A Model of Interaction Between the University and the Church

By: Daniel van Voorhis

March 19, 2018

What Can Past Reformations Teach Us about the Future?

In the Western world, after the first century, there is no more important time to observe the interaction between religion and the state than during the sixteenth century, the age of reformations. Having just witnessed the five-hundredth anniversary of Luther’s posting of the 95 Theses, there has been no shortage of works exploring the Reformation and its impact today. Unfortunately, 2017 was not only chronologically removed from Luther’s hammer, but it represents a world far different in temperament and what we expect of ecclesiastical and temporal authorities. Comparisons can only go so far as 1517 was a pre-Enlightenment context, mostly in an empire, and with the church and state so fused together as to render both almost unrecognizable to us today. Thus, we make comparisons across the chasm at our peril.

But despite the distance, we do learn something from the political changes during this age with regards to freedom of conscience, education, and vocational training. And we can see a model of interaction between the university and the church. To necessarily narrow the discussion of the sixteenth century I will confine myself to the early Lutheran reformation, and despite its fracturing into various movements these three trends do find their expression in broad Protestant and Catholic circles. 

"Unless I am convinced by Scripture and plain reason—I do not accept the authority of the popes and councils.”

Thus began Luther’s refusal to recant at the Diet of Worms. We are familiar with the later part of this quote when he says “Here I stand,” but this bit of prologue is important. Scripture and plain reason claim to be the only arbiters of truth: not popes, not church councils, and not emperors. The flowering (or splintering?) of the Protestant church in the wake of this bore witness to the claim that the freedom of one’s own conscience could now dictate their worship preferences. This freedom of conscience led in part to a myriad of so-called reputable sources sowing distrust in the church universal. But where we see confidence fizzle, the university system in Europe began to reap generations of free-thinking individuals who would eventually pave the way towards the Enlightenment.

This university system was built on the back of the German school project which went hand in hand with the Lutheran Reformation. The zeal of the reformers matched the optimism of the princes in thinking a people could be rightly moved if educated. The scholastic tone of this group can place its genesis in the teaching that correct belief is of the utmost importance. But these schools, often with connected parishes, taught boys and girls (Martin Luther insisted that both sexes were given an education) and sent literacy rates through the roof. Whether the literature would agree with them was another question. Nevertheless, this in conjunction with the Renaissance in southern Europe would spread a humanist ideal still present.

Luther’s doctrine of vocation would have been popular, especially in rural areas, in that it emphasized every vocatio or “calling” as a divine appointment. Thus, the nursemaid and the stall hand were elevated in their station. As far as the princes were concerned, the elevation of all callings served them in that it didn’t encourage social mobility and thus incur the violence involved when all the combatants believe it’s a zero-sum game. 

At first glance, the Reformation was a step backwards in pursuit of the modern goal of diversity and plurality. As the church fractured it came to have many heads, yet these individual branches would insist on their own purity and connection to the early church. Consequently, when combined with the rise of education these new “heads” ended up being not just separated by creed but now real diverse thought. From the Enlightenment salons to the Dutch schools reading their beloved Spinoza, the scientific community could grow (albeit checked by their rivals and the church). It seems that we might have a plurality of heads, political and theological, that can work to keep each other in check. 

The model, if it is worth following, seems to be of a symbiotic relationship between the church and the university, and even of faith and reason in general. Thus, if the two can respect the domains (or vocations) of each other, we could foster real growth in both knowledge and humanitarian work, in a tribute to what we lacked in charity over fighting about religion the first time.

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