Article: Ecclesiastical Eclipse: Evangelicalism and the Reformation by Bruce Baugus (original source RI. This is a good thing; however, my expectations are limited because the broadly evangelical discussion of the Reformation often reduces its legacy to a set of disembodied ideas about salvation (e.g. sola gratia and sola fide) and theological method (e.g. sola Scriptura). While the cultural and political implications of these ideas are much discussed (and sometimes exaggerated), the centrality of the church and the character of the Reformation as a fundamentally ecclesial affair are often neglected or under appreciated.

In fact, Evangelicalism, as a loosely confederated movement of extra-ecclesial institutions such as parachurch ministries, schools, publishing houses, websites, speakers, bands, and conferences, has a rather awkward relationship with this aspect of the Reformation’s legacy.

Churchly Character of the Reformation’s Legacy

From the beginning and throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the object of reform was not so much the doctrine debated in universities but the institutional church–its worship, ministry, discipline, and government. While the Reformation was certainly marked by profound doctrinal development within prolegomena and the loci of soteriology and ecclesiology, the central ideas of the Reformation were neither as unprecedented nor distinct as they are sometimes portrayed.

This, at least, was the argument advanced by the next several generations of Protestants who argued their interpretations and teachings of the gospel were not only true to Scripture but also in line with the best strands of the catholic tradition. Unprecedented, new, distinct, or other adjectives that suggested genuine novelty of thought were close to condemnations at that time; being a reformer was a delicate and often dangerous vocation.

Conversely, even the most defining and unifying Protestant claim, that sinners are justified by grace alone through faith alone, found several defenders among Roman Catholic loyalists at the Council of Trent. Giulio Contarini and company (Ranke, History of the Popes, counts seven in all; I.138), at least resisted the push to anathematize this view. They obviously lost the argument, but the fact they made the case at Trent in 1546-47, while pope and emperor were waging war against Protestants, is telling.

I am not suggesting, of course, that doctrine was inconsequential to the Reformation (or that the gospel is just some set of ideas); on the contrary, the Reformation was driven by evangelical convictions preached in pulpits and taught and debated in classrooms and writings. What I am suggesting is that the distinguishing characteristic of the Reformation as a historical development is not found in the ideas alone but in the transformation of the church across swaths of Europe as the institutional embodiment of those evangelical convictions. Without that there would have been no Reformation and no heritage for us to commemorate and debate five hundred years later. Continue reading →