Series Twelve: A Survey of Church History and Historical Theology

by Matt Johnston

General Introduction to Medieval Christianity (adapted from Schaff, History, 4:5–14)

• The theater of mediaeval Christianity is mainly Europe. In Western Asia and North Africa, the Cross was supplanted by the Crescent; and America only discovered in 1492.
• Industrious priests and monks saved the treasures of classical literature, together with the Holy Scriptures and patristic writings from the wreck of the Roman Empire.
• The church as a visible organization never had greater power over the minds of men. She controlled all departments of life from the cradle to the grave.
• “This is what makes the riddle of the medieval age; that it was not one age but two ages. We look into the moods of some men, and it might be the Stone Age; and we look into the minds of other men, and they might be living in the Golden Age; in the most modern sort of Utopia” (G. K. Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas, 42).

The Place of the Middle Ages in Church History

• The Reformers did not reject all medieval theology. Luther and Calvin’s disparagement of scholastic theology can be partially attributed to their rejection of one particular type.
• “Medieval Christianity is, on the one hand, a legitimate continuation and further development of ancient Catholicism; on the other hand a preparation for Protestantism” (Schaff, History, 4:11).
• There was continuity: Trinity; Predestination; Anselm’s ideas on the atonement set the stage for the Reformers ideas on the atonement.
• There was discontinuity:
  • Ancient Church: how did God become man?
  • Middle Ages: why did God become man?
• The rediscovery of Aristotle in the 12th century transformed the intellectual culture in Europe (Trueman, lecture 1, “Medieval Church: Introduction”).¹
• Big issue of the day was determining how to relate to the early Church Fathers and their theology (Trueman, lecture 2, “The Church Fathers and Translation”).

The Papacy in the Middle Ages

• Pseudo-Isodorian Decretals (Pro-papacy document forged in the 9th century)
  • “The most colossal and effective fraud known in the history of ecclesiastical literature” (Schaff, History, 4:268).
  • “Both [Pope] Nicolas I (858–867) and the rest of Europe believed that the Decretals were genuine” (Gonzáles, Story, 1:274).
  • Described the whole hierarchy of the Roman church as something that was intact from the beginning, rather than something that developed over time (Schaff, History, 4:273).
  • “The clergy is a divinely instituted, consecrated, and inviolable caste, mediating between God and the people … . The priests are the ‘familiares Dei,’ the ‘spirituales,’ the laity the ‘carnales.’ He who sins against them sins against God … . The cathedra Petri is the fountain of all power” (Schaff, History, 4:269).
• Popes often wielded their power over secular rulers, but at the same time, Popes were often chosen and controlled by rich nobles.
• On Christmas Day, 799 Pope Leo III crowned Charles the Great (Charlemagne), king of the Franks, holy Roman Emperor.
• Describing the papacy after the reign of John VIII (872–882) Gonzáles explains, “Popes were strangled, or died of starvation in the dungeons where they had been thrown by their successors. At times there were two popes, or even three, each claiming to be the true successor of Saint Peter” (Gonzáles, Story, 1:275).
• Benedict IX was made pope in 1033 (at the age of 12), he was driven out of Rome in 1045, and Italian nobles made Sylvester III pope. But, Benedict returned and began to rule again as Pope. However, after a time he sold the papal office for one thousand pounds of silver to Gregory VI. In the end Benedict refused to surrender and there were three so-called popes (ibid., 267).
• Urban VI (crowned 1378) in Rome and Clement VII in Avignon, France (this started the Papal schism that lasted for thirty-nine years; cf. Shelley, Church History, 221).
• Hildebrand, Gregory VII (elected Pope 1073) had a clash with Emperor Henry IV. Both men attempted to do away with each other. The result was Henry doing public penance for three days in the snow.²
• In 1208 Pope Innocent III excommunicated King John of England from the church, which meant his subjects were no longer required to obey him as king. Eventually, therefore, he humbly submitted to the Pope.

All Dark and No Light?

