Morality and the Protestant Reformation

The Psychological Impact of Theology

I mentioned recently that I finished reading Michael Massing's excellent book Fatal Discord: Erasmus, Luther, and the Fight for the Western Mind.

One of the things that struck me, in reading Massing's account of the Protestant Reformation, was how both Luther and Calvin struggled to get the people in both Wittenberg and Geneva to behave like proper Christians. One of the outcomes of the Protestant Reformation was a profound collapse of morals and Christian piety. Carousing, drunkenness, gambling, prostitution, public indecency and adultery skyrocketed in the wake of the "new gospel." Church attendance and giving also took a huge hit.  

The Reformers raged from their pulpits against their cities, denouncing their depravity and debauchery. But as Massing points out, what did the Reformers expect? Under the prior Catholic system, righteous behavior was meritorious. Your behavior mattered, eternally so. Good deeds received a reward, and bad deeds were punished. In addition, humans had free will. Because of this, your choices mattered, again, eternally so. Bad choices led to hell, and good choices led to heaven.

The Reformers, however, threw all this out the window. Free will was denounced as heretical. The will was, rather, in bondage. In addition, righteous behavior was described as sinful. As Luther declared, because of human depravity, "we sin even when we do good." Finally, there was Calvin's noxious doctrine of "double predestination," the belief that God predestinated the vast majority of humanity to be damned. Your fate as a "child of hell" was sealed before you were even born, and there was nothing you could do about it. No choice you made could change your fate.

Now I ask you, it is any wonder why the populace acted the way they did after the Protestant Reformation? If you tell people they have no free will, that good deeds are sinful, that our moral choices have no eternal impact, and that we're damned no matter what we do, well, what did you think was going to happen? 

I find Luther's and Calvin's confusion about this inexplicable. Theology has psychological impacts, a point theologians often ignore. Too many theologians obsess over a "correct" configuration of abstract ideas, ignoring their psychological, social, and moral effects. For example, the theology of the Reformation was, perhaps, the worst theology you could imagine to motivate righteous action. Seriously, the theological stew cooked up by the Reformers--no free will, good deeds are ineffectual and sinful, and the predestined damnation of the majority of the human race--was, and remains, a moral and spiritual formation disaster. 

Now a response here might be: Are you suggesting that we allow human beings, rather than God, dictate theological directions? Well, yeah, I'll grab the nettle here: I am saying that. To be clear, I'm not saying that theology water itself down to some humanistic, existential twaddle. But I am saying that if you teach things that undermine human agency you should adjust your moral expectations accordingly. You can't tell people their behavior doesn't matter and then expect them to act as if their behavior matters. You can't tell people they don't have free will and expect them to act as if their choices have moral content. This isn't rocket science. Theological reflection should take psychology into consideration to suss out such nonsense.