The Case for God

by Karen Armstrong

Historians used to think that the Reformation was primarily a reaction to the corruption of the Church, but there seems to have been a spiritual revival in Europe at this time, especially among the laity, who now felt empowered to criticize abuses that had previously passed without comment. As society changed, ideas and rituals that had been religiously viable before the advent of modernity became suddenly abhorrent.24 Instead of giving people a sense of life’s transcendent possibilities, they caused only anxiety. Luther memorably expressed this alienation from older practices. Although I lived a blameless life as a monk, I felt that I was a sinner with an uneasy conscience before God. I also could not believe that I had pleased him with my works. … I was a good monk, and kept my order so strictly that if ever a monk could get to heaven by monastic discipline, I was that monk. All my companions in the monastery would confirm this. … And yet my conscience did not give me certainty, but I always doubted and said, “You didn’t do that right. You weren’t contrite enough. You left that out of your confession.”25 In the past, the monastic life had encouraged a spirituality that was essentially communal. Monks had listened to the scriptures together during the liturgy. Lectio divina had been a ruminative, unanxious, and even enjoyable method of appropriating the truths of religion. But the new emphasis on the individual made Luther so obsessed with his own spiritual performance th...