• We would be foolish to imagine that between the Fathers and the Reformers there was a gap of roughly 1,000 years without any representatives of Christian orthodoxy.
• “There are very considerable difficulties in ascertaining accurately the doctrinal views of some of these alleged witnesses for the truth during the middle ages, as in most cases we have scarcely any means of knowing what they believed and taught, except from Popish writers, their enemies and persecutors; and we may be pretty confident that the men who murdered them would not scruple to calumniate them [make knowingly or maliciously false statements about them]” (Cunningham, Historical Theology, 1:451).

Fourth Period: From Gregory I to Hildebrand, or Gregory VII (AD 590–1049)

General Introduction to the Period

• Medieval “missions”—“The medieval Christianization was a conversion of nations under the command of their leaders … . It was a conversion not to the primary Christianity of inspired apostles, as laid down in the New Testament, but to the secondary Christianity of ecclesiastical tradition as taught by the fathers, monks and pope” (Schaff, History, 4:18).
• Muhammed and Islamic expansion
• Doctrinal Controversies: Procession of the Holy Spirit; Monotheletism and Adoptionism; the Eucharist; Predestination Controversy
• The Second Council of Nicaea (AD 787) sanctioned a limited worship of images.³

Mohammed (570–632)

• For a brief overview of Mohammed’s life, see chapter 1 in James White, What Every Christian Needs to Know about the Qur’an (Bethany House, 2013).
• “Mohammed claimed that he was not preaching a new religion, but simply the culmination of what God had revealed in the Hebrew prophets and in Jesus, who was a great prophet, although not divine as Christians claimed” (Gonzáles, Story, 1:249).
• In AD 622 Mohammed fled from Mecca to Medina, where he founded the first Islamic community, which followed his guidelines in every sphere of life.
• “By his death in 632, a goodly part of Arabia was in Moslem hands” (ibid.).
• Over the next 100 years (until 732) the Islamic expansion took Syria, Palestine, Egypt and North Africa. The Church in these regions was severely hurt or totally destroyed.

Gottschalk (804–868/9)

• Taught limited atonement (Schaff, History, 4:528)
• Taught a strong version of double predestination based on his understanding of divine immutability, which he considered a legitimate development from Augustine⁴
• A vigorous evangelist
• The church always held Augustine in high esteem, but they never really bought into his teaching on sin, grace, and predestination.
• An assessment of his teaching on predestination:
  • “He held a two-fold predestination of the elect to salvation, and of the reprobate to perdition; not in the sense of two separate predestinations, but one predestination with two sides (gemina, i.e. bipartita), a positive side (election) and a negative side (reprobation). He could not conceive of the one without the other; but he did not teach a predestination of the sinner to sin, which would make God the author of sin” (Schaff, History, 4:531).
  • “He spoke of two redemptions, one common to the elect and the reprobate, another proper and special for the elect only” (ibid., 4:531–532).
  • Berkhof sees Gottshalk as returning to a more careful and consistent Augustinian view of predestination. This is in contrast to Gregory the Great’s modified Augustinianism, which roots predestination in divine foreknowledge (Louis Berkhof, The History of Christian Doctrines, 141–142).
• His shorter confession is available online.⁵
• Rejected the doctrine of transubstantiation along with Ratramnus.

Ratramnus (9th century)

• A monk who defended Gottschalk’s view of predestination in his work on predestination (De praedestinatione Dei).
• Argued against Radbertus’ view of transubstantiation (De corpore et sanguine Domini), following Augustine. Eventually the transubstantiation view, relying heavily upon Ambrose, won the day.
  • “Ratramnus addressed the key question: ‘whether that very body which was born of Mary, suffered, died, and was buried, and which sits at the right hand of the Father is daily eaten in the church by the mouth of the faithful through the mystery of the sacraments.’ Ratramnus replied that ‘they are not the same.’ Rather, there is a ‘a great difference between’ the historical body of Christ—‘the real flesh of Christ’—and the Eucharistic body—‘the sacrament of the real flesh.’ So as not to be misunderstood, however, Ratramnus noted that ‘it should not be supposed that in the mystery of the sacrament either the body of the Lord or his blood is not received by the faithful.’ But that this is a figure of the body and the blood in the Eucharist, not the reality of the empirical body and blood of the historical Jesus Christ” (Allison, Historical Theology, 642).
  • In the 11th century the same controversy came up again, this time with Berengar of Tours arguing against Transubstantiation.
  • The Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 “officially ruled” in favor of transubstantiation.

