Martin Luther And John Calvin

Paper Summary:

Examines the religious ideas of the two leaders of the Protestant Reformation. Social changes of the 16th Century. Luther's challenge to the Church. His concepts of Revelation, faith and the relationship between humanity and God. Calvin's amplification of Luther's ideas. Doctrinal differences between Lutheranism and Calvinism. Calvin's belief in predestination.

From the Paper:

"Martin Luther (1483-1546) and John Calvin (1509-1564) were two of the principal leaders of the Protestant Reformation that transformed Western Europe in the sixteenth century. In the German states of the early sixteenth century there was "a combination of circumstances favourable to rebellion," the agricultural peasantry was oppressed and impoverished and the rest of the society strained against the domination of the Church and the excesses of ecclesiastical-temporal rulers of many bishoprics and monasteries (Sykes 28). Yet the form of the vast social change that eventually occurred was very different from outright armed rebellion against the civil or even the ecclesiastical authorities. There were minor peasants' revolts, it is true, but in general social change began in the arena of spiritual matters and this is due almost entirely to Luther's ..."

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