Sola scriptura and the regula fidei: the Reformation scripture principle and early oral tradition in Martin Chemnitz' Examination of the Council of Trent

2010 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 253-271
Author(s):  
James R. A. Merrick
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Council Of Trent ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Church Tradition

AbstractHow could a sixteenth-century Protestant reformer who championed sola scriptura defend against the charge of novelty? In particular, how did a reformer understand the post-apostolic church's regula fidei as a possible early counter-precedent to the scripture principle? And what does the answer to these questions tell us about the Reformation scripture principle? These are the principal questions with which this article is concerned. By looking at Martin Chemnitz's Examination of the Council of Trent, I show that Chemnitz rebutted the charge of novelty by returning the favour, that is, he rhetorically situated the Catholics alongside the early Gnostics since both believed in an oral tradition that differed substantially from scripture. Furthermore, I find that Chemnitz contended that Irenaeus’ and Tertullian's use of the regula fidei actually supported sola scriptura since these fathers never posited a substantial distinction between scripture and tradition and, in fact, held that the content of the rule was recorded in scripture. Chemnitz concluded that Protestants holding the scripture principle are the ones who are truly faithful to early church tradition in general and the rule in particular.

Bishop-Poets in the Shadow of the Council of Trent: Antonio Sebastiani Minturno and the Poemata Tridentina

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matteo Largaiolli
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
Spiritual Life ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
Spiritual Values ◽  
Council Of Trent ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
International Conference ◽  
Political Relations ◽  
The Reformation

The atmosphere of the Council of Trent was permeated by literature. Italian bishops at the time of Reformation were acquainted with the most significant humanistic literary culture of the sixteenth century. Antonio Sebastiano Minturno (1500–1574), an Italian bishop who actively attended the last phases of the Council, was author of two treatises on poetics, secular and sacred poems in vernacular (1559, 1561) and Latin poems. The importance of literature in his life can be seen in the network of his intellectual and political relations as well as in the use of poetry and literature in order to assert spiritual values and to represent the main events of his times. In particular, the Poemata Tridentina (1564), a collection of poems about the Council and its protagonists, can be read as a document of his spiritual life and of the catholic perception of the Council itself, since they are one of the rare literary works which explicitly deal with the Council of Trent as main theme. A different version of the paper was presented at the International Conference "More than Luther: The Reformation and the Rise of Pluralism in Europe" (Seventh Annual RefoRC Conference 2017, Wittenberg 10–12 May 2017).

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Ethan H. Shagan
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Religious Conflict ◽  
Urgent Problem ◽  
Western Thought ◽  
Council Of Trent ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Secular Age ◽  
Theological Differences

This introductory chapter talks about how the transformation of belief, rather than the rise of unbelief, propelled Western thought into modernity. The resulting configuration has shaped the conditions of religion in a secular age. The explosion of religious conflict in the sixteenth century made belief an urgent problem in the Christian West. In addition, the chapter argues that the Reformation was not an engine of modernity; on the contrary, modern belief developed in reaction against the religion of Luther and Calvin as much as against the Council of Trent. However, despite their theological differences, Protestants, Catholics, and Anabaptists in the sixteenth century participated in a common project to make belief hard.

Unity and Diversity in the Church of the Fourth Century

1996 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Andrew Louth
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Look Back ◽  
The Church

To look back to the early Church as a theologian and historian, and ask questions about her unity, is to enter on a long tradition, which goes back at least to the Reformation, if not to the Great Schism of 1054 itself. Once the Church had split, the various separated Christians looked back to justify their position in that tragedy. They scoured the early sources for evidence for and against episcopacy, papacy, authority confided to tradition or to Scripture alone: they questioned the form in which these early sources have come down to us - the sixteenth century saw reserves of scholarly genius poured into the problem, for instance, of the genuineness of the Ignatian correspondence, and what fired all that, apart from scholarly curiosity, was the burning question of the authenticity of episcopal authority on which Ignatius speaks so decisively. Out of that the critical discipline of patristics emerged. It was, in fact, rather later that the fourth century became the focus of the debate about the unity, authority, and identity of the Church - Newman obviously springs to mind and his Arians of the Fourth Century (London, 1833) and his Essay on the Development of Doctrine (London, 1845). Later on, the fourth century attracted the attention of scholars such as Professor H. M. Gwatkin and his Studies in Arianism (Cambridge, 1882), and Professor S. L. Greenslade and his Schism in the Early Church (London, 1953), and in quite modern times Arianism, in particular, has remained a mirror in which scholars have seen reflected the problems of the modern Church (a good example is the third part of Rowan Williams’s Arius: Heresy and Tradition [London, 1987], though there are plenty of others). Continental scholars such as Adolf von Harnack also studied the past, informed by theological perspectives derived from the present; in a different and striking way Erik Peterson turned to the fourth century to find the roots of an ideology of unity that was fuelling the murderous policies of Nazism. In all these cases the fourth century seemed to be a test case ‒ for questions of modern ecclesiology: Rome defended by development in the case of Newman, the justification for the ecumenical movement in the case of Greenslade.

