Sociocultural significance of the Reformation and Protestantism. The rise of Protestantism. Reformation. Modern Protestant churches in Russia

The third major variety of Christianity is Protestantism. Protestantism arose as a result of the second largest split in Christianity. In this case, the split occurred in the Roman Catholic Church. The emergence of Protestantism is associated with the development of a broad religious, socio-cultural and socio-political movement of the 16th - 17th centuries, which was called Reformation(from lat. reformatio - transformation, correction). The Reformation took place under the slogans of correcting the Catholic doctrine, cult and organization in the spirit of the original evangelical ideals, eliminating in them everything that in medieval Catholicism seemed to the reformers to be a departure from these ideals.

The Reformation had deep historical roots. The immoral behavior and flagrant abuses of the Catholic clergy, church formalism and hypocrisy long before the Reformation began were denounced by pious believers, mystical theologians and public figures. Forerunners of the Reformation are professors at Oxford University

John Wyclif (1320-1384) and professor at the University of Prague Jan Hus (1369-1415).

John Wyclif opposed the exactions of the Roman popes from England, doubted the right of the leadership of the church to forgive sins and issue indulgences, insisted that the Holy Scripture (i.e. the Bible) has undoubted priority over Holy Tradition, rejected the idea that in the process of the sacrament of communion actually, that is, materially, there is a transformation of bread into the body of the Lord, and wine - into his blood. Jan Hus also came up with similar ideas, demanding that the church renounce wealth, buy and sell church positions, ban the sale of indulgences, transform the activities of the church in the image of early Christian communities, deprive the clergy of all privileges, including the main ritual privilege - communion with wine. The fact is that in the Catholic Church until the decision of the Second Vatican Council (1962 - 1965), there was a serious difference in the rite of communion between the laity and the priests. The laity had the right to take communion only with bread, and the priests with bread and wine. Jan Hus was condemned by a church court for his heretical ideas and burned at the stake in 1415. But his followers (the Hussites) as a result of a long struggle in 1462 received the right to receive communion with wine.

The Reformation itself took place in Germany and Switzerland. Its initiators and leaders were Martin Luther (1483-1546), Thomas Müntzer (1430-1525), J. Calvin (1509-1564) and W. Zwingli (1484-1531).

As can be seen from the above, the pious, oriented to the deep inner connection of man with God, Catholic believers, it was painful to observe the luxury and debauchery that high-ranking clergy indulged in. Concerned about the problem of the salvation of the soul, they could not reconcile themselves to the idea that the cause of their salvation was in the hands of such people. Protested not only by luxury, immoral behavior, but also by extreme formalism religious life. As the researchers of this period note, in medieval Catholicism, all religious life is closed within the framework of church institutions. All forms of communication between believers and God are unified and codified, and the theological justification for this practice was the creation of the doctrine ex opero operate (action through action). According to this doctrine, ritual liturgical actions have power in themselves, spread divine grace, regardless of the moral qualities and those who are the object of the sacred action, and performing their priests, as if acting automatically. The decisive condition for the effectiveness of the sacraments is the conformity of their procedure with the approved canonical norms. The authority of the priests, their rights and opportunities, their place in church hierarchy are also determined not by moral qualities, but by canon law, legal norms.

The most striking and concentrated expression of the formalization of religious life and the orientation of the church towards enrichment, from the point of view of pious believers, was trade in indulgences. M. Luther's speech against the theory and practice of trading in indulgences was the starting point from which the Reformation began. On October 31, 1517, Luther published in Wittenberg (hung on the door of the church) 95 theses on the remission of sins, in which he denounced the mercenary trade in "heavenly treasures" as a violation of the gospel covenants. Accused by the leadership of the Catholic Church of heresy, Luther refused to stand trial, and in 1520 publicly burned the papal bull that excommunicated him from the church. Luther's ideas were supported by representatives of various estates in Germany. Encouraged by this support, he develops increasingly radical arguments against official Catholic doctrine. The main argument of the entire Lutheran teaching is aimed at destroying the power of the church. He rejects the special grace of the priesthood and its mediation in the salvation of the soul, does not recognize papal authority. Together with the Catholic hierarchy, he also rejected the authority of papal bulls (decrees) and encyclicals (messages), which was part of the content of Holy Tradition. In contrast to the dominance of the church hierarchy and Holy Tradition, Luther put forward the slogan restoration of traditions christian church and the authority of the Bible - Holy Scripture.

In medieval Catholicism, only priests had the right to read the Bible and interpret its content. The Bible was published in Latin and all services were held in this language. Luther translated the Bible into German and every believer got the opportunity to get acquainted with its text and interpret it according to his own understanding.

Luther rejected the dominance of the church hierarchy over secular power and put forward the idea of ​​the subordination of the church to the state. These ideas turned out to be especially close to some German sovereigns, who were dissatisfied with the concentration of land holdings and wealth in the church, the payment of large sums of money to the popes and the intervention of the pope in their politics. A group of German princes carried out reforms in the spirit of Luther's ideas in their possessions. In 1526, the Speer Reichstag, at the request of the German Lutheran princes, adopted a resolution on the right of every German prince to choose a religion for himself and his subjects. However, the second Speer Reichstag in 1529 canceled this decision. In response, 5 princes and 14 imperial cities formed the so-called Protest - a protest against the majority of the Reichstag. With this event, the origin of the term "Protestantism" is connected, which began to be used to refer to the totality of the faiths of Christianity, which in their origin are associated with the Reformation.

The Reformation had a number of currents. With the first of them, which was headed by M. Luther - Lutheranism, we have already briefly met. The second trend was headed by Thomas Müntzer. Müntzer began his reform activities as a supporter and follower of Luther. Later, however, both in regard to dogma and in socio-political issues, Müntzer moved / to more radical positions. Mystical motives predominate in the religious teachings of Müntzer, he opposes the church hierarchy, orthodox theological teachings, "self-confident Pharisees, bishops and scribes" and opposes them with the direct "faith of the heart." In his opinion, in order to find the true truth, a person must break with his sinful nature, feel the spirit of Christ in himself and turn from godless wisdom to the highest divine wisdom. The source of truth for man, according to Müntzer, is the Holy Spirit acting in the human soul.

From Luther's postulate of equality between laity and clergy, Müntzer concludes that all the sons of God are equal. And this also meant the demand for civil equality and the elimination of at least the most significant property differences. Thus, Müntzer came up with the idea of ​​social justice, for egalitarian or collective land use. Müntzer's ideal was the building of the Kingdom of God on Earth. Under this slogan, an uprising broke out and the Peasants' War began in Germany (1524-1525). This war ended in the defeat of the rebels and the death of Müntzer. Having been defeated, Müntzer's supporters fled to Holland, England, the Czech Republic, and Moravia.

In the first half of the 16th century, the reform movement began to spread rapidly beyond Germany. Separate Lutheran communities appear in the Scandinavian countries, the Baltic states, France and Poland.

Switzerland became the largest center of the Reformation during this period, in particular the cities of Geneva and Zurich, in which J. Calvin and W. Zwingli acted. J. Calvin laid down the main ideas of his religious teachings in two main works: "Instructions in the Christian Faith" and "Church Ordinances". On the basis of this doctrine, a special kind of Protestantism arises.

Protestantism

Reformation and rise of Protestantism

The Reformation has its own history. The revolutionary opposition to feudalism on the part of the popular masses and the emerging burghers runs through the entire Middle Ages, appearing now in the form of mysticism, now in the form of heresy, now in the form of an armed uprising. The dress rehearsal of the Refomation was the anti-Catholic Hussite doctrine, as well as the national liberation, anti-Catholic and anti-feudal movement of the Taborites, led by a follower of Jan Hus (1369-1415) Jan Zizka. In the era of the Reformation itself, many of the provisions of Hus were openly accepted by Martin Luther, and the Anabaptist movement became a continuation of the popular movement of the Taborites.

In the Reformation from the very beginning there were two wings - the burghers and the peasant-plebeian, therefore they speak of the burghers and the people's Reformation. During the period of the Reformation, the struggle of the revolutionary forces against feudalism and Catholicism was accompanied by a struggle within the opposition between the burgher and peasant-plebeian camps, deals between the burgher camp and feudalism at the expense of the people, and in a number of cases the use of the Reformation and its ideas by the feudal lords in their own interests.

Martin Luther was one of the inspirers of the bloody suppression of the great peasant uprising of 1524-1525. in Germany and the defeat of the popular Reformation in the person of the Anabaptists. At the beginning of the peasant war, in the pamphlet "On the 12 Theses," he declared the demands of the peasants to be the suggestion of the devil. In the pamphlet Against the Bloodthirsty and Robber Gangs of Peasants, Luther called for the merciless defeat of the rebels. The first religious work of another founder of the Reformation, Calvin, was directed against the Anabaptists, and not against the Catholic Church. Calvin burned on a slow fire the Spanish scholar Servetus, who adhered to the Anabaptists and to the rationalist Protestant doctrine, known under the names of Unitarianism or Socialism.

The Reformation was not against the church and religion as such, but against the feudal, Catholic Church, opposing to it a new church adapted to the interests of the bourgeoisie. The fact that the fighting parties expressed their interests even at that time in the language of the Holy Scriptures is explained by the immaturity of public consciousness, the dominance of religion, which in the 16th century. and partly in the 17th century. remained the dominant form of social consciousness. The influence of the secular culture of the Renaissance was not deep, religion remained the worldview of the majority. The “pure gospel”, a kind of “true word of God”, which had to be cleansed of the malicious distortions of Catholicism, became the revolutionary banner of the times. It was the leaders of the Reformation who translated the Holy Scripture into the vernacular, the Bible for the first time became available to the general public. (To what extent the Bible was hidden from the people, shows at least the fact that M. Luther saw it for the first time only at the age of 20.), who were not slow to see in some of its provisions a justification for their struggle for social equality.

Distinguishing between the popular and the burgher Reformation, it should be borne in mind that the burgher Reformation tried in every possible way to restore the influence of religion among the people, shaken due to the cynical practice of Catholicism, to elevate faith and belittle reason. “The virtue of faith,” Luther declared, “is that it wrings the neck of reason and strangles the beast, which otherwise might strangle the whole world with all its creations.” "Reason," said Luther, "is the devil's first whore," therefore, "by renouncing reason, we bring to God the most acceptable sacrifice that can be offered." Burgher Protestantism emphasized the impotence of man before the world, instilling in people a sense of doom to eternal torment. The popular Reformation saw its meaning in social progress, the masses understood the Reformation not so much as a religious, but as a social reform, the implementation of some “divine right” deducted in the Bible, dating back to original Christianity, it was often religious only in form, behind which rationalistic and even atheistic ideas.

The main Protestant countries in Europe are Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, England, Holland, Czech Republic, Hungary. Since the 17th century Protestantism began to spread in the North American colonies of European countries, where, fleeing persecution, representatives of a wide variety of Protestant denominations fled. Protestantism spread over time to other colonies.

The response controversy was led by a certain Ratramnus, who deviated to the opposite extreme of a purely abstract understanding of the Eucharist "in ... the sacrament, the Body and Blood of Christ are eaten only spiritually and by the power of faith of the one who receives them." This way of thinking is strikingly reminiscent of the later teaching of Luther, and its influence is confirmed by the fact that it was supported by prominent ecclesiastical figures of the time and then this judgment reappeared in the second phase of the Eucharistic controversy in the 11th century. One of its main participants, Berengary of Tours, believed that “His glorified body was lifted up to heaven; and if so, then the eating ... of the body ... can only be spiritual, because otherwise how can it be assumed that believers can eat ... the body, which is in a glorified form in heaven with its mouth. This doctrine was condemned at several councils in the middle of the 11th century, but continued to exist in France as late as the 12th century.

Later, however, the idea of ​​the spiritual communion of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist continued to develop implicitly in the theological-philosophical tradition of nominalism, which to a large extent paved the way for the Reformation.

Almost simultaneously with the first phase of the Eucharistic controversy, the doctrine of predestination began to develop, which subsequently reached its logical conclusion in the Swiss Reformation. In the 9th century, it was already clearly stated by the monk Gottschalk in the form of the doctrine of double predestination - the righteous to salvation, and the sinners to condemnation. Like the future reformers, he based his views on the teachings of Blessed. Augustine, but if the latter mainly had in mind predestination to salvation, recognizing only "some allowance of God for the condemnation of sinners, but no more", then Gottschalk was not afraid to give the views of bliss. Augustine's logical conclusion. He wrote: “I believe that in His mercy I predestinated the elect to eternal life, and that in His righteous judgment He predestinated sinners to eternal damnation.” Although this doctrine was condemned, we can judge the extent of its influence by the fact that it was approved at one of the local councils of the ninth century.

The second main postulate of the Reformation - sola Scriptura ("only Scripture") was already manifested in the Waldensian movement, which in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries covered almost all of Europe. Their heightened attention to St. The Scriptures were, in many ways, driven by a natural thirst to hear the Word of God, which they were denied in the Roman Catholic Church.

In the views of the Waldensians, we also see the idea of ​​the invisible Church, which Luther later developed, although historically it “reminiscent of the idea of ​​the invisible Church of Blessed. Augustine, who, under the influence of his concept of predestination to salvation, looked at her as a collection ... destined by grace for salvation, which sharply differ in this from ... the mass of members of the only visible Church.

In addition, noticeable features of the coming Reformation appear in the teaching of the Waldenses only about two sacraments: baptism and the Eucharist, as well as in the denial of the veneration of the Virgin, saints and icons.

One of the most prominent "reformers before the Reformation" was the English theologian of the second half of the XIV century, John Wyclif, translator of the Bible into English. In his views we find a rather sharp exposition of the doctrine of predestination and a very definite substantiation of the principle of sola Scriptura. Holy Scripture, according to the teachings of Wyclif, is the highest criterion: “if a hundred popes expressed any opinion, and if all the monks were converted to cardinals and defended this opinion, then one should not believe it if it is not based on the Holy. Scripture." Wyclif also expounded the heretical doctrine of the transubstantiation of the Holy Gifts, which subsequently had a direct impact on Protestant theology. He did not recognize the transubstantiation of bread and wine in the Eucharist and allowed only the co-presence of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Holy Gifts. Simultaneously with the criticism of the church hierarchy, he significantly expanded the church rights of the secular authorities.

The teachings of J. Wyclif were condemned in 1382. He himself, due to his enormous popularity and support from the authorities, escaped execution, but his views had a huge impact on the development of Protestant theology. In England, his ascetic preaching was reflected primarily in the Puritan movement; in Europe, Jan Hus became his closest follower.

Jan Hus lived at the turn of the XIV and XV centuries and is known, rather, as a passionate exposer of the vices of church life and a martyr. He regarded indulgences as an outrage against the grace of the Gospel and violently rebelled against church property. In his theological views, Hus does not deviate as far as Wyclif from the basic truths of the Catholic faith; he follows Wyclif only in his view of the Holy. Scripture and in the doctrine of predestination. In addition, like Blzh. Augustine, Hus taught that, along with the visible Church, there is the true Church of Christ, headed by the Savior Himself, and the chosen ones predestined for salvation are faithful to this Church. It may happen that the visible heads of the Church - popes and bishops - are among the condemned, then their power is usurpation, and they themselves are false prophets. Jan Hus also did not share the views of J. Wyclif on the Eucharist, he only demanded the restoration of communion under two types, as was customary in Orthodoxy.

Reformation doctrine of original sin

The foundations of the Protestant doctrine were formulated by M. Luther, F. Melanchthon and their associates during the German Reformation, which marked the beginning of its Lutheran branch. Therefore, the study of the general doctrinal foundations of the Reformation draws our attention primarily to Lutheranism, which has become the historical classic of Protestantism. It was the founders of Lutheranism who formulated the main principles of the Reformation in disputes with Catholic theologians. These principles, in one form or another, then inherited the main branches of the Reformation.

The origins of the doctrine of salvation by faith alone (sola fide) lie in the peculiar understanding of the nature of original sin by the fathers of the Reformation. Luther rebelled against the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church about the primordial state of man in paradise, where the opposition of reason and sensuality was restrained by grace, and in the fall he only lost it, keeping his nature intact. The independent ability to do good deeds, which achieved salvation in Catholicism, depreciated, according to the forefather of the Reformation, the saving merit of Christ. In contrast to this “virtue of thoughtlessness,” Luther needed to affirm with particular force the destructive effect of the first sin on the very nature of man, in order to deprive man of the very opportunity to do good and participate in his salvation, for it belongs only to the will of the Redeemer.

So, the state of man's primordial innocence was by nature distinguished not simply by the absence of sin, but by the highest perfection of his spiritual abilities, which were in complete harmony with the sensual side of his being. It was "perfect righteousness", agreement not only in human nature, but also in his relationship with the Creator. As the “Apology of the Augsburg Confession” says: “The natural forces of man, embraced by the general concept of the “image of God”, were naturally directed towards God as their direct and quite accessible goal”, i.e. man had access to the possibility of true knowledge of God and unity with Him. There was nothing supernatural in this state of the human race, "little diminished by the angels," for Protestant theology. In contrast to the Catholic tradition, which describes the primordial state of man in similar colors, explaining it by the influence of “the grace of primordial righteousness,” the fathers of the Reformation considered such a state to be natural, innate to man at his creation.

