The Reformers and Tradition: Seeing the Roots of the Problem

Abstract

Challenges the ideal of scripture vs. tradition as a manner of separating Protestants from Catholics in the early modern period, to argue instead that historians should be setting out a continuum of continuity with the medieval inheritance, and considering our typologies of the Reform movements against that. Then, as we teach the Christian Intellectual Tradition, we can see both genealogical and influential links across the eras, and present a better picture of what was going on in the Era of the Reformations, and through that, come to a greater understanding of the human condition.

Keywords

• scripture
• tradition
• Reformation(s)
• Reformers
• Protestant
• Catholic
• radical
• Martin Luther
• John Calvin