scholarly journals Historicus Practicus: Calvin’s Use of Josephus in the Commentaries and Lectures

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 117 ◽  
Author(s):  
WILLIAM DEN HOLLANDER
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Negative Attitudes ◽  
Historical Factors ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Church

Abstract: This article contributes specifically to the filling in of a lacuna in scholarship regarding the reception of Josephus’s writings among the Reformers and contributes generally to investigations into the humanist scholarship of the Reformation. It analyzes the use of Josephus’s writings in Calvin’s Commentaries and Lectures in order to bring about a better understanding of both the nature of his reception of Josephus and the character of his historical enterprise. The picture that emerges is of Calvin as historicus practicus: i.e., his role as historian was subordinated to his responsibility as theologian to edify the church. Calvin’s specific attitude towards the writings of Josephus is best explained by competing historical factors, especially Josephus’s earlier positive reception by the early church and the negative attitudes toward Jews present in the sixteenth century.

The Catholic Reform In The Sixteenth Century

1957 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 275-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
George H. Tavard
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Council Of Trent ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Many ◽  
Catholic Reform

The many aspects of Catholic activity during the sixteenth century make it difficult to present a systematic bibliography for that period. Interest in the Reformation era has considerably increased among Catholic scholars during the last decades. We must therefore proceed to a severe selection. Only studies that deal with the most significant topics will be included. No breakdown of the material can be completely satifactory. As the main point, however, is to give as clear a picture as possible, one must distinguish three broad periods: before, during and after the Council of Trent. Subdivisions of the subject matter in each period will necessarily overlap. But we will reduce this to a minimum.

Broken Promises and the Rise of a Stereotype

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Koji Yamamoto
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Political History ◽  
Negative Image ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Balance Of Trade

Projects began to emerge during the sixteenth century en masse by promising to relieve the poor, improve the balance of trade, raise money for the Crown, and thereby push England’s imperial ambitions abroad. Yet such promises were often too good to be true. This chapter explores how the ‘reformation of abuses’—a fateful slogan associated with England’s break from Rome—came to be used widely in economic contexts, and undermined promised public service under Elizabeth and the early Stuarts. The negative image of the projector soon emerged in response, reaching both upper and lower echelons of society. The chapter reconstructs the social circulation of distrust under Charles, and considers its repercussions. To do this it brings conceptual tools developed in social psychology and sociology to bear upon sources conventionally studied in literary and political history.

‘The healthe of my soule’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicola Clark
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Family ◽  
Kinship Relations ◽  
Royal Supremacy ◽  
The Church

Throughout the sixteenth century and beyond, the Howards are usually described as religiously ‘conservative’, resisting the reformist impulse of the Reformation while conforming to the royal supremacy over the Church. The women of the family have played little part in this characterization, yet they too lived through the earliest stages of the Reformation. This chapter shows that what we see is not a family following the lead of its patriarch in religious matters at this early stage of the Reformation, but that this did not stop them maintaining strong kinship relations across the shifting religious spectrum.

Communicatio Idiomatum

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Cross
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Divine Attributes ◽  
Son Of God ◽  
Comprehensive Account ◽  
Highly Sensitive ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Communicatio Idiomatum

This book offers a radical reinterpretation of the sixteenth-century Christological debates between Lutheran and Reformed theologians on the ascription of divine and human predicates to the person of the incarnate Son of God (the communicatio idiomatum). It does so by close attention to the arguments deployed by the protagonists in the discussion, and to the theologians’ metaphysical and semantic assumptions, explicit and implicit. It traces the central contours of the Christological debates, from the discussion between Luther and Zwingli in the 1520s to the Colloquy of Montbéliard in 1586. The book shows that Luther’s Christology is thoroughly Medieval, and that innovations usually associated with Luther—in particular, that Christ’s human nature comes to share in divine attributes—should be ascribed instead to his younger contemporary Johannes Brenz. The discussion is highly sensitive to the differences between the various Luther groups—followers of Brenz, and the different factions aligned in varying ways with Melanchthon—and to the differences between all of these and the Reformed theologians. And by locating the Christological discussions in their immediate Medieval background, the book also provides a comprehensive account of the continuities and discontinuities between the two eras. In these ways, it is shown that the standard interpretations of the Reformation debates on the matter are almost wholly mistaken.

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