it is the role of the elders; The elders, also assist the
shepherds to make the admonitions102. Deacons appear for the first
time in the ordinances of 1541, they manage the goods of the Church
(IC, IV, V, 15) and are in charge of charity (IC, IV, III, 9). For the
administration of goods) and hospital (for charity); The office of
deacon could be exercised by women, by appointment of the first
epistle of St. Paul to Timothy103.
From the historical point of view, the most striking of the so-
called second reform is its diversity. Calvinist theology gives rise to a
multitude of Churches, which are Calvinistic, but which have singular
peculiarities. It is not easy to determine exactly what are the temporal
and territorial limits of Calvinism, The new Calvinist Churches
sometimes emerge crystallized in a nation, a doctrine or even a
preacher, who when has a true personality founds a Church, a stream
or a denomination113. And the recognition of a common doctrinal
tradition is made in the context of important dogmatic discrepancies,
113
Some interesting studies present the process of secularization of Calvinism with
remarkable parallelism to that of reform itself. Calvinism from a strict
predestinationist orthodoxy evolved in Geneva to maintain the universal salvation of
believers, and influenced by Arminian ideas also to uphold free will. The illustration
is then presented as compatible with the Calvinist religion. In Presbyterian America,
however, secularization has to be founded on a criticism of Calvin and Puritan
morality, which is why Calvin is presented in the history books of schools as a
paradigm of intolerance, and in particular of European intolerance ; The paradigm of
the Puritans is on the other hand the process of the witches of Salem (D. SORKIN,
Geneva’s enlighted orthodoxy, “Church History”, 2005, Page. 286 y sigs).
and many of them also obtained by generalization 114, and whose
maximum achievement seems to have been to generate religious
freedom within it, and also an effective and tolerant State, which we
examine in detail in the following chapter..
114
The Confessio Gallicana was written by CALVIN in 1559, for the French
communities. The Scottish Confession of 1560 was written by J. KNOX, and
approved by the Scottish Parliament. The Confessio Belgica of 1561 was composed
by GUY DE BRÉS, and became the flag of struggle against Spanish rule in the
Netherlands. The Reformed Churches of Germany subscribed to the Heidelberg
Catechism at the initiative of the elector Frederick III of the Palatinate, written by
the disciples of Melanchton, Ursinus and Oleviano, in 1562. The Reformed
Churches of Switzerland adopted the second Helvetic Confession, prepared by
BULLINGER, 1564, to which other synods convened in Hungary, Poland and
Bohemia joined, although introducing their specificities: the Confession of Erlauthal
and the Hungarian Confession, both of 1562, the Consensus Sendomiriensis, in
Poland, and the Confessio Bohemica of 1609. (Basel was the only Swiss city that
remained faithful to the first helvetica confession). The Catechism of Heidelberg,
together with the Canons of the Synod of Dortdrecht, constitute the Confession of
Faith of the Reformed Churches of Holland and Reformed Churches German and
Dutch in America. The Westminster Confession of 1648 was adopted by the
Prebisterian National Churches in Scotland, England, Ireland, and by the
Constituting Synod of the Presbyterian Church of North America in 1729. The
Congregational Convention convened by Savoy in London in 1658, declared that he
approved the doctrinal part of the Westminster Confession, although he formulated
his own Confession, called Savoy, which is preferred by some Congregationalist
branches of the Reformed Church, such as the Synod of Cambridge, Massachusetts,
in June 1647, the Synod in Boston in May 1680, and the Synod of Saybrook,
Connecticut, in 1708. From here doctrinal and organizational evolution no longer
recognizes its Calvinist origin and overflows in many Anabaptist, Methodist,
Quaker, and even sectarian approaches doubtlessly Christians. (See some of these
confessions M.A. NOLL, Confessions and Catechisms of the Reformation, Gran
Rapids, 1991).
denominations, even separated or autonomous from the of Reformed
Church. And most Anabaptist Churches generally adopt the
organization of councils and consistories, and they usually recognize
functions (pastors, elders, deacons, charity being especially important,
usually suppressing doctors)115.
Modem World: The Influence of Calvin on Five Governments from the 16th through
the 18th Centuries, "Journal of Church and State," vol. 35, 1995, p.911.