But the more colorfully the Protestant theology describes the perfection of the primordial man in paradise, the more bleak becomes the depth of his fall after the exile. The effect of the fall into sin is not limited to the loss of God-created perfection; man falls into the exact opposite state. On the one hand, a person has lost his original righteousness, on the other hand, he has acquired a tendency to evil, he has become an enemy of God, and this enmity brings condemnation upon him. The “Formula of Concord” teaches: “it is necessary to believe that, after his fall, he lost his original righteousness, which belonged to him by nature, or the image of God ... instead of the image of God that he lost, there occurred ... the deepest ... corruption of his whole nature.” The soul of man became dead before God, and the image of God in fallen man, according to the definition of the same "Formula of Concord", was replaced by a pillar of salt, into which Lot's wife had once turned. Man has become a "moral idol", unable not only to strive for goodness, but even to desire it.

If Eastern Christianity does not allow complete enslavement of human nature by original sin and preserves in it the possibility of moral choice with the help of divine grace, then the Reformation affirmed the complete dominance of the sinful principle in man. Luther expressed himself very sharply on this subject: “The human will is like a horse. God sits on her, she runs where God wants and directs; sits on her, she runs where the devil drives her. This idea of ​​the complete inability of a person to choose between good and evil subsequently provided the basis for the development of Calvin's doctrine of predestination.

Depriving a person of the possibility of striving for good very soon developed into moral relativism - some reformers began to teach that Christians should not fulfill the commandments given to the Jews, etc. Therefore, Luther's categoricalness was significantly softened by Melanchthon, as well as by the subsequent development of the Lutheran doctrine. So the "Formula of Concord" already distinguishes on the basis of St. Scripture is our nature, in which it lives, and sin, which lives in our nature, but, nevertheless, has not become identical with it. Sin is from the devil, and nature is from God, sin has become only its quality, but not nature itself, which has retained the power of difference from it. Therefore, despite the fall, she retained a limited possibility of goodness, called by Melanchthon "the righteousness of the flesh." From such righteousness differs the righteousness of God or spiritual righteousness, already completely beyond the control of human effort, as this "Augsburg Confession" defines: "The human will, apart from the Holy Spirit, has no power to accomplish the righteousness of God or spiritual righteousness." This spiritual righteousness is actually the realm of soteriology, in which the salvation of man takes place. The beginning and driving force of this kind of righteousness belongs exclusively to the grace of God. In the words of the same “Augsburg Confession”: “Although we recognize freedom and the ability to perform external deeds of the law behind the forces of man, we do not ascribe to these forces spiritual deeds, such as true fear of God, true faith in God. ... These are the works of the first table, which the human heart cannot do apart from the Holy Spirit.”

As a result, the Reformation leaves a person only limited freedom of choice, but not action. Man has only the ability to passively submit to the grace of the Almighty acting in him, instead of striving for good, only non-resistance to him is left to man. The humiliation of human nature lies in the fact that it is only capable of resisting or obeying God, but is unworthy of assisting Him.

It is easy to see that in the Lutheran doctrine of original sin, the dispute of the Blessed Ones reappears. Augustine and Pelagius. Luther inherited the harshest forms of the teachings of the Blessed Ones. Augustine in the denial of man's freedom after the fall and his dependence in his salvation solely on the action of the grace of God. Suffice it to say that Luther's views were formed under the direct influence of the vicar general of the Augustinian order, John Staupitz, to whom Luther owes his acquaintance and his ardent adherence to the teachings of bliss. Augustine.

Reformation doctrine of salvation by faith alone (sola fide)

The Augustinian understanding of original sin provided the necessary theological premise for the cornerstone of the Reformation—the doctrine of salvation by faith alone— sola fide. The inner lie of Catholic soteriology was clearly recognized by many eminent representatives of the Roman Church. The “piecework” understanding of salvation, in which a person satisfied the justice of God with his good deeds, was, according to Luther, the greatest blasphemy, for instead of the Lord, a person believed salvation in his own effort and belittled the merit of the Redeemer. As the “Augsburg Confession” says: “Whoever confesses that he has earned grace through works, he neglects the merit of Christ and ... seeks the path to God besides Christ, by human forces.” The Reformation took up arms against this teaching with all its might, and as the only condition for obtaining justifying grace, established a saving faith that turned directly to Christ. With his characteristic categoricalness, Luther contrasted the ritual faith of Catholicism with faith - as the ultimate expression of the deep disposition of the human soul.

Historically, this doctrine began to develop in Catholicism itself long before the Reformation. For example, in the XII century. similar views were expressed by Bernard of Clairvaux, then by John Wessel, who lived in the 15th century. The latter, in particular, taught that it is impossible to earn salvation by good deeds, because a person's guilt before God is metaphysically incommensurable with his earthly zeal. In addition, the law of the Church is not something perfect, so that by its exact fulfillment it would be possible to be justified before God, and not a single person is able to adequately fulfill all the prescriptions of the law. One of the prominent Catholic hierarchs of the 16th century, Cardinal Contarini, in his Treatise or Epistle on Justification, also expounded views very close to the Reformation teaching on justification by faith alone.

Roots sola fide lay in those distorted ideas about God and His relationship to man that dominated the Catholic Middle Ages, when God's justice supplanted His mercy. The idea of ​​God as the Grand Inquisitor replaced the idea of ​​a saving God, and it was no longer the image of the meek Savior, but the horrors of hellish torment that served as the motivating force for good. The pressure of this horror gave rise to a thirst for guaranteed salvation, a person wanted to know for sure that he would escape hell, but good deeds did not give him such confidence, because, according to the Schmalkalden Articles: “satisfaction for sins is impossible because no one knows how much he must do good for sin alone, to say nothing of all.” The desire to know about one's salvation prompted the ordinary Christian consciousness to rush with all its might to faith, as to an instant and guaranteed sign of salvation, and in sola fide we see the ultimate expression of the thirst for guaranteed salvation, to which the Catholic Middle Ages, frightened by the horrors of hell, aspired. Luther himself admitted that the motive for his personal protest was the constant uncertainty about his own salvation: “My situation was such that, although I was an infallible monk, I still stood before God, like a miserable sinner, with a troubled conscience, and I besides, there was no certainty that my merits would soften him. Therefore, I did not love the just God and murmured against Him. ... Further, I understood that the justification of God is righteousness, by which the grace and manifest mercy of God justify us by faith. Only then did I feel reborn, as if I had passed through an open door to heaven.” With this confession, Luther expressed the feelings of thousands of good Catholics, who later turned into good Protestants.

The idea of ​​salvation only through faith developed mainly from a peculiar interpretation of the epistles of St. Paul, so revered by Luther. As the Augsburg Confession says: “We cannot receive forgiveness of sins and justification before God by our merits, but we receive their forgiveness and are cleansed before God out of mercy, by faith in Christ, we believe that Christ suffered for us and for Him for us sin is forgiven, righteousness and eternal life are granted. For God will consider this faith and count it as justification before Him, as St. Paul".

Man does not need to worry about the additional satisfaction of God with his works, which was demanded by the Catholic Church. “A man is afraid of punishment, and now he is pointed to the death of Jesus Christ, as such a great, excessive satisfaction with the truth of God that this truth no longer ... has the right to demand anything else from a person, any other satisfactions.” Human efforts, in this case, are not only superfluous, but also dangerous, because they interfere with the direct action of the grace of God. Christ brought for us such a payment, which provided us with forgiveness before the truth of God, and the assimilation of this all-encompassing merit of Christ occurs through faith. Once a person believes that the merit has been brought for him, then he is included in its saving action.

What is this saving faith that makes a person "a vessel for assimilating the merits of Christ." Faith is not a personal merit of a person and not the fruit of his inner development, it does not belong to him, but descends from above as a special gift from God. Luther wrote of this: "faith is not a human thought that I myself could produce, but a divine power in the heart." His famous words that “everything happens according to God’s unchanging determination. God works good and evil in us; saves us without our merit and accuses us without guilt" in this case are not an exaggeration, for a person becomes an involuntary, unconscious bearer of grace acting in him, and " sola fide" became the Protestant "opus operata". A person can and should only touch Christ with his thought in order to deserve eternal life. One has only to be sure of one's own salvation in order to possess it in reality, for justifying faith combines an appeal to God and His action, in the words of Luther: "thoughts about the work of salvation, and it will be your property." As Archim. Chrysanthos: “Protestantism put the principle “I believe, therefore I am saved” at the forefront.

What gives a person this satisfaction with Christ's sacrifice of God's justice? In this satisfaction, justification is given to him, but not as deliverance from sin, but as deliverance from punishment for it, for, according to one of the symbolic books: “Justification does not remove sin, for it is deep, but covers it.” “For the sake of our Advocate Christ, God deigns to regard us as perfectly righteous and holy, although sin in our flesh has not yet been removed and mortified, He does not want to see it and does not punish for it.”

The essence of the justification that the Protestant seeks to achieve by faith is not "deliverance from sin, damnation and death", but, like Catholicism, deliverance from punishment. This punishment is canceled by proclaiming the righteousness of a person, but not because of his internal moral purification, but on account of the sacrifice of Christ. “In justification, the righteousness of Christ is assimilated to us, without the fact that we ourselves in our moral nature have become righteous.” This proclamation is called "pronuncation", and in it God refuses to present an account for sin, there is a cancellation of moral debts on the fact of faith.

But what should a Lutheran do after his faith has achieved reconciliation with God and the "writing off" of sins? As already mentioned, obvious moral considerations did not allow the reformers to completely abandon the works of virtue. Symbolic books talk a lot about the so-called living or active faith, which "necessarily gives rise to new aspirations and deeds." However, the "Apology" immediately stipulates that "good deeds are necessary not for justification, but ... as the fruit and result of justification", i.e. The Reformation, although it admits active goodness, denies its participation in the salvation of man.

As already mentioned, the theological and historical basis of the doctrine of salvation through faith was the oppressive uncertainty of medieval Catholicism in its salvation. A person always strives to secure such confidence for himself: “under certain conditions, a Christian should be completely calm about his salvation.” The Reformation gave ordinary religious consciousness something that it could not get in Catholicism - the desired assurance of salvation, which comes immediately after belief. It is this sense of guaranteed salvation that separates the Protestant world more than anything else from the Orthodox tradition, for in it it inevitably loses this guarantee of salvation, security. afterlife that man so longs for. With a certain stretch, we can say that justification by faith, which turns into universal justification, is an attempt by a weak-minded humanity to theologically secure itself from the coming Last Judgment, to pass, like Luther, through the open door to paradise.

Although the Reformation rejected the service of a man-slave in salvation, it retained the logic of man's relationship with God, Who is at enmity with fallen humanity with all the power of His might. Patriarch Sergius expressed this worldview in the following way: “According to Protestant teaching, it turns out that God was always angry with a person ... Then, suddenly seeing a person’s faith in Jesus Christ, God reconciles with a person and no longer considers him His enemy, although a person even after this can still sin, but with impunity.

Accordingly, the understanding of the essence of that change in the relationship between God and man, which is called salvation or justification, also differs. His goal is not to get rid of sin, but to avoid punishment for it. Deliverance from sin requires an inner change in man, while the right to deliver from the punishment of sin belongs to God, so salvation remains "an act ... taking place in God, and not in man."

If Western Christianity, both in the Catholic and Protestant traditions, mainly sought a way to change the attitude of God towards man, then the East has always called on man himself to change his attitude towards God, Who remains unchanged in love for His creation. Therefore, the West thought so deeply about what kind of propitiatory tribute - deeds or faith - is more pleasing to God in order to get rid of the punishment for man. The religious consciousness of the Eastern Church often left this question aside, because it always considered a change in the attitude of a person himself to God, i.e., as a necessary condition for salvation. spiritual and moral change. Catholicism saw the way to salvation in man's own effort, the Reformation gave it entirely to the will of God, but in both cases, the very content of salvation remained unchanged. God either justified a person, satisfying His justice with his good deeds, or forgave him by faith, removing from him the guilt for sin, but in both cases the soul of the person being saved did not undergo a saving change, the person did not have to change his attitude towards God, to gain eternal life.

In Orthodox belief, the basis of human salvation is not the number of good deeds or the fact of faith, but the process of changing a person's attitude to God, i.e. spiritual and moral rebirth of the personality. For this rebirth both faith and works are equally necessary, the unity of active faith. As the Circular Epistle of the Eastern Patriarchs of 1723 says: “We believe that a person is justified not just by faith alone, but by faith, rushed by love (i.e., faith as an active force), that is, through faith and works. Not only the ghost of faith, but the faith that is in us through works justifies us in Christ.

Patriarch Sergius defined the correlation of faith and deeds in the Orthodox teaching on salvation in the following way: “One should not ask for what Human receives salvation, but you need to ask How Human makes your salvation." Both faith and works equally participate in the return of a person to God, they are equal components of the salvific change of the human personality, which destroys sin in a person and leads him to salvation.

We must also note the unparalleled impact that the Reformation had on the public consciousness of the West and, ultimately, on the formation of Western civilization as a whole. It is with the influence of the Reformation that the end of the Middle Ages and the formation of the consciousness of the new time is connected. The Reformation changed the religious motivation of society, the result of which was a change in the very direction historical development, a change in the type of socio-religious consciousness.

The religious consciousness of the Middle Ages was in tense uncertainty about its salvation, in fear of the daily depicted horrors of hell. In an effort to protect himself, a person was forced to constantly fill the treasury of good deeds, which was invariably emptied by new sins. The Reformation at once liberated the human conscience from this oppression, universal salvation depreciated the deeds of virtue, they were needed only to calm the conscience. At the same time, the Reformation directed this liberated energy to the practical arrangement of earthly life, making it the basis for the industrial development of the Protestant countries. His successes were ultimately able to break down Catholic resistance and laid the foundation for the modern industrial-technocratic civilization of the West, which became the historical product of the religious half-life of Western Christianity.

Reformation doctrine of Holy Scripture and Tradition (sola Scriptura). Institute of Symbolic Books

The Reformation began as an attempt to purify church life, to return to the ideal of evangelical early Christianity. According to the thought of its fathers, the entire development of the Church in the post-evangelical era was an unconditional decline, in which human traditions overshadowed the gospel truth. Therefore, it is necessary to return to its original source - the Holy Scriptures and discard all later layers - the Holy Tradition. The only doctrinal authority for Protestants all over the world remains St. Scripture, which is expressed by the principle sola Scriptura- only Scripture. So, salvation is only by faith - sola fide but faith only according to the Scriptures - sola Scriptura. Indeed, one of the symbolic books of the Lutheran Church defines: “We believe, teach and confess that the only rule and guiding thread by which any teaching and all teachers can be judged and evaluated are only the prophetic and apostolic writings of the Old and New Testaments.” With the same certainty, the attitude to St. Tradition: "All human decrees and traditions are contrary to the Gospel and the doctrine of faith in Christ... on the basis of the deeds and words of the Holy Fathers, it is impossible to determine the dogmas of faith."

Like salvation by personal faith, the principle sola Scriptura proceeded from the general idea of ​​the Reformation about the legitimacy of a personal, unmediated appeal to God, which the Reformation asserted with particular force. The power of salvation belongs only to God, but every Christian must turn to Him for its action on his own, without any mediation, earthly or heavenly. Formerly, the Catholic Church was the mediator of salvation, for she communicated to the faithful the saving power of the sacraments. The Church was also a mediator in the faith, for it offered a person to know God their own experience of knowing about Him - Sacred Tradition. Between man and Revelation in Holy Scripture, she affirmed through the Holy. Traditions. In an effort to destroy any mediation between God and man, the Reformation left only St. Scripture, opening which, everyone could directly know about God from His words. In the cult of St. Scriptures personal doctrinal experience supplanted the doctrinal experience of the Church.

Holy Scripture has become a source not only of knowledge about God, but also of His sanctifying action, the guidance of the Holy Spirit in the interpretation of the Holy. Scriptures. As Luther wrote, “here, in the word of God, is the house of God, here heaven is opened...” Appeal to St. Scripture acquires a partly sacramental meaning, for, according to the reformers, the Spirit of God, which inspired its authors, "will guide into all truth even those who learn from the Bible the law of God."

In addition to dogmatic reasons, the cult of St. The Scriptures had their own historical background for the Reformation. As already mentioned, Protestantism developed solely as a reaction to the errors of Catholicism. Indeed, the ecclesiastical authority of the Roman Catholic Church for a long time limited access to the Holy. Scripture and, conversely, gave excessive importance to the Holy. Tradition, often using it to justify their arbitrariness. Naturally, the first thought of the leaders of the Reformation was the desire to deprive their opponents of the opportunity to refer to the authority of St. Tradition and contrast it with Scripture.

Thus, the only source of knowledge about faith is St. Scripture, for the reformers it was also a fulcrum in the fight against Rome, the authority of the papacy was opposed to the authority of the public, non-hierarchical - the Word of God.

Allowing access to St. Scripture, the fathers of the Reformation hoped that no one would go beyond it. However, it soon became clear that hopes for the internal unity of the biblical testimony turned out to be too naive, and the absence of criteria for interpreting its text ends in religious arbitrariness. How serious this danger was, Luther himself testifies in a letter to Zwingli: “If the world continues to exist for a long time, then I proclaim that with various interpretations The Scriptures that are with us, there is no other way to maintain the unity of faith, how to accept the decisions of the Councils and resort to the protection of ecclesiastical authority. If the Catholic tradition still had its roots in the past, linking a person with a previous experience of communion with God, then after the Reformation, each of its followers was forced to develop their own experience of communion with God, losing any criteria for the legitimacy of such an experience.

Now the Reformation, like Catholicism after the Great Schism, needed its own restraining authority. The need to limit the arbitrariness of doctrine led to the emergence of the so-called symbolic books of Protestantism, under the name of which its own tradition, the second main source of Protestant dogma, is actually hidden. Each Protestant movement has its own symbolic books, but the very fact of their existence contradicts the original principle of the Reformation - sola Scriptura.

