Some Remarks on Protestantism

The word "protest" is right there in it. Protesting against what, is the question, and the answer has varied considerably from Protestant to Protestant. Within Lutheranism there has been a lot of controversy on this point, as far back as Luther's lifetime, when German peasants heard of this movement against the authority of the Catholic Church, and immediately associated it with their urge to rebel against their feudal overlords. There were some widespread and violent peasant uprisings in the 1520's in Germany. Luther condemned these revolts, explicitly sided with the hereditary rulers and the traditional class society and urged the aristocrats to crush the peasant revolts ruthlessly, which they did -- but a lot of people never got this message and have never gotten it since, and to this day, in Germany, at least, Protestantism, which in Germany is almost synonymous with Lutheranism, is generally associated with the political Left, and Catholicism with the Right.

Right from the start, Luther's revolt against the established Church was mistaken by many to be a revolt against Christianity, and for the freedom to question everything. Luther meant just about the opposite: himself a Catholic monk when he began to protest against the Church, he protested, as had other Catholics before him like Francis of Assisi and Savoranola, as other would later, as Ignatius of Loyola did at the same time as Luther, that the Church was not Christian enough. Francis' and Ignatius' protests were heeded by the Church and incorporated into it, Savoranola's were condemned and he was executed, Luther's were condemned and he escaped execution at the hands of the Church, not by much, but he escaped, and soon enough Lutheranism had established itself in parts of Germany, and in parts of the Netherlands and Scandinavia and elsewhere, and was executing Catholics.

Lutheranism was not the first protestant movement to break away from the Catholic Church which persists to this day: Jan Hus led a break from the Church in Bohemia a century earlier. Hus himself was burned at the stake in 1415, but the Hussites survived, combining theological objection to Catholic theology with a Czech nationalist revolt against the rule of the Catholic, Austrian Holy Roman Emperor. The Emperor was not just Catholic, he was very Catholic, crowned by the Pope. It was much harder, impossible, really, to separate religion from politics in those days.

The Hussites started earlier, but it was the Lutherans who seemed to open the floodgates of Protestantism: in Luther's lifetime Calvin and Henry VIII started Protestant denominations of their own, and from Lutheranism, Calvinism and Anglicanism there quickly splintered off many more denominations, and despite many bloody religious wars from Luther's time until 1648, religious unity was gone from the formerly all-Catholic regions of Europe from Iceland to Poland and Croatia. And, quite ironically, much of the movements of science and secularism since that time, at least in Germany, have their roots in the movement started by an extremely pious Augustinian monk who protested because in his eyes the Church was all too worldly, all too secular, all too interested in the free examination of new scientific ideas.

Luther also disliked the lavish art of the Vatican. While still a monk he visited Rome, and was shocked and appalled by the splendour of St. Peter's, paid for in large part by the indulgences bought by his fellow Germans. (At the same time that the Renaissance Popes were building their magnificent churches and palaces and filling them with great art and with scholars and building up the Vatican library and doing all the other things to which Luther objected, the things which their critics to this day have not ceased to denounce, they were also doing a much better job of caring for the poor in Rome and the Papal lands than many Popes before or since them, a fact unknown or unimportant, or both, to their critics.) In his (dis)taste for art, especially for grand and lavish, luxurious art, he does seem to have been more influential among his supposed followers than among Catholics.

I'm going to give Friedrich Nietzsche the last word here: this is chapter 61 of his book Der Antichrist:

