The breakdown of the Christian social system
From the 9th Century, the three pillars, represented by the Pope, the Emperor, and the Religious Orders, supported the Christian social system; but when it came to the 16th Century, this system had collapsed because the three pillars began to corrupt

(1) The giant pillar represented by the Pope:
The Pope had lived in Avignon for 70 years (1309-1377), but in the following 40 years, there was a great schism within the Western Church (1378-1417). By the 16th Century, the Holy See was corrupt. The priesthood became the prerogative of the nobility. They held several bishoprics at the same time, and many of the low-level clergy who were recruited held Mass only on a regular basis due to their low educational level. In this corrupt state, the church desperately needed to be reformed. However, due to the pope’s attachment to political power, the ignorance of the clergy, and the bureaucratic, centralized system, reforms from below were not supported by above.

As a result, on October 31, 1517, on the bulletin board of the University of Wittenberg, Germany, Martin Luther (1483-1546) posted ninety-five theses “against the effect of indulgences”, which sparked off the Reformation. This reformation movement led to the power of the people, and also exposed the political contradictions and power struggles amongst the Pope, the emperor and the nobility, and finally resulting in various churches breaking free of the Church of Rome. Because of this reformation movement, the Church of Rome eventually began to take reform actions. In the 18 years from 1545 to 1563, the Ecumenical Council held in Trent decided to reform the system of indulgences, re-emphasized the celibacy of the clergy, and outlawed the buying and selling of bishops’ or priests’ holdings or the bad practice of holding multiple offices. Although the reforms were quite successful, the schism was inevitable.

(2) The giant pillar represented by the emperor:
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From the 13th century onwards, although the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire had limited real power, he still represented a symbol of unity among Christians until the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved by Napoleon in 1806. In the 15th and 16th centuries, England (1485), France (1491), and Spain (1492) successively established their own National Monarchy. At the same time, the princes of the Germanic nation each trying to seek their own power for independence, making this sign of unity a big irony. In addition, since 1453, the Muslim Turks captured Constantinople and destroyed the Eastern Roman Empire, and posed a constant threat to the eastern part of the empire, and whenever the empire launched military conquests, the princes rebelled internally. Thus, this pillar supporting Christians also fell. In fact, due to the development of commerce, the middle class gradually was established in the city. They were not feudal lords or vassals. They were a group of people outside the feudal system, who possessed wealth envied by many. Later, these people became more and more powerful and became the internal factor which overthrew the feudal system and the monarchy system.

(3) The giant pillar represented by the religious orders:
Since the 6th century, the religious orders had been responsible for education, preaching, and teaching; they were also the source of spiritual strength in society, but in the 15th century, due to the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453), the Black Death (1347-1350, 1665, 1720), the disputes between the Pope and the Emperor, the Great Schism in the West (1378-1417) and the sale of important Church holdings, there was no peace in the monastic life. At the same time, it added corruption to corruption. Often the monks neglected their community prayers, and they began to own private property, and no longer lived in the monastery. As a result, the spiritual pillar of the Christian spirit also collapsed.

The Birth of a “New Society”
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While the Christian social system collapsed, another “new society” was born. This was mainly due to new discoveries and scientific inventions at the time. In the spiritual realm, the return to the Christian traditions led to the rise of Humanism, followed by Renaissance and Enlightenment. Moreover, there were major developments and new discoveries in navigation and new inventions in science and technology.

(1) Spiritual aspects:
The Crusades (1095-1291) led to the development of commerce in Italy on the one hand, and a love of Greek and Latin classical culture on the other, and the collapse of the ruling authority within Italy - imperial and religious - in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, which led to a growing individualism in the cities.

During this period, Petrarch (1304-1374) and Boccaccio (1313-1357) promoted the Restoration and Humanism in Florence and Naples. They gained a new vision of man and the world through the appreciation and study of classical literature.

They celebrated individuality, treating people as human beings, free from the constraints of church, nation, law and tradition, and emphasizing the beauty and satisfaction of life in this world. This movement began in Italy and soon spread to other parts of the world, becoming a creative Renaissance movement in the Western world by the early sixteenth century. The movement’s experimental and liberal spirit emphasizes the material and secular aspects.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) is an iconic figure of the Renaissance, as a painter, sculptor, architect and musician. In the spirit of the Renaissance, he exploited his human potential and also developed his skills in anatomy, mathematics, chemistry, biology, astronomy and geography. He was also an inventor. Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) and Raphael Sanzio (1483-1520) were equally two other Renaissance figures who had fame and talent.

