“One fair day in summer, my casement window being opened towards the south, the sun shining clear, and no wind stirring, I took my book, De Veritate, in my hand, and kneeling on my knees, devoutly said these words:—‘O thou eternal God, author of the light which now shines upon me, and Giver of all inward illuminations, I do beseech Thee, of thine infinite goodness, to pardon a greater request than a sinner ought to make; I am not satisfied enough whether I shall publish this book, De Veritate; if it be for Thy glory, I beseech Thee to give me some sign from heaven; if not, I shall suppress it.’ I had no sooner spoken these words, but a loud though yet gentle noise came from the heavens, for it was like nothing on earth, which did so comfort and cheer me, that I took my petition as granted and that I had the sign I demanded, whereupon also I resolved to print my book. And now I sent my book to be printed at Paris … without suffering it to be divulged to others than to such as I thought might be worthy readers of it.”

In Viking times the Northmen recognized several important sea routes, one of which, “the North Way,” was of such significance that it gave its name to a kingdom. The ships that sailed this route followed the west coast of the great Scandinavian peninsula northward and northeastward for a distance of one thousand miles to the land's end in the Arctic. Out toward the sea the fairway is flanked by an almost continuous series of islands, large and small, numbering perhaps one hundred and fifty thousand. Many of these are inhabited. On the other side rises the Norwegian plateau, a massive wall of ancient rock, which in many places descends abruptly to the water's edge. The wall is not continuous, for all along the coast the sea, thrusting forth its mighty arms, has carved out a maze of deep inlets, some of which run far into the land. The longest of these, the Sogn Fjord, has a length of nearly one hundred and forty miles.

The theme I propose to develop in this paper is that in the victorious and neutral nations the dominant ideals of post-War Protestantism have been carried over from before the War, that these led in the direction of Catholicism, but that in spite of its catholic ideals, Protestantism since the war has actually become more Protestant than before, not only in Germany where Protestantism has become aggressive, but also in the other nations where it is less self-conscious. In other words, Protestantism has been revived by force of circumstance in ways not of its own choosing; or, to use Protestant language, it has been saved by grace, not justified by faith.

From the downfall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, the center of Eastern Orthodoxy slowly shifted from the Byzantine church, which suffered a tragic deterioration under the rule of the Turk, to the Empire of the Russian Orthodox tsars. Before the World War, the predominant rôle in numbers and resources as well as in spiritual and theological leadership was played by the church of Russia. Out of the total of some 144 millions of Orthodox adherents, the Russian membership comprised about 110 millions. By reason of its wealth and of the generous financial aid which it freely dispensed to the rest of the needy Orthodox communions, Russia exercised a far reaching, in some instances controlling, influence among them. Moreover, the Russian Slavophil theologians and publicists have been largely instrumental in the modernization of Orthodox theology which they have restated in modern philosophico-religious terms. In turn, the Russian thought has affected all Orthodox communions and has exercised a dominant theological influence over them.

Recent Luther scholarship seems to have reached an impasse in its attempt to solve the apparent inconsistencies between the so-called young Luther and the older conservative writer of confessions. Within the last few decades two distinct schools of thought, with of course variations in each, have developed in the attempt to solve this problem.

The German Evangelical Synod of North America, now merged with the Reformed Church in the United States under the name of Evangelical-Reformed Church, was founded in the year 1840 as Der Deutsche Evangelische Kirchenverein des Westens. It might appear to the casual observer that the establishment of the Kirchenverein, like the founding of all immigrant churches, represented purely the transplantation of a foreign culture to the new world where, protected from old-world influences and indifferent to the forces of a strange environment, it would develop its independent forms. The development of this German religious community on the Missouri frontier, however, can not be understood apart from the conditions prevailing in both Europe and America at the time. From the time of its inception it was put to the task of emancipating itself from the ties which bound it to the fatherland and establishing such contacts with the new environment as would constitute it an American body.

The stories of the great Methodist and Baptist slavery schisms have found a place in the general histories of the United States. That there was, also, a major schism in the decade of the thirties in the Presbyterian church is fairly well known, yet few students of American history have demonstrated much discriminating knowledge of the two large bodies of Presbyterians that existed for thirty years after, and as the result of this schism. The great cleavage in the Presbyterian church, known as the Old School-New School schism, has been presented as the result of a struggle which was concerned almost exclusively with doctrine and ecclesiastical government. The struggle was, to a large degree, of a theological nature. Opposition to the New England influence, operating through the once popular Plan of Union, goes far to account for the fury with which Robert J. Breckinridge and others who represented the Scotch-Irish element in the church battled against more liberal tendencies. The upshot of the fight, the “cutting off” of two-fifths of the church in 1837–38, need not be recounted here.

The humanitarianism of the eighteenth century gave added impulse to the members of the Society of Friends to practice the gospel of love for all mankind. Since at first “they were in derision called Quakers,” it is most likely that all of their interests were sneered at. Nevertheless, they influenced other denominations by their anti-slavery appeals and popularized the idea of a “society” for humanitarian purposes as they gave full meaning to the words friends and humanity. The English Quakers were called “Friends of Thieves” because they worked for prison reform in London, and the American Quakers appear to be the first persons who were known as “Friends of Humanity” primarily because they opposed Negro slavery vehemently.