This contradiction is already reflected in the early symbolic books of the German Reformation. For example, the "Formula of Concord" proclaims that "one St. Scripture should be recognized as the criterion, norm and rule of faith, while the symbols have no authoritative meaning in matters of faith, but only serve as evidence of our faith. But, on the other hand, the same “Formula of Concord” prescribes that “all other books should be checked with symbols as to whether Christian ones are expounded in them correctly and in accordance with the word of God” and determines that the symbols contain a teaching that “existed and must always exist in the Church.

The ecclesiological foundations of the Reformation

The doctrine of the Reformation about the Church is the cumulative expression of its basic principles. In it we can first of all observe the influence of the doctrine of salvation by faith. The act of faith, as an expression of personal, subjective religious experience, in which a person turned to God directly, bypassing all intermediaries, necessarily led to the rejection of the grace-filled mediation of the Church and her sacraments. Another postulate of the Reforation - sola Scriptura rejected its doctrinal mediation, asserting the right of every Christian to his own interpretation of the truths of St. Scriptures. If the Catholic Church erected a hierarchically organized intermediary apparatus between man and God - the famous Catholic pyramid, then the leaders of the Reformation did not find anything better than simply getting rid of it, leaving man alone with God. The Church cannot be a mediator in the communion with God of the faithful, for all of them, having the only Intercessor Jesus Christ, are taught from Him, are sanctified directly by His Spirit, and each believer is directly connected with Christ by his faith.

Historically, the Protestant view of the Church developed as a reaction to the significant shortcomings of Catholic ecclesiology, which was dominated by the idea of ​​the Church as an ideological community; the spiritual principle was oppressed, the existence of the sacraments, transforming this society into the Body of Christ. The Reformation opposed the unearthly and invisible to the earthly, visible image of the Church. In the words of Luther himself: “The Holy Christian Church says: I believe in the holy Christian Church, but the Papal Church says: I see the Christian Church. The one says: "The church is neither here nor there" - and this one says: "The church is here and there."

This desire for a spiritual image of the Church was quite natural and justified. The Reformation tried to restore the inferiority spirituality Catholic churchliness, but falsely determined the nature of this spiritual principle. Instead of the Church being accomplished in the sacraments, the Reformation affirmed the image of the Church being accomplished by the faith of each of her faithful. Having renounced the earthly image of the Church as a visible community, Luther turned not to the heavenly, sacramental beginning of church life, but replaced the Catholic extreme with the opposite - instead of the experience of the earthly community, he affirmed the religious experience of the individual as the basis of churchness.

The Reformation opposed the subjective principle of faith to the objectified earthly image of the Church in Catholicism, and a person “consisting of two natures, body and soul, ... is not considered a member of Christianity according to the body that performs certain deeds, but according to the soul, i.e. by faith”, i.e. a person enters the Church and abides in it not by the grace-filled action of her sacraments, but by his own faith. "For the unity of the church, no human institutions are needed ... justification that comes through faith is not bound by external ceremonies." The Church exists not because the sacraments are performed in it, but because her faithful believe, she is "a spiritual gathering of souls in one faith." Justifying faith imparts to the church its inherent quality of holiness, for those who receive the gift of faith are sanctified by it, endowing their holiness to the invisible church itself.

The second general Christian problem that the Reformation tried and failed to solve was the problem of sinfulness in the Church. The entire history of Christianity and the Christian Middle Ages in particular testified to the fact that the Church is often filled with unworthy people who destroy its holiness with their sins. How can one reconcile the sinfulness of the earthly existence of the Church with her Divine origin and calling? The Reformation Fathers attempted to separate the righteous from the sinners with the doctrine of the invisible Church. Among those who call themselves Christians and form the visible Church, the true Church abides invisibly, to which belong the true believers and the righteous justified by this faith. “The hypocrites and the evil (i.e., sinners) can also be members of the church by external fellowship,” but they do not belong to it internally, in its essence, i.e. The Church of the Saints always invisibly separates itself from the sinners temporarily residing in it, but this separation is clearly revealed only on the Last Judgment. Just as faith is an internal and invisible principle, accordingly, the Church, to which a person joins through faith, must become invisible, not subject to external manifestations. This true Church is invisible and, being based only on faith, she herself becomes an object of faith. According to the views of the fathers of the Reformation, this true invisible Church has at all times been within the visible Church, and "the invisible Church is in the visible as the soul in the body," but it visibly manifested itself in the world in the era of the Reformation. In this definition of the spiritual and invisible essence of the Church, Luther directly correlates it with the Kingdom of God, about which the Savior spoke.

This attempt at purification developed in Protestantism into a denial of the visible earthly existence of the Church, but the very first steps towards the establishment of a spiritual invisible Church forced its founders to change their own convictions, for the invisible Church was turning into an unknown Church, which was in danger of becoming non-existent in the eyes of the faithful. Immediately after the destruction of the earthly ecclesiastical building of Catholicism, the Reformation was compelled to enclose its own ecclesiastical building with outward signs, and thus give it that visible form which it so zealously rejected. The Apologia asserts that "the True Church also has external signs by which it is recognized, namely: it is undoubtedly where the word of God is purely preached and the sacraments are performed according to the word."

The denial of the mediatory service of the Church, which proceeds from the postulate of salvation by faith, destroyed, first of all, the sacramental and hierarchical beginning of the Church, as well as the mediatory service of the Heavenly Church, which manifested itself in the rejection of the veneration of the Mother of God and the saints.

The destruction of the idea of ​​the Church, which sanctified the life of the believer with its sacraments, changed the whole structure of religious life. A person turns to God with his own faith, and only his inner confidence in the merits of the Redeemer, which does not need any mediation to Communion with God, can be saving. If there is no need for the intermediary, binding service of the Church, which elevates a person to God, then, accordingly, there is no place for the sacraments as a special image of the manifestation of God's grace in the world, for it is given directly to the believer. Logic development the doctrine of justification by faith alone must inevitably lead to a denial of the grace-filled saving power of the sacraments; they cannot give more than justifying faith gives.

A common feature of the sacraments in all branches of the Reformation is the denial of the real presence of God in the Eucharistic bread and wine and, accordingly, the denial of the connection between the Eucharist and the Sacrifice of Christ. Thus, the nature of the sacraments has undergone such a significant distortion that the Orthodox Church cannot recognize their sufficient worth of grace and partially recognizes only the confession of the foundations of the faith in baptism, supplementing it with Orthodox chrismation.

As already mentioned, the denial of the mediatory service of the Church was expressed in the consistent rejection of both the sacramental and hierarchical principles of church life. The Reformation replaced the hierarchical principle with the idea of ​​a universal or royal priesthood of the faithful, which, of course, was deprived of its sacramental dignity. Like the Old Testament Korah, Dathan and Aviron, who conjured that: “all society, all are holy,” Luther proclaimed: “We are all shepherds, because we are all Christians, we have one gospel, one faith, one Spirit ... So, the priesthood in the New Testament is the common property of everyone and everyone, only in spirit, and not in persons”, “why do we allow bishops and councils to decide and conclude what they want? We ourselves have before our eyes the word of God: we must know, and not them, what is right or wrong - and they must yield to us and listen to our word. So, every Christian is a divine person, enlightened by his own study of the Holy. Scripture, and containing the fullness of spiritual authority. Through salvation by faith and enlightenment by Scripture, the true believer gains direct communion with Christ: “Every Christian is a personal revelation of the true Church,” for all are baptized with one baptism and have the same rights in the Church.

Although the Reformation did not directly reject the institution of the priesthood, its nature changed. The appointment of a priest is not to communicate the gifts of the grace of the Holy Spirit, but only to teach the true faith and educate the people of God, i.e. the priest becomes a preacher. The essence of ordination, according to the teachings of the "Apology of the Augsburg Confession", "should be assumed only in the appointment of preachers, but not in the communication of special gifts of grace that distinguish priests from laity." Naturally, where there are no special gifts of grace in the ministry of a priest, there is no need for apostolic succession. The election of clergy (the so-called messenger from below) is the work of all the faithful, as the Apologia says, “the appointment of priests is granted to the Church by God’s command,” and in this she does not rely on the uninterrupted flow of Christ’s grace, but she herself endows with the necessary authority.

Having destroyed the mediatory service of the earthly Church, the leaders of the Reformation naturally rejected the mediation of the Church of Heaven, the Mother of God and the saints. This again reveals the blood relationship between Protestantism and Catholicism, for the denial of the veneration of the Mother of God and the saints developed as a reaction to their excessive veneration by the Catholic Middle Ages. The author of the Apology was largely right in asserting that the worship of the saints “offends Christ and His good deed because people trust the saints instead of Christ and are mad that Christ is a strict judge, and the saints are merciful ... intercessors.” To render worship to human achievement was for the reformers the greatest possible blasphemy in relation to the saving faith, therefore statements about the cult of saints are particularly harsh. For the same reasons, the veneration of the Virgin Mary, as the embodiment of the highest conceivable holiness of man, as an all-holy, becomes completely inappropriate in the Reformation. The apology says this about the attitude towards Her: “She is worthy of every highest honor, but should not be considered equal to Christ ... If, however ... they want to receive Christ’s redemption through Her, then they recognize Christ not as a Redeemer, but as a formidable vengeful judge” . In response, we can cite the words from the Epistle of the Eastern Patriarchs: “We ask the saints not as any gods, not as autocratic possessors of divine gifts, but as such persons who, having greater boldness towards God and closer access to Him than we, can mediate between Him and us by their intercession, and how holy persons can be heard by God rather than we who remain in sins.

The Reformation also made significant differences in the moral teaching of the Catholic Church, which was excessively burdened with asceticism, which sometimes turned into a savage denial of the dignity of the bodily nature of man. Asceticism was for Luther and his associates the same insult to the Sacrifice of Christ as the veneration of the saints; meaningless, from their point of view, the pursuit of exploits violated the main commandment of the Reformation - salvation is only by faith.

Lutheranism

Lutheranism arose on the basis of German religious consciousness during the German Reformation, which formed the general foundations of the religious consciousness of Protestantism. The founding fathers of Lutheranism were M. Luther and F. Melanchthon, as well as their closest followers. From Germany, it spread to a number of European countries: Austria, Hungary, France, the Scandinavian countries, and then North America. Now there are about 75 million Lutherans in the world and about 200 Lutheran churches. 50 million Lutherans belong to the Lutheran World Union, formed in 1947.

Very important among them belongs to the "Augsburg Confession" compiled in 1530 on the basis of several early Lutheran doctrinal writings. It got its name from the city in which the German emperor Charles V held a diet to reconcile the reformers with the Catholic Church. It sets out the basic dogmatic ideas of Lutheranism about God, sin, justification, the Church and the sacraments, as opposed to the Catholic doctrine.

Shortly after the announcement of the Confession, a refutation of it was received from the Catholic theologians who were present at the Sejm, and it served as a pretext for Melanchthon to write the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, which is close to the confession in content, but much longer, differs in a sharper polemical tone and in detail. reveals the doctrine of original sin in connection with the dogma of justification by faith.

In 1536, Luther wrote the so-called "Schmalkaldic articles" or paragraphs. Briefly repeating the contents of the first two books, this short work supplements it with the teaching on the trinity of the Divine Persons and on the Person of Jesus Christ.

Equally important in the Lutheran world are Luther's Large and Small Catechisms, compiled by him in 1529. They are written as a guide in matters of faith and are devoted to the interpretation of the Creed, the Lord's prayer and commandments, and other general truths of faith. The Large Catechism was intended for teachers and preachers, while the Small, being an abbreviated version of the Large, was intended for all believers and for study in schools.

The Formula of Concord, adopted in 1580, completes a number of symbolic books of Lutheranism. It was compiled by a group of theologians after Luther's death and is devoted to considering the main provisions of Lutheranism in comparison with the teachings of the Reformed, as well as resolving the contradictions that arose among Lutheranism itself.

Of the seven sacraments recognized both in Orthodoxy and in Catholicism, Lutheranism has practically retained only two: baptism and the Eucharist. Repentance also preserves the features of the sacrament, the rest are recognized as rites. Only baptism and the Eucharist have an undeniable divine origin, for they are based on the clear testimonies of St. Scriptures. According to Luther and his associates, only these sacraments have types in Old Testament- circumcision and the Paschal lamb, all the rest are church institutions, have no direct justification in Scripture and do not directly serve to affirm saving faith.

Lutheran doctrine perceives the sacrament not as a way of grace in the world, but as a sign of a person's communion with Christ, as "a reminder of our state of grace," according to Melanchthon. They are symbols of our union with God, like the rainbow after the flood. According to the definition of the Augsburg Confession, the sacraments should be "signs and means of the Divine will for Christians, appointed to arouse and strengthen the faith in those who use them." The whole power of these sacred rites is in reminding us of our salvation in Christ, which is accomplished once and for all, therefore, to demand and strive for a special grace-filled effect, in addition to what has already been granted to us by justifying faith, means to humiliate the redemption of Christ.

Unlike the teaching of the Eastern Church, which sees in baptism deliverance from original sin and renewal, the rebirth of human nature, Lutheran baptism does not free it from original sin itself, but only from punishment for sin, this is not rebirth from sin, but an amnesty. The fullness of the redemptive merits of Christ, imputed to the baptized according to his faith, completely covers any of his sins, depriving the will of a person of the visible need to strengthen and develop the state of grace, to which he joins in baptism.

The Lutheran sacrament of repentance is the ongoing action of baptism, and its existence is lawful because its purpose is the remission of sins through faith in Christ, it enlivens this faith, makes it real in a person's life.

Consistently confessing that the sacrament is only a reminiscent sign in nature, Luther nevertheless did not dare to declare the Eucharist to be the same sign; it retained reality and did not become a symbol. It preserves the dignity of the sacrament because it reminds the faithful of the foundation of their faith, the Calvary sacrifice of Christ. But the Lutheran understanding of the Eucharist rests on two main differences - the denial of the transubstantiation of the bread and wine of the Eucharist into the Body and Blood of Christ and the denial of the meaning of the Eucharist as a sacrifice.

Lutheranism's denial of transubstantiation went back to the tradition of nominalism, in particular, to the works of W. Ockham and P. Lombard. In the course of the Reformation, fierce disputes unfolded between supporters of the symbolic understanding of the Eucharist and those who asserted the reality of the presence of the Body and Blood of Christ without the transubstantiation of bread and wine. The first direction was fixed in the Swiss branch of the Reformation, the second - in the German one, therefore the Lutheran view of the sacrament of the Eucharist was formed in confrontation with the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church on transubstantiation, on the one hand, and with supporters of the symbolic view, on the other.

According to the teaching of symbolic books, bread and wine are not transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ, they do not change their essence: “We reject and condemn ... the doctrine of transubstantiation ... as if bread and wine, having been consecrated ... lose ... their substance and become the substance of the Body and Blood of Christ.” The internal inconsistency of the Lutheran understanding of the sacrament of the Eucharist lies in the fact that, having refused transubstantiation, Luther could not completely abandon the real, invisible presence of Christ in bread and wine, the feeling of a former Catholic monk restrained him, so he began to teach about the co-presence of the Body and Blood of Christ, which does not change the essence of the Eucharistic bread and wine. As the "Formula of Concord" says: "The body of Christ is present and taught under bread, with bread, in bread (sub pane, cum pane, in pane) ... by this way of expression we wish to teach the mysterious union of the unchanging substance of bread with the Body of Christ", moreover, the expression "under the bread" (sub pane) is only a modification of the Latin Eucharistic formulation "under the guise of bread" (sub specie pane). All analogies of symbolic books, however, do not indicate the image of the presence of the Body and Blood of Christ in wine and bread. The truth of the presence of the Body and Blood in the bread and wine of the Eucharist does not depend on the internal state of the one who performs the sacrament, i.e. the reality of the sacrament retains its objective nature: “Our faith does not produce the sacrament; it is produced only by the surest word and the establishment of the almighty God ”(“ The Formula of Concord ”). On the other hand, the validity of the sacrament also depends on the participation of the faithful with it, for, according to the same “Formula of Concord”, “mere blessing or pronunciation of the establishing words of Christ does not produce the sacrament, if all the actions related to the supper are not observed, according to the establishment of Christ. ; for example, if the blessed bread is not distributed, is not accepted by believers, if they do not become participants in it. Moreover, the realization of the co-presence of the Body and Blood of Christ with the bread and wine of the Eucharist occurs at the moment of eating bread and wine, “outside of eating, bread should not be considered sacred, then there is no sacrament”, therefore, the validity of the sacrament, its objective component depends on its subjective side. – the participation of the faithful in it.

The “Epistle of the Eastern Patriarchs on the Orthodox Faith” of 1723 pays special attention to the refutation of the Lutheran idea of ​​the Eucharist: “We believe that in the sacrament of the Eucharist our Lord is not symbolic, not figurative ... and not through the penetration of bread, so that the Divinity of the Word enters into what is offered for Bread is essential to the Eucharist, as the followers of Luther ... explain unworthily, but truly and truly, so that after the consecration of bread and wine, the bread is changed into the very true Body of the Lord ... and the wine is changed ... into the very true Blood of the Lord.

