BIBLICAL ROME IN THE EARLY MODERN ERA

FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO THE ENLIGHTENMENT

THEOLOGICAL HISTORY OF THE CONTINUATION OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

© Carlos Padilla – September 2024

 

The continuation of the Biblical Rome after the fall of Byzantium, or Roman Empire of the East, in 1453 AD perpetuates in time through the Roman Catholic Church as the head of the European kingdoms, from the so called Sacred Roman Empire which was Germanic, whose foundations were the previous Carolingian Empire, from the crowning of Charlemagne in 800 AD being this Church, which headquarters is the Vatican, and in this period, with the construction of the Basilica of Saint Peter, which in fact would reign over kings and emperors in Europe since 800 AD to 1806 AD.

From these headquarters, the papacy would govern the greatest part of the Christian western world until the Protestant Reformation of the XVI century by Martin Luther, Augustinian monk, who indignant by the sale of indulgences to finance the work and luxurious life of the papacy and the clergy, seeks forgiveness and the holy way while he translates the Bible to German from the original languages, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. It was then when the verse: “The just will live by faith” (Romans 1:17) would change his life forever, and the course of the history of Christianity which was then maturing and was being reformed to return, through the Word of God, to its origin, to the Words of Jesus Christ – Yahshua, and of His apostles. But how the Biblical Rome, or Roman Empire, now of the West, would endure during Modern Age, we will see as we continue reading…

 

ROMAN EMPIRE OF THE WEST IN THE MODERN EUROPE AND ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH ISRAEL

Emperor Charlemagne, Christian and lover of culture, impulse the medieval society of his time, and his purpose was the unity of the empire under Christianity, being that he took as references king David and the emperor Constantine to inspire his legacy, which would change the West since his crowning by Pope Leo III in the year 800 AD.

The Holy Roman Empire, and after Otto I, successor of Charlemagne, and the fights for power between emperors and popes, Pope Gregory VII carried a “dictatus papae” in the year 1057 AD as part of the “Gregorian Reformation” in which the Pope was the only one who could name bishops and kings. During the Middle Ages, papacy and empire participated together in the Crusades, but it already became consolidated that the bishop of Rome would, in fact, be who would elect kings and therefore the emperor of the perpetuated and transformed Biblical Roman Empire.

The Renaissance would bring a revolution to the society in all aspects, being a movement also originated in Italy, like Rome, which would affect the papal Empire because of the decadence of the world and of the official Church was outrageous, and the luxurious and sinning life of the papacy, the clergy also reflected the society of their time, and vice verse.

Science, with Galileo accepting the evident scientific proofs postulated by Copernicus about the earth and the planetary system around the sun, being round, was crushing against the established by the dogmatic, and at the same time corrupted religious leaders. From Florence, the internal wars between the powerful families like the Borgia, or the Medici were notable, and within them there were popes and bishops who had converted Catholicism in an idolatrous paganism justified by the pompous power, as it was the Roman Empire. Now the official Church no longer represented Jesus Christ, but was a heretical and blaspheme organization of power to rule.

Israel, which is reserved by God in His prophetical plan, and in particular, Jerusalem, under the Ottoman Empire received the construction of the old walls by Sultan Suleiman “the magnificent”, with status of Holy City, and would reform part of the Great Province of Damascus until 1872. The Jews, in the Renaissance, humanistic and then enlightened Diaspora, lived in ghettoes, were appreciated by the society for their wisdom, from doctors, then called physics, whom attended the European nobility, or teachers of Hebrew when Christianity jumped into the translation of the Holy Scriptures, and famous for their financial management. The expulsion of the Jews and Muslims from Spain by the Catholic Kings, influenced by the papacy and the “Holy” Inquisition, produced an exodus to Ottoman territory, and to European cities, whom received them with open arms, learning from them their knowledge that they were importing from Spain and Europe, and that now would serve another culture in detriment of their place of origin, by such Sephardic expulsion, by the Edict of the Alhambra, Granada, the 31^st of March of 1492 AD.

