Church Matters: Retrieving the Great Tradition

Ses s i on 2: The Med i eva l Chur ch and the Reformat i on 43

a. Appeal to the German Ruling Class : asking German rulers to reform the RCC

b. Babylonian Captivity of the Church : attacked the seven sacraments of the RCC as defined by the Council of Florence, reducing them to two, baptism and the Lord’s Supper

c. The Freedom of a Christian : distinguishes between a Christian’s inner and outer man

8. Established his own catechisms informed by justification by faith, and wrote hymns for the Church (e.g., A Mighty Fortress is Our God )

9. Greatly influenced key reformers: Philip Melanchthon, who authored the Augsburg Confession (1530), arguably the most significant and far reaching Lutheran confession of faith

10. In 1580, fifty years to the day of the reading of the Augsburg Confession to the emperor, the Book of Concord was published (which defined precisely the Lutheran position on numerous issues, creating a “Lutheran orthodoxy”).

C. The Reformed Tradition: Ulrich Zwingli

1. Founder of Swiss Protestantism, first of the Reformed theologians, circa 1484-1531

2. Appointed priest at Glarus in 1506, preached systematically through whole books of Scripture, a noted expositor