This is paper I just finished for a class, thought I would share it here in case anyone was interested in reformation history. I have not been blogging much lately so this will have to count. While I would have preferred to put more into this idea, I was under a time restraint combined with a page limit. Hopefully it will still be a good point for discussion. Footnotes have been added at the bottom and contain a number of additional ideas not found in the text. Comments for discusion are welcomed, have a great day!
In the whirlwind of cultural change that was the sixteenth century, Gutenberg pressed out a indelible stamp on history. It has been said that reform was inevitable but surely the process was fast tracked by invention.
By this innovation one early and positive spring flower of the sixteenth century was general access to both the words of Christ and diverse proclamations of the academia among the masses.
Post Luther’s ninety-five thesis, this access sparked a new found liberty and interest in interpretation that would lead to an all out explosion. While Luther was more devoted to church structure than many give him credit for, many of his ideas and the ideas of his fellow reformers would lead to expanded individuality in all things spiritual.
Luther believed in, and would tirelessly advocate, the radical idea that the authority of individual conscience bound by scripture stood over and above the authority of the church councils and weight of tradition.
The early reformers would advocate for a reliance on scripture to interpret itself and inform the church of its practices, championing a formula that proclaimed anything that is not in the bible is not acceptable Christian doctrine or practice.
While they owed a debt to both Augustine and Origen’s principles of biblical exegesis, and may have been propelled in this direction by Erasmus, they stirred sharply away from both tradition and the allegorical method.
Thus creating the two positive points of the reformation to be considered in this paper: the reformed hermeneutical approach and the rise of individual freedoms, which is derived from the latter.
Some may see this as simply a positive and in many ways it was, but it would come with the high cost of unity and arguably it eventually questioned the very authority of the bible itself.
It is easy for the decedents of the reformation to overlook history prior to Luther and assume change was impossible without the drastic measures taken by the reformers. But not all theology flowed down from Rome. The church had been undergoing both the process and processing of theology within itself from its inception.
“Erasmus believed that Christians needed to be more aware of where their faith had come from, and Erasmus’s epochal edition of the Greek New Testament, published in 1516, as well as his editions of the church fathers, was intended to hurry this process along.”
Proceeding Erasmus, Hugh of St. Victor followed by Andrew of St. Victor had already begun to take the Roman Catholic church in the direction of interpreting the scripture in a more literal sense.
Historically change did happen even in the areas of theological reform, howbeit this change was not always positive and certainly not preformed expediently.
While this may lead one to believe that given time the Roman Church may have produced sufficient internal reform, matters of hermeneutical theory that formed during the middle ages certainly stood in the way of progress toward a biblical church.
“In the first part of the Middle Ages, scriptural authority was firmly entrenched as the supreme authority in the church. In the latter part of the medieval period, the authority of the pope and the church’s canon lawyers, making pronouncements on behalf of an increasingly corrupt, papal dominated institution.”
It can be said that the revised hermeneutic of the reformers provided spark that started the reformation.
This hermeneutic can be seen as clearly the greatest contribution of the reformers with regards for establishing a zeal to understand the bible in its original context. Luther’s complete break from the allegorical method, followed by subsequent interpreters such as Zwingli, provided people with a better understanding of what Christianity was, in contrast to what it had become.
In addition they challenged the dire proclamation of John Eck that by their actions would leave Christendom with “nothing that is certain or decided” by alternately offering the assurance of what can be defined as “walking” the true path of the Christian faith.
While this can not be considered a return to biblical hermeneutics i.e. those employed by the apostles, considering the fact that the New Testament writers made frequent use of allegorical methods of interpretation with respect to the Old Testament.
The literal approach did further the understanding of the original intent of the New Testament writers so far as their own writing are concerned.
While the New Testament writers themselves allegorized the scripture, allegorizing the allegories only complicated any real understanding and furthered the divide already made present by time and culture.
The hermeneutical approach of the middle ages, combined with what was to follow at the council of trent claimed that “tradition has authority parallel that of scripture”. This combination dealt a unrecoverable blow to the authority of Biblical cannon by putting firmly in the hands of a self serving institution a method that would lead the church away from the scriptures to focus exceedingly on its own tradition. At the council of Trent, which painstakingly followed a great deal of the early Protestant reformation, the Roman Catholic church would declare that “only the church possesses the right to interpret the bible.”
The reformed hermeneutical approach would change all this but would lead to a plurality without end. Its great contribution was the appeal to sola scriptura, its great challenge was any appeal to finality with regards to interpretation. What began as an honest attempt to restore the existing church to a biblical foundation, morphed into a needed correction of the very foundation of faith itself. The reformed church emerged from this battle lacking a mediator or recognized authority in matters of dispute.
Luther was “bound by the scriptures” in the case of the Diet of Worms by virtue of his hermeneutical approach. Following this event he would quickly face others who moved with equal conviction propelling an unforeseeable degree of division and disagreement.
