The Reformation (15th-16th Centuries)

I envision the era of the Reformation commencing with the life and works of Martin Luther and concluding sometime near the end of the Reformation. I say this tongue in cheek, however I must hasten to add that it is as difficult to mark the end of the Reformation as it is to explain the movement because in some profound ways the Reformation is still alive and well. Semper Reformanda was not just the cry of a generation but a vision of life in Christ that has persisted to this day, and all the more in light of the fact that the official teaching of the Catholic Church, though far removed from the days of Leo X, is yet a long way from a biblical soteriology and ecclesiology.

Having said that, David Larsen envisions the century following the Reformation (chronologically defined) as “the ripening maturity of biblical preaching” (Larsen, 199-248). I find this description both accurate and helpful in that the seventeenth century presents us not with novel developments but with maturing movements that have their roots in the Renaissance and late medieval period. Thus, I suppose I will roughly define the limits of the Reformation from the day Martin Luther nailed his ninety-seven theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg to somewhere near the dawn of the seventeenth century.

The Reformation is an extraordinarily complex movement that exploded in the midst of an extraordinarily convulsive time of history. It is the result of an intricate nexus of historical factors such as the Great Schism and the Conciliatory Movement of the eleventh century; the growing secularization and corruption of the Roman Catholic Church; the burgeoning intellectual developments of the Renaissance and humanism; the various and serious doctrinal challenges that were confronting a church that could no longer suppress the ideas of its opponents; the decline of feudalism and the corollary destabilization of Europe and therefore the better part of the world; the technological advances that brought forth the printing press and modes of travel that allowed Europeans to venture out and encounter strange and foreign peoples along with their ideas and their gods; the Black Death which in the last forty years of the fourteenth century alone killed some 30-50% of the population of Europe so that the world’s population is said to have decreased from about 450 million to 350 million people by A.D. 1400 (McManners, 326-329).

This web of historical phenomena (and more) gave rise to an era of reforming movements which came from top and bottom, rich and poor. There were in fact many “reformations” prior to the Reformation so that we must envision even the Catholic Counter-Reformation as part and parcel of a long history that reaches back beyond the life of Martin Luther. There had been a very long struggle between those who knew and sought after God and longed for the church to fulfill her calling, and those who sought to use the church for personal or political purposes. The difference in the sixteenth century is that the rhetoric was applied, the talk became action, and the action became revolution—exactly why this is so and why this explosion occurred when it did is a bit of a mystery. Perhaps God had grown impatient with his unfaithful Bride.

With regard to the history of hermeneutics and homiletics, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli and other leading lights of the era were agreed in their rejection of the allegorical method and the mysticism that had developed because of it. “We would not be exaggerating greatly if we described the progress of biblical exegesis as the gradual abandonment of allegorical interpretation” (Silva, 52), and this progress gained massive momentum in the sixteenth century. Indeed, the Reformers passionately argued for the primacy of “the plain meaning of Scripture,” and its general perspicuity, which implied, among other things, that the common Christian could understand the Bible and should thus have it available in a language they could understand. Underneath this conviction was the belief in the priesthood of all believers who as such had a right to private interpretation in the context of Christian community.

Furthermore, the Reformers rejected Aquinas’s articulation of nature and grace, and thus blew the trumpet of grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone to the glory of God alone on the basis of Scripture alone. They believed, as did the early church, that the appropriate context for the interpretation, proclamation, and application of the Word of God is the church, and in this way consciously dealt another blow to the remaining vestiges of Scholasticism and the more minor movements it spawned.

As Silva has aptly noted, “It is no exaggeration to say that the sixteenth-century Reformation was, at bottom, a hermeneutical revolution” (Silva, 77), and revolution is not too strong a word. By the grace and power of God, this generation of faithful believers turned the world upside-down mainly by returning to a more orthodox view of the Word of God which they then courageously applied to their social context in a number of ways. Surely, God had ripened the times for men and women such as these, and surely there have been those in every age who have been faithful to God and boldly stood for truth, and surely the heroes of the Reformation were hopelessly flawed and broken and made countless errors which were at times tragic and egregious. Yet we can and should celebrate the days in which God caused the various chains thrown upon his Word to be loosed again.

To get a feel for the careful position on Scripture carved out by some of the Reformers of this era, consider the following statement taken from The Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 1, Paragraph VII:

"The Old Testament in Hebrew (which was the native language of the people of God of old), and the New Testament in Greek (which, at the time of the writing of it, was most generally known to the nations), being immediately inspired by God, and, by His singular care and providence, kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentical; so as, in all controversies of religion, the Church is finally to appeal unto them. But, because these original tongues are not known to all the people of God, who have right unto, and interest in the Scriptures, and are commanded, in the fear of God, to read and search them, therefore they are to be translated in to the vulgar language of every nation unto which they come, that, the Word of God dwelling plentifully in all, they may worship Him in an acceptable manner; and, through patience and comfort of the Scriptures, may have hope." 

This masterful statement clearly communicates that while the Reformers sought to make a clean break with the abuse of tradition, they did not desire to break with the tradition itself (Silva, 96). Rather, they reached back over time, to Antioch and Augustine, and affirmed a view and use of Scripture that has indeed caused the Word of God to dwell more plentifully among the peoples of the earth.

We should not be surprised that the return to a more biblical view of Scripture and its uses led to a renaissance of biblical preaching of which we are direct heirs. As Larsen has noted, the “Protestant Reformation…must be seen as one of the most fertile and forceful times of biblical preaching” because the “Reformers subscribed to a view of scriptural authority which made biblical preaching a necessity” (Larsen, 142). If the Bible is the living Word of God, and if God has commanded that Word to be proclaimed in all the world, then woe to the church if we do not preach the Word in season and out of season (2 Tim 4:1-5). To be sure, the church’s view of the Bible determines how the church will appropriate the Bible, and so we have need to give thanks to God for those faithful servants who have handed down to us a more orthodox view of the Bible.