However, as humanism was advancing, and the secularist thinking gain territory, the anti-Semitic feeling grew which did not see with good eyes the Jewish concept of chosen people, and did not accept that at the same time that they wanted to be part of the European society that was progressing; they wanted to continue to be part of their religion different traditions than those of the new and elevated enlightened society. It is comparable with the Islamic immigrant whom today wants to maintain his law and religion, at the same time as being accepted in the postmodern and secular Europe of the XXI century. Israel, on their side, and Jerusalem on the other, were being forgotten by the West, but the Biblical Rome was not, for the continuation of the Roman Empire, who has always wanted to maintain control over the Holy Land, until our days, through the custody of the holy places, through the Order of the Franciscan friars “Custodia Terrae Santae” who have maintained the custody after the crusades, and negotiated with Muslim governors until the British mandate, before the declaration of the UN of the State of Israel.

 

THE HISTORICAL INFLUENCE OF THE RENAISSANCE, HUMANISM, AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT IN THE BIBLICAL ROME AND VICE VERSE

The Renaissance was initiated in the XV century, and it is widely accepted that it was in Italy, in the Florence of the Medici, where humanism starts to penetrate in the layers of the society, and these change to see the growth of the middle class, instead of the two extremes, poor class, and rich class and in government. That middle class begins to be powerful and educated, in search of knowledge and of art; Shakespeare and Romeo and Juliet, Cervantes and the Quixote, or Machiavelli and the Price.

The Humanism, which would carry a tendency of placing man in the centre, instead of God, would influence in the naturalistic concept of the Darwinian evolutionism; Darwin, who left the seminary to investigate, could not understand why archaeological remaining transitional species could not be found. Humanistic philosophy was a natural change of tendency, but was not new, for the Greeks already, like Socrates, had experimented with this concept in the antiquity, before Jesus Christ. Now Descartes and the rationalism would come, the spirit vs. matter, and it’s opposed, the empiricism of John Locke, and his critic David Hume. The French Enlightenment and the rationalism of the German Immanuel Kant. Jacob Bohme explored the spiritualist extreme; George Fox and the Quakers were seeking the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, and pietism in search of holiness. Count Nicolas Ludwig von Zinzendorf, and the Moravians of the discipleship correctly made by John Wesley by Methodism. Puritan colonies, and the Great Revival, Maryland and the Catholicism in the Unites States. Or the system of Hegel of pure reason, the world is thought. Sees Christianity as the reality of God in the spirit. Reason is shared between God and man. The absolute is in the world, God must be present in daily life, not in a remote infinite.

The science of this fascinating time would provide us a whole revolution of concepts, and it was finding a society tired of dogmatic imposition, was received as a liberation from a false, corrupted and totalitarian church, represented by an imperialistic papacy and its Episcopal government system, which imposed to the illiterate society their religious norms. The scientific revolution would come by the hand of reputed doctors like Sir Isaac Newton and the universal gravitation, or law of gravitational, after Galileo and the thermometer, or his discoveries with the telescope, and the heliocentric movement of the earth which was discovered before by Copernicus, and which Kepler explained with the planetary laws of the solar system. Miguel Servet, discovered the pulmonary blood circulation, but it was his faith, nor Catholic, nor Protestant according to the cannons of the time, would cost him his life in the bonfire by the hand of some Calvinists. James Watt invented the steam engine, which would change the world of transportation, and would be the entrance to the industrial era which we will see in the next study.

Art would give us as a present Leonardo da Vinci, and his famous works like the Holy Supper, the Gioconda, the Vitruvian Man. Botticelli and the Birth of Venus, or Venus and Mars. The Creation, the Piety, the Sistine Chapel, the Final Judgment, or the Moses, and the David of Michel Angelo. The Rapture of Europe, by Titian. Bosch and his transition from the medieval sacred art “The Final Judgment” to a kind of delirious abstract. The Transfiguration, of Raphael and other sacred works, but also the School of Athens, in the Vatican.