Donatism was an exclusively African schism and for more than a century held the center of the stage in the Christian life of that land. It was born of local passions and quarrels, and had no success outside of Africa. It became the church of the native population and, raising“altar against altar,”1 successfully opposed both the Catholic church and the Roman Empire during several generations. Frequently, and especially in Numidia, the church of Donatus was more numerous, richer, and more powerful than its Catholic neighbor. Moreover, the Donatist cause came to shelter under its name a true social and economic revolt, which it found a useful instrument at times, but which was never a recognized part of its policy. Although the Donatist controversy was thus a local schism, it had important results for the Latin church, chiefly in regard to the doctrine of the sacrament of baptism, the orders and reception of schismatics and heretics, and the coercion of non-Catholics.

In his celebrated lecture on the Confessions of St. Augustine the late Professor Adolf von Harnack declared: “Between St. Paul the Apostle and Luther the Reformer, the Christian Church has possessed no one who could measure him- self with Augustine; and in comprehensive influence no other is to be compared with him.” Not only was this North African bishop the chief luminary of Western Christendom in his own generation, but through his writings he fairly dominated the philosophy, the theology, and the ethics of the Middle Ages; he stimulated the medieval mystics, alike those who accepted and many of those who rejected the traditional dogmas; he inspired both the so-called forerunners of the Reformation and the leading humanists of the Renaissance; and in large measure he moulded the evangelical faith and piety of the Lutheran and especially of the Reformed churches from the days of their founders down to our own times. But in no realm of thought or life was his influence more potent or historically more significant than in that characteristic development of the relations of church and state that marked the millenial period beginning, less than half a century after his death, with the fall of the Western Empire in the year 476. He was the weightiest authority to whom emperors and popes could and did appeal for support in their age-long contest for the supreme power: the former to vindicate their independence in secular affairs, and the latter to prove their lordship over all other earthly potentates, whether temporal or spiritual.

At the midpoint of the nineteenth century, the historical reconstruction of Christianity which had been made by Baur had come to dominate critical scholarship in the form popularized by the Tűbingen school generally. In Germany Zeller, Schwegler, Hausrath, Köstlin, Volkmar and Hilgenfeld were the distinguished heirs of Baur's views. His representative in Holland was Scholten. In French criticism Baur's influence was felt in the work of Colani, Scherer, and Havet. In Great Britain, Samuel Davidson expounded Tűbingen criticism, which was also to be found in the anonymous work later acknowledged by W. R. Cassels. Indeed the Tűbingen theology was reflected, although in a considerably modified form, in the work of Holsten and Pfleiderer long after the direct influence of the school had waned.

There is nothing inherent in Christianity itself which calls for a close relationship with the state. Primitive Christianity “demanded the complete separation of church and state,” asserting that each must be recognized as having its own distinct and independent mission to perform. For the first three hundred years of Christian history the church existed entirely apart from the state, and indeed had not even a legal status. Then came a time during which the church became little more than a branch of the state, and in this period it lost practically all independence of development, and was largely diverted from its proper work to serve political ends. It was as a result of this danger that the church developed, during the next period in its history, the doctrine of its independence of state control, and in the great investiture struggle, maintained it with success, against Roman emperors and German kings. Then the church having secured its independence of state control, and having perfected its organization to a high degree, and having grown strong and aggressive, it went a long step further and asserted the right of the church to control the state. But it needs no argument to prove that both the control of the church by the state and the control of the state by the church are equally foreign to the teaching of Christianity as such.

With the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 the region we have chosen to call trans-Missouri became a potential American frontier. Settlement began in Missouri with the opening of the nineteenth century, but it was not until after 1850 that the remainder of the region was thrown open to allow the restless flood of western-moving people to pour into Kansas, Nebraska, and Dakota. Protestantism came into the new region as a part of this vast conquest.

While endeavouring to formulate these remarks I have come to suspect that there may possibly lurk in the title of my paper a misleading implication. The word “contribution” would seem to connote on the part of the Protestant churches a deliberate and concerted effort toward the triumph of religious liberty. Those of us who today prize ecclesiastical freedom would like to feel that our colonial ancestors of their own free will and choice undertook the march to liberty. Liberal-minded historians in particular are prone to sing the praises of this individual or that church for furthering this advance; they are inclined to gloss over or to apologize for the men and the institutions that hindered it.

William Ockham's interests were turned to political philosophy by the circumstances of his life. As early as 1323, he became entangled in the controversy of his order on evangelical poverty with the pope, John XXII, who by his bull, Ad conditorem canonum, issued on December 8, 1322, withdrew from the Franciscans the right of holding property in the name of the Holy See, granted to them by Innocent IV in 1245, and by Nicholas III in 1279. The case seems trifling, yet it involved the interpretation of the life of Christ himself, whom the sons of St. Francis tried to imitate by substituting the use of property for its ownership. The “Spirituals” stood for the original views of the order and considered the papal bull as dragging them down to worldliness and abasement. Ockham in a sermon delivered at Bologna attacked the pope's conception of apostolical poverty. John XXII, in a bull dated December 1, 1323, and addressed to the bishops of Ferrara and Bologna, ordered his arrest and held him in Avignon for four years for trial. In August, 1325, a commission of six theologians, one of whom was Durandus de St. Porciano, at that time bishop of Meaux, was appointed to investigate his theological and philosophical doctrines. In 1326 the commission declared fifty-one articles taken from his Commentary to the Sentences as heretical. On April 13, 1328, Ockham signed the protest of the general of the Franciscan order, Michael Cesena, also under arrest, against the papal bull of 1322, which condemned the tenet of evangelical poverty. The night of May 24, 1328, brought a dramatic turn in his life. He succeeded in escaping from the papal prison in the company of Cesena and Bonagratia of Bergamo, the famous civil and canon lawyer, and fled to Pisa to seek the protection of Louis of Bavaria, emperor of Germany and archenemy of the pope.