Church Matters: Retrieving the Great Tradition

40

Chur ch Mat ter s : Ret r i ev i ng the Great Trad i t i on

with both the assistance of philosophy and the revelation of God in Christ and the Church

b. The Manual against the Heathen : four books written in early 1260s written for the benefit of both Jews and Muslims who had not embraced the faith

c. Summa Theologica (or The Sum of Theology ), written in the last ten years of his life, five volumes where he takes the theology of Augustine and restates it in Aristotelian terms. Undoubtedly, one of the most important systematic presentations of the Christian faith ever written (note: Thomas did not live to finish

the Summa, but some of his followers drafted a supplement of his other works to complete it.

4. The rumblings and corruptions in Catholicism

5. The decline of the papacy

II. The Reformation

The Reformation expressed itself in various institutional structures, frequently the result of nationalistic impulse, and in these entities many of the diversities within evangelical theology arose. There were differences in understanding the nature of the sacraments, the place of the divine decrees in relation to personal salvation (see Predestina tion), the time of the millennium, the form of church government, the precise nature of biblical inspiration, the way to arrive at Christian assurance and the relation of the church to culture and the state – most of which would be considered by evangelicals today as matters of somewhat secondary importance. ~ Packer and Sinclair, p. 239.

A. Factors leading to the Reformation