The press of Gutenberg and the first Bible would change the world. The hunger of knowledge, and over all, of knowledge of the Truth, was satiated by the Word of God, which was opening the eyes of the believers who could now compare the power that the clergy was exercising as a kind of Roman Empire over their lives, with the humble and holy lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ – Yahshua, could learn firsthand the truth of the Gospel in comparison with the liturgical tradition, and at last they could know the Way of Salvation, without paying money to buy indulgences, because salvation was being offered freely in the Word of God, by the faith in the work of Jesus Christ on the cross.

In the same way, and by learning to read the Bible and other books, the society increased its knowledge, many could read classical works, could read the news in papers; could study, a whole cultural revolution. With all this social and cultural reformation in the European DNA, the world would no longer be the same, and as well as the hunger for knowledge and of science, there was for the Truth, after the religious, social and of power decadence, which made the press, the Internet of a world that was starting not to depend on the official church, nor of the political power to be feed, but from those that now were believed to be the true wise, and of science. But, overall, now, everyone who would want could learn how to read and study, and although the political and religious powers would try to control every book, secrecy would allow for Truth to reach all who seek it.

Arriving to the Enlightenment progress and reason where placed as the engines of society who saw the arrival of the French Revolution in 1789, and it is relevant to point out that the papacy suffered its destitution in fact as temporary sobering. France occupied Rome in 1798 and deposed Pope Pius XI. Napoleon was not interested in religious matters seeing himself dominating, so he allowed the popes to continue with their religious life, but from then onwards limited to the Vatican, nor to politics, or at least he believed it, but the Biblical Rome, the Roman Empire of the West would continue to have its tentacles in the European society, trying to influence the world avoiding, as much as possible, the new ideas and restricting society, as it did imposing them even to the point of assassinating the people by the “Holy” Inquisition, of which they will pay in the Judgment Seat of Christ.

But there was hope in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776 of a new world which was initiating without the shadow of the power of the Biblical Rome, a nation that would become the first world power, and it would not be Catholic but with a Biblical beginning and inspiration, a kind of Promised Land for the world. Finally, those who did not have Promised Land were the Jews, Israel and Jerusalem were affected, but the Jews adapted and contributed to the cultural innovation, art, philosophy, science, medicine, and in fact they would be part of the western society and of the United States of America.

We close this chapter with the statement. This period of total transformation of the European society which would be permeating the world, shows us how the ideas of the Renaissance, of the Humanism, and of the Enlightenment not only would change man, they would change the boson of the Roman Church. The influence was such that it could have overthrown entirely the permanence of the Roman Empire of the prophecy of Daniel. But its power was adapting and becoming strong to continue influencing the society, the monarchies, and in all the layers of the society through traditional Catholicism, now in battle with Protestantism, through the Counterreformation and its dogmas of faith, superstition and threat of excommunication of kings and those in power, as well as the fight for political power, real estate, land, and books edition, as well as the prohibition of the Bible in common language to avoid believers from reading it, under the excuse of bad interpretation; a complete manipulation that would affect many, maintaining their influence and power.

 

PROPHECY OF THE CONTINUATION OF THE BIBLICAL ROME IN THE RENAISSANCE AND THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION IN MODERN ERA

We continue to see how the dream of Nebuchadnezzar in the prophecy of Daniel 2 and 7 of the statue with the feet and toes of clay and iron, can be seen reflected in the continuation of the Roman Empire it its substitute, the Holy Roman Empire, which was of Germany, where the popes would elect the emperor, a mix of clay and iron which governed Europe from Rome in the papacy, and from some German city by the emperor. Previously we have seen the beginning of the Roman Empire as the fourth empire of the prophecy in: https://www.yahshua.net/rome-biblical-and-theological-history/ and how Rome would perpetuate in Byzantium in: https://www.yahshua.net/bizantium-biblical-historical-bizantine-empire/  