"Hier tut es not, eine für Deutsche noch hundertmal peinlichere Erinnerung zu berühren. Die Deutschen haben Europa um die letzte große Kultur-Ernte gebracht, die es für Europa heimzubringen gab, - um die der Renaissance. Versteht man endlich, will man verstehn, was die Renaissance war? Die Umwertung der christlichen Werte, der Versuch, mit allen Mitteln, mit allen Instinkten, mit allem Genie unternommen, die Gegen-Werte, die vornehmen Werte zum Sieg zu bringen ... Es gab bisher nur diesen großen Krieg, es gab bisher keine entscheidendere Fragestellung als die der Renaissance, - meine Frage ist ihre Frage -: es gab auch nie eine grundsätzlichere, eine geradere, eine strenger in ganzer Front und auf das Zentrum los geführte Form des Angriffs! An der entscheidenden Stelle, im Sitz des Christentums selbst angreifen, hier die vornehmen Werte auf den Thron bringen, will sagen in die Instinkte, in die untersten Bedürfnisse und Begierden der daselbst Sitzenden hineinbringen ... Ich sehe eine Möglichkeit vor mir von einem vollkommen überirdischen Zauber und Farbenreiz: - es scheint mir, daß sie in allen Schaudern raffinierter Schönheit erglänzt, daß eine Kunst in ihr am Werke ist, so göttlich, so teufelsmäßig-göttlich, daß man Jahrtausende umsonst nach einer zweiten solchen Möglichkeit durchsucht; ich sehe ein Schauspiel, so sinnreich, so wunderbar paradox zugleich, daß alle Gottheiten des Olymps einen Anlaß zu einem unsterblichen Gelächter gehabt hätten - Cesare Borgia als Papst ... Versteht man mich? ... Wohlan, das wäre der Sieg gewesen, nach dem ich heute allein verlange -: damit war das Christentum abgeschafft! - Was geschah? Ein deutscher Mönch, Luther, kam nach Rom. Dieser Mönch, mit allen rachsüchtigen Instinkten eines verunglückten Priesters im Leibe, empörte sich in Rom gegen die Renaissance ... Statt mit tiefster Dankbarkeit das Ungeheure zu verstehn, das geschehen war, die Überwindung des Christentums an seinem Sitz -, verstand sein Haß aus diesem Schauspiel nur seine Nahrung zu ziehn. Ein religiöser Mensch denkt nur an sich. - Luther sah die Verderbnis des Papsttums, während gerade das Gegenteil mit Händen zu greifen war: die alte Verderbnis, das peccatum originale, das Christentum saß nicht mehr auf dem Stuhl des Papstes! Sondern das Leben! Sondern der Triumph des Lebens! Sondern das große Ja zu allen hohen, schönen, verwegnen Dingen! ... Und Luther stellte die Kirche wieder her: er griff sie an ... Die Renaissance - ein Ereignis ohne Sinn, ein großes Umsonst! Ah diese Deutschen, was sie uns schon gekostet haben! Umsonst - das war immer das Werk der Deutschen - Die Reformation; Leibnitz; Kant und die sogenannte deutsche Philosophie; die "Freiheits"-Kriege; das Reich - jedesmal ein Umsonst für etwas, das bereits da war, für etwas Unwiederbringliches ... Es sind meine Feinde, ich bekenne es, diese Deutschen: ich verachte in ihnen jede Art von Begriffs- und Wert-Unsauberkeit, von Feigheit vor jedem rechtschaffnen Ja und Nein. Sie haben, seit einem Jahrtausend beinahe, alles verfilzt und verwirrt, woran sie mit ihren Fingern rührten, sie haben alle Halbheiten - Drei-Achtelsheiten! - auf dem Gewissen, an denen Europa krank ist, - sie haben auch die unsauberste Art Christentum, die es gibt, die unheilbarste, die unwiderlegbarste, den Protestantismus auf dem Gewissen ... Wenn man nicht fertig wird mit dem Christentum, die Deutschen werden daran schuld sein ..."

Please forgive me for not translating that. I'm a little tired, and I don't really want to translate that passage anyway. It's so full of fire and passion and furious energy, and I couldn't do justice to it under the best of circumstances.

The Nazis claimed they loved Nietzsche, but it's hard for me to imagine them reading this or many another passage by Nietzsche where he criticizes Germany about as sharply as anyone ever has. Instead of translating the passage -- chapter 61 of Nietzsche's Antichrist, if you really want a full translation there are lots of them about -- I'll just summarize it: The Renaissance was on the point of doing away with Christianity, replacing its values with their life-affirming opposites in the person of the Pope, when Luther came to Rome, saw these life-affirming tendencies, hated them with a typically German hate, and attacked the Church for this and so robbed the world of the achievements of the Renaissance. This type of German, represented by Luther, Leibnitz, Kant and by German philosophy generally, is Nietzsche's enemy.