Church Matters: Retrieving the Great Tradition

Ses s i on 2: The Med i eva l Chur ch and the Reformat i on 57

transition to a money economy, and new technologies, notably printing, promoting a new assertive middle class, alongside persistent peasant discontents), and intellectual (chiefly the Renaissance, especially in the Christian humanism of northern Europe) – it was fundamentally religious in motivation and objective. It was not so much a trail blazed by Luther’s lonely comet, trailing other lesser luminaries, as the appearance over two or three decades of a whole constellation of varied color and brightness, Luther no doubt the most sparkling among them, but not all shining solely with his borrowed light. The morning star was Erasmus, for most Reformers were trained humanists, skilled in the ancient languages, grounded in biblical and patristic sources, and enlightened by his pioneer Greek NT of 1516. ~ D. F. Wright. “Protestant Reformation.” Evangelical Dictionary of Theology . Walter Elwell, ed. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1984, p. 919.