The Age of Reform

The age of reform refers to the period covered by the thirteenth through the sixteenth centuries. Steven Ozment recaptures this journey helping to draw out significant themes and changes within the church during this time. Several prominent figures emerge, all of who serve to aid the development of the understandings theological issues the Church faced throughout the age of reform. 

This essay will serve to analyze Ozment’s writing, highlight the life of Luther, as well as the specific local reformations of this time. Conclusions and applications for twenty-first century Evangelical Chistians will follow.

The Age of Reform

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries we begin to see the emergence of reason and the beginning of its nature as an informative one for theological issue. The Church in the past has not relied on reason as much as experience and direct revelation. The Middle Ages were considered an age of faith, This was beginning to change and would have profound consequences. “The scholastic synthesis of reason and revelation in the 13^th century was a chief source of both the intellectual and ecclesiopolitical conflicts of the late Middle Ages.”

The figures of most prominence during the early Middle Ages were farmers and soldiers. Physical survival was the focus of most people. We see a lot of experimenting with preservation tactics. People were not preoccupied with reason, much less reconciling reasons with their faith. In fact to some, the two were opposed. “The proper relationship between philosophy and theology, between reason and faith, because a major problem for thinking of the high and later Middle Ages”

As we move to the fourteenth century, the idea of mysticism surfaces and we see people reverting to their old ways of grounding their theology in subjective experience and unjustified dogmatism.  Ozment comments that the options in that day were simply “either ‘practical skepticism’ or ‘blind fideism.’” 

The high Middle Ages were marked by self-discovery and definition. As we fast-forward to the late Middle Ages, we see challenges emerge that were unprecedented. Famines, wars, revolts, and schism in the church. However, the fifteenth century was also considered a true renaissance of culture and learning.

The new discipline of the days was call “dialectic.” Everything was beginning to be subjected to logical analysis. Indeed, even the articles of faith began to be scrutinized.  These “thinkers first discovered the pains and pleasures of truly critical thought.” Ideas now had consequences. There was now a disbelief in the neutrality of ideas. There were logical consequences that could be found through reason. 

Though the concept of reasons was being esteemed in a way that it was not before,“the church did not challenge bad logic with good logic or meet bad reasoning with sound.” There existed a dichotomy between the realm of life to which reason could apply, and the other realm of like to which reasons could not be applied. “Reason and revelation, nature and grace, philosophy and theology, secular man and religious man, the state and the church – all progressively lost their common ground and went their separate ways”

Martin Luther and the German Reformation

Martin Luther was born at the end of the fifteenth century in Germany. He was an active scholar, and by the age of twenty-two he had received both his bachelor and master’s degrees. He would have continued with his studies in law had not other circumstances pointed him towards the monastery. He soon became a doctor of theology, and was considered the “ages most brilliant theologian.”

The most important doctrine that led to reformation in the Church was that of justification by faith; Luther stressed it as well. The implications of the doctrine of justification by faith were far reaching. “The Reformation was an unprecedented revolution in religion at a time when religion penetrated almost the whole of life.” However, according to the medieval church, what made fallen man righteous again was not faith, but was rather “the remission of the guilt incurred by sin by priestly absolution…In theological doctrine the medieval Christian was always sinning, always beginning anew, always returning to the sacraments for short-lived strength and assurance” 

The doctrine of justification challenged priestly authority head on, potentially influencing the balance of power. In light of the unacceptable implications of what he was preaching, the emperor gave Martin Luther “a brief period of grace in which to reconsider before he cam under the imperial ban and subject to capital punishment”

Luther lived his life expecting “religious values to inform secular life and the sword of the magistrate to defend religious truth.” Sadly, this was not what he experienced. He had already begun influencing what would undermine the authorities of the day. The people had been listening the Luther. The people agreed with Luther. “Many common people looked to him for deliverance from both social and religious bondage.” Luther was familiar with what the scriptures taught on obeying authorities, but he instructed disobedience to authorities which aimed to rule over people’s (believer’s) conscience.

The German Reformation, in regards to the doctrine of justification by faith, “enhanced the inner, personal side of religion against its stultifying external and institutional forms… [It] made it possible for Christian values to penetrate German society and politics and transform German culture.”

I believe Luther had many strength in his approach to reforming the Church. Partly because his focus was on reading scripture aright, that is, properly. If scripture properly read implies justification by faith, and if by emphasizing this doctrine there follows reform in the Church, then that reform was needed. When examining the life of Luther, it does not seem that from the get-go he set out to shake things up in the Church. Rather, as he studied and experienced his own Christian pilgrimage, he was attuned to the convictions of the spirit and did not remain quiet.   