121
Puritan preachers from the very beginning secularized the notion of universal
priesthood and advocated the authority of God granted to the Christian people and
not to the King, and especially in Scotland these doctrines promote a Calvinist
rebellion. Opposition to royal absolutism is reproduced similarly in Holland,
England, and France. On the other hand, Presbyterianism and parliamentarism
always had a particular fascination on jurists. It is an idea repeated in the Anglo-
Saxon literature. DUNNE, The City of Gods, Notre Dame, 1978; HANCOCK,
Calvin and the fondations of modern politics, Ithaca, 1989; MITCHELL, Not by
reason alone, Chicago 1993, who see in the political ideas of the Anglo-Saxon
authors of the XVII, the "political arm" of their Calvinist religious convictions. This
idea is repeated. Cf. BALMES, cit., P. TROELTSCH (Op. Cit., Page 63): Calvinism
in its great struggles against the Catholic authorities (Scottish, Dutch, Huguenots
and English) ends up organizing the State in a synodal-presbyteral form and in that
Context originates the theory of the social pact. Also K. Barth (The Theology of
John Calvin, trad ing Grand Rapids 1995, page 305) considers him one of the
founding fathers of modern democracy. Likewise, in my opinion, the theory of the
constitution could be a secularization of the Calvinist dogma of predestination.
The English way of Reform after almost two centuries of
clashes, affirms religious freedom and transforms the royal authority
into supreme authority of the parliament. English Calvinists were the
main protagonists in the forge of the political categories of the modern
world. CALVIN influences the modern secular world but not because
of his theory of the state, but because, the patristics of modernity are
English jurist philosophers of Calvinist formation (such as HOBBES,
HOOKER, LOCKE). A political theory, with precise analogies to the
epistemological and ecclesial Calvinist system.
HENRY VIII with his authority supports the unity of the Church
in spite of his deep internal discrepancies, but at his death, in the reign
of EDUARD VI, under the protectorate of the Duke of SOMERSET,
Lutheranism is introduced, but concerned in not changing the
traditional liturgy125. In 1552, as we have said, Calvinism is adopted
and promulgated a new Book of Common Prayer126.
123
C. CROSS, Church and people, Glasgow, 1978, pág. 94, TAVARD (La poursuite
de la catholicité dans l’Eglise d’Angleterre, París, 1965., pág. 42).
124
LINDSAY (The constitutional history of modern Britain, Londres, 1964, pág.
71). SKINNER, op. cit., II, page. 99 y sigs.
125
DELUMEAU, op. cit., page. 77; LEONARD, op. cit., II, page. 50. SOMERSET
sought advice directly from Calvin (WALTZER, The revolution of the saints,
Londres, 1966, page. 62; BOYER, op., cit., page 7. 1549).
126
Luther, Calvin, and other reformers, felt a very special aversion for Anabaptism
(on the subject, see CROSS, Church and People, Glasgow, 1976, p88). Curiously in
this phase of the Reformation of the Church we witness the natural coexistence of
Lutheranism and Calvinism as uniform religious forms in their opposition to
Papism; thus, if CRANMER in his early days maintained Lutheran tendencies, he
later accepted, quite naturally, Calvinism.
1.3. Elisabeth.
The schism of HENRY VIII not only denies the Roman Church,
it also affirms absolute monarchy. HOBBES and HOOKER elaborate
the doctrinal apparatus of Tudor absolutism.
133
On Hobbes: CARPINTERO, Del Derecho Natural medieval al Derecho Natural
moderno: Fernando Vázquez de Menchaca, Salamanca, 1977, Pág. 127. TRUYOL
SERRA, A., Historia de la Filosofía del Derecho y del Estado II, Madrid, 1975, pp.
157-165; RODRÍGUEZ PANIAGUA, Historia del pensamiento jurídico, 5.’ ed.,
Madrid, 1984, page 113. N. BOBBIO, Thomas Hobbes, trad. esp., Barcelona, 1991.
M DZELZAINIS, Ideas in Conflict: Political and Religious Thought during the
English Revolution, en The Cambridge Companion to Writing of the English
Revolution, Cambridge, 2002; G. BURGESS, Absolute Monarchy and the Stuart
Constitution, London 1996; Q. SKINNER, Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy
of Hobbes, Cambridge 1996. D. CRESSY, England on Edge: Crisis and Revolution
1640-1642, Oxford 2006.