The second essential difference of the Lutheran Eucharist is that it does not assimilate the meaning of the sacrifice, for the true sacrifice of the Savior was made once and for all and is not repeated, so that by performing it anew the dignity of His feat would not be diminished. According to the Augsburg Confession: “The sacred sacrament was established not to be offered as a sacrifice for sins (for the sacrifice was made before), but to revive our faith and comfort our conscience... Therefore, the sacrament requires faith and without faith it is in vain.” This view developed as a reaction to the extreme abuses of the Catholic Middle Ages, when the Eucharist became a means of receiving grace and fulfilling desires, a sacrifice made by people to propitiate an angry God. In the struggle against Catholic distortions of the sacrament, Lutheranism lost its meaning and saving effect and excluded the faithful from the fruits of Christ's redemption. It is noteworthy that the Fathers of the Reformation repeatedly referred to the image of the Eucharist as the sacrament of thanksgiving, which was preserved by Eastern Christianity, in contrast to the Catholic idea of ​​the Eucharist as a sacrifice offered to avert the punishment for sin.

Calvinism

Undoubtedly, Germany was and remains the cradle of the Reformation, but evidence of its objective maturation in the bowels of the Catholic Middle Ages, struck by an internal crisis, was the emergence of a second powerful center of church protest in Switzerland. It arose simultaneously with the beginning of the German movement, but practically independently of it. Soon the differences in the interpretation of the general principles of the Reformation became so significant that already in 1529 there was a separation of the German and Swiss branches of the Reformation, which consolidated the independent existence of a group of Protestant movements, collectively known as the Reformed Churches. At present, there are significant Reformed churches in England, Hungary, the Netherlands, Romania, France, Germany, Slovakia, the USA, Switzerland, as well as in a number of third world countries. The most representative international organization is the "World Alliance of Reformed Churches", which in 1875 united in its ranks about 40 million representatives of the main currents of the Reformation.

On the whole, Reformedism or, as it is often called, Calvinism, is distinguished from Lutheranism by a greater consistency and rigidity of views. Perhaps it was precisely this circumstance that contributed to the wide spread of reformism, because its sharp, gloomy, but logically verified theological forms coincided with the religious character of the Middle Ages, on the one hand, and, on the other, satisfied that thirst for rationality in matters of faith, which had been brought up by the Catholic tradition.

The foundations of the Reformed tradition were outlined in his writings by John Calvin, a younger contemporary of the fathers of the Reformation. His main work is the famous work "Instructions in the Christian Faith". In Geneva, Calvin also proved himself to be a major public figure, he became almost the sole ruler of the city and did much to transform his life in accordance with the norms of the Reformed dogma, without stopping at the physical reprisal against his opponents. His influence both in Switzerland and in Europe was so great that in his time he earned the title of "Pope of Geneva".

There are a lot of symbolic books of the Reformation, and not all of them enjoy the same authority. First of all, the “First Catechism”, written by J. Calvin in 1536 on the basis of his “Instructions in the Christian Faith”, enjoys the greatest recognition. He expounds the doctrine of the sources of Christian knowledge, of God and His attributes, of man and the fall into sin, of the Church and the sacraments. The "Geneva Catechism" and "Geneva Agreement" are also considered to be generally authoritative beliefs (the latter work is distinguished by the most consistent presentation of the doctrine of predestination). The Gallican Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism are also widely accepted in the Reformed tradition.

Turning to the consideration of the features of the Reformed dogma, we must first of all indicate the common principle that organically connects it with Lutheranism and with the ideology of the Reformation as a whole, namely, the affirmation of salvation by faith. The Swiss reformers gave a slightly different development to this principle, and here we must turn to those contradictions in the Lutheran system of views that were never resolved by it. Twice Luther and his supporters did not dare to draw conclusions that logically followed from the foundations of their religious outlook. Both times this innuendo became the cause of fierce disputes, which did not lead to final clarity in the view of the relationship of grace to the person being saved and the sacraments, in particular, the Eucharist. The resolution of the internal inconsistency of Lutheranism in these matters is the main merit of Reformed theology, which, however, not only distanced it from the truly Christian foundations of the faith, but led to a direct contradiction with them, especially in the doctrine of unconditional predestination.

This idea, in its essence, is only the logical conclusion of the idea common to the entire Reformation about the unconditional destruction of human nature by the fall. Luther taught about "falling to the point of losing the very striving for good, about the complete moral deadness of fallen man." Calvin also proceeds from the same premise - “there is not a single part in a person that is free from sin, and therefore everything that he does is imputed to him as a sin”, but from it he draws conclusions that Luther did not know or wanted to avoid.

From the extremes of the general Protestant view of the complete decomposition of the fallen nature of man, Calvin quite logically moves to the other extreme - the position of the unconditional predestination of man's fate. Indeed, if from the hopeless depths of a person’s fall only the gift of saving faith, sent down by God, can be restored, if any of a person’s own effort is fruitless and does not matter for his salvation, then a natural question arises - why are not everyone saved equally? If a person is unable to choose good or evil, it means that this choice is made for him by Himself. If salvation does not belong to the person himself, is outside his will, then the cause of salvation or death is not in his own moral choice, but outside of him - in the realm of God's will, which determines the ways of the saving gift of faith given by one and taken away from others. So, salvation is entirely contained in the hand of God, which moves some to heavenly bliss, others to eternal torment.

At the basis of such an attitude of the Creator to man lies the idea of ​​His undivided dominion over the world, of the absolute sovereignty of the Divine. Calvin was driven by the desire to restore the true greatness of God, which Catholicism belittled by human hope in the price of human good deeds. The will of the Creator reigns over everything, including the souls of those created by Him.

Predestination allows you to finally destroy any possibility of a person’s merit in the matter of salvation, he belongs entirely to the will of God, which chooses him as its instrument, and “the good deeds that we do under the guidance of the Holy Spirit do not play a role in our justification.” A similar view belonged to Blessed. Augustine, but he did not dare to carry it out with such consistency as Calvin. Blzh. Augustine, and then Luther, preferred to speak only of predestination to salvation, not daring to "sacrifice mankind on the altar of sola fide." Calvin, on the other hand, was not afraid of double predestination - some for salvation, others for condemnation. The Lord reveals His mercy in the elect through gratia irrestibilis - an irresistible grace that they cannot resist, and He also reveals His truth in the condemned, depriving them of this grace. Proceeding from the prejudicedly interpreted saying of St. Paul from Romans 8:29, whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son”, Calvin cold-bloodedly divides all mankind into two kinds of people: a small flock chosen for salvation by virtue of the incomprehensible decision of God, in addition to all their merit, and the doomed majority, who will not be saved, despite all efforts, and are called to this world only in order to to prove that these human efforts are fruitless in the face of the sovereignty of God.

Proceeding from the concept of unconditional predestination, Calvin rejected the universality of the sacrifice on the cross and the Gospel gospel, for the Lord suffered death on the cross not for everyone, but only for those whom He Himself chose to eternal life. This provision destroys the main dogma of Christianity - the belief in the redemption of all, accomplished by the God-man, and directly contradicts the words of St. Paul " The grace of God has appeared, saving for all people" ().

Trying to soften his teaching, the Swiss reformer taught that God's predestination comes from His omniscience: "God knew everything that should happen, and He could not know, for everything happened from Him and according to His will." But this attempt only changes the form of predestination, not its essence. The reason why “God once decided in His eternal and unchanging council whom He wishes to bring to salvation and whom He wishes to put to death” remains unknown, and Calvin himself is forced to admit it: “When asked why God does this, we must answer: because that He so pleases”, the law of God prescribes to a person “excessive for him, in order to convince a person of his own impotence”, i.e. the root of the problem remains, for a person in the Calvinian understanding is deprived of the gift of choice, which he makes for him.

But the doctrine of the predetermining action of God gave rise to an inevitable contradiction - if everything is predetermined by God, then He is the culprit of evil and is responsible for everything that happens, for sin is committed not by God's permission, but by His predestination. God becomes not only a source of salvation, but also death, evil exists not by the will of people who voluntarily choose it, but by the will of God Himself, Who sends them into evil. In this, many saw an indirect revival of dualism, the equal existence of good and evil, for both exist in the world at the behest of the two-faced Calvinian Deity.

To restore the image of a perfect and good God, Calvin is forced to proclaim the relativity of the concepts of good and evil. He argues in the sense that, as an infinite being and the Creator of everything, he does not obey any law. Therefore, what is considered evil from our point of view does not have a moral quality for Him, for He is above the law, which He commanded for the fulfillment of people. For God there is no law, therefore for Him there is no transgression of the law.

Such a view actually destroys the image of God, who "is love", the source and root cause of goodness; he affirms, if not the immorality of God, then His immorality. Calvin returns to the Old Testament image of the law, which is higher than morality, good and evil lose their absolute value and from transcendental categories become temporary derivatives of the law. Such a relapse of Old Testament thinking is not surprising; on the whole, Calvinism is distinguished by an increased attention to the history of Old Israel.

The God of the Reformed remains merciful and all-forgiving to a small number of the elect. For the rest, He again acquires the familiar features of a ruthless Judge, with the only difference that if medieval Catholicism still left the opportunity to propitiate Him, then the teachings of Calvin take away this hope, turning the Christian God into a semi-pagan fate that overtakes a person without meaning and guilt. If a person is deprived of freedom, then he is not responsible for involuntary evil. Why, then, does God punish a person by not giving him the freedom to choose otherwise?

Calvin's predestination is no longer just a violation of the foundations of Christian life, but a direct destruction of them. The views of Calvin and his followers encroach on the very foundations of the Christian universe, on the image of God and the calling of man in the world, therefore the Eastern Church found it necessary to pronounce judgment on them. At the Council of Jerusalem in 1672, Calvin and his teachings were anathematized, and his preachers were called "the worst even of the infidels." The “Epistle of the Eastern Patriarchs on the Orthodox Faith” of 1723 also directly speaks against predestination: “but what blasphemous heretics say, that God predestinates or condemns, regardless of the deeds of the predestined or condemned, we consider this foolishness and impiety; for in such a case Scripture would contradict itself. It teaches that the believer is saved by faith and his works and at the same time presents God as the only author of our salvation, because ... He ... gives enlightening grace ... without destroying the free will of man.

The Orthodox understanding of God's omniscience, including His foreknowledge of the future destinies of people, has never rejected the free will of man, his conscious participation in his own salvation. Speaking of the views of blj. Augustine, we have already mentioned the brilliant formulation of St. John of Damascus: "God foresees everything, but does not predetermine everything."

The flagrant injustice of this teaching, its direct contradiction of St. The Scripture was already understood by Calvin's contemporaries, but none of the branches of modern Calvinism officially rejected this teaching, just as no one canceled the anathemas of the Orthodox hierarchs. For us, the fate of this doctrine is indicative not only as a stage in the historical development of one of the branches of the Reformation, but as a natural result of the development of one of its main theological postulates - the doctrine of salvation by faith. Consistent doctrinal development of this postulate leads, ultimately, not only to delusions, but to conclusions that are directly anti-Christian and inhuman, its internal logic leads to absurdity.

In the doctrine of the Church, Reformation also consistently develops its basic principle. The true Church is the community of the truly chosen, i.e. predestined for salvation. But the Swiss Reformation finally abolishes all the features of the hierarchical structure that Luther still retained; in Reformed ecclesiology, the administrative principle of the church resolutely supplants its mystical, sacramental nature.

As already mentioned, the Swiss Reformation finally separated from the German because of disagreements in the doctrine of the Eucharist, which did not receive its logical conclusion in the Lutheran tradition. Luther proclaimed the independence of the action of grace from any external images of its manifestation, but he did not dare to consistently apply this principle in the interpretation of the Eucharist. The reality of this sacrament is realized subjectively by everyone who approaches it, but at the same time it is associated with the objective co-presence in the Holy Gifts of the Body and Blood of the Savior.

With his characteristic consistency, Calvin cleansed the sacraments of all human participation, which is completely supplanted by predestination, which does not need gracious assistance. The Reformed tradition recognizes only two sacraments - baptism and the Eucharist. The Eucharist becomes a true symbol: “the body of Christ is not contained in bread, and we would look in vain for Him in this earthly being; such teaching is an impious superstition.” According to the teachings of Calvin, His Body and Blood are not present in the substance of the Eucharist, there is no real partaking of them in the Eucharist, and we perceive Jesus Christ Himself spiritually and invisibly: “Although the Lord is in heaven, He nourishes and gives life by the incomprehensible power of the Holy Spirit us with the substance of His Body and Blood.” Only those who have been chosen for salvation truly partake of the Spirit of God; for the rest, this communion has no effect. There is no transubstantiation, no Lutheran “co-presence” in the Reformed understanding of the Eucharist, there is only a spiritual union with the Savior, while bread and wine remain only symbols of this union.

In the understanding of the second sacrament, which was preserved in the Reformation - baptism, Calvin is close to Luther, he considers this sacrament to be a divine sign of the believer's acceptance into a grace-filled union with God, the seal of his adoption to Christ.

The Reformed Church also recognizes St. Scripture. But if Lutheranism still has respect for church tradition, the same Luther quite often quotes the fathers, the decrees of councils, then Calvin resolutely rejects any authority of the conciliar consent of the Church, her conciliar decrees, testing everything with the criterion of reason.

Particularly noteworthy is the principle of worldly asceticism, which developed on the basis of the doctrine of unconditional predestination and had a tremendous impact on the socio-economic development of countries where Calvinism became widespread, as well as Western civilization as a whole. On the one hand, an indirect result of the doctrine of unconditional predestination was a general oppression of religious activity, any religious aspirations of a person were paralyzed by the predetermination of his fate. On the other hand, predestination inevitably gave rise to the desire of everyone to learn about their predestination to salvation, and not vice versa. This desire was answered in the principle of worldly asceticism - a person could indirectly judge his predestination to salvation by worldly prosperity: the Lord blesses those chosen for heavenly salvation with prosperity in their earthly life. The principle of worldly asceticism obliged a person to increase his well-being, which, in turn, was perceived not as a person’s personal property, but as a gift from above, as a sign of God’s goodwill towards a person. Accordingly, this gift had to be used for multiplication, the wealth given by God cannot be used to satisfy one's own needs, there was a sacralization of hoarding. Under these conditions, the only way out was activity in the world, which acquired the character of consecrated labor. Needless to say, what a powerful religious motivation for socio-economic progress Calvinism provided to the emerging capitalism, and it is no accident that he gained a predominant influence in the countries of radical capitalism, for example, in the USA.

Anglicanism

The third significant branch of Protestantism is Anglicanism, which originated in the British Isles and then spread to the countries of the former British Empire. Currently, the Anglican churches are united in the so-called Anglican Commonwealth. The most significant of them are the Church of England, the Church in Wales, the Episcopal Church of Scotland, the Protestant Episcopal Church in the USA, as well as a number of churches in India, Pakistan, South Africa, Canada, Australia, etc. In total, there are about 70 million Anglicans in the world. Every 10 years, the highest hierarchs of these churches gather to discuss the most important issues at the so-called Lambeth Conferences. At the beginning of our century, prominent figures of Anglicanism stood at the origins of the "Faith and Order of the Church" movement, and to this day the Anglican Churches actively participate in the activities of the WCC.

The beginning of the Reformation in England is most often associated with the name of Henry VIII, but its creator and ideologist was his contemporary, the Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer, and the key to its success was hidden in the same general dissatisfaction with the state of the Roman Catholic Church that caused the European Reformation.

The formation in the second half of the 16th century of the third main branch of the Reformation - the Anglican - due to historical conditions, differed significantly in its nature from the birth of the German and Swiss branches. If in Europe the Reformation proceeded mainly "from below", then in England it began "from above", which was reflected in its comparative conservatism and the preservation of the hierarchical structure of the church. In addition, the English Reformation was late in time compared to the European one, and all this contributed to the originality of its development - it took on a softened character of a compromise between Rome and the Reformation in Europe. The foundations of Catholic doctrine and church life were increasingly eroded over time under the onslaught of extreme Protestantism, mainly the Calvinist tradition.

The symbolic books of the Church of England are few compared to other Protestant confessions. They are often distinguished by some deliberate theological ambiguity, vagueness. This is natural, for they were drawn up in an era of religious strife as an expression of compromise rather than principle and reflect the general duality of Anglican doctrine.

First of all, these are the so-called "39 members of the Anglican Church", which are the latest edition of the Anglican doctrine compiled by T. Cranmer on the basis of the "Augsburg Confession" and some provisions of Calvinism. They were finally approved by the Parliament of England and the church authorities only in 1571 and represent summary foundations of the Anglican faith. Of undoubted significance for the faith and life of all Anglican churches is the so-called "Book of Common Prayer", which contains the order of Anglican worship. After a number of revisions, its final approval took place in 1661, until now it remains a symbol of the church unity of the entire Anglican Commonwealth. Third symbolic book is the "Anglican Catechism", finally formed by 1604.

The Anglican Church also recognizes three Creeds as sources of doctrine: Niceno-Tsaregrad with the addition of filioque, Athanasian and Apostolic, and also, in part, the decisions of the Ecumenical Councils. Although the Anglican Church retains respect for the tradition of the Church, partially recognizes it and uses it in its life and teaching, but, like all Protestant confessions, it denies its doctrinal dignity, equal to St. Scripture, for according to the 6th member of the Anglican Confession: “St. Scripture contains everything necessary for salvation.”

We see clear traces of the influence of the Reformation in the doctrine of original sin. 9 and 10, members of the Anglican faith basically repeat the Lutheran view of the nature of man after the fall, original sin "is the corruption and damage to the nature of each person, naturally from what happens ... as a result of which every person, by his nature, is inclined towards evil", so that "by itself it cannot do good deeds pleasing to God."

In the doctrine of salvation, the Anglican creed repeats the general idea of ​​the Reformation that only the alienated grace of God works in justifying a person, accomplishing salvation without the cooperation of the saved. As the 11th member of the Anglican Confession puts it: "We are justified before God only by the merits of Jesus Christ through faith, and not by our good works."