East and West Split (AD 1054)

• Bishop of Rome and the Patriarch of Constantinople excommunicated each other.
• The language divide: Latin in the West and Greek in the East; West typically appealed to Latin Fathers, and East to Greek Fathers.
• General Issues over which East and West disagreed:
  • West believed in the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son (Filoque: ‘and the Son’), the East in the procession of the Spirit from the Father only.
  • East did not acknowledge the Pope, but saw five Patriarchs with equal authority.
  • East denied the immaculate conception of Mary and allowed lower clergy to marry.

Fifth Period: The Church under the papal hierarchy, and the scholastic theology (AD 1049–1294)

General Introduction to the Period (Schaff, History, 5:3–4)

• The classical age of Latin Christianity: the age of the papal theocracy, aiming to control the German Empire and the kingdoms of France, Spain, and England.
• Rise of the great Mendicant orders
• The crusades and the conquest and loss of the Holy Land.
• It was the age of scholastic philosophy and theology.
• The Inquisition was established, involving the theory of the persecution of Jews and heretics as a divine right, and carrying it into execution in awful scenes of torture and blood.

Scholasticism (11th–16th centuries) (Allison, Historical Theology, 753)

• A scholarly approach and method employed by many theologians during the latter part of the medieval period, the term being derived from the Latin scholasticus, meaning “learned.”
• As an approach, it joined together Christian theology and philosophy (especially that of Aristotle), seeking to find compatibility between faith and reason.
• As a method, it involved composing lists of contradictory statements from several authoritative sources and applying logic to find their agreement.
• The main figures associated with scholasticism are Anselm, Peter Abelard, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Bonaventura, and Thomas Aquinas.⁶

Crusades

• Most recognize seven crusades
• “Driven by religion fervor, love of adventure, and dreams of personal profit, crusaders from western Europe for 200 years attempted to expel the Muslims from the Holy Land” (Shelley, Church History, 186).
• The Crusades began in part in response to the difficulty pilgrims were having making their way from Europe to the Holy Land.
• First Crusade (1095) broke out under Pope Urban II’s encouragement
  • The cry was Deus Volt! (God wills it!)
  • Pope Urban promised plenary indulgences to those who went.
  • Horrible atrocities were involved (ibid., 188; Shelley even speaks of cannibalism).
• There were even so called “children’s crusades” in 1212. 30,000 children were involved and many were sold into slavery (Schaff, History, 5:266–268; Gonzáles, Story, 1:296).

Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109)⁷

• “With Anselm the systematic study of the doctrine of the atonement began … . There was one great thinker during the Middle Ages who not only reproduced the Augustinian anthropology, but also made a positive contribution to it, namely, Anselm of Canterbury” (Berkof, Theology of Christian Doctrine, 171 and 142).
• Uses logic to explore the context of what he already believes. He provides a proof for the existence of God, in a time when there really was no such thing as an atheist.
• The ontological argument for God’s existence in the Proslogium:
  • “There is, then, so truly a being than which nothing greater can be conceived to exist, that it cannot even be conceived not to exist; and this being you are, O Lord, our God” (III).
  • “So truly, therefore, do you exist, O Lord, my God, that you can not be conceived not to exist; and rightly. For, if a mind could conceive of a being better than you, the creature would rise above the Creator; and this is most absurd. And, indeed, whatever else there is, except you alone, can be conceived not to exist. To you alone, therefore, it belongs to exist more truly than all other beings, and hence in a higher degree than all others” (III).
  • The monk Gaunilo critiqued Anselm, saying his argument could be used to prove anything such as the perfect Island (cf. Frame, History of Western Philosophy, 136).
• Cur Deus Homo (Why God Became Man)
  • The question: “For what cause or necessity, in sooth, God became man, and by his own death, as we believe and affirm, restored life to the world; when he might have done this, by means of some other being, angelic or human, or merely by his will” (I.I).
  • He rejected common theories: Ransom to Satan; Atonement only as an example
  • His explanation of the atonement (often called the satisfaction theory) (adapted from Berkof, Theology of Christian Doctrine, 172):
    • He finds the ultimate ground for the atonement in the honor of God. Man, who is obligated to honor God, did not honor God and thus contracted a debt. “God was robbed of his honor and this must be restored some way.”
    • Two ways to vindicate divine honor: (1) punishment; (2) satisfaction. Punishment would the ruin of the human race, so God chose satisfaction
    • The way of satisfaction includes two things: (1) willing obedience to God; (2) amends for the insult to God’s honor by paying something above the actual debt. “But since even the smallest sin, as committed against an infinite God, outweighs the whole world and all that is not God, and the amends must be proportionate, it follows that these are beyond the power of man.”
    • The voluntary gift of the God-man was the only way for God’s honor to be satisfied. As Christ voluntarily, and not necessarily died, He brought abundant glory and honor to God and reward which He did not need, but gives to man.
  • The good (ibid., 173):
    • “Its real value lies in the fact that it establishes the objective character of the atonement. And bases its necessity on the immutable nature of God, which makes it impossible that He should permit the violation of His honor to go unpunished.”
  • The bad (ibid., 174–175): Falls short of orthodox doctrine of penal substitution⁸
    • “(a) it erroneously represents punishment and satisfaction as alternatives from which God could choose.”
    • “(b) it has no place for the idea that in His suffering Christ endured the penalty of sin, since it regards the sufferings of Christ as a voluntary tribute to the honor of God, as a superfluous merit which served to compensate the demerit of others … Catholic idea of penance applied to the work of Christ.”
    • (c) overly influenced by the laws of feudalism
    • (d) Denies the atoning significance of his life.
    • (e) It falls short of the full-orbed application of the merits of Christ to the sinner, emphasizing only the external.

Waldensians

• Beginnings of the movement
  • Southern France was their first home. Italy still has Waldensian churches, although the denomination is now quite liberal.
  • Derive their name from Peter Waldo, who died sometime before 1218.⁹
  • Peter has a conversion story like Anthony of Egypt. He sold all he had and began to life a simple life on the “plain precepts of the Bible” (Schaff, History, 5:495).
  • They were not licensed to preach by the local bishops.
• Assessments of the Movement
  • “They were the strictly biblical sect of the Middle Ages” (ibid., 5:493).
    • No doctrine of justification by faith in their extant writings.
    • Distinguishing principles of the early Waldensians (ibid., 5:502):
      • (1) They thought they ought to obey God rather than man. Rome took this to mean that they didn’t have to submit to the Pope and [other] leaders, and on this point they were often persecuted.
      • (2) The authority of the Scriptures and their popular use by the laity
      • (3) The importance of preaching and the right of laymen to preach
      • Some denied infant baptism, purgatory, and prayers for the dead.
  • “Their doctrines from the twelfth century downwards, were substantially those now held by the Protestant churches” (Cunningham, Historical Theology, Vol. 1, 452, 457)
  • “They were pledged to the three monastic vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. They refused to accept Purgatory … [and the worship of the saints and Mary]. They retained confession, but the formula of absolution was not: ‘I absolve thee,’ but ‘May God absolve thee from all sin.’ … They held capital punishment to be contrary to the Scripture, and refused to take an oath. … The order of their worship was very simple. They read or recited the Word of God, which they knew for the greater part by heart, and expounded it in a practical and popular manner. … [T]hey never administered the sacraments; when these were needed, they had recourse to the Roman Catholic priests” (Giovanni Luzzi, The Struggle for Christian Truth in Italy, 152–53).
  • In 1270 the following was written by their opponents: “And because they [The Waldensians] presumed to interpret the words of the gospel in a sense of their own, not perceiving that there were any other, they said that the entire gospel ought to be obeyed literally. And they boasted that they wished to do this, and that they only were the true imitators of Christ … . This was their first heresy, contempt of the power of the church … . In their zeal they led many others astray along with them. They teach even little girls the words of the Gospels and the Epistles, so that they may be trained in error from their childhood … . They teach their docile and fluent disciples to repeat the word of the Gospel and the sayings of the apostles … by heart, in their common language, so that they may know how to teach others and lead the faithful astray” (David of Augsburg, “On the Waldensians of Bavaria, 1270” in Allison, Historical Theology, 127).

