The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (1985 page)

Reformation, the
.

Movements for reform in the Christian Church in the West, in the early 16th cent. This was arguably the greatest crisis in Christendom before the challenges of the present time. Modern scholarship no longer seeks to spell out the causes of a reformation movement in simplistic terms, and it is very important to think of
reformations
in the plural. In some quarters critiques of Roman papal orthodoxy and the Catholic
status quo
were referred to as the search for ‘a new divinity’; and when the original protestors gained a following, they were known eventually as ‘protestants’. Orthodoxy in the late medieval parish was dominated by what has aptly been described as ‘the mechanics of ritualised religion’, which put faith into non-verbal language. This was deeply affected and called in question by the invention of the printing press.
Prominent in the critical appraisal of the debate, with its distance from pastoral involvement, was Desiderius
Erasmus
(
c.
1466–1536). He sought a textual basis for faith. His
Colloquies
popularized the need for Church reform ‘in head and members’. In his aim to secure religious, moral, and social reform, he anticipated much of the programme later adopted by
Luther
(1483–1546), and by the Swiss and other ‘protestant’ theologians. His influence was also felt throughout the Catholic Church, not least in his work on the
New Testament
, writing a critical exposition of the received text. He wanted lay people to read the Bible. In this he was helped by the invention of printing. But it was for others to work out what the pastoral and theological consequences would be of accurate, widely available Bibles, especially when translated into the vernacular.
The lead from university to parish was made by Luther. He is usually remembered for his outburst against the selling of
indulgences
, and for his challenge to Johann
Tetzel
(
c.
1465–1519), Luther's understanding of
justification
by faith
alone (justificatio sola fide
) he held out as a ‘re-discovery’ of the gospel. Moving away from
Augustine
, he understood justification as the instantaneous realization that sinners are forgiven and made righteous by the work of the crucified Christ. By imputation, fallen humanity had been reconciled in Christ to God the Creator. The unmerited grace of the Almighty is conveyed to sinners because of the atoning work of Christ on the Cross (
Sermon of the Threefold Righteousness
, 1518). Luther's stand as a reformer is far clearer in the
Christocentric
emphasis of the Heidelberg Disputation (Apr. 1518), with its theology of the Cross, its contrast of ‘law’ and ‘gospel’, and its departure from scholasticism, than in the notoriety he gained by circulating
Ninety-Five Theses
(Oct. 1517) in order to debate the indulgence controversy.
Nothing in W. Christendom was quite the same again. Already threatened with excommunication (
Exsurge Domine
gave Luther sixty days to recant), the Edict of Worms (May 1521) outlawed him and placed him under ban for seeking to ‘disseminate errors and depart from the Christian way’. He was saved by another of the key factors in the reformations: the lay ruler of his country, Friedrich, Elector of Ernestine Saxony (from 1486 to 1525), smuggled him into exile. Kidnapped, he was taken to Wartburg, and there, in a seclusion which he called ‘my Patmos’, he worked out the full implications of his stand, with profound consequences. In two tracts of 1520, he had already sought to recruit both secular authority and sympathetic clergy. A third, the celebrated
Treatise of the Liberty of a Christian Man
(1520), commended the new faith to those who would know Christ. With the aid of
Melanchthon
(1497–1560), he masterminded a visitation of Saxon churches, and by his
Catechisms
(1529) he sought to instruct ‘common people’. Embattled in controversy with
both
radicals
and
‘holy Rome’, he proved a natural leader and pastor.
Luther was protected in his
‘reformation’
by a prince. Another reformer, Ulrich
Zwingli
(1484–1531), addressed himself to a very different task in his Swiss City State, with different results: Zwingli in Zurich illustrates the way a people's priest (
Leutpriester
) might work with the civic authorities and, by public disputation, defeat the bishop and his representative in debate. The argument that popular demand could legitimately accomplish the will of God (
vox populi
being accounted
vox Dei
) enabled Zwingli to abolish the Mass in Zurich (1525) and to secularize convents and monasteries to fund the common chest.
Again distinct but of huge consequence for the W. Church was the work and ministry of John
Calvin
(1509–64), who promoted John
Knox
(the reformer in Scotland,
c.
1505–72) to proclaim
Geneva
‘the most perfect school of Christ that ever was in earth since the days of the apostles’. Calvin, just after he had published
The Institutes (Christianae Religionis Institutae
, 1536), was diverted to Geneva because of troop movements in the Italian Wars. Recognized by the fiery Farel (1489–1565), he was prevailed on to help those who had only ‘a little while before expelled the papacy’ from their midst. By 1538, when the authorities reacted again and repudiated the reform party, he reached Strasburg, enjoying an influential three-year stay with Martin
Bucer
(1491–1551). The pause was not to last. In 1541 the Magistracy of Geneva invited him to fill a preaching role at the Cathedral of St Pierre. For the next twenty-five years he became a prophet of Christian order, denouncing the religion of Rome as a legal tyranny and as entirely false by the standards of The
