The French Revolution, Catholic Ultramontanism, German Higher Criticism and Evangelical Fundamentalism

 

Storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789 => new era of the cause of the common man

“Age of Progress” (1789-1814) begins with the cry of “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!”

 

--Rights of the common man

--Progression of human history—inevitable improvement of the human condition through Enlightened science and the use of reason

 

Catholic Church suffers more than the Protestant churches which were, in some ways, products of the re-emergence of the supremacy of Reason

            --Democracy brought the glorification of Man; Church lashes out at it as  kind of heresy

                        --“Ten thousand people telling a lie do not turn the lie into truth.”

                        --Guarantees of the franchise do not automatically produce a Utopia on earth

            --De Toqueville’s (early 19^th c.) warning against majority tyranny was realized in radical movements of the late 18^th and 19^th century

            --Church attempts to go backward

 

Early 19^th century liberalism

            --advocates the middle class’s values and social and economic freedoms

            --laissez-faire approach to economics and business (cf. modern 21^st c. conservatives)

            --representative government/republican government

Early 19^th century equality

            --rights are the same for everyone politically

            --working class socialism as a means to equality, either by democratic evolution or Marxist revolution

Early 19^th century fraternity

            --nationalism (loyalty to and advocacy for and willingness to die for one’s own national identity; geographic and ethnic ties become more important than religious ties)

 

18^th century  France dominated by minority, the nobility and the clergy

            --peasants (80% of the population) are oppressed

            --middle class is small but is in the best position to revolt (had wealth, intelligence, and ability without any of the responsibility, authority or recognition of the upper classes)

           

Challenges are presented across  Europe from a number of radical politicians as early as the 1760s and ff.

            --the American Revolution serves as an inspiration for these radicals in Europe

France is largest nation in Europe and also the most politically and economically bankrupt (and probably morally bankrupt, as well)

            --Louis XVI summons Estates-General (first time they have met in 175 yrs.) to has out a solution to France’s growing budgetary and political woes

            --Estates-General has no clear guidance as to how they should operate

                        --First and Second Estates (Clergy and Nobility) wish to have votes counted by estate, thus they would be in the political majority

                        --Third Estate (the bourgeoisie) wish to have votes counted individually, which would give them the edge, if they could also bring over liberals from the other Estates

            --Bastille is stormed in July; by August, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen are made law; not long after that Louis XVI is guillotined, a reign of terror is instituted and Napoleon comes into power (all within a short span of about a decade)

 

--Third Estate breaks away from the other two Estates and forms the National Assembly

            --National Assembly reorganizes the RCC in France

                        --Splits Church into two factions—the constitutional clergy (who take the loyalty oath to the government, forswearing loyalty to the pope) and the non-constitutional clergy (who do not take the oath and are eventually persecuted and exiled (or killed)).

                        --Some 30,000-40,000 priests in France are exiled

                        --New calendar is created expunging all references to Christianity

                        --Cult of Reason is set up; Catholic parish churches and cathedrals are transformed in to “Temples of Reason” where the Goddess of Reason is enthroned and worshipped (common to see girls dress as Liberty, Reason, or Nature and lead processions through the towns to the new altars to Reason)

            --By 1795, Free Exercise of religion is granted to all faiths; leads Catholics to return to their own altars and attempt to recreate the old way

            --Napoleon appears on the scene; leads a coup d’etat against the corrupt French Republican government and has himself proclaimed emperor of France (receiving the crown from the Pope, though placing it himself on his own head in spite of the pope’s claims to temporal power)

                        --1801 Concordat restores the RCC to a place of primacy in France; recognizes that Catholicism is the religion of the majority of Frenchmen (there is no temporal power attached)

 

The Catholic Reaction to Revolution

Roman Catholic Church regards political freedom as improper to Man

            --stick to Augustine’s argument that liberty is by grace, not grace by liberty

            --sought to counteract teachings of 19^th c. liberalism, such as John Stuart Mill’s notion that “The liberty of each, limited by the like liberty of all” should be the norm for modern society

 

1815—Absolutists attempt to regain European thrones (Congress of Vienna, end of the Napoleonic Wars) but are opposed by the new liberals

 

1830—liberal revolution in France overturns the restored monarchy

 

1848—Triumph of liberalism (the liberal revolution) throughout Europe

 

Papacy during all these years of the first half of the 19^th century is languishing in the throes of the Middle Ages’ last gasps—Leo XII, Pius VIII and Gregory XVI all refused to come into the 19^th century and contend with the new ideas; never understood the new order ushered in by the  French Revolution and never developed ways to fight it or convert it’s spirit

 