In the same respect, because Luther was not always enacting a specific thought-out strategy, some might accuse him for having various weaknesses. However, I think that his strengths and his lasting impact on the Church far outweighed any weaknesses one might challenge him for. 

Swiss Reformations

The Swiss reformations included both that Anabaptists and the Reformed. Each reformation had its own essential theme: Anabaptism was concerned with baptism, and the Reformed tradition was concerned with the Eucharist. 

Conrad Grebel was the founder of Anabaptism. Anabaptism was an opposition that focused “especially on the issue of infant baptism.” Though people sometimes baptize infant for different purposes, such as simply a way of dedicating them, Anabaptist were responding to the type of infant baptism that seemed to be equated with salvation. Baptism viewed in this way was also viewed to Baptism neutralized “the individual’s responsibility for original sin” and weakened “the inclination to sin.” Familiar with the understanding of baptism of their time, the Anabaptist were convicted that rather, people should be baptized “as mature, consenting adults who had freely chosen a life in imitation of Jesus.”

In response to the Anabaptist movement, adult rebaptism became a capital offense in the sixteenth century. “Scholars estimate that at least 850 and perhaps as many as 5,000 Anabaptists were legally executed between 1525 and 1618 by burning, decapitation, and drowning.”

The second Swiss reformation was started by Ulrich Zwingli, and  “n several ways, Zwinglian Protestantism broke more radically with medieval religion than Lutheranism.” Zwingli was a well-studied young man like Luther, and also left a lasting impression in the church as did Luther. However, Zwingli and Luther had their differences. 

The main concern of the reformed centered around the sacraments, specifically the Eucharist. Rather than literally understanding the elements of Christ’s body and blood, as had been previously held, the reformed interpreted it as symbolic. “In contrast to others, the Zwingli “believed as firmly as any medieval mystic that tangible things could neither contain nor dispense spiritual reality; the physical could not nourish the spiritual.”

Though each local reformation succeeded in challenged what was assumed in the day, they each were very different. “So it was that in 1530 Lutherans and Zwinglians went their separate ways, both confessionally and politically.”

American Evangelicalism

In several ways American Evangelicals have been faithful to the Reformation heritage. However, I do believe there are some issues that the reformers would have with the way we do church now. We focus first on the former.

American Evangelicals have whole-heartedly embraced the doctrine of justification by faith alone. There is no room for a works-based justification in most of our local churches, as there is no sacred space reserved for anything in authority to pardon sin. As whole congregations, pastors included, we acknowledge we are on level playing-field at the foot of the cross. 

However, have we swayed too far away from responding to certain commandments, because our focus on faith rather than works? Faith and works are not pitted against each other in scripture, but sadly this is what many of our churches do today. Faith produces good works, but I think the reformers might ask where that work is, if they walked into some of our churches today. 

Luther’s influence left the church with the “opportunity to invest society’s established institutions with moral and religious values.” Are we as involved with our institutions as to invest in them would the truth we know from scripture and from reasons, or do we function as if we still live with the dichotomy of two realms, one of which is informed by scripture and reason and one of which is not. Luther might be disappointed.

Ozment concluded that the problem of the Reformation was the “naïve expectation that the majority of people were capable of radical religious enlightenment and moral transformation.” In spite of whether this is true or not, have we thought about whether people today are capable of radical religious enlightenment and moral transformation?

It has been said that whoever does not remember history is doomed to repeat it. As I have journeyed through history classes, I have realized that some of my grand ideas were actually tried by people earlier on and they didn’t pan out so well. I am thankful to be able to learn from history. However, I do not think that “learning from history” can be reduced to simply meaning avoided the large mistakes they made. I think it means we can take pointers and see how strategies work/fail and mold our plans having gleaned from what history has taught us.

In an age of postmodernism, we find ourselves in a current culture which has sanctioned religious life as “reason-free.”  Believers are being called as they were in the twelfth through the fifteenth centuries to be faithful in their witness and to fight against this dichotomy. We are not called to escape this world but are called to participate in the redemption of it. This is done at the institutional, religious, and cultural levels. All of which believers should find opportunities to share the gospel and to influence through proper morals. 

Bibliography

Ozment, Steven. The Age of Reform 1250-1550: An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe. New Haven: Yale University Press,1980. 

 Steven Ozment, The Age of Reform 1250-1550: An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980) 20.