By the middle of the 17th century, the Lutheran Reformation and the Roman Reformation had both come to a halt. The Church, for its part, had contributed no new ideas or vitality to move society forward. Instead, it was the new cosmology, with its scientific and rational philosophy, that gave rise to the Enlightenment, a movement of great influence.

The movement actively applied the rules of reason to individual and collective life, confident in its understanding of people and the universe, believing that only through rational criticism and empirical verification can one gain an understanding of human nature, society, history, ethics and religion. This spirit does not accept any authority (such as the Bible or the Church) or uncritical forms of tradition, but optimistically believes in the continuous development and progress of humanity.

(2) Scientific aspects:
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Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), contested Aristotle (384-322 BC) and Ptolemy (second century AD), who believed that the Earth was the centre of the universe. He proposed the heliocentric theory, in which the sun was the centre of the universe. This theory was promoted by Johann Kepler (1571-1630) and Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), and verified by Isaac Newton (1642-1727) in England through mathematics, by explaining the gravitational forces as the cause for the rotation of the planets. This new discovery has opened up a new world, a world where the universe is a system of laws and not a place where arbitrary divine power is exercised. The earth is no longer the centre of all things, but a tiny speck of dust in the midst of countless immense bodies.

(3) Philosophical aspects:
Philosophers everywhere challenged the established authorities in the name of reason. In France, Rene Descartes (1596-1650) argued that all knowledge begins with doubt, and that only what the mind can fully understand is real knowledge; furthermore, all things must be clear and obvious by mathematical calculation to be reliable. In England, John Locke (1632-1704) based all rational criticism on the experience of the senses. In Germany, however, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) affirmed that reason did not obtain absolute objective truths, but had to be accepted and understood according to the subjective conditions of time and space. This was the culmination of the Enlightenment, when reason was brought to its fullest extent.

(4) Geographical aspects:
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During the period when the Muslims controlled the land and sea routes between the West and Asia on the Mediterranean coast, a spirit of innovation and adventure emerged in Europe, and the rivalry between the two ‘seafaring peoples’ of Spain and Portugal led to a race to discover new routes and new continents. In 1492 Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) discovered America for Spain. 1498 Vasco da Gama (1469-1524) found a new route around Africa to India for Portugal. 1519-1522 Ferdinand Magellan (1481-1521) discovered a global route for Spain. These new geographical discoveries gave the Western world new perspectives, access to new peoples and cultures, new possessions and the accompanying land, slaves and trade facilities. In short, they discovered a new world.

(5) Technological aspects:
In 1445 Johann Gutenberg (1397-1468) invented the movable type printing method and in 1456 printed the first Latin Bible in typography, which expanded the circle of readers and improved their critical faculties. 1658 Christian Huygens of the Netherlands invented the pendulum clock. It is called a “philosophical machine” that can calculate time accurately. In 1613 gunpowder was used commercially and later for military purposes, changing the organization of the military and abolishing the knight system. The navigational compass of this period made navigation easier. These inventions were also some of the key elements of the new society. These factors helped the new society to reach maturity. In Britain, the invention of the steam engine (1769) led to the Industrial Revolution. In North America, the American Independence Movement (1775-1783) and in France, the Civil Revolution (1789-1799) brought the Western world to another stage.

Preaching of the Church
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What did the Church preach at the time of the collapse of the Christian social system and the birth of a new society? Within the Church, the Church preached a ‘counter-witness’ to the reforms and renewal that began as a result of corrupt life and ended in war and division. In the face of the new society, the Church focused only on judgement and self-defense; in fact, it retreated. In the face of the new world, the churches exported the theology, the culture and the counter-evidence of division of the Western Church in the form of schism, under the protection of imperial monarchs.

(1) Preaching within the church:
The Church's radical reformation from decay and the renewal that it brought about was the greatest internal preaching of the Church during this period. The Lutheran Church, in addition to rejecting bad practices within the Church, also refocused its faith in line with the views of Martin Luther. Martin Luther believed that the discipline and spirituality of the Order were merely techniques for man to find God in his own strength, ignoring the fact of trusting in the Lord and recognizing that God Himself comes to seek man. The Lutheran Church then focused on the Pauline view of faith: through faith and, in the spirit of restoration, return to the source of the Church - the Bible. The Roman Church took up the burden of its historical tradition and convened the Ecumenical Council of Trent 1545-1563. The Council did away with the bad customs associated with the priesthood and the selling of indulgences, and affirmed traditional theologies such as the transubstantiation of the substance of bread, justification by faith and works, the seven sacraments, and the existence of purgatory. The theology of these traditions was immediately supported by various parties, notably the Society of Jesus, founded in Paris in 1534. In the spirit of the Council, a new trend in literature, architecture, painting, music and theology emerged in the Roman Church, known collectively as the Baroque. This trend favours the praise of the Virgin Mary, the supremacy of the Pope, the seven sacraments and the intercessions of the saints. The Roman Church used these various artistic means to express its preaching, especially in the spirit of Christian humanism, focusing on the birth of Christ and the humanity of Jesus. From this period onwards, special veneration of the Sacred Heart of Jesus began.

