Justin Effler > Recent Status Updates

fact, Jesus does not cancel the law but rather upholds it: the basis for acceptance remains perfect righteousness (v. 20). The question is whether that righteousness is inherent in us or imputed to us—and one thing that Jesus’s subsequent interpretation of the law makes clear is that if it is the former, we are utterly without hope (vv. 21–48).

The language of “faith working itself out in love” is biblical (Gal. 5:6) and was acceptable to Protestants, and it even appeared in the Tetrapolitan Confession.32 But Trent situated the concept of “working in love” differently than did any Protestant church, by viewing it through the lens of the penitential system of the Catholic Church.

“Time is a mercy”

In the East, Jeremiah II was not only aware of the Reformation but was also asked to give his verdict on the Augsburg Confession (1530). Although his response was judiciously warm and charitable, Jeremiah still made clear that he was troubled by Protestant teachings.

The Reformed confessions say nothing about the covenant or the Sabbath,and only little about predestination.Lutheran confessions speak of grace and justification,but do not give voice to the controversies on the Third Use of the Law or the ubiquity of Christ. Anabaptist confessions sketch only a very simple summary of their unique community life.And in the Anglican communion there was only the scant FortyTwo Articles

So, in June 1553, a royal mandate was issued that commanded use of the Forty-Two Articles in England. They were the work of Cranmer, and their message is overwhelmingly Protestant, although they take no noticeable side in the Lutheran or Reformed debate on the sacraments.

If one were to search for the least likely country to embrace the Reformation, England would be at the top of the list. Almost immediately, Henry VIII responded to the Reformation with a mixture of anger and condemnation.

Historians regularly find it necessary to remind students of Calvin’s actual role in the Reformation, which was not as the founder of the Reformed faith, nor even the dominant influence on early Reformed churches, at least in his lifetime. Instead, Calvin was a second-generation Reformer, whose reputation was at first minimal in some Swiss regions, but he increased in stature by the end of his life.

If the question is about our choices day by day, especially our choice to sin, then the First Helvetic Confession confirms this freedom. When it comes to our choice to place our faith in Christ, however, the framers of the confession denied human capacity to do so and saw faith as a gift of regeneration given by the Holy Spirit.

Martin Bucer shared Luther’s concern that the language of memorialism locked Christ away in heaven, separated from the sacraments; he also believed that the Zwinglian position would be better if it were strengthened to stress what was in, rather than what was not in, the Lord’s Supper.

From the beginning, the Lutheran and Reformed camps did not agree on the nature of the Lord’s Supper, while both rejected Anabaptist views of baptism, political authority, and other vital issues. This confessional separation gives the lie to the common view that the Reformation was initially harmonious and only later ruined by confessional inflexibility.

Luther’s hostility toward the Zwinglian position was ironclad. He forever remained allergic to those who spoke of the sacrament in spiritual terms, and he was committed to defining his church by a clear doctrine of the physical eating of Christ’s body and blood in the sacrament.

Luther remained adamant that the physical body of Christ was offered to the communicant in the bread and wine, although he rejected the Catholic explanation that the elements had been transubstantiated. Zwingli, in turn, remained committed to his memorialist position.

Zürichers almost never trusted Lutherans—or those who got too close to Lutherans or their ideas—but this suspicion was not shared by other Reformed leaders. Calvin and his mentor, Martin Bucer, for example, were almost always willing to make another attempt to bridge the Lutheran and Reformed sides.

By the Reformation in the sixteenth century, most of Europe had come to see the authority of Christ’s vicar as unassailable. In fact, because many students see the Middle Ages from the vantage point of a Reformation or modern perspective, we need to recall that the changes in medieval doctrine—even changes in the view of papal authority—did not take place quickly… [but gradually]…

But the Fourth Lateran Council is considered the most indelible mark left by Innocent III, not only because it altered the church’s stance on several issues but also because its proclamation of transubstantiation was the culmination of medieval teaching on Christ’s presence in the Eucharist.

Abelard went beyond the Nicene Creed, primarily by claiming that the Trinity was a logical inference from the study of philosophy. God’s triunity did not need to be revealed, he argued, since it could be discerned in the writings of Plato.

When Pope Urban II called for a crusade in 1095, he felt that it was within the scope of his power to leverage these warrior classes for the sake of the church. Some popes directed armies against heretics, and most wars (even between Christian nations) were instigated with the explicit blessing of the pope. By the 1500s, there were even a few cases of the pope sitting at the front of an army himself.

The Dictatus Papae was a series of basic statements, each of which demanded that Catholics recognize the authority of the pope in all matters, especially in matters of secular politics. The decree began by stressing that the pope alone was universal in the church; thus his delegate (legatus) sat above any regional or ecumenical council.