Thomas Aquinas (1226–1274)

• “He was born in the purple; almost literally on the hem of the imperial purple; for his own cousin was the Holy Roman Emperor” (Chesterton, Aquinas, 29). His father, a rich Count with a castle, planned to make Thomas a monk and eventually the abbot of a nearby monastery. Much to the dismay of his family (his brothers tried to lock him in a tower), he became “one of the Begging Friars, of the new order founded by Dominic the Spaniard” (ibid., 39).
• “It was Aquinas who baptised Aristotle” (ibid., 92). “It [an approach to Christianity influenced by Plato] thought of God too exclusively as a Spirit who purifies or a Saviour who redeems; and too little as a Creator who creates. That is why men like Aquinas thought it right to correct Plato by an appeal to Aristotle; Aristotle who took things as he found them, just as Aquinas accepted things as God created them” (ibid., 62).
• “It is impossible to overestimate his importance for the story of Christian theology and especially for the story of Roman Catholic theology” (Olson, The Story of Christian Theology, 331).
  • Angelic Doctor (1323); Universal Doctor of the Church (1567 Council of Trent); “In 1879 Pope Leo XIII declared Thomism (Aquinas’ teachings) to be eternally valid for the Roman Catholic Church” (Allison, Historical Theology, 756; Olson, Christian Theology, 331).
  • “While most of the Reformers respected Aquinas as a great genius, they regarded his theology as a serious diversion away from the biblical faith into philosophical speculation under the spell of Aristotelian philosophy” (Olson, Christian Theology, 335).
• Most important work was Summa Theologica, which was his systematic theology (ibid., 334).
  • Four-fold sense of Scripture: literal, allegorical, tropological, analogical—these were argued for on a basis similar to the Christological argument of both the Redemptive-Historical Hermeneutic and the Canonical Interpretation (Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of Scripture, 1:225–6, 261–67).
  • Aquinas, with the help of Aristotelian philosophy, set forth the definitive Catholic explanation of transubstantiation:
    • “For it is evident that every agent acts according as it is in act. But every created agent is limited in its act, as being of a determinate genus and species: and consequently the action of every created agent bears upon some determinate act. Now the determination of everything in actual existence comes from its form. Consequently, no natural or created agent can act except by changing the form in something; and on this account every change made according to nature’s laws is a formal change. But God is infinite act, as stated in I, 7, 1; 26, 2; hence His action extends to the whole nature of being. Therefore He can work not only formal conversion, so that diverse forms succeed each other in the same subject; but also the change of all being, so that, to wit, the whole substance of one thing be changed into the whole substance of another. And this is done by Divine power in this sacrament; for the whole substance of the bread is changed into the whole substance of Christ’s body, and the whole substance of the wine into the whole substance of Christ’s blood. Hence this is not a formal, but a substantial conversion; nor is it a kind of natural movement: but, with a name of its own, it can be called “transubstantiation” (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, pt. 3, q. 75, art. 4: http://www.newadvent.org/summa/4075.htm).
• For an article that lays out some of the specific ways Aquinas’ view of justification differs from the biblical view expressed by the Reformers see Reymond’s critique of Gerstner: Robert L. Reymond, “Dr. John H. Gerstner on Thomas Aquinas as a Protestant” WTJ 59:1 (Spring 1997).

