The Reformers Weren’t Innovators

Martin Luther was a medieval man with a tongue as sharp as a knight’s sword. Toward the end of his life, he wielded its blade to cut down the accusation he may have hated most of all: the Reformation was a deviant sect and innovative heresy, a clean break with the catholicity (or universality) of the church.

The sting of that accusation, leveled by Duke Henry of Braunschweig, hurt because the reformer had spent his best years proving otherwise.

Luther called the duke Hanswurst, or “Johnny Sausage,” the German name for a silly carnival clown who wore a fat German sausage through his belt. In 1541, Luther wrote against Henry’s accusation, saying it was as ridiculous as the clown. But Luther wrote with all the seriousness of a man fighting for his life against the Devil. Henry—and Rome itself—claimed the reformers “have fallen away from the holy church and set up a new church.” He said of Rome, “We are the true church, for [we] have come from the ancient church and have remained in it.” In a moment of irony, Luther turned the charge around: “But you have fallen away from us and have become a new church opposed to us.”

Mark of Catholicity: The Creeds

To manifest his catholicity (conformity with the universal church), Luther proposed one proof after another, each demonstrating why the Reformation aligned with the Nicene Creed: “We believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.” Luther quoted the Nicene Creed (and named the Apostles’ Creed) to locate the Reformation within the orthodoxy of its creedal tradition. The sola scriptura principle in no way stalled Luther’s command. He ordered the churches of the Reformation to believe, sing, and confess the creeds.

Luther: ‘We are the true church, for [we] have come from the ancient church and have remained in it.’

In his earlier debate with radicals, the young Luther said they swallowed the Spirit, feathers and all, by setting the Spirit against the Word. Now the older Luther issued the same warning but with the creeds in view: to believe in God is to believe that his Spirit didn’t breathe its last breath at Pentecost but guided his church into a true confession of the faith, one handed down to the communion of the saints. “Hence we belong to the ancient church and are one with it. There is, therefore, in this matter also, no reason the papists should really call us heretics or a new church, for whoever believes as the ancient church did and holds things in common with it belongs to the ancient church.”

The reformers, Luther concluded, were by no means excluded from the communion of the saints—communio sanctorum—that Augustinian and medieval notion of God’s elect. If the churches of the Reformation are “the true, ancient church, one body and one communion of saints with the holy, universal, Christian church,” then who’s the innovator and sect, betraying the catholic heritage?

Catholicity Against the Papacy

Luther gave Hanswurst a straight answer because Hanswurst had bluntly assaulted Luther using the authority of the papacy in Rome. To demonstrate his bold claim of catholicity, Luther recruited 12 papal doctrines that collide with the church “catholic”—from indulgences to pilgrimages, from transubstantiation to the papacy’s keys over the secular domain.

If the churches of the Reformation are ‘the true, ancient church,’ then who is the innovator and sect, betraying the catholic heritage?

When Luther’s proofs were stacked next to Rome’s proofs, the reformers were confident their faith was ancient and the other an ecclesiastical avant-garde. No one was so insistent on the final authority of God’s Word and no one was so aggressive in his condemnation of the papacy as Luther. He never hid his advocacy for change. And yet, in Luther’s own mind, his call for reform wasn’t a summons to something modern. His vision for renewal was catholic. Debate may persist over the success of that vision, but no debate should exist over its self-professed goals. In Luther’s own words, “Thus we have proved that we are the true, ancient church, one body and one communion of saints with the holy, universal, Christian church.”

If Protestants today desire fidelity to the history of their own genesis, they should listen to one of the Reformation’s heirs, Abraham Kuyper: “A church that is unwilling to be catholic is not a church, because Christ is the savior not of a nation, but of the world. . . . We cannot therefore, without being untrue to our own principle, abandon the honorable title of ‘catholic’ as though it were the special possession of the Roman Church.”

What Defines True Protestantism?

What defines a true adherence to Protestantism? To be Protestant is to be catholic. But not Roman.

Why does this matter? Because if the reformers’ perception is considered, then the story of the Reformation isn’t a story of a rebellious departure from the church catholic but a story of renewal. The Reformation shouldn’t be defined according to its critics but on its own terms, as a movement of catholicity. The reformers didn’t take an axe to the tree, throw the tree in the fire, and plant a new tree. The tree remained the same; they simply pruned its savage branches.

To be Protestant is to be catholic. But not Roman.

Too often, Reformation scholars blame the reformers for schism and secularism. Others celebrate the Reformation as a revolution, as if the reformers intended a clean break from the Great Tradition that came before them, wanting to begin a new church otherwise lost since the apostles. Unfortunately, both interpretations have monopolized the conversation.

When we summon the voices of the reformers themselves (as I do in The Reformation as Renewal), what do we hear? A constant chorus, all singing a similar tune: the Reformation was an attempt to renew, not replace, the Christian faith. The reformers saw themselves in continuity not only with the church fathers but with key medieval scholastics. They were resolved to retrieve the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.