In endeavoring to understand the sixteenth-century Reformation, most people seem to look at it much as they do at a tree, focusing their attention upon that which appears above ground. If one attempts to cut the tree down and clear away the stump, however, one soon finds that the roots are of equal if not more importance. In like manner, although one must give all due credit to men such as Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, Cranmer, Knox, and others, whoever would understand the Reformation must look to the roots whence it sprang. If one does this, he will find the roots of the sixteenth-century Reformation long and complex—almost too complex, in fact, for the human investigator to separate and unravel.

When endeavoring to study this movement, however, one quickly realizes that its tap root was religious. Ecclesiastical reform had had many advocates for over a millennium before Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church at Wittenberg on October 31, 1517. Within the ranks of the clergy, reformers had repeatedly appeared demanding radical changes, while among the laity a continual recurrence of millennial and ascetic movements had demonstrated that even the average man felt dissatisfaction with the Church’s spiritual condition. Basically, men seemed to feel that the Church stood between them and God, rather than providing a way to him.

In support of this interpretation one finds that many of the reform movements sought for a fuller and clearer statement of the Christian doctrines of grace. In the fifth century, Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, had set forth in his anti-Pelagian writings and other works a view of grace which of necessity conflicted with the idea of grace coming to one through the instrumentality either of good works or of the Church’s sacraments. He taught that God sovereignly bestowed his grace on whom he willed and as he willed.

This Pauline teaching the Church quickly modified at the Council of Orange (529), with the result that a doctrine inseparably binding the sacraments and grace gained the day. By the thirteenth century, the Church taught that only through the proper receiving of the seven sacraments did one obtain God’s grace, which he had committed to the Church.

Against these views voices were raised throughout the Middle Ages, claiming that God’s grace came to his elect as he saw fit and according to his own wisdom. In the ninth century Gottschalk and Ratramnus appeared as two who advocated an Augustinian position over against that of the official church, but they were silenced. In the twelfth century Bernard of Clairvaux called for reform of the Church through a revitalized monasticism and proclaimed the Augustinian doctrines of grace in this context. A less theological reformer in the person of Peter Waldo, a merchant of Lyons, entered the stage a little later, calling upon men to turn back to the study of the Bible in order that they might know the way of salvation. His followers soon found themselves under ecclesiastical censure, but in the Italian Waldensian Church have continued down to the present day. Then in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries came John Wycliffe in England and his follower Jan Hus in Bohemia. Although Wycliffism, known as Lollardy, died out in England, it survived in Scotland, and in Bohemia it became the core of a great Czech national revival. Besides these, many other reform movements sprang up in different places, all seeking the revival and reform of the Church.

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The Persecution of Reformers

What was the Church’s reaction to these demands? Generally speaking, it opposed them, formulating its own doctrines more clearly and strictly against what it considered their heresy. Some reforms of morals and manners were attempted by the creation of new monastic movements and by the establishment of orders of friars, but on the whole the ecclesiastical leaders made no doctrinal concessions to the rebels. Rather, the Church persecuted wherever it could, hoping to extinguish the deviationist teachings by burning the heretics who held them. At the same time the Church, becoming increasingly wealthy through endowments, declined morally, so that by 1500 Rome had become a byword for its profligacy. To all intents and purposes, however, the Roman Church ruled supreme and wished for no change. Who could have prophesied Luther’s success within the next 30 years?

At this point one must ask why the earlier reformers had achieved so little in their attempts to change the Church. To this question one finds two answers. In the first place, while the would-be reformers had continually called for a return to the Bible and for a re-emphasis on God’s sovereign grace, they never really faced man with his responsibility in terms of a demand for faith. They had never set forth clearly a doctrine of justification by faith alone, so that, even in their thinking, they had not shown the connecting link of faith between man and God’s grace, Sacramentalism to a large extent still remained. In the second place, they lacked an audience or social context to which their demands appealed.

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In a Time of Social Turbulence

To understand this latter statement one must grasp some of the changes which medieval society had experienced prior to 1500. By 1100, after a long period of relative stagnation, central and western Europe were experiencing something of an economic upsurge which within 200 years had become a “boom,” with trade expanding, towns growing, and merchants amassing wealth. Then for various reasons, one of the most important probably being the Black Death which ravaged Europe around 1350, a depression set in continuing until after 1450, and with the depression came a contraction of trade, decline of industry, economic and social distress. Only during the latter part of the fifteenth century did the European economy commence its upward swing again, eventually to reach higher levels than ever before.

The economic changes of the two centuries prior to the Reformation played an important role in preparing an audience for the new doctrines. The depression and subsequent rise of the economy had caused much hardship for the gentry in the west and northwest, for their peasants increasingly demanded freedom from serfdom and sought payment in hard cash for their labors. If they did not receive what they wanted they could easily run away to find employment elsewhere, for the Black Death had caused a serious shortage of labor. Thus the gentry had to struggle hard to maintain their old position. In addition to this, the depression had wiped out or changed the operations of many of the wealthy Italian merchant princes who had dominated the earlier expansion, so that when trade began to improve those who spearheaded the recovery came from among the smaller merchants of France, England, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Scotland. They continually pushed upwards, fighting against the rules, regulations, and taboos of the old medieval church-dominated social structure.

Thus Europe in the fifteenth century was experiencing a social turbulence which it had not known for a thousand years, since the days of the barbarian invasions. Among the peasants, the gentry, and the businessmen, individuals in growing numbers increasingly asserted what they felt to be their freedom and their rights against the old corporatist philosophy of the Church. Moreover, they began to look increasingly to the civil ruler to protect and guarantee their rights against those who would restrict them, whether the Church or foreigners. Thus side by side individualism and nationalism, two apparently contradictory motifs, grew up in western Europe. In some cases the rulers used the growing individualism for their own benefit, but others opposed it as contrary to their God-given authority. Most important of all, however, neither of these lines of development could fail to lead to conflict with the Church.

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The Tinder for Luther’s Spark

Closely connected with these trends was the humanism of the Renaissance, which had its origin in Italy. There men had turned to the study of the Greek and Latin classics, which laid down for them a frequently noble but pagan way of life, stressing the glory of the individual’s self-development. While ancient classical studies also became popular in northwest Europe, biblical studies received as much if not more emphasis. Moreover, with the invention of movable type for printing, around 1450, a vehicle for spreading new ideas among the peasants, gentry, and middle class was ready to hand. Here was the tinder for Luther’s spark.

When Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door, he was merely following an old academic practice of calling for a debate on a theological question. He did not think of himself as a reformer. His statements, however, were quickly translated into the vernacular and were thus broadcast through Germany. The son of a miner, he spoke in language which the ordinary man understood, and in his doctrine of justification by faith alone he spoke to hearts prepared by the Holy Spirit to receive it. Other reformers such as Calvin carried Luther’s views further, elaborated and in some respects modified them, but basically they spoke the same word to the same social, political, and economic situation. In the providence of God, when the fullness of time had come all the elements were present to start a spiritual revival: the message, the messenger, and the audience.

The roots of the Reformation were very long, for it did not come in a day or a year. This fact should perhaps hearten us in our own day when many are crying out for immediate revival and reformation. God in his own time brought the Reformation, and when it came no man could stop it or alter its course. The Christian’s responsibility is not to “start a revival,” but to be constantly in prayer and ever watchful that he may witness a good confession. Then when all things are ready, God may well give a new reformation to the Church by his Spirit.

W. STANFORD REID

McGill University

Montreal, Canada.

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