Sixth Period: The decay of mediaeval Catholicism, and the preparatory movements for the Reformation (AD 1294–1517)

General Introduction to the Period (Schaff, History, 6:1–4)

• The power of the papacy, which had asserted infallibility of judgment and dominion over all departments of human life, was undermined by the mistakes, pretensions, and worldliness of the papacy itself.
• The religious unrest found expression in Bradwardine, Wycliffe and Huss.
• The Renaissance, or the revival of classical culture, unshackled the minds of men.
• The last period of the Middle Ages was a period of intellectual discontent, of self-introspection, a period of preparation for what was to come.

The State of Roman Catholicism

• “The following doctrines of the Roman Church must be kept in mind if we want a real picture of Catholicism at the time of Boniface VIII (1300 A.D.):
  • “(a) Meritoriousness of external work.—The doctrine of grace was forgotten and the merit of work, including prayers to the dead and prayers for the dead, was stressed. Asceticism with celibacy or virginity was esteemed the highest type of life.
  • “(b) Sacramentalism.—The simple doctrine of the ordinances as symbols of grace has been changed to the Roman idea of sacramentalism, the doctrine that Divine grace is granted through external means and that these means are controlled by the church.
  • “(c) The Pope is God’s representative on earth; the vicar of Christ; head of the church.
  • “(d) The Pope and the clergy make up the visible church. The ordinary members exist for the purpose of being ruled.
  • “(e) The Pope is the ultimate judge in religious matters, but he is also the ultimate judge in secular matters since he is the ruler of all civil governments, of emperors, kings and princes. Civil governments exist only by papal permission.
  • “(f) Every law, even the law of God, may be set aside if the church should find it necessary. Denying the prerogative of the Roman Church is heresy, and the church must deal with it as such. It was against doctrines like these that so many earnest people protested” (Peder Stiansen, “Church Reform in the Late Middle Ages,” [Part 1] BibSac 105 no. 418 (April 1948): 218).
• In 1300 Boniface issued the bull Antiquorum Habet Fida Relatio to institute the first Year of Jubilee, promising all who came to Rome plenary indulgence:
  • “We, confiding in the mercy of Almighty God, in the merits and power of these His Apostles, in the counsel of our brethren, and in the plenitude of the Apostolic authority, grant to all those who being truly penitent and confessing their sins, shall reverently visit these Basilicas in the present year 1300, commencing from the festival of the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, which has just been celebrated, and to all who being truly penitent, and shall confess their sins, and shall approach these Basilicas each succeeding hundredth year, not only a full and copious, but the most full pardon of all their sins” (non solum plenam, et largiorem immo plenissimam omnium suorum concedemus, et concedimus veniam peccatorum).¹⁰
  • “In one month two hundred thousand pilgrims visited Rome. All these strangers brought rich offerings; and the popes and the Romans saw their coffers replenished. Roman avarice soon fixed each Jubilee at fifty, then at thirty-three, and last at twenty-five years’ interval” (D’Aubigné, Reformation, I:II).
• “In 1302 A.D., Boniface VIII had issued a bull ‘Unam Sanctum,’ the boldest claim ever made by anybody sitting in the bishop’s chair in Rome. Boniface began by quoting Jeremiah 1:10 … [and] declared that there is only one church, outside of which there is no salvation” (Stiansen, “Church Reform,” 219; cf. his explanation about three popes).
  • The last lines read: “Further, we declare, say, define and pronounce it to be altogether necessary for salvation for every human creature that he be subject to the Roman pontiff” (“The Bull of Boniface VIII., Unam Sanctam, Nov. 18, 1302,” in Schaff, Creeds, 2:605).

John Wycliffe (1324–1384)