Liberals insist that the Church keep quiet and not express its views of morality in public life—the Catholic Church should hold no special place in the world, and its members should not be elevated over other citizens—liberalism would intend to take on the evils of the world itself without any divine assistance from the RCC or any other religious congregation or church (the enthronement of Reason still lives on, despite its literal dethronement in France during the final years of the 18^th century)

 

Italian Risorgimento begun in Sardinia

            --hatred of the Papal States and all that they stood for (i.e., a moral and spiritual, as well as political absolutism)

            --goal was to overthrow all alien forces in Italian peninsula and unite the then seven disparate Italian states and the Papal States

            --French forces had to protect the Papal States from invasion of Italian nationalists (would continue to do so from 1849-1870)

 

Pius IX (1846-1878): Hailed by liberals as a possible reformer and modernizer in the Church

            --gave the Papal States a constitution in March 1848; permits people in those lands a degree of participation in their government

            --Revolutionaries assassinate the first papal prime minister => Pius reinstating absolute rule in the Papal States

            --Revolution in Rome forces Pius to flee the city temporarily

            --French help restore the Papal States and Rome; Pius resumes absolute powers

1859-60—nationalists gain much of the Papal States’ territory

            --1861—King Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia (leader of the nationalist movement) is crowned King of Italy

            --1870—Rome falls to the nationalists and the Papal States cease to be an independent principality

            --Pius decides to stick to the Vatican (remains the “prisoner of the Vatican” till his papacy ends with his death in 1878)

            --Victor Emmanuel moves his government to Rome, despite papal protestations and excommunications; promises Pius full spiritual authority and an annual subsidy, but Pius rejects such offers and forbids Italian Catholics from participation in the new nationalist government’s elections (leaves field wide open for liberals)

            --Italian government falls to the radicals and anti-clerical movement; no agreement worked out between Italian government and the Vatican until 1929’s Lateran Treaty with Mussolini

 

 

Vatican Council I (1870):

--culmination of Ultramontanism

--French Catholic attachment to the papacy after Napoleon

            --saw the papacy as the only source of order and public morality in a troubled world

            --the pope was the leader of the fight against political tyranny

            --urged an independent clergy under an infallible pope—Church is a monarchy

                        --“What sovereignty was to secular kings, infallibility was to the popes; infallibility was nothing more than sovereignty in the realm of the spirit and the Church.”

                        --Pius hopes to win monarchists over to the papal cause—transferring their loyalty to the Church instead of to the liberal states

                                    --Pius encourages belief in the papal infallibility

                                                --One Jesuit publication asserts that God is thinking in Pius when the latter meditated

                                                --Some hymns are published and sung addressing Pius, not God

                                                --Some go so far as to call Pius the “vice-God of humanity”

                        --Dec. 8, 1854, Immaculate Conception (“It is a divinely revealed truth of faith that Mary in the first moment of her conception was freed by special grace from the stain of original sin in view of the merits of Christ” whom she would bear) is dogmatized

                                    --first ex cathedra declaration of dogma (all the rest had been done by councils in the previous centuries; not even Innocent III can claim to make dogma apart from councils, as witnessed in his calling of the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215)

                        --1870 Council must decide if pope can indeed decide matters of dogma alone

 

                        --Dec. 1864, Syllabus of Errors is published

                                    --lists 80 evils of modern society

                                    --church would thereafter be in a struggle to the death with modernity

                                    --condemns such things as socialism, rationalism, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, public schools, Bible societies, separation of church and state, etc.)

                                    --Pius concludes his encyclical denying that “the Roman pontiff can and ought to reconcile himself and reach agreement with progress, liberalism, and modern civilization.”

                        --Vatican I—definition of papal infallibility had to be hammered out; most of the dissenters did so only because they thought the time was not yet right; the rest were eager to give it a formal definition

                                    --council asserts the primacy of the pope and his infallibility

                                    --full papal authority over the whole Church and over each bishop in faith, morality, discipline, and church administration

                                    --ex cathedra declarations are infallible and do not require council’s assent

                        --Outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War on 19 July 1870 (infallibility had been defined just the day before) causes the first Vatican Council to conclude, as bishops return home to prepare for the conflict

                        --Ultramontanist strategy wins out; becomes the guiding force in Catholicism for nearly 100 years; Church refuses to confront modernity until 1962

 

Evangelicalism Comes of Age

--Emerges from a tension between missionary zeal and the necessity of preserving the true worship of God

            --mission must be coupled with worship so the mission will not be empty of meaning

            --worship must be coupled with mission so the worship will not be mere religious formality

--Para-church organizations appear—cross-denominational organizations with service and worship as their goals

            --spreading the gospel and creating new disciples

            --distributing Bibles and helping the poor and needy—Anglicans could work alongside Nonconformists and vice-versa for the higher cause of the Gospel of Jesus Christ