Although the Anglican doctrine preserved the Reformed doctrine of predestination, it significantly softened it and has more sense of God's foreknowledge of human destinies than the actual predestination of their final fate.

The dignity of the sacraments in Anglicanism belongs only to baptism and the Eucharist, these are the sacraments of the gospels; the rest are the sacraments of the Church and cannot be considered full-fledged, although in this series, the sacrament of the priesthood still retains special significance. Anglicanism more retains the true meaning of the sacraments, as images of the special action in us of the grace of God. Article 25 of the Anglican creed states that “the sacraments instituted by Christ are not mere... symbols... of the Christian creed, but they are... real signs of the grace and blessing of God to us, through which God invisibly works upon us... strengthens. ..our faith in Him.”

The Anglican understanding of the Eucharist, like Lutheranism, is notable for its internal contradictions. Thus, according to the exposition of 28 members of the Anglican Confession, “transubstantiation (or the change of bread and wine in the sacrament of the Lord) cannot be proven by Holy. Scripture. ... The Body of Christ is given, accepted... in the Eucharist in a heavenly, spiritual way, and the means, as the Body of Christ is received... in the Eucharist is faith. ... bread and wine still remain in their ... natural essence. The denial of the transubstantiation of the Holy Gifts, however, does not mean their complete immutability in the sacrament. The change does not take place in the nature of bread and wine, but in an invisible relation to them. heavenly body and the blood of the Savior. This change takes place through the consecration of the Holy Gifts by the power of the Holy Spirit in the priesthood of a legally ordained priest, but it occurs spiritually and consists in the fact that the Body and Blood of Christ unite their indescribable presence with bread and wine, together with which they are served to communicants. Bread and wine become the Body and Blood in the sense that they perceive the dignity, power and action of the Body and Blood of Christ through the union of their qualities with the essential qualities of the Body and Blood of the Savior, and their spiritual presence is perceived realistically, according to the Anglican Catechism: “The Body and the Blood of Christ is truly and truly taken... by believers at the Lord's Supper." Such uncertainty is typical of Anglican theology and allows for the coexistence of a fairly wide range of opinions on this matter.

The Anglican Church retains a general rejection of the sacrificial meaning of the Eucharist throughout the Reformation. 31 members of her creed reads: “The sacrifice of Christ, once offered, is a sacrifice ... satisfying for all the sins ... of the world - both for original sin and for arbitrary ones, and there is no other satisfaction for sin as only that one. Therefore, the idea of ​​sacrifices offered during the liturgy ... is ... a dangerous deception.

As we have said, the features of the sacrament in the Anglican tradition also preserve the priesthood. The tripartite hierarchy of episcopal, priestly, and deaconal ranks remains a distinctive feature of Anglicanism, which it inherited from the Roman Catholic Church, and not only the ecclesiastical hierarchy was preserved, but the very idea of ​​​​apostolic succession, completely alien to most Protestant denominations.

The question of the validity of apostolic succession in Anglicanism is closely connected with the history of relations between the Anglican Churches of England and America and Orthodoxy, primarily with the Russian Orthodox Church. These ties were especially livened up at the turn of the last and present centuries, there was even talk of a possible reunification of the Anglicans with Orthodoxy. The most prominent theologians of the Russian Church took part in discussions on this issue. For quite objective reasons, reunification turned out to be impossible, but mutual benevolence in relations between Anglicans and Orthodox remained. After the revolution, the Anglicans were among the few in the West who consistently supported the Russian Church during the years of persecution. Unfortunately, recent decisions in favor of the female priesthood have seriously complicated the attitude of Orthodoxy towards the Anglican Church.

The question that the theology of the Orthodox, Catholic and Anglican Churches had to solve at the end of the last century was to determine the authenticity of the apostolic succession of the Anglican hierarchy, but its solution required the development of a number of historical problems, as well as questions related to the doctrine of the Church and the sacraments.

The prehistory of the question begins on December 17, 1559. when the ordination of the Archbishop of Canterbury Matthew Parker took place, from whom the entire modern Anglican hierarchy originates. He was ordained by four Anglican bishops, of whom two had apostolic succession of ordination in the Roman Catholic order, and two were ordained in the new Anglican order, but by Archbishop T. Cranmer, who had a valid Roman Catholic ordination but was excommunicated for disobedience to the pope.

The verdict of the Roman Catholic Church was issued in September 1896 by the bull of Leo XIII, which invalidated all the ordinations of the Anglican Church, performed according to its reformed order, since they did not preserve the necessary established form of the sacrament.

Orthodox theology in resolving this issue proceeded from the predominant significance of its doctrinal aspect over the formal one. According to V.V. Bolotov, “not excluding the possibility of recognizing the reality” of the Anglican hierarchy, “it is necessary ... to be convinced of its orthodoxy, Orthodoxy”, i.e. in this case, the truth of the apostolic ministry is ultimately determined by the content of the faith. The Orthodox understanding of the interdependence of the grace-filled and doctrinal components of church life was expressed by one of the researchers of this issue, prof. I.P. Sokolov: “in its official creeds, the Anglican Church does not recognize the priesthood as a sacrament and does not teach about the offering of a true propitiatory Sacrifice at the Eucharist ... The question of the Anglican hierarchy is the question of what consequences these errors should have for the validity of the initiations of this church.”

The general conclusion of Orthodox theology at the beginning of our century boiled down to the need to clarify the Orthodoxy of the faith of the Anglican Church in order to resolve the issue of the validity of its hierarchy. The final decision on this issue was adopted at the Pan-Orthodox Conference of the Heads and Representatives of the Autocephalous Orthodox Churches, held in Moscow in 1948. Although this conference was held under obvious political influence, nevertheless, the possibility of pan-Orthodox consent was used to resolve the issue of the Anglican hierarchy. Its essence is expressed by the resolution "On the Anglican Hierarchy":

"1. The doctrine contained in the "39 members" of the Anglican Church differs sharply from... the doctrine and tradition... of the Orthodox Church; meanwhile, the solution to the question of recognizing the reality of the Anglican hierarchy must, first of all, be based on the doctrine of the sacraments, consistent with Orthodoxy. ...

“3. Treating with all attention and sympathy the contemporary movement ... of many representatives of Anglicanism, aimed at restoring ... communion between the believers of the Anglican Church and the Universal Church, we determine that the modern Anglican hierarchy can receive recognition from the Orthodox Church of the grace of her priesthood, if between The Orthodox and Anglican Churches will establish a formally expressed ... unity of faith and confession ... ".

Unfortunately, changes in the practice and doctrine of the Anglican churches that have taken place over the past decades have further alienated them from the doctrine of the Orthodox Church. The Episcopal Church in the United States has been practicing the female priesthood for decades. In 1994, a similar decision was made by the Church of England.

Although the main desire of the fathers of Anglicanism was to avoid the extremes of both Catholicism and Protestantism, their offspring turned out to be internally unstable, prone to decay. The vagueness of the doctrine of the Anglican Church gave freedom to the development of opposing currents. In the Church of England, for example, two main groupings coexist: the "high church", which has retained the remnants of church tradition, and the "broad church", which is dominated by Protestant views.

ecumenical movement

The ecumenical movement was perhaps the most significant event in the development of Western Christianity in the 20th century. It was born out of a feeling, common to all Christians, of the unnaturalness of the division of the Christian world. The fact that it originated in a Protestant environment is quite understandable, because it was the Protestant world that most acutely felt its church insufficiency, separation from the universal fullness.

Another thing is that this desire to overcome Christian divisions was expressed in the only form acceptable to the Protestant religious consciousness, in the form of the so-called “branch theory”. According to this theological conception, the united Christian Church, which existed since ancient times, in its development was divided into many directions or branches, each of which equally retains its connection with the early Christian heritage, which constitutes the trunk of this common Christian tree. The fragmentation of the Christian world is natural and does not carry in itself inferiority, it is a manifestation of the fullness and diversity of Christian life. Accordingly, the coming unity of Christians must include all manifestations of this diversity, for each branch is a full-fledged part of the common Christian heritage.

Naturally, such an attempt by the church to legalize deviations from the heritage of the undivided Church has never enjoyed recognition either in Orthodoxy or in Catholicism. Usually the rationale for Orthodox participation in the ecumenical movement is the words of the Savior from the Gospel of John (17:21) “Let them be one in Us, that the world may believe,” as well as numerous sayings of St. Scriptures and St. Fathers. The duty of unity prevails over the entire Christian world, and, above all, over the Orthodox, and it remains a necessary condition for the full value of our witness to the world. The controversy lies in whether they agree with gospel commandment unity theological views that actually justify the consequences of breaking this commandment. Can we, for the sake of following the duty of unity, recognize the equal dignity of right faith and deviation from it? Orthodoxy cannot help striving for the unity of Christians, but it cannot fully accept the image of unity that the modern ecumenical movement carries within itself. The very foundations of participation in the ecumenical movement of the Orthodox Churches initially and in essence differ from the Protestant justification of ecumenism, for the goal of Orthodoxy is witness to the truth to heterodoxy, the goal of heterodoxy is unity at any cost.

The first step in the formation of the ecumenical movement is considered to be the World Missionary Conference, held in 1910 in Edinburgh. The reason why the first attempts at Christian unity are connected with missionary work is clear, because its absence remains the most obvious temptation for those who turn to Christ. The conference in Edinburgh was intended to resolve the contradictions that inevitably arose between the various Protestant missionaries in the colonial countries, when their mutual criticism weakened the success of the mission.

Simultaneously with the Edinburgh Conference, which was attended by many future prominent figures of the ecumenical movement, for example, D. Mott, W. Temple, the desire to unite all Christians manifested itself in the United States. In the same 1910, a commission was created in the American Episcopal Church to prepare World Conference on the Faith and Order of the Church.

The further development of ecumenism was hindered by the First World War, but her upheavals served as an incentive for further attempts to unite Christians. In the 1920s, two main currents in ecumenism took shape: "Faith and the Order of the Church", under the leadership of the Anglican Bishops C. Brent and W. Temple, and "Life and Work", which was headed by the Lutheran Archbishop N. Cederblom. These movements differed significantly in their views on the path to achieving Christian unity, and the differences turned out to be so significant that they retained their significance even after the unification of these movements into the World Council of Churches.

The movement "Faith and the Order of the Church" considered the true and highest goal of the ecumenical movement to be the unity of faith of all Christians, on the basis of which all other differences can be overcome. If we are talking about Orthodox participation in the formation of the ecumenical movement, then this participation was most of all concentrated around "Faith and the order of the Church."

On the contrary, the Life and Work movement proceeded in its ideology from the impossibility of quickly achieving unity in faith and therefore sought to unite the efforts of all Christians in their practical activities, which would help overcome religious differences. As the slogan of "Life and Work" said: "Faith separates, deeds unite." In other words, "Faith and Dispensation" was more of a theological movement, while "Life and Work" was more practical, and the search for agreement between these directions continued during the two interwar decades.

By the beginning of the century, the first attempts to fundamentally expand the ecumenical movement, transforming it from inter-Protestant into pan-Christian, also date back. In 1919 a group of ecumenical representatives of the American Protestant churches visited the Vatican, but their visit ended in vain. The general attitude of the Roman Catholic Church remained, at best, watchful expectant, and in 1928 it was reinforced by Pius XI's encyclical The Souls of Mortals, which stated: that everyone is more or less good and healthy... The Church would betray its purpose by taking part in pan-Christian events... Under no circumstances are Catholics allowed to enter into such enterprises or to contribute to them.

Attitude Orthodox world ecumenism from the very beginning was probably distinguished by two main features: on the one hand, it clearly felt a sincere desire to promote the unity of Christians with all its might and a hope, perhaps naive, to enlighten Orthodox faith the Protestant world. On the other side, Orthodox attitude to the ecumenical movement has too often turned out to be contradictory, and this inconsistency has had a detrimental effect both on our general Christian authority and on intra-Orthodox relations.

An example of such inconsistency is the well-known envoy of the Patriarchate of Constantinople dated 1920. The attitude of Orthodoxy towards the heterodox world has always been dogmatically conditioned, it proceeded from the paramount importance of doctrinal agreement in any interaction with heterodoxy. (In this regard, the closest thing to the Orthodox point of view is the ideology of "Faith and Church dispensation"). Unfortunately, the district message of 1920 is an example of at least an ambiguous attitude towards this rule, which was strictly observed for centuries. In the text of the epistle, we read that “dogmatic differences existing between the various Christian Churches do not exclude their rapprochement and mutual communion, and that such rapprochement ... is necessary and even useful for ... each Local Church and the entire Christian Fullness, as well as for the preparation and easier conduct ... of a blessed union, ”and further:“ For even if possible difficulties arise on the basis of old prejudices, habits and claims, which have repeatedly disrupted the cause of the union in the past ... they cannot and should not serve as an insurmountable obstacle ” . This document leaves a very ambivalent feeling and cannot be compared with the dogmatic messages of the Eastern Patriarchs of the 19th century. It should also be said that he expresses only the opinion of the Church of Constantinople and does not have the full authority of the entire Orthodox East.

A few years later, the foundations of a possible Orthodox participation in the ecumenical movement were set out with much greater consistency in the Statement of the Orthodox participants in the conference "Faith and Church Order", held in 1927 in Lausanne. It was signed by representatives of almost all the Local Churches and it, in particular, determined that “in matters of faith and religious consciousness in the Orthodox Church, no compromise is appropriate,” and “where there is no community of faith, there can be no communion in the sacraments.”

The upheavals of the revolution did not allow the Russian Church to exercise due influence on the attitude of the Orthodox world towards the ecumenical movement. The only possibility of such influence was the participation of the Russian church emigration in ecumenical activities, and Russian theologians abroad in the 1920s and 1930s took part in many ecumenical meetings, trying to draw the attention of the West to the tragedy of the Russian Church. Many of them were inspired by quite sincere hopes for the success of the Orthodox witness to the non-Orthodox world, which at that time still preserved the foundations of the Christian way of life.

In the interwar decades, the development of the ecumenical movement proceeded in three parallel directions. First of all, these are the activities of the commission "Faith and Church Dispensation", in which the Orthodox Churches, including the Russian Church Abroad, participated widely. Then the work of the commission "Life and work" continued, in which representatives of the Orthodox world also took part. And, finally, the Edinburgh Conference of 1910 stood at the origins of the creation of the International Missionary Council, which, after the creation of the World Council of Churches, was associated with, and then completely united with it.

In 1938 a preparatory committee for the World Council of Churches was formed, but the development of ecumenism was again interrupted by the World War. However, after its end, again, as in the beginning of the century, the sense of responsibility of the Christian world for what had happened and the need to unite in order to preserve peace became more acute. In the first post-war years, Europe lived with the desire to restore and reaffirm the brotherhood of the human race, undermined by two world wars, and the Christian image of such a brotherhood could not be more in line with the aspirations of the peoples.

In this atmosphere, in 1948, the first founding Assembly of the World Council of Churches was held in Amsterdam, which included about 150 churches and church organizations, mostly Protestant. This assembly merged "Faith and Order of the Church" and "Life and Work" and was later joined by the International Missionary Council. In its course, the foundations of the ideology and organization of the WCC were laid, although later they underwent significant changes. Of the Orthodox Churches, only the Churches of Constantinople and Hellas participated in the work of the Amsterdam Assembly, the Russian diaspora was represented mainly by the St. Sergius Theological Institute in Paris.

Almost simultaneously, the Conference of the Heads and Representatives of the Local Orthodox Churches was held in Moscow, which represented the majority of the Orthodox world. The Conference's critical attitude towards ecumenism is well known, and this is usually explained by the pressure of the Soviet state, which had already entered the Cold War. Undoubtedly, there is a significant amount of truth in this, but the fact remains that the Orthodox criticism of the WCC, reflected in the Conference documents, had a direct effect on the further development of this organization.

It resulted in the adoption in 1950 of the so-called Toronto Declaration, which still remains one of the founding documents of the World Council of Churches. The Declaration was drawn up with the decisive participation of Orthodox participants, among whom were, for example, such eminent theologians as Fr. Georgy Florovsky, Metropolitan of Thyatira Herman, prof. Mr. Alevizatos and others. First of all, the declaration defines that "The World Council of Churches is not and should never become a super-Church." The purpose of the World Council of Churches ... is to promote the study and discussion of questions of the unity of the Church.” Extremely important for the Orthodox Churches was the statement that membership in the WCC “does not mean that each Church must recognize the other Churches that are members of the Council as Churches in the full and true sense of the word”, in addition, the obligation of the participating Churches was expressed “ assist each other if necessary and refrain from such actions that are incompatible with fraternal relations”, in other words, from proselytism, from which the Orthodox Churches suffered, first of all. The Toronto Declaration also formally affirmed that "in no event shall any Church be or shall be compelled to make decisions contrary to its convictions."

The Russian Orthodox Church and, together with it, most of the Slavic Churches joined the WCC at the Third Assembly in New Delhi in 1961. Now there is a lot of debate about the true reasons for this step and there is no doubt that behind it was the desire of the Soviet state to use the Church to spread its influence in the world, although, on the other hand, participation in the ecumenical movement gave our Church the opportunity to resist the growing atheistic pressure in those years.

On the other hand, the participation of the Russian Church ensured very significant changes in its own religious consciousness of the WCC, in particular, the so-called “trinitarian formulation”, or the naming of the Persons of the Holy Trinity, was introduced into its basis or foundation of religion. The new edition of the basis stated that "The World Council of Churches is a fellowship of Churches that confess the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Savior according to the Holy Scriptures and therefore seek a common confession, a common calling for them to the glory of the one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit."

