Reformation Myth-Busting

“Martin Luther was the first Protestant, and yet he was more Catholic than many of his Roman Catholic opponents.”

-          Jaroslav Pelikan

The Reformation as Renewal: Retrieving the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, by Matthew Barrett

To be clear, the Reformers did not think of the Reformation as a return to exhaustive continuity with the past – that myth is not the claim of this book.  At the same time, the Reformers did not think of their Reformation as a radical break with the past – a caricature this book seeks to remedy.

The Reformation is enveloped in a narrative, some of it with basis in fact, some not.  It is an oppositional narrative – a narrative that presents the Reformers as merely opposing the current.  Barrett offers four such false threads in this oppositional narrative and will, through his book, examine these.  But, to summarize:

First…the Reformation was anti-tradition.  The Reformers believed sola scriptura, and that meant the Bible was the only authority for the church.

Second, the Reformation was not only anti-Catholic (Roman Catholic) but also anti-catholic (universal church), as if the true gospel and the true church had been lost since the days of the apostles…

Third, the Reformation was anti-medieval, specifically anti-Scholastic.  The Reformers thoughts Scholasticism represented everything wrong with the church, both its beliefs and practices.

Fourth, the Reformation was anti-philosophy, convinced Christianity was antithetical to Plato and Aristotle.

Evangelical academics avoid this simplistic narrative, and present the history with nuance.  However, the interested masses – even among the evangelicals – still see things this way; an oppositional narrative, and not at all accurate – certainly not complete.

Certainly, some can find something in some Reformers that would support one or another of these views.  But, per Barrett, not on the whole.  There were radicals and schismatics that came out of the Reformation – identified as such by other Reformers – that held such views, but these were on the fringes of the movement.

There were primarily two specific areas in which the Reformers disagreed with the Roman Church: soteriology, and ecclesiology.  Much of their writing focused on and around these two issues.  As Richard Muller would write:

“It is worth recognizing from the outset that the Reformation altered comparatively few of the major loci of theology: the doctrine of justification, the sacraments, and the church received the greatest emphasis – while the doctrines of God, the trinity, creation, providence, predestination, and the last things were taken over from the tradition by the magisterial Reformation virtually without alteration.”

The Reformers did not intend to start a new church; they intended to reform the only church they knew – “a catholic church they still believed possessed and practiced legitimate marks of a true church.”  Luther expressed his protest as a member of the church, as one of its doctors and professors.  It should be remembered that it was the pope who excommunicated Luther, and not Luther leaving the church.

As for authority, a better understanding of the Reformers view of sola scriptura would be that the Bible is the only infallible authority.  Tradition has its role, but it was not infallible and it remained subject to the proper interpretation of Scripture. 

Many of the so-called ancient traditions of the church were, in fact, much more recent inventions.  Such ideas could not be traced back to the early church fathers, or to practices of the early church.  Luther would identify novelties such as indulgences, private masses, the pope, and purgatory. 

Per Steinmetz:

“For Melanchthon and Calvin, though less so for Luther, the Reformation was almost as much an argument over the writings of the early Christian fathers as it was an argument over the meaning of Scripture.”

Regarding soteriology, the Reformers saws themselves as Augustinians.  Thomas Cranmer, Martin Chemnitz, and others would offer evidence from the earliest church fathers for the positions taken by the Reformers.

The shift came with the advent of the via moderna, a shift the Reformers believed betrayed the early church fathers.  When the Reformers criticized the “Schoolmen,” their criticisms were specific as to the individual and movement – and not a blanket criticism of the entire body of theology.

Conclusion

Barrett will explore and expand upon all of this in his book.  Again, he is not going to mine the depths of the early church fathers to determine if the Reformers were right.  Instead, he will consider if the Reformers themselves interpreted their reformation as a renewal of catholicity.

The Reformers did not take an axe to the tree, throw the tree in the fire, and plant a new tree.  Rather, the tree remained the same; they simply pruned its savage branches.