134
English text: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/3207.
135
The social pact is formulated as an alternative to the religious legitimation of
political power, and as a justification for the religious schism. The power does not
come directly from God (who is hidden).
BEZA wrote in 1565 that the papacy had not been expelled from
England, but transferred to royal majesty. As the reign of
ELISABETH evolves, a movement that promotes the purification of
the Church of England, contrary to the king as the head of the Church,
crystallizes and proposes a new form of government. GRINDAL,
exiled in the time of Queen Mary, named primate of the Church of
England in the days of Elisabeth, Calvinist, defender of Presbyterians,
recriminates to the queen that the absolute monarchy represents a civil
papism136. In this context the political problem is no longer to justify
the opposition to Rome of the English monarchy, which appears
consolidated, but to defend the Anglican ecclesial and political order
against the Puritan movement.
139
D. WALANCE, Puritans and predestination: Grace in English protestant
Theology, 1525-1695, Chapel Hill, 1982, W.J TORRANCE KIRBY, Richards
Hooker’s doctrine of royal supremacy, Leiden, New York, Köln, 1990, C.J.
COCKSWORTH, Evangelical Eucharistic thought in the Church of England,
Cambridge-New York, 1992, page 33). The word of God must be found in
Scripture, but this is not the only word of God, because God speaks also through
nature (NEILL, L’anglicanisme, 2. ed., 1965).
140
D. CRESSY-L.A. FERREL, Religion and society in early modern England,
London New York, 1996, Page. 127. COLLINSON, Episcopacy and Reform in
England in the later sixteen century, «Studies in church history», III, Leyden, 1966,
page 91.
141
PARKER, Arminianism and Laudianism in seventeenth century England,
«Studies in church history», 1, page. 20.
2. Origins of parlamentarism.
146
SOLT, Saints in arms: Puritanism and democracy in Cromwell’s army, Stanford,
1959; TYACKE ., page., page 69 y sigs. LEONARD, op. cit., II, page. 249.
147
MARSHALL John Locke. Resistance, Religion and Responsabilty, Cambridge,
1994, Page 110). SOLAR CAYON, La teoría de la tolerancia en John Locke,
Madrid 1996, Pág. 156 y sigs.
148
L. COLLEY (Britons: forging the nation, New Haven/London, 1992, Page. 54.
TYACKE Aspects of English Protestantism, Manchester, 2001, Page., 70. M.A.
DRURY, Anticatholicism in Germany, Britain and the United States A review and
critic of recent scholarship, Church History, 2001.
149
TAVARD, La poursuite..., cit., Page. 85.
face of the progressive dissolution of Protestantism in the face of the
appearance of radical movements and sects150.
150
J. MARSHALL, John Locke, Toleration and Early Enlightenment Culture:
Religious Toleration and Arguments for Religious Toleration in Early Modern and
Early Enlightenment Europe. Cambridge, 2006. Particularly concerned with the
restoration of antitrinitarian currents. The Blasphemy Act of 1698 punishes
unitarianism as blasphemy, probably because it breaks the boundaries between
Christianity and other major religious currents: Judaism or Islam.
In 1689 LOCKE returned to England from his exile on the same
vessel that brought William of Orange, and published the famous
treatie: "on the false principles and misrepresentations of sir Robert
Filmer". LOCKE seeks a coherent response to the absolutist
statements of Filmer, follower of Hobbes, principal defender of the
divine right of kings in the reign of Charles II152.
160
BERCOVITCH, The puritan origins of the American self, New Haven-Londres,
1975, Page. 80; también BUSHMAN, From puritan to Yankee, Cambridge, Mass.,
1967, P. JOHNSON, The history of the American people, New York 1999, Page. 33.
AVIHU ZAKAI, History and Apocalypse in the Puritan Migration to America,
Cambridge 1992, W. S. HUDSON- J. CORRIGAN, Religion in America, 6 ed.
Upper Saddle River, 1999, Page., 40 y sigs., R.BALMER-J.R.FITZMIER, The
Presbyterians, Westport, Conn. 1993, J. Von ROHR The shaping of American
congregationalism, Cleveland, 1992, en particular Page, 200).