Acts of the Apostles
and of the organization of the primitive Church. His
Ecclesiastical Ordinances
(1514) repudiated the role of bishops and priests, arguing instead for the oversight of ordained ‘pastors’ and ‘doctors’ (teachers), and the new lay offices of ‘elder’ and ‘deacon’. The influence of Calvin was direct through his College of Geneva, founded in 1559 to prepare pastors to promote biblical theology throughout Europe (and later, via England, Scotland, and Holland, to evangelize the New World). The definitive edition of
The Institutes
was published in that year and adopted as a training text. Calvin succeeded in reaching a measure of agreement with Zwingli in 1549 (
Consensus Tigurinus
) and thus did something to correct the divisive effects of the number of different Protestant reformations.
Unlike the Protestant reformation in Europe, the reformation in England focused first on the needs of the ruler and only secondly on a desire to change theological formulae and lay piety. The earlier protests of John
Wycliffe
and of the Lollards, and the movement toward vernacular Scripture, tended to be confined to an area and to be successfully persecuted as ‘heresy’. The desire of Henry VIII (1491–1547, r. 1509–47) to annul his marriage with Catherine of Aragon obliged him to repudiate the restrictions of Roman canon law and ultimately the papacy itself. He used the Parliament of England to help him, and he put in positions of strategic importance Thomas Cromwell (
c.
1485–1540) and Thomas
Cranmer
, the former as Secretary and Vicegerent, the latter as Archbishop of Canterbury. They steered a largely reluctant king toward the dissolution of the monasteries, a number of restatements of doctrine, and (most importantly) the order that a Bible in English should be put in every church (1539).
By the time Henry died a
Litany
in English had been produced, but under his son, Edward VI, liturgical reform began in earnest, with the
Book of Common Prayer
of 1549, revised in 1552. Had the boy-king lived, reformation in England would have been different: his death in 1553 illustrates the crucial importance of supportive secular authority.
Edward was succeeded by the daughter of Catherine of Aragon, Mary. She reinstated the power of the papacy and a medieval liturgy in Latin. Cranmer was burned, and the stage was set for the restoration of Catholicism. It was not to be. In 1558 Mary was succeeded in England by Elizabeth (1533–1603, r. 1558–1603). Elizabeth owed her birth to her father's repudiation of Rome, and she knew the pain that religious upheaval caused. Under her, with the help of Parliament and of Matthew
Parker
, her able Archbishop of Canterbury, a Protestant settlement of religion was established by law. The
Book of Common Prayer
of 1552 was adopted with emendations; the Church was to be episcopally governed under the Queen and Parliament. The theological enquiry and defence of the settlement resumed, notably at the hands of John Jewel (1522–71) and Richard
Hooker
(1553–1600). Gradually parishes in England came into step.
Throughout the 16th cent., the Catholic Church also underwent reformation. This spontaneous movement to reform the religious life, to re-evangelize Protestant countries, and to convert the newly discovered peoples of America and of the East, was associated with the emergence of the new religious Order of
Jesuits
, under
Ignatius of Loyola
. Other Orders were reformed, especially in Spain with St
Teresa
of Avila and St
John
of the Cross, with an influence still felt today. The attempts by the Council of Trent (1545–7, 1551–2, 1562) to heal the rifts in Christian unity were a failure, but the Council achieved new definitions of justification and a revised liturgy. Papal sovereignty became more firmly entrenched, with permanent status being given to Congregations (committees of
cardinals
) such as those which formed the
Inquisition
(1542) and
Index
(1566) to safeguard Catholic faith and practice.
The resulting transformation of Europe at the hands of different reformers was the rending of the seamless robe. This was the price paid for a Catholic Church no longer as corrupt in its head and members as it had been when Erasmus surveyed it. All the reformations, Protestant or Catholic, needed to use education to their own advantage: schools were founded and refounded, and the advance of literacy meant that reason ultimately replaced indoctrination. The Reformation also did much to awaken social conscience, although not with immediate effect. Philanthropy was on both sides of a great divide—no mean harvest yielded by those whose new-found commitment resulted in lives of thank-offering after the assurance of salvation.
Cultural achievement is more difficult to estimate. There were advances in portraiture and
music
, as with Cranach (1472–1533) and the Bach family. Above all else, the revolution in printing, a process updated with moveable type and new paper, promoted a quite different spirituality, to give heart and transforming faith that must ultimately symbolize the magnitude of this significant crisis in Christendom.
See also
RADICAL REFORMATION
.

 
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Reformed Churches
.

Term loosely applied to
Protestant
churches, but specifically those which hold
Calvinistic
, as opposed to
Lutheran
, theology. See further
PRESBYTERIANISM
for the distinctions among Reformed Churches.

 
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