Dr. E. Michael Jones vs. Dr. James White on the Reformation

The remains of Glastonbury Abbey which was looted by Henry VIII and Cromwell in 1539

This post is actually a good follow up to my last post which says that by around the year 1500, the days when a Pope wielded immense political power were long gone.  The 16th century was one of Kings, Queens, and Princes.  In my interview with Dr. E. Michael Jones he mentioned that the Protestant reformation was a state sponsored looting operation.  He has mentioned this before as well.

Is Dr. Jones correct?  Yes he is, but I will get into that in a bit.  I actually came to this conclusion on my own though I didn’t put it as bluntly as Dr. Jones.  In every book on the reformation it’s there, though in the background.  It’s in the background because it’s not the romantic narrative that wants to be told.  Someone like Dr. James White will say that during the reformation, the gospel was recovered after hundreds of years of tradition, papal bulls, and ecumenical councils had all but buried it.

As I said, I came to this conclusion on my own.  I then read the book The Crisis of Civilization by Hilaire Belloc and he just lays it all out.  His book isn’t an apologetics book.  He criticizes the Church and Papacy for massive abuses between 1300 and 1500.  He essentially sees it as a betrayal of the glorious golden age of Christendom that started with the Gregorian reforms and went on until about 1300.

Belloc writes:

As a mere negative heretical movement wherein a mass of divergent and even contradictory opinions had free play, the movement might have been less destructive.  But there was a driving power behind it which was of very great effect; the opportunity for loot.  Here were these great monastic establishments, the numbers enjoying which had dwindled, but the revenues of which had been maintained.  The Papacy was the central authority.  Deny the authority of the Papacy and it lay defenseless before attack and spoliation.  Such attack followed almost immediately upon the first years of the great revolt.  Certain of the Swiss cantons and the more or less independent small secular princes especially in the north of Germany, certain of the Free Cities, as they were called (that is, the mercantile corporations of the trading towns), these and even local squires and petty lordlings fell upon the endowments of religious houses and parishes, of Sees and all forms of clerical income, swelling their own fortunes out of the proceeds.  It may be imagined what a temptation lay before all those not restrained by a governmental power above them to indulge this orgy of loot.

– Hilaire Belloc, The Crisis of Civilization, p. 95

Secular historian Will Durant has written a multi-volume series called The Story of Civilization.  Volume 6 deals with the reformation.  Durant shows us that this reckless looting did not go unnoticed by the reformers themselves.  They knew that the secular Lords didn’t care about either the new or old religion.  They looked at it as financial gain.  In Chapter 20, he writes:

But by 1527 the Lutheran “heresy” had become orthodoxy in half of Germany. The cities found Protestantism profitable; “they do not care in the least about religion,” mourned Melanchthon; “they are only anxious to get dominion into their hands, to be free from the control of the bishops”; for a slight alteration in their theological garb they escaped from episcopal taxes and courts, and could appropriate pleasant parcels of ecclesiastical property.

A few pages later, he writes:

Since many monks and nuns now left their convents, and the public seemed unwilling to support the remainder, the Lutheran princes suppressed all monasteries in their territory except a few whose inmates had embraced the Protestant faith. The princes agreed to share the confiscated properties and revenues with the nobles, the cities, and some universities, but this pledge was very laxly redeemed. Luther inveighed against the application of ecclesiastical wealth to any but religious or educational purposes, and condemned the precipitate seizure of church buildings and lands by the nobility. A modest part of the spoils was yielded to schools and poor relief; the princes and nobles kept the rest. “Under cover of the Gospel,” wrote Melanchthon (1530), “the princes were only intent on the plunder of the churches.” 

We see that Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon knew exactly what was going on.  I don’t doubt for a second that Luther, Melanchthon, Zwingli, Calvin, and the others believed in their messages.  At the same time, the reason why Luther didn’t inherit the fate of Girolamo Savonarola is because he and his fellow reformers were being used as pawns in a massive state sponsored looting operation.  I suppose both parties won.  The secular lords got church property, and the reformers got to spread their message.  Regardless of this, the only conclusion is that Dr. E. Michael Jones is correct.

Here is my interview with Dr. Jones.  Go to 46:30 for the section on the reformation.