161
W. S. HUDSON- J. CORRIGAN, Religion in America, 6 ed. Upper Saddle
River, 1999, Page. 54.
162
Although the first amendment forbids states to constitute an official religion, 36
of the 41 delegates voting in 1787 for the United States Constitution define
themselves as Calvinists.P.E. HAMMOND (With liberty for all. Freedom of
Religion in the United States, Louisville, 1998), HANSON C.P. Necessary virtue:
The pragmatic origins of religious liberty in new England, studies how in 1770 the
colony of England forms an alliance with the Catholic Quebec in its fight with the
British empire, what considers like the origin of the religious tolerance of the
catholics in the new State .
163
M.A. NOLL, The civil war as a theological crisis, Chapel Hill, 2006.
Churches are unable to resolve the moral dilemma of American
culture, and no Calvinist Church, no Puritan denomination identifies
the ideals of the new free society. Along with this, secularization, the
proselytizing thrust of Baptists and Methodists, the emergence of
increasingly peculiar Protestant denominations and sects, later
immigration that does not communicate with Protestant ideals (of
Jews, Orthodox Christians, Catholics) marks a profound Crisis of
Calvinists values that forged the identity of the new Zion. Since the
late nineteenth century the multiplication of the number of non-
Protestant churches and the exponential fragmentation of Protestant
denominations makes it difficult to recognize the United States with a
Calvinist religious identity164.
164
KOSHMIN-LACHMAN One Nation under God: Religion in Contemporary
American Society, New York, 1993.
165
R. De MATTEI, A sinistra de LUTHER, Roma 1999, Pág. 7.
166
KINGDOM, Myths...cit., pag 140). Según VAN KLEY, Los orígenes religiosos
de la revolución francesa, trad.esp Madrid 2002.
The arguments are reproduced in the treatise of Philippe DU
PLESSIS MORNAY, Vindiciae contra Tyrannos, published in 1579.
In the context of the massacre of St. Bartholomew's day, the unofficial
Calvinist doctrine on the right of rebellion. He argues that the
authorities could resist the oppression of true religion and also acts of
tyranny. The right of resistance in this context is not individual or
popular, but corresponds to the lower authorities, especially regional
or local authorities, who can and should loyally oppose the unjust
order of a superior. The main argument is to compare the king with a
guardian, the officers of the kingdom with protectors and the people
with a minor or incapacitated; if the king abused power and ruled as a
tyrant in his own interest, it was duty of the delegate of the general
states or the high officials of the kingdom to confront him or even
dismiss him167.
175
The historical and political interpretation of the antecedents of the French
revolution thus appears notoriously controversial. RANDELL, John Calvin and the
later reformation, 1990, Page. 91), POLAND Burdette C., French Protestantism and
the French Revolution: A Study in Church and State, Thought and Religion 1685-
1781, Princeton, 1967, Page. 15 y sigs.
Recapitulation
1. Two kingdoms......................................................................................................27
3. Staatspositivismus................................................................................................34
1. Dogmatic...............................................................................................................44
1.1. Faith and authority..........................................................................................44
1.2. Tradition, Roman law and Old Testament.....................................................45
1.3. Old Testament in English Reformation..........................................................49
2. Predestination.......................................................................................................51
2.1. Denial of free will...........................................................................................51
2.2. A Church of the elected..................................................................................52
2.3. Predestination in the Reformed Churches......................................................54
3. Organization of the Presbyterian Church.........................................................56
3.1. Pastors and Elders.........................................................................................56
3.2. Corporative governance.................................................................................57
3.3. Political and popular control of the Presbyterian Church..............................60
3.4. The universality of the Reformed Church......................................................61
3.5. The unity of the Church in a Presbyterian organization.................................62
3.6. Dogma and authority.....................................................................................64
CHAPITER IV:..........................................................................70
2. Origins of parlamentarism..................................................................................78
2.1. Evolution of Calvinist thought on the right of resistance...............................78
2.2. Absolute king and Christian people...............................................................79
2.3. The restoration................................................................................................80
2.4. John LOCKE and the origins of popular sovereignty....................................82
Recapitulation...........................................................................92