--Evangelicalism centered in personal piety, a personal conversion experience, and a zeal for missionary activity and service

            --devotion to the Bible as the (inspired) Word of God (sometimes to the point of near bibliolatry)

            --emphasis on the necessity of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ and a spiritual rebirth

            --God’s love for all of humanity is revealed in Christ and this love compels us

            --Generally low-church styles of worship (though there was not an automatic exclusion of high-church ritual, just the emphasis on scriptural preaching took center stage, not the sacramental and liturgical rites of the high church tradition)

            --urged reform of society and help for the oppressed

                        --better prisons

                        --better conditions for the poor and needy

                        --distribution of bibles to everyone

                        --anti-slavery (first in Britain, then here)

Fast forward a bit—

 

German higher criticism: 19^th century movement that began to pick apart the Bible as just another text, using the textual criticism methods developing during the time

            --purports to demonstrate that the Christian and Jewish scriptures are not authored by the men they say wrote them; show that many “errors” exist in the biblical texts, e.g., nonconformity with the teachings of modern science (Darwinism is a big problem for some evangelicals and Catholics later in this century), historical inaccuracies, inconsistencies or contradictions in the text, etc. 

            --JEDP theory (Yahwist, Elohist, Deuteronomic, and Priestly authors of the Pentateuch, not Moses)

            --The teachings of Jesus could not have contained the claims to be Messiah and Son of God—these later claims were made by disciples and later authors to affirm their own faith in Jesus

                        --Quests for the “historical Jesus” begin in earnest around this time (e.g. Albert Schweitzer)

 

Darwinian Evolution: theory that the universe was not created in 6 literal days, instead the species evolved over millions of years to become what they are today

 

Evangelical reaction to higher criticism and to the teaching of Evolution:

            --some welcome the marriage of the bible and science and join the “modernist” camp (become known later as the “theological liberals”)

                        --Social Gospel of the early 20^th century; Henry Emerson Fosdick, etc.; 19^th c. Unitarianism (Emerson, Thoreau)

                        --deemphasis on sinfulness of man and more emphasis on his perfectibility

            --others react violently against it—become known later as “fundamentalists”

                        --The Fundamentals written in 1910 by a number of well-known evangelical scholars (yes, there were conservative Christians in the academy back then)—Machen,  Riley, Hodge, etc.

                                    --affirmed traditional doctrines of inspired (for some, inerrant or infallible) scripture, the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, the Second Coming of Christ and the need for repentance and personal salvation

                                    --end up in the early 20^th century withdrawing from society because of pressures in the academy and in their mainline churches (to which most belonged at the time)

                                    --mid-20^th century resurgence of fundamentalism, as they had developed their own sub-culture during their withdrawal period, had proven that they could go it alone without the aid of the mainline churches, established their own churches and/or denominations or went independent of any denomination; spoke to social ills through their interpretation of scriptural teachings that the heart was the locus of conversion, that each must be converted individually and only in the transformation of individual hearts can we hope to see an improvement in society in general

                        --Premillennial Dispensationalism: theory originally developed by John Nelson Darby (member of the Plymouth Brethren) and taken to new heights by Calvinist-leaning fundamentalists such as C. I. Scofield and Charles Ryrie; assumes that the Second Coming of Christ will occur before the Millennial Reign of Christ (Rev. 13), that before the Tribulation (a seven-year period during which the Antichrist will reign for 3 ½ years) a secret “rapture” of the saints will occur, leaving all the lost on earth to suffer during the Tribulation; also during the Tribulation, the Jews will be converted to Christianity, and after those seven years, Christ will come in glory to reign for 1000 years in peace from Jerusalem itself, then Satan will be let loose for a time and finally thrown into the lake of fire and the  New Heaven and New Earth will appear and time shall be no more.

                                    --this doctrine becomes more and more a litmus test of fundamentalists; believe it or you are not a fundamentalist and you are an enemy of the faith (at least the more militant would say this)

                                    --also serves as a motive for fundamentalists to missionize—the more people are converted, the faster we can bring about the rapture and get the heck out of Dodge

                                    --also allows a bit of Christian complacency with the struggles of this world, knowing that God’s plan will prevail and we as Christians will be secured with him in the rapture; no need to attempt to reform the ills of society and the faults of governments—the Rapture might be just around the corner, a heartbeat away; salvation of the lost is all-important

                                    --also one of the reasons that the US is such a staunch supporter of national Israel even today (since its inception in 1948); fundamentalists believe that this is a literal fulfillment of prophecy that just before the End Times, the Jewish nation will be restored so that the rest of the (unfulfilled) prophecies of the Old Testament about the Temple and the fall of Jerusalem can be fulfilled (cf. Daniel 7-9; the book of Revelation)