The Vatican and the Protestant Reformation are influenced by the humanistic movement, which shows how the catholic leaders were not being a Biblical model like the apostles of Jesus Christ had been. Although the world now being seen from “the man in the centre” it did not mean that the believer would not be, but in deed that the believer would have ways of judging the Doctrine, Bible in hand, and to not be deceived by superstition and tradition of leaders deviated from the Truth. The world of the believers from the Renaissance, and later Enlightened, needed a Church which in deed was holy and that would be formed by true believers, it needed a Reformation, purification, sanctification, an approach to the people of God. What the Biblical Rome in its perpetuation in the political power which emanated from the Vatican, fulfilling the prophecy in another step in its evolution to the Babylon of Revelation 17 and 18, had managed to do, was to scare away multitude of believers of good heart, before the outrage of the clergy and its corrupted management of the power in all the estates of the society that controlled.

It was a needed to turn believers again to the true Way which is Jesus Christ – Yahshua, and therefore His Word, the Bible, in the language of the People (vernacular), fulfilled two purposes: one, that all who believed could know Jesus Christ in a personal way and without deceit. And another, that the illiterate society would learn how to read, with the Bible. This did that the protestant countries would progress more and prosper before, as well as acquiring a conscience of fear of God which in Catholic countries was not seen, nor it’s seen today. Who read the Bible, now would also read other sources of information, whether philosophy, science, or news, in conclusion, it could learn and study by himself.

Martin Luther, an Augustinian friar, Catholic, who wasn’t achieving spiritual peace following the strict practices of the tradition, searched in the Bible, from his translation from the original languages, and found: “…the just, shall live by faith” Romans 1:17, which made him understand that the business of the works which the Church of Rome imposed and sold, was not the Theology of the Cross of Jesus Christ. Works make us feel as if we could justify by ourselves, which moves us away from the essential need of the work of Christ to save us, essential for our justification, but through faith in Him. As professor of Sacred Scripture, he understood that the foundation of the true faith and authority is the Bible, not the tradition that contradicts it. Jesus himself is the Verb of God, the Word of God, as well as the Second Person of the Trinity. We must repent, know God in Christ and be born again of the Spirit. Luther could see two kingdoms, one on earth, which is the state, under the law, and another under the Gospel, which is the one that governs over the believers, over the Church. Civil authorities have no authority on the Gospel, but as we live under the state, our works are under the law, and the state under the law. Faith must not be imposed by the state. All this was leaving out the imposition of the Vatican, but Luther himself would take time to grow in his faith until he would understand that not all Christians would follow his “new” reformed Theology literally in the Diet of Worms.

He was criticising Pope X for selling indulgencies to be able to finish the Basilica of Saint Peter, in Rome, and supposedly he was using his power to take out of the purgatory (a non Biblical Christian doctrine), arguing that if the pope really had the power to do that, he should do it out of love and freely. The 95 Thesis nailed on the door of the church of the Castle of Wittenberg became the Theological base against the corruption of the papacy, not only for its luxurious and mundane way of life, but for the heresies and for deceiving the faithful believers deviating them from the Truth of Christ. By translating the Bible to German he provided the people with the theological Truth so that everyone seeking God could know Him.

