ETHICS OF THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION
I. PRINCIPLES OF THE REFORMATION OF ETHICAL IMPORT
[Sidenote: Principle of the
self-sovereignty of the individual
as the ultimate authority in
morals]
In its essential principle the Protestant Reformation was a protest
against the principle of authority in the realm of the spirit. It
proclaimed the right of individual judgment in matters of religion
and morals. There was in this proclamation an ethical implication of
revolutionary significance. It was a recognition of the truth “that
duty in the last analysis is imposed upon the individual ... by
himself; that there is no authority in moral matters more ultimate than
a man’s rational conviction of what is best.”[716]
Of all the agencies which during recent times have been at work
moralizing morality and creating for the moral life a permanent
and indestructible basis in reason and conscience, this Protestant
principle of the autonomy of the individual soul in the spiritual
domain has been one of the most efficient and pervasive.
[Sidenote: The principle of
salvation by right belief]
Though the chief significance of the Protestant revolution and
its ultimate import for morality lay in this assertion of the
self-sovereignty of the individual, still the full ethical consequences
of this revolutionary principle did not become clearly manifest till
after the lapse of more than three centuries.
Throughout the earlier periods of the Reformation era the moral
evolution in Protestant lands was influenced less by the announcement
of this principle than by that of certain other principles less
fundamentally important, or by certain minor modifications effected
by the reformers in the body of doctrines and practices of the Roman
Catholic Church.
Among these principles was that of salvation by faith, which meant
practically salvation by right belief. This was no new principle in
Christian theology. The Church had always insisted upon acceptance
of the main articles of its creed as necessary to salvation. But by
reason of the emphasis which had been placed upon the doctrine of the
meritoriousness of works, many had come to believe, and to act upon
the belief, that a man is justified by what he does. The assertion
of the doctrine of justification through faith alone had important
consequences for morality, since it implied the denial of the ethical
value of works, which meant specifically the repudiation of the
principles of asceticism, on which the monastic system rested, as well
as the rejection of the doctrine of purgatory, which afforded basis
and sanction for a considerable part of the moral code of the medieval
Church.
II. SOME IMPORTANT MORAL OUTCOMES OF THE SIXTEENTH-CENTURY RELIGIOUS
REFORM
[Sidenote: The reform movement
reënforces the ethical tendencies
of the Renaissance]
Though the immediate results of the Reformation were disastrous
to Humanism, the ultimate effect of the religious movement was to
reënforce the true ethical tendencies of the intellectual revival. As
we have seen, the thing of deepest import for morals in the Renaissance
of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was the announcement of
the freedom and self-dependence of the individual spirit, since such
self-sovereignty is the prerequisite of a true and vital morality.
Likewise the essential proclamation of the Reformation was the
autonomy of the individual in matters religious and moral. It is true
that the reformers, though proclaiming liberty of conscience, the
right of individual judgment, did not, as has already been said, at
once recognize all the ethical implications of this principle. “The
Reformation,” as Dr. Arnold truly observes, “was weak in that it never
consciously grasped or applied the central idea of the Renaissance--the
Hellenic idea of pursuing, in all lines of activity, the law and
science, to use Plato’s words, of things as they really are.”[717]
But the assertion of the right of individual judgment in matters
religious and moral was bound sooner or later to lead to the
recognition of the duty of inquiry, of investigation of the law and
science of things as they really are, and of absolute loyalty to the
truth when found. The final outcome within the Church of this new
mental attitude has been the “Higher Criticism,” which is simply the
continuation by modern scholars within the reformed denominations
of the scientific criticism of the Bible begun by the distinguished
humanist Erasmus. In this remoter issue of the Reformation the
essential oneness of its spirit with that of the Renaissance is
revealed, and the ground for the assertion that the ultimate moral
results of the religious reform were a reënforcement of the deepest
ethical tendencies of the intellectual revival is disclosed.
[Sidenote: Substitution of an
inerrant Book for an inerrant
Church]
Had all the implications of the principle of the right of individual
judgment in matters of religion and morals been seen and frankly
accepted by the reformers of the sixteenth century, the Protestant
revolution would have effected at once the transfer of morality from
a supernatural to a natural basis. But for an inerrant Church the
reformers substituted an inerrant Book, which every one should accept
as an infallible guide and rule of conduct. The ultimate sanctions
of morality were still looked for in the historic past, in an outer
revelation and an outer authority. Consequently the moral ideal of
Protestantism retained the essentially theological, supernatural
character of the ideal of Roman Catholicism.
[Sidenote: New ranking of virtues
in the moral type]
But the changes effected by the reformers in the body of the teachings
of the old Church resulted necessarily in a certain displacement and
shifting of the virtues in the moral type, and in a new estimation
of ethical values. Various virtues or duties hitherto regarded as
essential to excellence of character were assigned a lower place in
the rank of virtues or were excluded altogether from the ideal, while
new moral qualities or attributes were added, the outcome being what
we must regard as a new moral type. In the following pages we shall
comment briefly upon the more important of the changes effected in
several domains of the religious-ethical life.
