How Did Protestant Reformation Influence Humanism

powerfully shaped the Protestant Reformation and the subsequent history of Western Civilization the socio-political situation in Europe, the corruption of the Roman Curia and the papacy, the new insights of textual criticism and return to sources advocated by renaissance humanism, and the impact of the printing press. In actual history, these factors combined with Luther’s theological insights to create the “perfect storm” of the Protestant Reformation Long before Luther, the peoples of the Holy Roman Empire and across Europe had begun to resent and occasionally revolt against the feudal system, a system inexorably tied to the function of the Roman Catholic Church. The formation of what could be called the “early middle class,” namely the creation of guilds,
The development of academic textual criticism as applied to the Biblical text by scholars such as Erasmus made clear the need for reconsideration of the interpretation and application of the Biblical texts. Ad fontes humanists pointed the church back to Classical Greece and Rome, as well as the beginnings of the Christian tradition with a commitment to the past that seemed highly likely to impact the future of the church had Luther not come along and reconceived of how to use the Biblical text. And while Luther began in earnest the rhetorical and practical use of printed materials as a means of effective and forceful communication on a large scale, it seems likely that academics (such as Erasmus or Calvin) and/or other clergy (such as Zwingli and Marpeck) would eventually have been able to use their combination of humanism, textual knowledge, and the power of the press to get across ideas worthy of creating a theological reformation of the European Church during the 16th century. As we