The Influence Of The Sixteenth-Century Western Religious Reform Theory On The Modern Bourgeois Political Ideology

Taking the influence of the sixteenth-century Western Religious Reform Theory on the modern bourgeois political ideology as the research object, and the famous sixteenth Century religious reformer thoughts as the main arguments, my thesis demonstrated how this influence promoted the development of the modern bourgeois political ideology. These famous religious reformer ideas includes Martin Luther’s "Two Kingdoms" theory,"Justification by Faith" thought, and the claim of establishing a "clean and thrift national church", as well as the expedient claim of "the divine right of kings" and so on; this thesis also included John Calvin’s thought of predestination, and the relationship between church and state, as well as the claim of reforming the church according to the principles of democratic theory. All these thoughts and ideas were put forward and were widely accepted, and then gradually contributed to the modern bourgeois ideologies, including secularism, national consciousness, and promoted the origin and development of human rights thoughts, such as freedom, equality, democracy. Ultimately, all these above promoted the western European social transformation, leading to the modernization of the Western Europe world.This thesis contains more than60,000words, and is divided into five chapters in addition to the introduction and the conclusion parts. The introduction part summarizes the purpose and significance of topics, and the topics about current research at home and abroad; the first chapter roughly describes the study of the origin of medieval religious supremacy theory and its negative influence, and the analysis of background and principled position of the sixteenth-century reformation theory. This chapter is mainly discussed on the purpose of laying the groundwork, making the discussions of following chapters not too obtrusive. The second chapter discusses the promotion effects of "two kingdoms" theology, which was proposed by Luther and developed by Calvin, on the modern bourgeois secularism thought. The third chapter demonstrates the idea, proposed by Luther, of establishing a "clean and thrift Lutheran national church", and his expedient claim of "divine right of Kings", and their influence on promoting the awakening of the Western European popular nationalism consciousness and the nation state consciousness. The fourth chapter describes the theories of Luther, Calvin and other famous religious reformers, such as the theory of "justification by faith", the predestination theory, and the theory that salvation based not on deed, through which I demonstrated the positive effects of these theories on promoting the separation of rational from belief and the arousal of individual spirit, and on these basis I elaborated how liberalism gradually penetrated and finally established in the western people’s personal beliefs and earthly life. The fifth chapter discusses the personal beliefs related to equal factors in Lutheran Reformation Theory, based on which the reformers promoted the idea of democratizing the church and put it into practice. All these provided the theoretical basis for the enlightenment of the modern bourgeois secular senses of equality and democracy.Taken together, the thoughts of the sixteenth-century religious reformers greatly promoted the generation and establishment of modern bourgeois political ideology. Thoughts guide behaviors, and the modern western bourgeoisie started one revolution after another in the guidance of these emerging political ideologies. Therefore, this thesis gave another historical interpretation of the western European reformations in the level of ideology reformation.