[Sidenote: Protestantism brings
into disesteem the monastic ideal]
We proceed now to notice some of the immediate and special moral
effects of the Reformation. In the first place Protestantism
discredited the monastic type of goodness. The meritoriousness of
celibacy was denied. The austerities of the ascetic were declared to be
not only useless but positively wrong. Instead of being an object of
profound veneration and homage, the saint of medieval times became to
the Protestant reformers an object of the deepest moral detestation.
The immediate consequences of this change in men’s conceptions of what
constitutes the highest moral excellence was that throughout one half
of Europe the monasteries, which the religious-moral enthusiasm of the
earlier centuries of Christianity had created, were dismantled and
razed to the ground, and an institution which had dominated Christian
Europe for a thousand years was suppressed in all the northern lands.
This revolution, we believe, effected on the whole a great gain for
morality and marked a forward movement in the moral evolution of
the Western world; but at the same time it must be recognized that
the destruction of this system, which throughout a full historical
period had fostered some of the most admirable of Christian virtues
and nurtured unnumbered saintly lives, resulted in the exclusion
of valuable ethical elements from the moral life of Protestant
communities. There are types of character nourished by the conventual
system that society can ill afford to spare. Very few will dissent
from Lecky’s view that “in the Sisters of Charity the religious orders
of Catholicism have produced one of the most perfect of all types of
womanhood.”[718]
[Sidenote: Effects upon industrial
morals of the dissolution of the
monasteries]
In destroying monasticism the Protestant reformers destroyed an
anti-industrial type of character, and thus helped to clear the
ground for the great industrial development which during the last
three centuries has given a new aspect and outlook to civilization.
The reformed Church gave prominence to the active masculine virtues
as opposed to the passive feminine virtues exalted by the conventual
system. Hence it was more favorable than the old Church to the
development of civilization on its material side. It hardly admits
of doubt that in these opposed tendencies of the ethical ideals of
the two churches is to be sought one cause of the amazing contrast,
industrially viewed, long observed between the distinctively Protestant
and the distinctively Catholic countries of Europe. It is true that
the line of demarcation once so observable is now becoming blurred,
and that modern industrialism with its ideal of industrial virtues is
fast becoming equally characteristic of all lands of advancing culture,
whether Protestant, Catholic, or pagan.
[Sidenote: Effects upon morals of
the abolition of purgatory]
The Protestant denial of the Catholic doctrine of purgatory, which
followed as a direct logical result of the reformers’ doctrine of
justification by faith, had consequences for morality no less positive
than those that followed the denial of the Catholic teaching of the
meritoriousness of the ascetic life.
It is undoubtedly true that the doctrine of purgatory, conceived as
part of a system of future rewards and punishments, has exerted on
the whole an influence favorable to morality. But the institution
lends itself easily to misuse. In the Middle Ages the doctrine of
indulgences was applied to souls in purgatory, and the shortening
of the period of their suffering there made dependent not alone
upon the prayers of their friends on earth, but often practically
upon the payment of sums of money, designated as alms to the poor
or gifts to the Church. The forgiveness of sins was thus too often
made a commercial transaction. Thus the doctrine of purgatory, beyond
controversy, contributed essentially to that despiritualizing of
religion and that deadening in wide circles of the moral sense which
characterized the later medieval period and which, through inevitable
reaction, helped to provoke the Protestant revolt.
The effect upon morals of the abolition of purgatory by the reformers
was immediate and far-reaching. Many specific duties were at once
dropped from the moral code. Prayers for the dead ceased to be a
pious duty; they were not even morally permissible. Furthermore, the
performance of such good works as the making of pilgrimages and the
giving of alms for the benefit of souls in purgatory not only ceased to
be regarded as meritorious, but came to be looked upon as positively
wrong. Besides these direct ethical consequences of the abolition of
purgatory there were indirect ethical results which we shall notice in
another connection.[719]
[Sidenote: Effects of the
religious reform upon the virtue
of toleration[720]]
Ultimately the Reformation, largely through the outworkings of the
principle of the right of private judgment in matters of conscience,
was destined to foster the growth of the important virtue of
toleration. But throughout the first three centuries of Protestantism,
owing mainly to the great emphasis laid by the reformers on the
doctrine of the supreme ethical value of correctness of religious
belief, this principle of the right of private judgment exerted
little appreciable influence upon the moral evolution. Holding fast
to the doctrine of the criminality of wrong belief, the new Church
like the old was necessarily intolerant. It regarded heresy with
dread, looked upon toleration as a fault, and, whenever circumstances
favored, engaged in persistent and unrelenting persecution to maintain
uniformity of religious belief. It was not till late in the modern
period that religious toleration came generally to be recognized by the
Protestant conscience as a virtuous disposition of supreme worth.