Soon people would have the bible in hand translated to their own language, free from both tradition and the authority of the Roman church. These events and ideologies would become the driving force behind the individuality and liberty that we have today, and it is hard to lack anything but gratitude for them. Even so, the post modern views of truth they spawned and the collapse of a recognizable authority has certainly lead many to feel adrift when searching for the solid ground of truth.
The early practice of the reformers lead them to divide quickly in matters of disagreement and this continued with ferocity until the ecumenical moments that arose during the last century. Once the dam had imploded the division proliferated, now no longer would members work to reconcile their theology or appeal to unity in spite of diversity. Division was the way of least resistance. The church was certainly ripe for reform, the case of Jan Huss makes this clear; most of the early reformers expected to begin this realignment with truth to be internally ingested.
For the political structure parading under the banner of Christianity this would not be the case and there is fair amount of evidence that it could not have been the case. The Roman church had strayed from the prominence of Jesus and muddied the waters of truth absorbing centuries of cultural pollution. The reformers can be credited for cleaning that pollution with the cleansing waters of scripture. If we suffered the loss of an identifiable physical authority to speak on matters of division, we more than made up for it by gaining the individual liberty to be subservient to Sola Scriptura.
1 William C. Placher (1988). Readings in the History of Christian Theology Volume 2. Philadelphia Pennsylvania: The Westminster Press. 38. ; Jonathan HIll, The History of Christian Thought (Downers Grove, Ill. : InterVarsity Press,2003), 181; 205.
2 Justo L. Gonzalez (2010). The Story of Christianity. New York, Ny.: Harper Collins. 14.
3 Mark A. Noll (2000). Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity: Baker Academic. 155; 168-170. Justo L. Gonzalez (1975). A History of Christian Thought: From the Protestant Reformation to the Twentieth Century Volume 3. Nashville, TN. Abingdon Press. 61 As implied later in this paper their theology would also lead to expanded individual liberty in all areas of western culture.
4 Ibid Noll. 156 If required in opposition of.
5 Hill 191.
6 Hill 190-193
7 While Luther appeals to the authority of the single christian with the support of scripture the reforms in no way envisioned the extent of individual liberties that would flow from their inspiration. Gonzalez (1975) 61.
8 James W. Voelz (1997) What Does This Mean? Principles of Biblical Interpretation in the Post-Modern World. Saint Louis, Mo. Concordia Publishing House 207-216. Luther’s idea of the authority of individual conscience “bound by scripture” takes a drastic turn in post-modern thinking. As expressed by Voelz in chapter 10 of “What does this mean?” Hill 191-192 “The radical Reformers’ belief that every individual could interpret the Bible according to their own experience simply made their own whims the final authority.”
9 Hill 190.
10 Gregg R. Allison (2011). Historical Theology: An Introduction to Christian Doctrine. Grand Rapids Mich. Zondervan 171.
11 Allison 84.
12 Allison 83.
13 Noll 159. Luther’s own account of his transformation was based on a new understanding of scripture.
14 Johathan Hill (2003). The History of Christian Thought. Downers Grove Ill. Inter-Varsity Press 191. “Luther rejected the allegorical method.”
15 Noll 155, 172. Hill 186. Not that either Luther or Zwingli made great strides in defining the “path” of the true Christian faith where praxis is concerned, only that they inspired a hermeneutical approach that latter would lead to such. Consider Luther’s own statement “Sin greatly, and repent even more greatly.” It is not as much a question of Luther or any of the reformers personal life as much as the conflict of defining christian life and praxis may have been to challenging while also pioneering new concepts of justification by faith alone. Men like John Bunyan would later help formulate the concepts of the christian life for millions of followers based on the principles biblical exegesis begun by the reformers.
16 Ricard Longenecker (1975) Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publ. Co. USA. 128 “while 1 Cor. 9:9f. portrays a mild allegorical exegesis such as was undoubtedly part-and-parcel of the apostle’s exegetical equipment, Gal. 4:21-31 may very well represent an extreme form of Palestinian allegorical interpretation.”
17 Grant R. Osborne (2006) The Hermeneutical Spiral: A Comprehensive Introduction to Biblical Interpretation: Downers Grove Ill. Inter-Varsity Press 24
18 Osborne 24-25.
19 Allison 177.
20 Placher 23. From the moment the founding reformers gain a footing free from endangerment by the Roman Catholic church they find that they can not agree with each other.
21 Placher 23. From its inception the reformation created division within the body of Christ.
22 This explain the renewed interest in all things Eastern Orthodox. Bradley Nassif. “Will the 21st Be the Orthodox Century? Christianity Today, December 2006.
23 Gonzalez (1975) 61. “The life and death of Jan Huss herald, in tragic form, the end of the Middle Ages and the great theological project they had nurtured. To Huss and his followers on the eve of the Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church was going the way of the Roman empire.”- Hill 161. It is for reasons such as this that regardless of the high virtues of unity the Roman Catholic churches leadership of the reformation era had shown itself to be an anti-christ and therefor not part of the Church many seek to unify.
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