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Haase_UZ_x007E_DTh (2).pdf - South African Theological Seminary

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inviolability and Divine origin, the more<br />

disposed would men be to consider every<br />

attack on it as an intolerable crime against<br />

the Deity and a highly criminal menace to<br />

the public peace (Water, 2001:614).<br />

Theologians and jurists alike began to compare heresy to treason, considering heretics,<br />

“robbers of the soul.” Regrettably, this same mentality carried over into early<br />

Protestantism, which perpetrated the same kinds of maltreatment (cf., Calvin’s Geneva).<br />

Yet, without the Protestant Reformation and the subsequent reforms endorsed by the<br />

Council of Trent (1545-1563), the Roman Catholic Church “might have continued its<br />

degeneration from Christianity into paganism until your popes would have been<br />

enthroned over an agnostic and Epicurean world” (Durant, 1985:940).<br />

Church dogma and other long-standing biblical and cultural assumptions were<br />

increasingly questioned. “The authority of the church was challenged in many spheres,<br />

but no where so seriously as in the intellectual realm” (Cragg, 1960:12). The notion that<br />

the human mind at birth was a ‘blank slate,’ was increasingly accepted, in deference to<br />

the traditional biblical view that all are born sin-corrupted (cf., Psa. 51:5a). It also began<br />

to be assumed that an ethical [secular] culture was a possible and adequate substitute for<br />

the Christian faith. People gradually pushed for greater freedom from church dogma and<br />

the personal, social restrictions the church imposed upon them.<br />

The Christendom of the day believed a strong, centralized church, and strong-handed<br />

governments were necessary to maintain regional integrity and security, notions driven by<br />

pragmatic concerns. Indeed, Muslim aggressions into Eastern and <strong>South</strong>ern Europe had<br />

already significantly altered the old Roman Empire, as had the continued influx of<br />

Barbarians from the North. Adding to regional tensions was the reality -- even after the<br />

Reformation -- of massive Christian conversions to Islam, especially in the Balkans<br />

region. The rise of the Ottoman Turks with attendant religio-political pressures, seemed<br />

to hasten these defections to Islam, but many former Christians willingly converted<br />

(Latourette, 1975:2:901). Among the motivations for these defections, especially after<br />

the Reformation, was frequent fighting between Catholic and Protestant groups, as well<br />

as battles within their own ranks.<br />

17<br />

University of Zululand, KwaZulu-Natal, <strong>South</strong> Africa

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