• Basic biography (from Daniell, The Bible in English, 70–76):
  • 1361—Became a fellow at Merton College, Oxford at thirty-seven where he was an outstanding scholastic philosopher, studying and teaching logic and metaphysics.
  • 1377—Pope Gregory XI condemns Wycliffe in five papal bulls. He is then summoned to answer charges of heresy found in his work On Civil Dominion.
  • 1382—His English translation of the entire Bible is completed. His followers were called ‘Lollards’ for the first time (a term of abuse) in a sermon. Following the sermon his works were denounced as heretical.
  • 1384—Died of stroke. He was later condemned at the council of Constance (1415). His remains were dug up and burned and his ashes were thrown in the River Swift (1428).
• Wycliffe’s Bible
  • “It seems unlikely that Wyclif himself, pen in hand, translated any of ‘his’ Bible. But that the manuscripts were the work of men close to him, influenced by him, inspired by his teaching and preaching, there can be no doubt” (ibid., 73).
  • The Bibles associated with Wycliffe were translated from the Latin Vulgate.
• Assessment of his teaching (adapted from Schaff, History, 6:346).
  • He exalted preaching and insisted all people have access to the Scriptures.
  • He demanded the purity of the clergy and taught all men could marry.
  • He defined the Church as the congregation of the elect; taught that the Pope is not essential to the church.
  • Proved that transubstantiation was unbiblical.
  • Wycliffe taught that justification is by faith alone: “that faith is the basis of the justification of man unto God” (De Veritate Sacrae Scripturae, i.219). The doctrine of merit is denied, and Christ’s mediation is made all-sufficient. He approached close to the Reformers when he pronounced “faith the supreme theology,”—fides est summa theologia—and only through the Scriptures can one become a Christian.
• Common themes in his writings:¹¹
  • The gospel:
    • “[Every man] should have great and lasting sorrow for his sin, and a mind intent on Christ’s righteousness and wisdom, and on Christ’s passion, death, and mercy to forgive sin on true repentance; and let each man put his full trust in God’s mercy, and in his own good life, and not in false pardons, nor in vanities, which men invent to avail after men’s death for love of money, for such things avail not any man, but destroy those who trust in them” (De Episcoporum Erroribus, Vaughn, Tracts and Treatises of John De Wycliffe, 45; cf. Expositio Decalogi, 5).
    • “Therefore Christ especially commanded his apostles and disciples to preach the Gospel, and not to shut themselves up in cloisters or churches to pray as some men” (Speculum de Antichristo, Vaughn, Tract and Treatises, 23; cf. De Conversatione Ecclesiasticorum, 13; Of Feigned Contemplative Life, 49).
  • Against the excesses of the Pope and the clergy:
    • “These wicked prelates sell Christian men’s souls to Satan for money, for which souls Christ shed his precious heart’s-blood - upon the cross … and thus almost all men are conquered to the fiend, and these prelates show themselves very Antichrists, procurators of Satan, and traitors to Jesus Christ and his people” (Vaughn, De Conversatione Ecclesiasticorum, 15).¹²
    • “[People often claim] that there is nothing lawful among Christian men without leave of the bishop of Rome, though he be Antichrist, full of simony and heresy. For commonly, of all priests he is the most contrary to Christ, both in life and teaching ; and he maintaineth more sin, by privileges, excommunications, and long pleas; and he is most proud against Christ’s meekness, and most covetous of worldly goods and lordships” (ibid., 20).
    • “Christian men should give more heed to Christ’s Gospel and his life, than to any bulls from the sinful bishops of this world, or else they forsake Christ, and take Antichrist and Satan for their chief governor” (Good Preaching Priests, Vaughn, Tracts and Treatises, 30).
  • Against indulgences:
    • He calls the whole system of indulgences, and pardons “a subtle merchandise of Antichrist’s clerks, to magnify their counterfeit power, and to get worldly goods, and to cause men not to dread sin” (Vaughn, De Conversatione Ecclesiasticorum , 19).
    • “Marvelous it is that any sinful fool dare grant anything on the merit of saints, for all that ever any saint did may not bring a soul to heaven without the grace and might of Christ’s passion … . In that passion, it is maintained ‘all merits that are needful’ will be found, and the judgment of God hereafter will not be found to have been influenced by the caprice or the biddings of man” (ibid).
  • Emphasis on the Scriptures (‘Holy Writ’):
    • At the end of his tract Poor Preaching Priests he adds this, “If any man can prove by Holy Writ or reason that these points are false, poor priests will meekly amend them, and heartily pray all good men to help them in the true cause, for the honour of God, the health of their souls, and the salvation of Christian nations” (Good Preaching Priests, Vaughn, Tracts and Treatises, 29).
    • “True men say that in this life, without special revelation, men know not what sin is venial and what is deadly, and that these terms venial and deadly, are inventions of new men, without authority of Holy Writ” (De Episcoporum Erroribus, Vaughn, Tracts and Treatises, 45).
    • Cf. his work How Antichrist and His Clerks Travail to Destroy Holy Writ, and to Make Christian men Unstable in the Faith, and to Set their Ground in Devils of Hell.