Luther will also have a spiritual growth, as we all have, and found other reformed who did not agree with all his doctrine, like the discrepancy about transubstantiation, and they were also erudite in the Scriptures. Cases like Erasmus of Rotterdam, who did not accept predestination, defending free will, as a good humanist, finally he had to choose if to follow Luther or remain in Catholicism, and without attacking Luther, because he hated the separation of the Church as well as its theological deviation as well as of the clergy. Ulrike Zwingli in Switzerland, another Catholic priest who received the Reformed Doctrine that Luther found, also by reading the Scriptures, and expel the sellers of indulgences, finally separating from Rome, criticised celibacy for not being Biblical, and died in a civil war between Catholic cantons that attacked the Protestants. The Anabaptists, Menno Simons, other Catholic priest who embraced the Reformation, but they were against the baptism of babies, because one is baptized as an external sign that has received the faith, and been born again. But the great synthesizer of the Reformed faith was John Calvin, who after publishing commentaries, like the one about Seneca, under the influence of the times of the humanistic movement, composed his great work “Institution of the Christian Religion” Basil 1536. A book of 516 pages and 6 chapters. Four of them about the law, the Creed, the Our Father prayer, and the sacraments. The last two about the Protestant criticism of the false sacraments of Rome, and Christian freedom.

Henry VIII of Great Britain, and the influence of Wycliffe who preached Lutheran ideas, and yearned a church of the state separated from Rome, helped the monarch to be proclaimed as the head of the Church of England, at the same time that it granted him the nullity of his marriage, which already was according to the cannons, to marry another wife and seek another male heir to the throne. A division of churches that did not have much to do with the Protestant Reformation. Even more Mary Tudor “bloody Mary” who was first declared illegitimate daughter by her father, the heir and daughter of Catherine of Aragon, wife of Henry VIII, returned to England under the papacy, burning in the bonfire 288 Reformed believers, a true revenge against her father, the king. But his heir Isabel, influenced by her governors accepted the execution of a similar number of Catholics traitors to her throne, including her cousin, who plotted to topple her by order of the Pope.

Scotland received the Reformation with the entrance of John Knox, who raised the Reformed Church of Scotland, but the kingdom was threatened by the alliances of Catherine of Medici who was reigning in France, although Isabel of England sent troops, died and an agreement was reached for the Scottish to be owners of their destiny embracing the Reformation. King James ordered his famous English translation of the Bible, contemporary of the Spanish Reina-Valera, both directly from the original languages, even better than the famous Polyglot Complutense Bible. Closing the chapter on England and Scotland, it must be highlighted the Westminster Confession of Faith, which amplified what was exposed in the Synod of Dordrecht, creating an expression of Calvinistic orthodoxy which has remained, but which maybe Calvin would have not expressed in that way. It included: the authority of the Sacred Scripture over theological matter. The Bible is infallible, and any obscure part made clear by the clear parts. The Trinity, Predestination to salvation of some people and some angels, from the sovereignty of God. The total depravation of man since Adam’s sin, which separates us from God and inclines us to evil, and to sin. God has determined all that will happen, from eternity. The doctrine of the Limited Expiation to those saved. The chosen are sanctified by the Holy Spirit in a continuous work, those whom are guarded for salvation by Him.

The Netherlands and the Calvinistic Reformation of Arminius and the predestination vs. free will, or the vicarious death of Christ for all the humanity vs. only for those who believe, concluded in measures against arminianism in the Synod of Dordrech. Finally the Reformation in the Scandinavian countries and the Catholic reaction of the Council of Trent, until the Counterreformation. Spain and the Inquisition, and the Catholic domain over the Hispano-American countries, but they could not stop the Bible in Spanish of the Catholic Hieronymites monks Casiodoro de Reina, and Cyprian de Valera, from the original languages which is the literary work of greater quality, and contemporary with the Quixote, from Cervantes, reader of that first translation from the Spanish reformers, all influenced by Humanism, but these monks had to emigrate from the Monastery of Saint Isidoro del Campo, Seville, to Europe to not be burned by the Inquisition.

Really, it has been a whole strategy of permanence in power the one carried out by the papacy in the European monarchies, which has maintained the religious Roman Empire ruling. A more profound study of the History of the Church can be done in the book “History of Christianity” of Justo L. Gonzalez. A radical change between two worlds, in the same period of time, between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, which has separated Catholics and Protestants since then. The Protestant moral which glorifies God through work, opposes to the Catholic moral which sees it as a punishment. Book recommended from Max Webber: The Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism.

