Rebel in the Ranks Quotes

“The dispute between Erasmus and Luther signals the end of Christian humanism as a reforming initiative aiming to renew Christendom as a whole. As the sixteenth century unfolds, Protestant and Catholic humanists will marshal their knowledge of languages and scholarship against each other in the service of rival theological commitments. Like Catholics and magisterial Protestants more generally, Erasmus and Luther believe in original sin but remain deeply divided about the extent and the range of its effects. Ultimately, this divide implies very different views about human nature. On one side are those convinced that only if utterly sinful human beings acknowledge their inability to contribute to their salvation can they be saved by God’s grace. On the other side are those who agree that human beings cannot be saved without God but that we retain some goodness and capacity to freely cooperate with God’s grace as a necessary precondition for our salvation. Different views of human nature go together with different views of God and of how God interacts with human beings. And through all the rancor eternal salvation is hanging in the balance.”
― Brad S. Gregory, Rebel in the Ranks: Martin Luther, the Reformation, and the Conflicts That Continue to Shape Our World

“Generally speaking, these Christians want basic changes inspired by the gospel to infuse their traditional, broader understanding of “divine law.” They want the right to choose their own clergy. They want an end to feudal taxes and fees they consider burdensome and unjust. They want access to shared woods, fields, and streams for their use. And they want the abolition of traditional serfdom and the oppressive conditions it entails.”
― Brad S. Gregory, Rebel in the Ranks: Martin Luther, the Reformation, and the Conflicts That Continue to Shape Our World

“When a burdened Augustinian friar in Wittenberg in October 1516 lamented in a letter how busy he was, no Reformation was in sight. Only Luther’s religious anxiety and his pastoral concern for Christian souls were present. By the summer of 1521, Martin Luther is Europe’s most famous man and its all-time bestselling author.”
― Brad S. Gregory, Rebel in the Ranks: Martin Luther, the Reformation, and the Conflicts That Continue to Shape Our World

“After the Leipzig Disputation, Luther’s cornerstone becomes more firmly settled. “By scripture alone”—or in Latin, sola scriptura—becomes his rock. On this basis he will criticize whatever in Church teaching and practice contradicts God’s Word. On this basis he will reconstruct authentic Christian teaching and practice for the sake of laypeople, who have been sadly misled through no fault of their own. And on this basis he will become the unwitting progenitor of a revolution in Western Christianity—a revolution that will affect just about everything because of how religion is interconnected with the rest of life.”
― Brad S. Gregory, Rebel in the Ranks: Martin Luther, the Reformation, and the Conflicts That Continue to Shape Our World

“These cities are also important centers of commerce, artisanal crafts, education, and culture—nodes in a network of communication and travel that connects the cities of northern France, England, and the Low Countries to the Italian peninsula. Their influence puts them in a position to shape the religious life of their communities in crucial ways. Over the previous couple of centuries, many of these cities have wrested control of church institutions away from bishops, precisely because many urban leaders were conscientious Christians who cared about the Church.22 If the bishops wouldn’t oversee reforms, secular authorities would.”
― Brad S. Gregory, Rebel in the Ranks: Martin Luther, the Reformation, and the Conflicts That Continue to Shape Our World

“But upon closer inspection, the Dutch Republic is vastly different from the Spanish Netherlands, specifically concerning the relationship between religion and politics. In fact, that relationship in the Dutch Republic is unique in Western Europe. In the Dutch Republic there is no state church, as there are in France, Spain, England, German Lutheran territories, Scandinavian countries, or the Reformed Protestant territories of the Holy Roman Empire. People in the Dutch Republic do not have to belong to a particular religion. Well into the seventeenth century, the dominant, state-supported, public church in the Dutch Republic includes only a small minority of the population. Equally unique is the fact that, from its establishment, the Dutch Republic remains a haven for religious groups of all sorts.”
― Brad S. Gregory, Rebel in the Ranks: Martin Luther, the Reformation, and the Conflicts That Continue to Shape Our World

“with competing claims apparent among groups such as the Diggers, Quakers, Ranters, Baptists, Muggletonians, and Fifth Monarchists”
― Brad S. Gregory, Rebel in the Ranks: Martin Luther, the Reformation, and the Conflicts That Continue to Shape Our World

“The Calvinist nobles convey their objections by throwing two imperial representatives out the window of Prague Castle in the famous “defenestration of Prague.”
― Brad S. Gregory, Rebel in the Ranks: Martin Luther, the Reformation, and the Conflicts That Continue to Shape Our World

“A majority of political representatives that convene at the Diet of Speyer in 1529 vote to undo the changes in religion and enforce the Edict of Worms. A minority of five evangelical princes and fourteen cities protest this vote—the origin of the term Protestants.”
― Brad S. Gregory, Rebel in the Ranks: Martin Luther, the Reformation, and the Conflicts That Continue to Shape Our World

“In the 1520s, dozens of free imperial cities are the sites of an aggressive, disruptive Reformation movement as unexpected as an Augustinian friar becoming a publishing sensation and celebrity papal critic.7”
― Brad S. Gregory, Rebel in the Ranks: Martin Luther, the Reformation, and the Conflicts That Continue to Shape Our World

“To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation appears in August, a scathing manifesto in German by a man now convinced of his role in a cosmic battle between God and Satan.”
― Brad S. Gregory, Rebel in the Ranks: Martin Luther, the Reformation, and the Conflicts That Continue to Shape Our World

“Through the medium of print, thorny questions intended for debate among authorized experts have been made available for public comment for the first time. But only a tiny percentage of the population can read Latin. Writing about touchy theological issues in German would be something else entirely, which is why it’s so alarming when Luther decides to respond to his critics publicly in the vernacular.”
― Brad S. Gregory, Rebel in the Ranks: Martin Luther, the Reformation, and the Conflicts That Continue to Shape Our World

“The first hint of what is to come occurs near the end of Luther’s obscurity. In September 1517 the dutiful Johann Rhau-Grunenberg publishes a one-page broadsheet by Luther with a boring title: A Disputation against Scholastic Theology. In his broadsheet, Luther ironically lists concise propositions to be argued over—a central practice of scholasticism—in order to criticize scholasticism itself, sort of like a poet writing a poem to criticize poetry.”
― Brad S. Gregory, Rebel in the Ranks: Martin Luther, the Reformation, and the Conflicts That Continue to Shape Our World