(2) Proclamation to the new society:
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The Church in the face of the new society became the supporter and ruler of the old. The Church had the power and honour of the old aristocracy and the economic interests of the feudal lords; it could hardly draw on the spirit of the age to resist the new society and continued to view the new things with suspicion and hostility. This conservative and self-conservative attitude prevented the Church from actively proclaiming the Gospel and from looking critically at science and reason, which were so highly valued at the time. The Galileo incident is a striking example of the conflict between faith and science at the time. The conflict between faith and reason had longer-term consequences.

The scholars of the time: Blaise Pascal 1623-1662, Voltaire 1694-1778, Jean Jacques Rousseau 1712-1778, David Hume 1711-1776, advocated the independence of man and freedom of belief. Therefore, one must not accept the truth by authority, but respect one’s conscience and the revelations of nature. They raised with the Church fundamental questions about the existence of God, human nature, original sin, the purpose of life, miracles, natural phenomena, etc. But the Church’s response was negative, it vigorously opposed the discussion of these questions and used its power to enforce the existing “List of forbidden Books”. As a result, the Church was out of touch with this new society and its spirit, which was leading the world forward.

(3) Proclamation to the New World:
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With the new discoveries of navigation, Africa, still living a tribal life, the rich and unorganized Americas and Asia, with their ancient cultures, suddenly became accessible to Westerners and to the Western Church. The expeditions from the West carried soldiers, merchants, navigators, representatives of kings and missionaries, so that the Church’s mission to the New World was in tune with the military, economic and political actions of the West. Spain and Portugal, the countries of the Roman Church, were entrusted by the Pope with the task of converting the people under the ruling of the occupied territories to the Church, and for this purpose they had to protect the missionaries and help establish missions and dioceses.

Westerners faced the new world with a sense of cultural superiority to the novelty and excitement it offered. With faith and advanced technology, they brought the light of the Gospel to people in darkness. In Africa, Westerners were missionaries under the protection of the Portuguese rulers. They encountered many difficulties: a high mortality rate of the missionaries due to unsuitable climates, intermittent Western support and the erratic nature of local tribal leaders, which made missionary work unsustainable. The main reason, however, was that the missionaries did not learn the local language well enough to understand the local customs and ideas and to give long-term instruction.

The missionaries of the time used to baptize large groups of local people according to the ‘Fide Ecclesiae’, making the Church’s preaching like an invitation to participate in a welfare organization. Between 1645 and 1700, there were around 600,000 Catholics in the Congo and Angola.

In Central and South America, the Spanish rulers took the following steps: firstly to conquer, secondly to settle their own settlers in the area and finally to establish ecclesiastical organizations to preach the gospel. The missionaries went about establishing Christian villages, called reductions, with churches, schools, hospitals and orphanages to protect the natives who had become Christians from exploitation and fraud, and to provide education. The lack of training and promotion of local clergy meant that by the end of the 18th century, when Spanish rule faltered, so did the missionary loosen up.

While the average missionary in Asia was simply a transplant of the Western Church, there were some vigilant missionaries who believed that the Church’s preaching should be adapted to the inherent ancient cultures of the region and a viable missionary approach should be found.

First, in Japan, the Jesuit Valignano (1537-1606) preached exclusively to the nobility.

Later, in China, the Jesuit Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) made every effort to enter the capital and to make a way into the circle of scholars, preaching the Gospel through the local culture and through high intellectuals.

In southern India, Robert de Nobili (1577-1656) abstained from eating meat and wearing leather shoes, putting on the robes of a Hindu monk, studied ancient Indian texts and even cut off contact with Western church groups in order to gain the trust of the locals. In Vietnam, Alexander de Rhodes (1591-1660), who created the Vietnamese script using the Latin alphabet, formed a local group of natives with a preaching vocation.