Martin Luther (1483-1546) and John Calvin (1509-1564)

Lutheranism spread gradually, taking expediency not just of wad's appreciation of Luther's doctrinal pronouncements but of the everyday animosity toward Rome that existed throughout Germany. Calvinism, on the other hand, was positive on the spot, so to speak, as Calvin worked simultaneously to create a church state and to develop the theology from which its legitimacy was derived.

Luther " shared out with his contemporaries the conviction that all mankind would appear ahead the Judgement seat of Christ" (Lienhard 86). The fear of eternal damnation had driven Christians for centuries and explained the power of the Church which alone could aid people in their search for salvation. Luther had been an Augustinian monk for three years and during that item he was perpetually "weighed d protest by the sense of blaze and the hopelessness of winning forgiveness" (Stevenson 31). He was struck by the seeming gap between his own awful world sinfulness and the perpetual, glorious holiness of God and could see no way to bridge the separation between them. He was staged to perform penances and to be truly repentant--all of which he did without ever contact that he had eradicated the sinfulness that was inherent in his very being. When he was appointed professor of philosophy at the University of Wittenberg by Frederick the voter of Saxony, later one of his strongest supporters, Luther acquired a rep

Lienhard, Marc. "Luther and Europe." The Reformation. Ed. Pierre Chaunu. New York: St. Martin's, 1990. 82-109.

The immense and sudden popularity of Luther's positions undoubtedly grew from "the far-flung revulsion from the Church and its system, alike in its theological and its pecuniary expression" (Sykes 34). merely it spread rapidly and there is abundant evidence to suggest that people who simply felt suppress by " any a local or a distant authority,"--whether a landlord or a prince--"tended to see in the Protestant movement an ally" (Ozment 20). This reaction was aside from either their sentiments regarding the Church or their personal faith.

When Luther and the many preachers who carried his ideas throughout Germany and Switzerland wrote, verbalise and sang about such radical ideas as "a priesthood of all believers, scorned the authority of ecclesiastical landlords, and ridiculed papal laws as pure fabrications, they could not help but touch policy-making as well as religious nerves" (Ozment 20). every(prenominal) side in major political questions indulged in a willful misreading of the new doctrine and manipulated the Reformation for their own ends.

When Luther published his ninety-five theses by nailing them to the door of the cathedral, however, he was enkindle mainly in reforming the Church and presented his arguments in scholarly Latin. But the question of indulgences raised many other difficulties and Luther began to question not just the practices of the Church but the legitimacy of papal restrain and even the need for a priesthood. The reasoning that brought Luther to the conclusion that the pontificate was an unnecessary and illegitimate institution was based on his cognizance of the overwhelming nature and permanence of human sinfulness. When viewed in the consideration of "the holy and radical demands of God" it was clear that sin was not the passing behaviors of human beings "but rather a primordial orientation engraved in the heart of human beings" and drivi
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