The Saved and the Damned

Thomas Kaufmann, the leading European scholar of the Reformation, argues that the main motivations behind the Reformation rest in religion itself. The Reformation began far from Europe's traditional political, economic, and cultural power centres, and yet it threw the whole continent into turmoil. There has been intense speculation over the last century focusing onthe political and social causes that lay at the root of this revolution. Thomas Kaufmann, one of the world's leading experts on the Reformation, sees the most important drivers for what happened in religion itself. The reformers were principally concerned with the question of salvation. It could all have ended with the pope's condemnation of Luther and his teaching. But Luther believed the pope was condemned to eternal damnation, and this was the root cause of the great split to come. Hatred ofthe damned drove people to take up arms, while countless numbers left their homes far behind and carried the Reformation…