After the adoption by the Second Vatican Council of the Decree “On Ecumenism”, which affirmed, albeit with significant reservations, that “in ecumenical work, faithful Catholics must undoubtedly take care of the brothers separated from them,” there was a change in attitude towards the WCC on the part of the Roman Catholic Church, which culminated in the visit Pope Paul VI to the headquarters of the WCC in Geneva in 1969. Catholics participate in the work of many divisions of the WCC, but the Roman Catholic Church, nevertheless, is not a member, it officially participates only in the work of "Faith and Church Dispensation", which remains the only proper theological subdivision of the WCC.

A significant change in the future appearance of the World Council of Churches, however, soon began to determine the trend towards the gradual extinction of the theological component of its activities, its displacement by “practical Christianity”. As already mentioned, initially ecumenism developed in two rather contradictory directions, on the one hand - the "theological ecumenism" of "Faith and Dispensation", on the other hand - the practical ecumenism of "Life and Activity", and the possibility of forming the WCC appeared only as a result of the unification of these movements, and each of them retained its influence. For decades, these initially opposing aspirations were in one way or another consistent with each other, but gradually theological ecumenism began to be absorbed by practical, social ecumenism. This was expressed at least in the fact that the commission "Faith and the Order of the Church" was reduced to the position of a secondary, albeit respected, division within the WCC. The further development of this trend led to the gradual disintegration of the ecumenical movement that we observe today.

The most significant, albeit controversial, fruit of theological ecumenism was the document adopted at the meeting of the Faith and Dispensation Commission in 1982 in Lima. This document is called "Baptism. Eucharist. Priesthood” is the result of many years of work of the Commission. He sets out the totality of theological views regarding these three sacraments that exist in the Churches that are members of the WCC.

Although, according to the compilers, this document "displays a significant coincidence in theological issues," one can hardly speak of it as a coordinated position of all the Churches that took part in the work on it. "Baptism. Eucharist. Priesthood” is, rather, a generalization of existing views, indicating the points of their common ground or even coincidence. On the other hand, it inevitably reflects the deep-seated contradictions of various confessions on the fundamental issues of their dogma and the structure of the Church, and leaves a lot of open questions. For this reason, key concepts, such as the interpretation of the image of the presence of the Body and Blood in the Eucharist, the meaning of apostolic succession, the question of the female priesthood, did not receive a full and indisputable interpretation in this document. Moreover, the deliberate duality of the formulations allows us to put completely different meanings into them, which happened after the publication of this document. Most of the Churches that are members of the WCC sent their responses, which contained completely contradictory interpretations of its provisions.

The text adopted in Lima can, to a certain extent, be called the pinnacle of what ecumenical theology could achieve; it clarified the whole variety of theological ideas on basic dogmatic issues and offered them in a generalized form to the entire Christian world. It also tried to point out ways to overcome the existing differences, but, of course, it could not overcome them on a purely theological level.

Currently, the World Council of Churches brings together about 330 Churches from about 100 countries. The supreme body of power is the Assembly of the WCC, which is convened every seven years. The Assembly elects the General Secretary of the WCC, who exercises overall leadership of the Council between Assemblies. In general, the leadership of the WCC remains collegiate and is carried out through the Central Committee and the Executive Committee. All working bodies are combined into four units or divisions, each of which has its own area of ​​work. The first unit includes the commission "Faith and church dispensation".

Introduction

Conclusion

Introduction

PROTESTANTISM, a religious movement that includes all those Western denominations that do not go beyond the Christian tradition, but differ from the Roman Catholic tradition. The word "Protestant" was first used at the Reichstag in Speyer (1529) to refer to the signatories of the Protestatio, a document that openly disagreed with the Reichstag's decision to ban a number of reforms within the church. Later, "Protestants" began to be called all those who left obedience to the pope during the upheaval of the 16th century, which went down in history under the name of the Reformation. Since then, Protestantism has fragmented into numerous families of churches and unrelated sects, and the word has become a collective concept, behind which there was no particular denomination.

1. The emergence of Protestantism. Reformation

Protestantism as a current of Christianity belongs not only to the history of Christianity. Even today he is an influential spiritual and intellectual force. The point is not only in hundreds of millions of his followers, but also in the spiritual heritage of such masters of the thoughts of our time, philosophers of the West as Karl Barth (1886-1968), Karl Jaspers (1883-1969), Martin Luther King (1929-1968). .), Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965), Billy Graham (b. 1926) and others.

The history of Protestantism is connected with the names of the greatest representatives of mankind and its culture. To understand this, let's look at the facts. The beginning of the 16th century in Europe is a great era of a radical change in European culture, when the foundation is laid for its development for centuries to come. This is the time of noble impulses and the burning of "heretics", passion for ancient culture and witch hunts, pious disputes and sophisticated torture. All this flows into a single stream of social development, forms a worldview that heralds the onset of the bourgeois era.

The Catholic Church is a fierce defender of the medieval order. She still enjoys great power. By this time, however, anti-church movements are reaching their highest point. In England, this trend was represented in the sermons of Oxford University professor John Wyclif (1320-1384), who demanded the subordination of the English church in civil matters to the king. He also opposed the exactions of the popes from England, questioned the right of the church to indulgences, insisted on the priority Holy Scripture over church tradition.

His ideas influenced the views of Jan Hus (1369-1415), a professor at the University of Prague, who preached the church's rejection of wealth and the sale of indulgences. The burning of Hus at the stake on June 6, 1415, by the verdict of the Council of Constance, caused outrage in the Czech Republic.

These ideas gave rise to a movement called the Reformation. Its social base was extremely diverse. To unite these disparate forces, some kind of common program is needed. And it appeared: on October 31, 1517, in Wittenberg, the local priest Martin Luther nailed theses to the gates of the cathedral. These theses, as noted by F. Engels, "had an inflaming effect, like a lightning strike into a barrel of gunpowder." Initially, Luther did not contemplate any radical reform of the church. The main idea of ​​his theses was that salvation requires the inner repentance of sinners, which cannot be replaced by an external pecuniary sacrifice.

Rome responded to Luther with a threat of excommunication and physical violence. But, as they say, the scythe found a stone, and the Wittenberg priest Martin Luther refused to submit to the force. But the pope could not give in either - by this time the conflict had received wide publicity. An escalation of mutual attacks and accusations began, and on December 10, 1520, Luther publicly burned the papal bull (decree) excommunicating him from the church.

The essence of the conflict was that the Catholic Church, as a social institution of feudalism, could not be defeated without destroying the dogmatic foundation on which it based its dominance in society. In dogmatic terms, such a role was played by the theological teaching that the salvation of people is impossible without the help of the church, without the grace contained only in it.

In order to reject this theological construction within the framework of Christianity, it was necessary to oppose the earthly limitations of the church with the omnipotence of God himself. In other words, the freedom of people from the claims of Catholicism could be justified by emphasizing the complete, absolute dependence of man on the creator, the inability of the sinner by his behavior (holy deeds and feats of piety) to influence the highest divine will. Therefore, the reformers resolutely rejected the Holy Tradition, which affirmed the church as a special divine social institution, and declared the Bible the only source of faith.

At the same time, the peculiarities of religious consciousness, as well as the real, increasingly complex social conditions, led in practice, even at the beginning of the Reformation, to the emergence of various, often warring, currents. The Reformation brought forward several prominent prominent figures: Martin Luther (1483-1546), Thomas Müntzer (1490-1625), John Calvin (1509-1564), Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531). But the main thing, of course, is not in the personality of the reformers themselves, although this is very important, but, above all, in the difference in the socio-political background of their views, social practice, which they are able to shed light on. Luther opposed Rome, prompted primarily by the experience of the knowledge of God. He paved the way for a new theology and could not see the whole path in advance. Calvin is younger than Luther, and he finds Protestant ideas already established. At the age of 26, he publishes An Instruction in the Christian Faith (1536), in which he laid out Protestant doctrine in a systematic, ruthlessly coherent form that soon became an encyclopedia of Protestant thought.

The emergence of Protestantism was a turning point in the whole of European culture. The spiritual revolution was made by the titans in the power of thought, passion and character, in versatility and learning: Leonardo da Vinci, Machiavelli, Erasmus of Rotterdam. These certainly include Luther and Calvin. They were believers and new spirituality ran for them through a religious feeling, through the revival of the "apostolic faith." For a medieval person, the idea of ​​God is not an abstract, abstract dogma. For them, God is the highest truth, around which all their ideas and ideas were grouped.

A group of German princes carried out evangelical reforms in their domains. In 1529 they made a "protest" against the abolition by the Speyer Reichstag of the right to decide the question of the religion of subjects, which they achieved in 1526. This event is associated with the origin of the term "Protestantism", which began to be used to refer to the totality of Christian denominations that are genetically related to the Reformation.

2. Features of the Protestant creed, organization and cult

In accordance with common doctrine In Christianity, Protestantism of all varieties stands on the position that knowledge of religious truth is given to man by divine revelation. However, an essential question arises about the criterion of what of human knowledge belongs to the revealed truth and what does not correspond to it or even contradicts it, where is the guarantee of the divine revelation of this or that theological thesis.

There is no doubt in Christianity that the main source of revelation is the Bible. But there are many contradictions in it, as well as incomprehensible places that require interpretation and clarification. For Catholicism, the right of such an interpretation belonged only to the church, and so immutable that the laity was even forbidden to read the Bible without guidance from the clergy.

Protestantism deprived the papacy and the church of a monopoly on the interpretation of the Bible. To do this, the Protestants proclaimed the right of every believer not only to independently read, but also to interpret the Bible. As for Holy Tradition, Protestantism refused to be a source of revelation. "Only the Bible" - this has become the main motto of all Protestant churches.

The reformers insisted on a personal relationship between man and God. It is known that in orthodox Catholicism God is conceived as the unity of three persons: God the Father, God the Son and the Holy Spirit. The centuries-old history of the church testifies that it is the formulation and interpretation of the dogma of the Trinity that constitutes a kind of epicenter of theological battles. The official beginning was laid by the Alexandrian theologian Arius (IV century), who questioned the second person of the trinity - the godlike nature of Jesus Christ.

It was the emphasis on personal communication with God that determined the typological feature of Protestantism. Religious and theological pluralism took the place of ecclesiastical uniformity. Therefore, in different countries and even within the same country, different creeds arose. All of them shared the key ideas and ideas that determined their common Protestant character (the concept of "personal faith", "baptism in the spirit", chosenness, etc.), but depending on the specifics of the political struggle and social position, familiar symbols and concepts acquired special character. Thus, its various currents arose: Anglicanism, Lutheranism, Calvinism.

First of all, Martin Luther attacked the Catholic Church's claim to heavenly patronage and representation. Between man and God, as M. Luther believed, there should be no mediators; God gives salvation of his own free will, and not at all compelled by the harassment of the sinner. The fate of a person is determined not by the church, but entirely by the grace of God, and the believer cannot and is not able to achieve salvation with his own strength. He acquires it only when he realizes himself as a hopelessly sinful being, gains personal faith in God and in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. The doctrine of "personal faith" as the only and sufficient condition for salvation forms the foundation of Protestant dogma and presupposes a rethinking of all traditional teaching.

In the Small Catechism, Martin Luther clearly formulates this thought as follows: “I am convinced that it is not by my own strength and reason that I can believe in Jesus Christ, my master, or come to him, but the Holy Spirit called me through the Gospel, enlightened me with his gift, sanctified and kept me in the true faith." As a result, the idea of ​​the place of religion in the life of a believer changes radically: all daily activities are recognized as sacred, regardless of church regulation. What is important is not what a person does, not his occupation and place in society, but his awareness of his duty to God, what is important is not the result of the activity, but the internal state, the goal that a person sets for himself. Thus, Protestantism puts forward a special ethics - the ethics of motives.

Personal faith, according to the teachings of Luther, causes a radical upheaval in a person's soul, makes him "internally" free. Therefore, the slogan of love for one's neighbor is equated with service to one's neighbor: a person should not, like a monk, run away from the world. "... To serve God," Luther stressed, "is nothing else than to serve one's neighbor, be it a child, a wife, a servant... anyone who needs you bodily and spiritually; and this is worship."

The Protestant concept of individual people being chosen for salvation, individually aware of their own destiny, consecrated private entrepreneurial activity with the authority of God, which at that time was deprived of official sanction.

Protestantism advocates from the very beginning for the simplification and cheapening of the cult, rejects prayer for the dead, worship of the Mother of God and saints, veneration of relics, icons and other relics. Unlike the Catholic Orthodox teaching about the sacraments, Protestants view them as symbols or rituals, the purpose of which is to remind about Jesus Christ and the salvation of the human race. The sermon comes to the fore in worship.

The cult innovations of Protestantism went mainly along the line of "cheapening" the church and church ritual, although their motivation, as a rule, was associated with dogmatic principles that were opposed to Catholicism.

Among the various branches of Protestantism, there was no unity on some issues related to the cult, with the external situation in the church, and so on. The Lutherans, for example, kept the crucifix, the altar, candles, and organ music in their churches, while the Calvinists abandoned all this.

The Mass, a once and for all established set of ritual ceremonies with fixed standard prayer formulas in Latin, was rejected by Protestants of almost all directions. Divine services began to be conducted by them in the vernacular languages, it consisted of a sermon, the singing of prayer hymns and the reading of various chapters of the Bible, mainly from the New Testament. The Bible was translated into popular languages, and its regular reading entered the life of every devout Protestant. In the biblical canon, Protestantism made some changes and did not recognize parts of the books of the Old Testament.

The most important rites, which in Catholicism were considered the core of worship - the sacraments, underwent a decisive revision in Protestantism. Lutheranism left only two of the seven sacraments - baptism and communion, Calvinism - only one baptism. At the same time, the interpretation of the sacrament as a rite, during the performance of which a miracle occurs, was muffled in Protestantism. Lutheranism retained a certain element of the miraculous in its interpretation of communion. It took a middle position between Catholicism, on the one hand, and Calvinism, on the other, in resolving the question of whether the miracle of turning bread and wine into the flesh and blood of the Savior occurs during the ceremony. With regard to baptism, Protestantism did not accept the position of the Anabaptists, leaving infant baptism in force. As a compromise, he introduced the "second baptism" - the confirmation of teenagers. Although it should be noted that a number of the most recent Protestant churches recognize only adult baptism.

Protestantism's rejection of the sacrament of the priesthood was of particular importance. Proceeding from the position on the uselessness of intermediaries between God and people, Protestantism rejects the division of society into clergy and laity, which also results in the rejection of the sacrament by which the clergy were elevated to the position of a special social stratum. The doctrine that any person can communicate directly with God gave grounds for the assertion of a "universal priesthood." Every lay person can be chosen by his congregation to be a pastor and serve as a pastor for as long as the congregation deems him worthy of it. Usually parishioners at a prayer meeting choose an elder.

In the organizational structure of the Protestant churches, the influence of the new social and cultural situation, the new spiritual needs of the individual, freeing himself from the fetters of the estate-corporate fetters, was expressed, all Protestants are united by the refusal to recognize the primacy of the pope.

Many Protestants observe the most important holidays inherited from the Catholic church year mainly related to the life of Jesus Christ. Modern Protestant churches also have their own new holidays - the Feast of the Harvest and the Day of Unity. So, for example, the Feast of the Harvest among Evangelical Christian Baptists is a celebration of the exaltation of God, his power, who gave the harvest, as well as the glorification of labor in the "field of God" to "save the souls of perishing sinners", convert them to Christ.

3. The main directions of Protestantism

The advent of the new time meant the shifting of the center of social activity of many peoples. The movement of history was determined by the development of industry and, in general, the economy of many European countries. This formed a new ideology, a completely different worldview. Church uniformity is being replaced by religious and theological pluralism. Therefore, in different countries and even within the same country, various creeds and directions of Protestantism arise. All of them shared the key ideas and ideas that determined their common character: the concept of "personal faith", "baptism in the spirit", chosenness, and others. However, depending on the specifics of countries, the political situation in them, these movements acquired their own characteristics. Gradually, the main Protestant churches took shape.

One of the earliest branches of Protestantism is Anglicanism. His creed is a conglomeration of Catholicism, Lutheranism and Calvinism. It is set forth in the Book of Community Worship (1549) and the Creed adopted in 1571. In it, the concept of salvation combines the principle of the saving power of the church, inherited from Catholicism, with the Lutheran doctrine of salvation by faith alone. Anglicanism retained the hierarchy, the episcopate, the magnificent cult. It is currently state church England.

In the Lutheran Church, named after founder Martin Luther, "conversion" and "justification" are brought to the fore in the concept of salvation. Lutheranism preserves the episcopate, a special ordination to the priesthood, and the remnants of the liturgy. It recognizes two sacraments: infant baptism and communion. There are no icons in Lutheran churches, but crucifixes, vestments of the clergy, an altar are preserved, organ music and choral singing are used.

Sermon is central to Lutheran worship. Lutheranism is the most influential and numerous confession of modern Protestantism.

Another branch of Protestantism is Calvinism. It found a more consistent embodiment of the anti-Catholic demands of the bourgeoisie. In 1536, Calvin published his main work in Switzerland - "Instruction in the Christian Faith", in which he outlined his views. In 1542, the Catechism of Geneva was published. Unlike Lutheranism, Calvinism does not have a creed that is binding on everyone; the only source of doctrine is the Bible. Calvin attached dominant importance to the doctrine of predestination, for God chose some to eternal bliss, others to perdition. A person is saved because he receives the gift of faith, he is chosen for salvation. At the same time, Calvinism requires initiative from a person: he must act in such a way as to be worthy of eternal bliss, if he is predestined to it.

