Martin Luther and Progressive Thought

Although it may seem as though the scientific advances of Galileo, the political ideas of Machiavelli, or the philosophical ideals of equality of Locke would be the most important intellectual ideas posed during the time when these historical figures lived, it seems that Martin Luther paved the way for all of these changes. Luther posed the idea that men do not need the Church to tell them how to have a connection with God and it was his attempt to educate people by providing them with Bibles translated from the Latin (the language of learning and aristocracy) to German (a language of the people with other translations to follow from followers of Martin Luther). While it may not seem more important than Galileo’s discoveries or other political theories, one must wonder whether or not the Church would be able to exert even more control without the protestant ideas disseminated by Luther and other reformers. 

Without these new ways of “bring the church down to a human level” the Church may have been able to stifle Galileo completely, put an end to Machiavelli’s The Prince which showed that leaders of state (and by proxy, religion) were prone to human error, and ruined Locke’s ideas that all people are a blank slate and have basic natural rights than extend across class lines. Without such a solid protestant voice as Luther’s the Catholic Church might have grown even larger and swept away Western thought in its totalitarian ideas that were agreed upon at the Council of Trent. Without the Protestant religion and a man like Martin Luther, there might have been no possibility for dissent and thus all of these revolutionary ideas might have been lost forever.