Reformation Thought. Alister E. McGrath

reforming program of the “Catholic Reformation,” was its call for the simplification of the vocabulary and conceptualities of Christian doctrine. There was a concern that scholastic theology, predominant during the Middle Ages, was inaccessible to ordinary people. It was important to use simpler and clearer language to express core Christian beliefs. Trent also appreciated the importance of religious education, and initiated a process of catechization, in which ordinary believers would be helped to grasp the basic themes of the Christian faith.

Yet this demand for the simplification of theological language was not accompanied by any program of review or revision of the prevailing doctrinal consensus of the church. Many Italian bishops at the Council of Trent (Figure 1.2), perhaps influenced by the general dislike of many Renaissance humanists for the technicalities of theology, felt that there was no need for such a review. Reform was restricted to institutional, moral, and pastoral matters – all of which mattered profoundly, of course, but did not engage the concerns expressed by writers such as Luther and Calvin.

      Figure 1.2 The 23rd Session of the Council of Trent, 1563. Bridgeman XIR 33245. The Council of Trent, 4th December 1563 (oil on canvas), Italian School (sixteenth century), Louvre, Paris, France. Formerly attributed to Titian (1488–1576).

      To critical observers such as Martin Luther at Wittenberg and John Calvin at Geneva, the medieval church seemed to have lost sight of its intellectual and spiritual heritage. It was time to reclaim the ideas of the Golden Age of the Christian church. The sad state of the church in the early sixteenth century was simply a symptom of a more radical disease – a deviation from the distinctive ideas of the Christian faith, a loss of intellectual identity, a failure to grasp what Christianity really was. Christianity could not be reformed without an understanding of what Christianity was actually meant to be. For Luther, in particular, the morbidity of the late Renaissance church was simply the latest stage in a gradual process of degeneration which had been going on since the early Middle Ages – the corruption of Christian doctrine and ethics.

Thinkers such as Luther and Calvin held that the core ideas that lay at the heart of Christian faith and practice had been obscured, if not undermined, through a series of developments in the Middle Ages. According to these and other reformers of that age, it was time to reverse these changes, to undo the work of the Middle Ages, in order to return to a purer, fresher version of Christianity which beckoned to them across the centuries. The reformers echoed the cry of the humanists: “back to the fountainhead (ad fontes),” a call to return to or learn from the Golden Age of the church, in order to reclaim its freshness, purity, and vitality in the midst of a period of stagnation and corruption.

      A Failed Attempt to Reform: Conciliarism

      But who could reform the church? It was not a new question. Many medieval thinkers, frustrated at the apparent inability of the papacy to initiate a process of review and reform of the church, urged secular rulers to convene a reforming council and force reform upon an institution which seemed unwilling to reform itself. Leading advocates of this approach, often known as “Conciliarism,” included Pierre d’Ailly and Jean Gerson. The matter seemed to have been resolved at the Council of Constance (1414–18), which declared that only a General Council had the necessary authority to reform the church. However, in the end, this attempt to reform the church became mired in procedural wrangling, and power reverted to the papacy.

      Important through these developments were, they do not adequately explain the rise of Protestantism. The root and branch reform demanded by so many in the later Middle Ages could easily have taken the form of an internal review of the church’s teachings and practices, not unlike the great Gregorian reforms of the eleventh century. What really needs to be explained is why and how a group of movements working for renewal and reform within the church at the opening of the sixteenth century solidified as an entity outside the church structures of its day, and somehow managed to survive.

      The Growth of Regional and National Power

      Part of the explanation of this development lies in the localization of power in regional rulers, which became significant at this time. By the first decade of the sixteenth century, some fundamental shifts in power had taken place across Europe. The power of the pope had diminished, as the power of secular European governments had increased. In 1478, the Spanish Inquisition was established, with power over clergy and religious orders (and eventually also over bishops). Yet this was an instrument of the Spanish state, not the Spanish church. Control of this system of courts rested not with the pope, but with the Spanish king. The Concordat of Bologna (1516) gave the king of France the right to appoint all the senior clergy of the French church, effectively giving him direct control of that church and its finances.

Across Europe, the ability of the pope to impose a reformation upon his church was steadily diminishing. Even if the will to reform had been there in the later Renaissance popes (and there are few indications that it was), their ability to reform the church was gradually slipping away. This diminishment in papal authority did not, however, lead to a decrease in the power of local or national churches, which continued to exercise major influence over nations. It was the ability of the pope to control such local or national power that declined during our period. The German, Swiss, and English reformations illustrate this point well.

      Protestant reformers often allied themselves with regional or civic powers in order to achieve their programs of reform. Luther appealed to the German nobility and Zwingli to the Zurich city council to support their reforming projects, pointing out the benefits which would accrue to both as a consequence. For reasons we shall explore presently (pp. 261–3), the English Reformation (in which political factors tended to overshadow theological issues, which were generally treated as being of secondary importance) is not typical of the European movement as a whole.

      The continental Reformation proceeded through a symbiotic (and occasionally opportunistic) local alliance of theological reformers and state or civic authorities, each believing that the resulting Reformation was to their mutual benefit. The reformers were not unduly concerned that they gave added authority to their secular rulers by their theories of the role of the state or the “godly prince”: the important thing was that the secular rulers supported the cause of the Reformation, even if their reasons for doing so might not be entirely straightforward or praiseworthy.

      The mainstream reformers were pragmatists, people who were prepared to allow secular rulers their pound of flesh provided the cause of the Reformation was advanced. In much the same way, of course, the opponents of the Reformation had little hesitation in calling upon the support of secular authorities which felt that their interests were best served by a maintenance of the religious status quo. No study of the Reformation can overlook its political and social dimensions, as secular authorities in northern Europe and England saw their chance to seize power from the church, even at the cost of thereby committing themselves to a new religious order.

      Nevertheless, the fact remains that certain distinctive religious ideas achieved widespread circulation and influence within western European society in the sixteenth century. The Reformation was about theology, not just social and political change. These theological ideas cannot be ignored or marginalized by anyone concerned with the study of the Reformation. It is hoped that the present work will introduce, explain, and contextualize them.

      The Religious Agendas of the Reformers

The fundamental conviction motivating the magisterial reformers, though to different extents, was that Christianity could best be reformed and renewed by returning to the beliefs and practices of the early church. The first five centuries – often designated “the patristic period” – tended to be regarded as the Golden Age of Christianity. There was some divergence within the movement over which early Christian writer offered the best intellectual foundation for such a program of doctrinal reform, with Augustine of Hippo being recognized as especially significant by many.