Central to Calvinism is the doctrine of "worldly vocation" or "worldly asceticism." Evidence of a possible chosenness can be considered success in entrepreneurial activity, in professionalism. For this, a Calvinist must renounce worldly pleasures, extravagance, and lead a modest lifestyle.

The ritual side of Calvinism is distinguished by the most radical reformism: all the external attributes of the cult are discarded - the altar, icons, candles, the cross. The sermon is the central moment of worship, it includes the singing of psalms and prayers.

In later times, new trends in Protestantism appear. Among them, Baptism, Adventism, Pentecostalism can be noted, although the list of movements in Protestantism is not exhausted by this.

One of the new directions was Baptism. The first Baptist community arose at the beginning of the 17th century among English emigrants in Holland. Their doctrine is based on Lutheranism and Calvinism. Personal faith is of particular importance. Baptism is seen as a sign of conscious conversion to faith, spiritual rebirth. Candidates for membership in the community are admitted to it only after a probationary period and repentance at a prayer meeting. Only those who have received water baptism are considered full members of the community. Baptism requires active missionary work from its followers.

In the early 30s of the 19th century in the USA, Baptism separated from religious movement Adventists (from the Latin word for "coming"). Its founder is W. Miller (1782-1849), who published in 1833 the book "Evidence from Scripture and history about the second coming of Christ about 1843 and his personal reign for 1000 years."

Adventist teaching differs from other Protestant teachings in its eschatology, i.e. developing the idea of ​​the end of the world, meaning and completion earth history. They solve the question of the posthumous fate of a person in a special way, because they do not consider the soul to be immortal.

There are several branches of Adventism. One of them is Seventh-day Adventism. Its founder is Ellen White. Adventism is also spreading in Russia.

Protestant currents, called "Pentecostal" arose in the United States. At the heart of the doctrine - set out in one of the books of the New Testament - the book "Acts of the Holy Apostles" - the story of the descent of the Holy Spirit on the apostles on the fiftieth day after Easter. Referring to this, they claim that each true christian can receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit: the ability to prophesy, the healing of the sick, speaking in other tongues, which was called "glossolalia".

Pentecostalism in our country is represented by a direction called by Christians of the Evangelical Faith, recognizing the Trinity. In addition to common Protestant denominations There are other currents of Protestantism, some of which have existed for several centuries, others developed in the 19th century, some are emerging in our time.

4. Modern Protestant churches in Russia

Differences in contemporary Protestantism- not so much the differences between different directions, churches and denominations in dogma and structure, but the differences between the trends within Protestantism itself. Since the middle of the 20th century, large movements of Protestantism in our country, as well as in the whole world, have been strongly influenced by the external environment, a world that is becoming more and more secular. Everything becomes in them less people who regularly attend worship services. At the same time, circles of intensive study of the Bible and comprehension of it in relation to the era appear, faith becomes not just inherited from the past generation, but independently gained through suffering.

All these remarks apply entirely to the Protestant churches in our country, or to "sects" as they have been called quite recently.

Sectarian movements, "reformation" in a broad sense, appear in Rus' around the 14th century. Its main forms were flocks, Christ belief, Dukhoborism, Subbotniks, usually represented by various groupings. All of them resolutely rejected the Orthodox Church, external piety in favor of internal faith (“God is not in logs, but in ribs”), they sought to create self-governing communities as prototypes of the “Kingdom of God”.

The first Protestant association in Russia was the sect of the Mennonites or "peaceful Anabaptists" that arose in Holland in the 16th century. Their preaching was distinguished by the ideas of humility and humility, renunciation of violence and wars, which later became clearly entrenched in the religious demand for renunciation of military service and the use of weapons. This brought them severe persecution by the authorities. After Catherine II allowed foreigners to settle in Russia (1763), Mennonites from Germany began to move to the south of Ukraine and the Volga region. Their appearance in Russia had no particular impact on the religious situation of that time.

The widespread dissemination of Protestantism in our country begins in the 60-70s of the XIX century with the advent of followers from Germany Evangelical Baptists. They were active in preaching and began to found communities in the regions of the Caucasus, Southern Ukraine, the Baltic states and St. Petersburg. The first Russian Baptist was the merchant N. Voronin, who was baptized by faith in Tiflis in 1867. The growth in the number of evangelical Christians, Baptists and followers of other currents of Protestantism caused an extremely negative reaction from the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church. Soon persecution and repression began.

In the resolution of the meeting of Orthodox leaders led by K.P. Pobedonostsev, who at that time was Chief Procurator of the Holy Synod, said in particular: “The rapid growth of sectarianism is a serious danger to the state. All sectarians should be prohibited from leaving their place of residence. courts. Passports of sectarians should be marked in a special way so that they will not be hired or settled anywhere until life in Russia becomes unbearable for them. Their children should be selected by force and brought up in the Orthodox faith. "

Only in 1905, with the issuance of the decree on religious tolerance of April 17 and the Manifesto on the granting of civil liberties of October 17, the Protestant churches were able to conduct missionary and publishing activities.

The largest Protestant movement in Russia is Baptism. The name comes from the Greek "to immerse", "to baptize in water". The current name of the church was formed from the name of two related movements: the Baptists, originally called "Christians baptized by faith" and mainly living in the south of the Russian state and the church of "Evangelical Christians", which appeared somewhat later, mainly in the north of the country.

The unification of the churches of the evangelical confession was achieved by the Evangelical Christians and Baptists Agreement in 1944. In 1945, an agreement was concluded with representatives of the Pentecostal churches, called the "August Agreement", in 1947 an agreement was reached with Christians in the spirit of the apostles, and in 1963 the Mennonites were accepted into the union.

Pentecostals proceed in their doctrine from the indication of the Gospel about "the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles" on the fiftieth day after Pascha. Mennonites consider humility, the rejection of violence, even if it is done for the common good, moral self-improvement, to be the most essential features of Christianity.

The Union of Evangelical Christian Baptists has been part of the World Baptist Union since its founding in 1905 and shares seven biblical principles - the theological foundations developed by the World Brotherhood: "The Holy Scriptures, the books of the Old and New Testaments (canonical) are the basis of the Doctrine. exclusively from regenerate people. The commandments about Baptism and the Lord's Supper (communion) also belong to regenerate people. Independence of each local church. Equality of rights for all members of the local church. Freedom of conscience for all. Separation of church and state."

The Union of Evangelical Christian Baptists - both in general and in each local church - considers its tasks to be the preaching of the Gospel, the spiritual education of believers to achieve holiness, Christian piety and observance of the commandments of Christ in life, the development and strengthening of the unity of believers in accordance with the High Priestly Prayer of Christ, active participation in social service.

Now the Union of Evangelical Christian-Baptists of Russia publishes two magazines "Brotherly Messenger" and "Christian and Time", more than a dozen newspapers, publishes Bibles, collections of spiritual songs, and other Christian literature.

Another Protestant church that is widespread in modern Russia is the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The founder of this trend is the American prophetess Ellen White, who, guided by her "visions", in which "the Lord revealed truth to her", developed the ideas of Adventism. The main thing was the instruction from all days of the week to celebrate not Sunday, but Saturday, when it is impossible not only to work, but even to cook food. Thus, the fulfillment of the fourth biblical commandment was put at the forefront: “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy: work for six days and do (in them) all your works, and the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God: do not do any work on it. .." (Ex. 20: 8 - 10).

The Seventh-day Adventists developed dogmatics, rituals, everyday life, in which the so-called "health reform" plays a special role. Its theological justification lies in the assertion that the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and, in order not to destroy it, one should lead an appropriate lifestyle. They have food bans, as well as a ban on tea, coffee, alcoholic beverages, and smoking.

Today there are more than 30 thousand Seventh-day Adventists in our country, they have about 450 prayer houses. The central body of this church is located in the Tula region in the village of Zaoksky, where they have a theological school and a seminary, a radio and television center. The church publishes newspapers and a number of magazines in cooperation with foreign Adventists. Church members help kindergartens, hospitals, the elderly. Created in the Tula region rehabilitation center under the leadership of Valentin Dikul, where they help sick children.

Among other Protestant currents operating in modern Russia, we should mention Evangelical Christians or Pentecostals. The name goes back to the gospel story that during the celebration of the feast of Pentecost (50th day after Easter), the Holy Spirit descended on the apostles and they "were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues" (Acts 2: 4). Believers of this trend practice "speaking in other tongues" during prayer meetings, believing in the possibility of indwelling the Holy Spirit in true believers. In Russia, this church has several currents.

In 1992, a religious and social organization called the Salvation Army began to operate actively in our country. The movement originated in England in the last century, has a strict organization Salvation Army soldiers swearing allegiance to God, serving people and God, giving up alcohol, smoking, drug addiction, and other bad habits. They are involved in evangelism and social work. In Moscow, the Salvation Army opened 18 free canteens, helps refugees and the homeless, provides humanitarian assistance to hospitals, kindergartens, and other people in need.

At present, there are over one million Protestant believers in Russia, belonging to dozens of different Protestant denominations. Some of them arose in the last century, others appeared in the most last years. The development of market relations, the change in the ideology of the state contributes to the strengthening of the positions of Protestantism. Using the support of their foreign international centers, they carry out active missionary work to evangelize the population, distribute a huge amount of religious literature and other products.

5. The Religious Content of Protestantism

Sharing the main features of a developed religion, i.e. believing in the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, the supernatural and afterlife, etc., Protestants, just like Catholics and Orthodox, imagine God as a triune God - the father, God - the son and God - the holy spirit. They identified Jesus Christ with the second person of this Trinity. However, Protestantism has its own characteristics that distinguish it from Orthodoxy and Catholicism. Protestantism cleared the sky of a whole pantheon of gods, which turned Catholicism and Orthodoxy into polytheism. Protestants worship only the triune God (they do not have the cult of saints and the Mother of God), and especially Christ, considering him the true head of their churches in general and communities in particular.

At the same time, Protestantism has much in common with Catholicism: the filioque (the doctrine that the "holy spirit" comes not only from God the father, as the Orthodox believe, but also from the son), and the use of unleavened bread during communion, and organs, and baptism through pouring, and the custom of sitting during worship, and much more.

In accordance with the general teaching of Christianity, Protestantism of all varieties takes the position that knowledge of religious truth is given to man by divine revelation.

There is no doubt in Christianity that the main source of revelation is the Bible. But there are many contradictions in the Bible. All this is subject to interpretation and explanation. For Catholicism, the right of such an interpretation belongs only to the Church, and it is so neglected that it is even forbidden for the laity to read the Bible without guidance from the clergy. In order to interpret the latter, a huge number of works were written by the "fathers of the church" and the theologians - scholastics, church councils passed many definitions and decisions, and the popes of Rome promulgated a whole library of bulls, all sorts of infallibly true messages. All this literature, together with what the ministers of the church teach in sermons and oral instructions, is called Sacred Tradition. Thus, Sacred Scripture can only be correctly understood in the light of Sacred Giving. It is quite understandable what power such a decision gave the papacy. To dislodge the papacy from this position, it was necessary for Protestantism to deprive it of its monopoly on the interpretation of the Bible with the help of the Sacred Doctrine and its own arbitrariness. To do this, he proclaimed the right of every believer not only to independently read, but also to interpret the Bible.

As for Holy Tradition, Protestantism completely denied it the meaning of the source of revelation. "Only the Bible" became its main motto. Protestantism opposes the idea that the interpretation of the Bible should be guided by reason. Allowing philosophical thinking as a kind of seasoning for faith, Protestantism nevertheless considered only the latter as the only criterion for the truth of the perception of biblical revelation. Faith, which Protestantism has placed at the center of its teaching, is a personal experience, essentially not amenable to explanation and control from the outside.

The Protestant teaching dealt a blow to the Catholic clergy in the area that concerned the influence of his prayers on the earthly destinies of people. If a believer - a Catholic considered it sufficient to pray with the help of a priest to the Mother of God or to some saint in order to get rid of this or that trouble or, conversely, achieve success in life, then Protestantism claims that human destiny does not depend on prayers or on human activity, so that the whole ponderous colossus of the Catholic cult has essentially no meaning in life.

The cult innovations of Protestantism went mainly along the line of "cheapening" the church and church ritual. The veneration of the biblical righteous remained unshakable, but was deprived of those fetishistic essentially political forms that the cult of saints in Catholicism generally took. Protestantism also abandoned a number of other elements of the cult - the worship of relics, relics, the cross, statues and icons. The refusal to worship visible images was dogmatically based on the Old Testament Pentateuch, which considers such worship as idolatry.

Among the various branches of Protestantism, there was no unity on some issues related to the cult, the external environment of the churches, and so on. The Lutherans, for example, kept the crucifix, the altar, candles, and organ music in their churches; Calvinists, on the other hand, abandoned all this.

The Mass was rejected by Protestants of almost all denominations. Divine services began to be conducted by them in national languages; it consisted of a sermon, the singing of prayer hymns and the reading of certain chapters of the Bible, mainly the New Testament.

The most important rites, which in Catholicism were considered the core of worship, the sacraments, underwent a decisive revision in Protestantism. Lutheranism left only two of the seven sacraments - baptism and communion, Calvinism - only one baptism. At the same time, the interpretation of the sacrament as a rite, during the performance of which a miracle occurs, is muted in Protestantism. Lutheranism retained a certain element of the miraculous in its interpretation of communion. It took a middle position between Catholicism, on the one hand, and Zwinglianism and Calvinism, on the other, in resolving the question of whether the miracle of turning bread and wine into the flesh and blood of the Savior occurs during the ceremony. With regard to baptism, Protestantism did not accept the position of the Anabaptists, leaving infant baptism in force. As a compromise, he introduced the "second baptism" - the confiscation of adolescents.

Protestantism's rejection of the sacrament of the priesthood was of particular importance. Protestantism rejected the division of society into clergy and laity. The doctrine that any person can communicate directly with God provided the basis for the assertion of a "universal priesthood."

All these principles were directed against the powerful apparatus of the Catholic Church.

Protestantism shifts the center of gravity of religious life from the church to the individual.

From the very beginning, Protestantism broke up into a whole series of currents, churches, sects, and the separation of sects continues to this day on its basis.

Conclusion

Protestantism is one of the three, along with Catholicism and Orthodoxy, the main directions of Christianity, which is a combination of numerous and independent Churches and denominations, connected by their origin with the Reformation, a broad anti-Catholic movement of the 16th century. in Europe.

Protestantism shares common Christian ideas about the existence of God, his trinity, about the immortality of the soul, heaven and hell (while rejecting the Catholic doctrine of purgatory), about Revelation, etc. At the same time, Protestantism put forward 3 new principles: salvation by personal faith, the priesthood of all believers, the exclusive authority of the Holy Scriptures (Bible).

According to the teachings of Protestantism, original sin perverted the nature of man, deprived him of the ability to do good, so he can achieve salvation not with the help of good deeds, the Sacraments and asceticism, but only through personal faith in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

Every Christian, being elected and baptized, receives "initiation" for communion with God, the right to preach and worship without intermediaries (the Church and the clergy). In Protestantism, thus, the dogmatic distinction between the priest and the laity is removed, the church hierarchy is abolished. Therefore, in Protestantism there is no confession and remission of sins, as well as the celibacy of priests and pastors. By secularizing the Church, Protestantism abolished monasteries and monasticism.

Protestantism also abolished many Sacraments, leaving only Baptism and the Eucharist, and rejected the doctrine of grace. In addition, he abolished prayers for the dead, the veneration of saints and numerous holidays in their honor, the veneration of relics and images. Prayer houses of Protestants were freed from magnificent decoration, from altars, images and statues, bells were removed. Protestant worship is extremely simplified and reduced to preaching, prayer and singing of psalms and hymns in national languages. The Bible is proclaimed to be the only source of doctrine, and sacred tradition rejected. The Bible was translated into national languages, and its study and interpretation became the main duty of every believer. The principle of universal priesthood laid the foundation for the democratic structure of communities (equality of laity and clergy, election, accountability, etc.).

The original forms of Protestantism were Lutheranism, Zwinglianism and Calvinism, Unitarianism and Socianism, Anabaptism and Mennonism, and Anglicanism. In the future, a number of currents, known as late, or neo-Protestantism, arose: Baptists, Methodists, Quakers, Adventists, Pentecostals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, or "Saints last days", The Salvation Army, Christian Science and a number of others. The formation of most of these movements took place under the sign of a "religious revival" (rivalism), a return to the ideals of early Christianity and the Reformation.

List of used literature

1. Garadzha V.I. Religious studies. - M.: Center, 1995.

2.Kislyuk K.V., Kucher O.N. Religious Studies - Rostov-on-Don, 2003.

3.Radugin A.A. Introduction to Religious Studies: Theory, History and Modernity. - M., 1997.

4. Yablokova I.N. Fundamentals of Religious Studies - M., 2004.

On October 31, 1517, the young Augustinian monk Martin Luther (1483-1546), professor of theology at the newly founded University of Wittenberg, posted 95 theses on the doors of the palace church, which he intended to defend in a public debate.

The reformer was born on November 10, 1483 in the city of Eisleben in Thuringia. His father, Hans Luther, came from a peasant background, was a miner, and later acquired six foundries; mother, Margarita, also came from a peasant class. Martin was brought up in strictness, he received his education in church schools, where harsh morals reigned. In 1501 he entered the University of Erfurt and graduated in 1505 with a Master of Arts degree. He then turned to the study of law, but a career in law seemed to suit his father's wishes rather than his own.