The countries that accepted democracy before, even though it was a parliamentary monarchy, and would allow to vote and chose, and would accept politics of social help together with a capitalistic liberalism, with an honourable ethic that gives glory to God, would lead the world, as did the Unites States of America, Netherlands, and even the failed try of the Spanish Constitution of 1812, but in Spain could not be, maybe because the Bible was not the guide of the people, and in other nations it was. Again we see the dark hand of the religious and spiritual Roman Empire.

 

THE SPIRIT OF THE RENAISSANCE HUMANISTIC ENLIGHTENED

Man in the centre instead of God in the centre, was seen by some secularists as the separation of man from the Creator. That was one of the consequences of separating man from God under the deceit of naturalism and evolutionism, which now science has accepted as failed, and that, as Darwin himself declared in his book, he could not understand why no evidence of such theory could not be found nor fossils of transitional species.

However many prominent scientists of these times, who we have mentioned before, maintained and strengthened their faith in the Bible as the inspired Word of God, revealed as a guide for man, who is the main purpose of God’s Creation, and whom He saves by the death of His Son Jesus Christ – Yahshua, who came to this world to give His life on the cross for our sins and to give us eternal life, by His resurrection. Man in the centre, but now we see it from God’s heart and from the heart of man, not man in the centre without God, as atheism was proposing. This is how the Renaissance, humanistic and enlightened spirit affected society, and the spirit of the Biblical Rome. Let us take advantage of the rebirth to the letters and to culture, and the humanism of the critical mind to be enlightened, and let us not allow for confusion, nor with the deceit that separates man from God, as atheism does, nor with that which prevents knowledge, as one clergy does threatening instead of teaching the Truth of the Gospel, by using the reason that God has given us, and the true science which is of God.

 

CONCLUSION

From the medieval darkness, to the light and knowledge of the Renaissance Enlightened, a new world was opening its path in Europe, in the West, and in the entire planet. Knowing how God plans things and how He is in control of all, it is not by chance that the Renaissance, the print, the advanced science, and the Bible, were available to be taken to the New World which just in that time had been discovered and conquered, thanks to having left behind the flat and limited earth, and the Genoese Columbus believed Copernicus and da Vinci, and funded by the Spanish Crown, carried out the achievement. America would be evangelized Bible in hand, something unthinkable a century before, especially the United States, by European Protestants. Even more, the foundational Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence were impregnated of the Christian spirit, whose signers, except one, professed the Protestant Christian faith.

The Roman Empire, the Biblical Rome of the prophecy of Daniel, maintained, through Catholicism, and from the Vatican, in fact a power over the European society, through the dogmas and the Counterreformation, over a society that although it pretended to be educated, humanistic, and illustrious, still fought against superstition and against the spiritual power of the old religious tradition of a clergy that kept their tentacles in all the layers of society, achieving this way, to perpetuate, despite the great attack to its power and decrease of its influence.

We conclude that the Humanistic Renaissance and the Enlightened provided a critical spirit, which when it was guided by the Truth, it would take the believer to the Bible, which could now be read in vernacular language. However to the atheist it separates him from God giving him arguments that, even though not true, could be used to form an argued ideology, an atheist religion, a humanistic philosophy of self deceit, but a self deceit with reasoning and argument with which to justify itself before society. The honest person who receives the spirit of the Renaissance, Humanism and Enlightenment, will continue to see how there is an intelligent design in the cosmos, in the world and in the human being, created to the image and likeness of God, who has also revealed His Word and given us Salvation by faith, which is the conclusion of the Protestant Reformation, which got to this modern era of Renaissance, Humanism and Enlightenment.

I think these Biblical Texts reflect the true spirit of the Renaissance, the Humanism and the Enlightenment from the faith: “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” Philippians 4:8. And in the spirit of the Protestant Reformation, these word the Lord Jesus: “Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.” John 5:39. Amen.