John Huss (1372–1415) (adapted from Allison, Historical Theology, 748)

• Professor of philosophy at the University of Prague and preacher in the main church.
• Drew heavily upon John Wycliffe:
  • “Teacher never had a more devoted pupil than the English Reformer had in Huss. The first three chapters of De ecclesia [‘On the Church,’ his major work] are little more than a series of extracts from Wycliff’s treatise on the Church” (Schaff, History, 6:370).
  • Attacked clerical corruption in the Catholic Church
  • Criticized transubstantiation
  • Denounced some popes as heretics
• He was excommunicated by the church, and his followers were placed under an interdict. Although he was promised safe travel to the Council of Constance, Huss was burned at the stake there in 1415. The Hussite movement spread throughout Bohemia.
• “Huss died for his advocacy of Wycliffism. The sentence passed by the council coupled the two names together” (Schaff, History, 6:383).
• “On arriving at the execution-ground … Huss knelt and prayed. For the last time the marshal of the empire asked him if he would recant to save his life. Said Huss: ‘God is my witness that the evidence against me is false. I have never thought nor preached except with the one intention of winning men, if possible, from their sins. In the truth of the Gospel I have written, taught and preached; today I will gladly die” (Shelley, Church History, 232).

Erasmus (1466–1536)

• Erasmus was the “Prince of Humanists” (Gonzáles, Story, 2:10).
• He published the first printed edition of the Greek New Testament, and in one way or another managed to influence each of the major Reformers.
• He wrote The Praise of Folly, a scathing satirical attack on the excesses of Roman clergy.
• The Greek New Testament (1516)
  • His work on the New Testament, drawing from several manuscripts was “ground breaking,” and proved to be in many ways the genesis of modern textual criticism (cf. John D. Currid, Calvin and the Biblical Languages, 66).
  • Erasmus’ New Testament continued to be the standard Greek Text with few deviations for hundreds of years to come.
  • Though Erasmus never joined Luther, the second edition of his New Testament was the basis of Luther’s German translation.
  • Tyndale’s English translation was based on Erasmus. In addition Erasmus’ text was the basis for the famous Geneva Bible (James White “Erasmus of Rotterdam: His New Testament and Its Importance.,” http://vintage.aomin.org/erasmus.html).
  • It is also almost sure that Calvin “knew and used Erasmus in more than one edition [of his Greek New Testament].” (T. H. L. Parker, John Calvin, 101).
  • Ulrich Zwingli was a great admirer of Erasmus (Estep, The Anabaptist Story, 11).
  • Erasmus respected the Anabaptists more than any other of the groups that broke from Rome (cf. Roland H. Bainton, Erasmus of Christendom, 261).
• Erasmus and the Reformers
  • Although Erasmus was initially counted in with the Reformers, His love of learning, his desires for independence and ‘peace,’ did not allow him to break from Rome.
  • To show his commitment to Rome, he wrote Diatribe on the Freedom on the Will against Luther. Luther vigorously responded with his The Bondage of the Will.
    • “Luther believed that the human will was enslaved, totally unable, apart from grace, to love or serve God. But Erasmus considered this a dangerous doctrine since it threatened to relieve man of his moral responsibility. What Luther regarded as basic to biblical religion, Erasmus dismissed in the name of scholarship” (Shelley, Church History, 313).
    • Luther’s response to Erasmus includes these phrases: “I thought it outrageous to convey material of so low a quality in the trappings of such rare eloquence; it is like using gold or silver dishes to carry garden rubbish or dung” and “Your thoughts of God are too human” (Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will, trans. J. I. Packer and O. R. Johnston: 63, 87).