In July 1505, as Luther was returning to the university after visiting his parents, he was caught on his way by a thunderstorm. Falling to the ground under a terrible lightning strike, he screamed in horror, turning to the patron saint of his father: “Holy Anna, save me! I will become a monk." Fulfilling this vow, he soon entered the Augustinian order, which was distinguished by a strict charter.

Taking vows and the monastery. In September 1506, Luther made his last vows, and in May 1507 he became a priest. The following year he was transferred to the University of Wittenberg, where he taught logic and physics, and in 1510 he was sent on an assignment to Rome. In 1512, the University of Wittenberg awarded him a doctorate in theology; he quickly rose to the teaching field and preached regularly in the parish church.

Luther has long been tormented by the question of the fate of man in the world. His era was the era of a real cult of death, which arose a century earlier after the epidemics of the "black death" - the plague, but it was not even death that inspired him with the greatest fear, but the subsequent judgment and the threat of eternal damnation. Initially, he hoped to earn paradise by a harsh lifestyle, but he soon came to the conclusion that it was not in the power of a person to do something so good as to allow him to rightfully claim the mercy of God. By carefully studying the Church's system of repentance, Luther became convinced that sins that he was not able to overcome and eradicate can still be forgiven. He found that he was not even able to confess all his sins: some of them slip from memory, while others are committed completely unconsciously, so that a person does not see his sinfulness until God the Judge points his finger at them.

Teaching in Wittenberg. The solution to the problem came to Luther not as a result of a sudden insight, but as a result of reading the Holy Scriptures, which he had to study especially closely when he was appointed to the chair of biblical exegesis at the University of Wittenberg. Having prepared and delivered courses of lectures from 1513 to 1516 on the interpretation of the Psalms and the Epistles of the Apostle Paul to the Romans and Galatians, Luther came to the conclusion that the salvation of man depends solely on God's grace, which became available only through sacrificial death Christ. Christ is, first of all, not a formidable Judge condemning sinners, but a Redeemer who accepted death on the cross.

Dominican friars traveled throughout Germany, offering full remission of sins and liberation from torment in purgatory to those who, having repented and confessed their sins, paid in accordance with their income. It was also possible to purchase a special indulgence for the souls in purgatory.

Luther's theses not only condemned the abuses attributed to the sellers of indulgences, but also generally denied the very principles according to which these indulgences were issued. He believed that the pope had no power to forgive sins (with the exception of punishments imposed by himself) and challenged the doctrine of the treasury of the merits of Christ and the saints, which the pope resorts to for the remission of sins. In addition, Luther deplored the fact that the practice of selling indulgences gave people what he believed to be a false assurance of salvation.

All attempts to force him to recant his views on papal power and authority failed, and, in the end, Pope Leo X condemned Luther on 41 counts (bull Exsurge Domine, June 15, 1520), and in January 1521 excommunicated him from the church.

In the meantime, the reformer published three pamphlets one after the other, in which he boldly outlined the program for reforming the church - its teachings and organization. In the first of them, "To the Christian nobility of the German nation about the correction of Christianity", he called on the German princes and sovereigns to reform the German church, giving it a national character and transforming it into a church free from the domination of the church hierarchy, from superstitious external rituals and from laws that allow monastic life, celibacy of priests and other customs in which he saw a perversion of a truly Christian tradition. In the treatise On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church" Luther attacked the entire system of church sacraments, in which the church was seen as the official and only mediator between God and the human soul. In the third pamphlet - " On the freedom of a Christian- he expounded his fundamental doctrine of justification by faith alone, which became the cornerstone in the theological system of Protestantism.

He responded to the papal bull of condemnation with the condemnation of the papacy (the pamphlet " Against the accursed bull of the Antichrist"), and publicly burned the bull itself, the Code of Canon Law, and several pamphlets of his opponents. Luther was an outstanding polemicist, sarcasm and abuse are his favorite tricks. But his opponents were not distinguished by delicacy. All the polemical literature of that time, both Catholic and Protestant, is full of personal insults and was characterized by rude, even obscene language.

Luther's audacity and open rebellion can be (at least in part) explained by the fact that his sermons, lectures, and pamphlets secured him the support of a large part of the clergy and a growing number of laity, both from the upper and lower strata of German society. Colleagues at the University of Wittenberg, professors from other universities, some fellow Augustinians, and many people devoted to humanist culture sided with him.

In addition, Frederick III the Wise, Elector of Saxony, Sovereign Luther, and some other German princes who sympathized with his views, took him under their protection. In their eyes, as in the eyes of ordinary people, Luther appeared as a champion of a holy cause, a reformer of the church and an exponent of the growing national self-consciousness of Germany.

Condemned and excommunicated by the pope for heretical views, Luther should, in the normal course of events, have been arrested by secular authorities; however, the Elector of Saxony protected the reformer and ensured his safety. The new Emperor Charles V, King of Spain and monarch of the Habsburg hereditary dominions, was at this moment seeking the united support of the German princes in anticipation of an inevitable war with Francis I, his rival for hegemony in Europe. At the request of the Elector of Saxony, Luther was allowed to attend and speak in his defense at the Reichstag in Worms (April 1521).

He was found guilty, and because he refused to recant his views, imperial disgrace was imposed on him and his followers by imperial edict. However, by order of the elector, Luther was intercepted on the road by knights and placed for his safety in a remote castle in the Wartburg.

During the war against Francis I, with whom the pope entered into an alliance that caused the famous sack of Rome (1527), the emperor could not or did not want to complete Luther's work for almost 10 years. During this period, the changes advocated by Luther came into practice not only in the Electorate of Saxony, but also in many states of Central and North-East Germany.

While Luther was in his enforced seclusion, the cause of the Reformation was threatened by serious disturbances and destructive raids on churches and monasteries, carried out at the instigation of the "Zwickau prophets." These religious fanatics claimed to be inspired by the Bible (they were joined by Luther's friend Karlstadt, one of the first to adopt the Protestant faith). Returning to Wittenberg, Luther crushed the fanatics with the power of eloquence and his authority, and the Elector of Saxony drove them out of his state. The "Prophets" were the forerunners of the Anabaptists, an anarchist movement within the Reformation. The most fanatical of them, in their program of building the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, called for the abolition of class privileges and the socialization of property.

Thomas Müntzer, the leader of the "Zwickau prophets", also participated in the Peasants' War, a major uprising that engulfed southwestern Germany like wildfire in 1524-1525.

The cause of the uprising was the age-old unbearable oppression and exploitation of the peasants, which caused from time to time bloody riots. Ten months after the start of the uprising, a manifesto was published (" Twelve Articles") of the Swabian peasants, compiled by several clerics who sought to draw the attention of the reformist party to the cause of the peasants.

To this end, in addition to a summary of peasant demands, the manifesto included new items advocated by the reformers (for example, the election of a pastor by the community and the use of tithes for the maintenance of the pastor and the needs of the community). All other demands, which were of an economic and social nature, were supported by quotations from the Bible as the highest and last authority. Luther appealed to both the nobles and the peasants with an exhortation, reproaching the former for oppressing the poor and urging the latter to follow the instructions of the Apostle Paul: "Let every soul be submissive to the highest authorities." He went on to call on both sides to make mutual concessions and restore peace. But the uprising continued, and Luther, in a new appeal, " Against gangs of peasants sowing murder and robbery" urged the nobles to crush the uprising: "Anyone who can should beat, strangle, stab them."

Responsibility for the disturbances caused by the "prophets", the Anabaptists and the peasants, was placed on Luther. Undoubtedly, his preaching of evangelical freedom against human tyranny inspired the "Zwickau prophets" and was used by the leaders of the Peasants' War. This experience undermined Luther's naive expectation that his preaching of freedom from slavery to the Law would force people to act out of a sense of duty towards society. He abandoned the original idea of ​​creating a Christian church independent of secular power, and was now inclined to the idea of ​​placing the church under the direct control of the state, which has the power and authority to curb movements and sects that deviate from the truth, i.e. from his own interpretation of the gospel of freedom.

The freedom of action granted to the reform party by the political situation made it possible not only to spread the movement to other German states and free cities, but also to develop a clear management structure and forms of worship for the reformed church. Monasteries - male and female - were abolished, and monks and nuns were released from all ascetic vows. Church property was confiscated and used for other purposes.

At the Reichstag in Speyer (1526), ​​the Protestant group was already so large that the assembly, instead of demanding the implementation of the Edict of Worms, decided to maintain the status quo and leave the princes free to choose their religion until ecumenical council.

The emperor himself harbored the hope that the ecumenical council, held in Germany and tuned to the implementation of urgent reforms, would be able to restore religious world and unity in the empire. But Rome feared that the council, held in Germany, under the existing circumstances, could get out of control, as happened with the Council of Basel (1433).

After defeating the French king and his allies, during a lull before the resumption of conflict, Charles finally decided to tackle the problem of religious peace in Germany. In an effort to reach a compromise, the Imperial Diet, convened at Augsburg in June 1530, demanded that Luther and his followers present to the public a statement of their faith and the reforms they insisted on.

This document, edited by Melanchthon and entitled " Augsburg Confession" (« Confessio Augustana"), was clearly conciliatory in tone. He denied any intention of the Reformers to secede from Roman Catholic Church or change any essential point of the Catholic faith. The Reformers insisted only on the suppression of abuses and the abolition of what they considered erroneous interpretations of the teachings and canons of the church.

They referred to abuses and delusions:

communion of the laity under only one form (consecrated bread);

attributing the character of sacrifice to the mass;

obligatory celibacy (celibacy) for priests;

mandatory confession and the existing practice of its conduct;

rules regarding fasting and food restrictions;

principles and practice of monastic and ascetic life;

The sharp rejection of these demands by the Catholics and the bitter, incoherent polemic between theologians of both parties clearly showed that the gulf between their positions could no longer be bridged. To restore unity, there was only one way - a return to the use of force.

Emperor and majority of the Reichstag upon approval catholic church provided an opportunity for the Protestants to return to the bosom of the church until April 1531. In preparation for the struggle, the Protestant princes and cities formed the Schmalkaldic League and began negotiations for assistance with England, where Henry VIII was in revolt against the papacy, with Denmark, which accepted the Lutheran Reformation, and with the French king, whose political antagonism with Charles V prevailed over all religious considerations.

In 1532, the emperor agreed to a truce for 6 months, as he was embroiled in the fight against Turkish expansion in the east and in the Mediterranean, but soon the re-emerged war with France and the uprising in the Netherlands absorbed all his attention, and only in 1546 he was able to return to German affairs. Meanwhile, Pope Paul III (1534-1549) succumbed to pressure from the emperor and convened a council at Trient (1545). The invitation to the Protestants was rejected with contempt by Luther and other leaders of the Reformation, who could only expect sweeping condemnation from the council.

Determined to crush all opponents, the emperor outlawed the leading Protestant princes and began hostilities. Having won a decisive victory at Mühlberg (April 1547), he forced them to surrender. But the task of restoring the Catholic faith and discipline in Protestant Germany proved almost impossible. The compromise on matters of faith and church organization, called the Augsburg Interim (May 1548), proved unacceptable to either the pope or the Protestants. Yielding to pressure, the latter agreed to send their representatives to the council, which, after a break, resumed work in Trient in 1551, but the situation changed overnight when Moritz, Duke of Saxony, went over to the side of the Protestants and moved his army to Tyrol, where Charles V was located The emperor was forced to sign a peace treaty in Passau (1552) and stop the fight.

In 1555, the Peace of Augsburg was concluded, according to which the Protestant churches that accepted Augsburg Confession, received legal recognition on the same basis as the Roman Catholic Church. This recognition did not extend to other Protestant sects. The principle “cuius regio, eius religio” (“whose power, that is faith”) was the basis of a new order: in every German state, the religion of the sovereign became the religion of the people. Catholics in Protestant states and Protestants in Catholic states were given the choice of either joining the local religion or moving with their property to the territory of their religion. The right to choose and the obligation for citizens of cities to profess the religion of the city extended to free cities. The Augsburg religious peace was a heavy blow to Rome. The Reformation took hold, and the hope of restoring Catholicism in Protestant Germany faded.

Switzerland. Shortly after Luther's rebellion against indulgences, Huldrych Zwingli (1484-1531), priest cathedral in Zurich, in his sermons he began to criticize indulgences and "Roman superstitions". The Swiss cantons, although nominally part of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, were in fact independent states united in an alliance for a common defense, and were governed by a council elected by the people. Having won the support of the city authorities of Zurich, Zwingli could easily introduce a reformed system of church organization and worship there.

After Zurich, the Reformation began in Basel, and then in Bern, St. Gallen, Grisons, Wallis and other cantons. The Catholic cantons, led by Lucerne, made every effort to prevent the further spread of the movement, as a result of which a religious war broke out, ending in the so-called. The first Treaty of Kappel (1529) guaranteed freedom of religion to each canton. However, in the Second Kappel War, the Protestant army was defeated at the Battle of Kappel (1531), in which Zwingli himself fell. The Second Peace of Kappel, concluded after this, restored Catholicism in the cantons with a mixed population.

Zwingli's theology, although he shared Luther's fundamental principle of justification by faith alone, differed in many points from Luther's, and the two reformers were never able to agree. For this reason, and also because of the dissimilarity of political situations, the Reformation in Switzerland and Germany took different paths.

The Reformation was first introduced in Geneva in 1534 by the French refugee Guillaume Farel (1489-1565). Another Frenchman, John Calvin (1509-1564) from the Picardy town of Noyon, became fascinated with the ideas of the Reformation while studying theology in Paris. In 1535 he visited Strasbourg, then Basel, and finally spent several months in Italy at the court of the Duchess Renata of Ferrara, who sympathized with the Reformation. On his way back from Italy in 1536, he made a stop in Geneva, where he settled at the urging of Farel. However, after two years he was expelled from the city and returned to Strasbourg, where he taught and preached. During this period, he established close relationships with some of the leaders of the Reformation, and above all with Melanchthon. In 1541, at the invitation of the magistrate, he returned to Geneva, where he gradually concentrated all power in the city in his hands and, through the consistory, managed spiritual and secular affairs until the end of his life in 1564.

Although Calvin proceeded from the principle of justification by faith alone, his theology developed in a different direction from Luther's. His concept of the church also did not coincide with the ideas of the German reformer. In Germany, the formation of a new church organization proceeded in random, unplanned ways under the influence of the "Zwickau prophets", at that time Luther was in the Wartburg castle. On his return, Luther expelled the "prophets" but found it wise to sanction some of the changes already made, although some of them seemed too radical to him at the time.

Calvin, on the contrary, planned the organization of his church on the basis of the Bible and intended to reproduce the structure of the original church as it can be represented on the basis of the New Testament. He took the principles and norms of secular government from the Bible and introduced them in Geneva. Fanatically intolerant of other people's opinions, Calvin expelled all dissenters from Geneva and sentenced Michel Servetus for his antitrinitarian ideas to be burned at the stake.

England. In England, the activities of the Roman Catholic Church have long been a source of great resentment from all classes of society, which was manifested in repeated attempts to stop these abuses. Wycliffe's revolutionary ideas concerning the church and the papacy attracted many supporters, and although the Lollard movement, inspired by his teachings, was severely suppressed, it did not completely disappear.

However, the British rebellion against Rome was not the work of the Reformers and was not caused by theological considerations. Henry VIII, a zealous Catholic, took severe measures against the penetration of Protestantism into England, he even wrote a treatise on the sacraments (1521), in which he refuted the teachings of Luther. Fearing powerful Spain, Henry wished to make an alliance with France, but met with an obstacle in the person of his Spanish wife, Catherine of Aragon; among other things, she never gave birth to an heir to the throne, and the legality of this marriage was in doubt. That is why the king asked the pope to annul the marriage so that he could marry Anne Boleyn, but the pope refused to give permission for the divorce, and this convinced the king that in order to strengthen his power, he needed to get rid of interference in his affairs from the pope .

He responded to the threat of the Vatican to excommunicate Henry VIII with the Act of Supremacy (1534), in which the monarch was recognized as the highest head of the Church of England, not subject to either the pope or others. church authorities. Apart from abolishing papal supremacy over the church, liquidating the monasteries and confiscating their possessions and property, Henry VIII did not make any changes to church teachings and institutions. IN " Six articles"(1539) the doctrine of transubstantiation was confirmed and communion under two forms was rejected. Likewise, no concessions were made to the celibacy of priests, the celebration of private masses, and the practice of confession. Harsh measures were taken against those who professed the Lutheran faith, many were executed, others fled to Protestant Germany and Switzerland.

However, during the regency of the Duke of Somerset under the minor Edward VI Articles Henry VIII were abolished, and the Reformation began in England: the (1549) and formulated 42 articles of faith(1552). The reign of Queen Mary (1553-1558) was marked by the restoration of Catholicism under the control of the papal legate, Cardinal Pole, but, contrary to his advice, the restoration was accompanied by severe persecution of Protestants and one of the first victims was Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury.

The accession to the throne of Queen Elizabeth (1558) again changed the situation in favor of the Reformation. The "oath of supremacy" was restored. Articles Edward VI, after a revision in 1563 called 39 articles, And Book of Public Worship became the normative doctrinal and liturgical documents of the Episcopal Church of England; and Catholics were now subjected to cruel persecution.

The reforms "from above" did not meet with serious resistance from the British people. Most of the clergy voluntarily adapted to the new religious order, and the aristocracy, many of whose representatives received a substantial share of the confiscated monastic properties as a gift from the king, almost completely supported the new order.