https://churcheswithoutchests.net/2025/03/13/the-imitation-of-christ/
I am pleased to note de Bruyn also offers some praise for the Theologia Germanica, another worthy pre-Reformation work.
But as I've often argued there's a problem with this approach to orthodoxy - it's progressive. Men like de Bruyn are willing to say that à Kempis and the anonymous author (the Friend of God from the Oberland) of the Theologia were Christians.
But they would not reckon them so today. They would not allow them to 'join' their churches. Likewise were I to even advocate Wycliffe's view of the Supper (which is in fact very close to what I hold), I would be denied membership in Reformed Confessional bodies.
What then is the standard for Christian and gospel definitions and fellowship? If Sola Fide is the article by which the Church stands or falls, there is indeed a problem as you cannot find the doctrine pre-1517 and certainly not in the Middle Ages. You can find salvation by faith, but not in the narrow forensic Lutheran formulation. Given how Reformed Confessionalist circles reacted to Federal Vision (which was in some ways little different from a Lutheran or Anglican view)... this posture vis-a-vis these medieval writers makes no sense.
If orthodoxy evolves, then why should anyone accept the Confessional narrative that it evolved to that point and then in the 16th and 17th centuries - everything stopped. We may mock some of the more extreme KJV-only Fundamentalists who seemingly hold to a Double-Inspiration view - that a new Bible was inspired in 1611, a posture made doubly absurd as they reject the so-called Apocrypha which was part of the 1611 edition. But is not the progressive orthodoxy of Confessionalism making the same argument? The standard and progression of orthodoxy suddenly freezes and is set in stone. This requires an act of faith (and by implication the Spirit) that has no basis in the New Testament.
Some argue the Magisterial Reformation was the reconstitution of New Testament Christianity or the Greatest Revival in History - a not-so-subtle attempt in some cases to argue for a Pentecost-like occurrence. The problem is the argument that the Magisterial Reformation was a reconstitution of either Early (Ante-Nicene/pre-Constantinian) Christianity (let alone the New Testament) is prima facie ridiculous. It was nothing of the kind. It was an improvement in some respects, but I contend that it created new problems and some of its departures are as grievous as the errors of the Medieval Church.
By all means read The Imitation of Christ and the Theologia Germanica - but contemporary Confessionalists undercut their own position when they endorse such works. If they were consistent they would jump from the New Testament straight to the 16th century and renounce the Middle Ages.
But then, they're not even honest about their own historical theology and the shift from the Humanist emphasis of the early Reformers to the Scholasticism of subsequent generations - let alone the Enlightenment influence that came to dominate interpretation in the 19th century and beyond. And incidentally we see some Restorationists engage in the same kind of selective 'leapfrog' history - in their case making a bigger jump from the 2nd century to the 19th.
I'm not suggesting that Church history isn't complicated. My issue is with Confessionalism and its narratives. I argue the position supplants Scriptural authority - which should be our only 'static' standard. We judge and approve or condemn all historical expressions of theology (including Confessionalism and the Magisterial Reformation) by that standard. We may appreciate a great deal in the Confessions and some aspects of the Magisterial Reformation, but they are not the benchmark let alone the gold standard.
And (it must be said) that if the full flowering of the Reformation resulted in Baptistic theology (de Bruyn is a Baptist, and this argument is made by some of them)... then who is to say that further evolution is invalid? I'm not suggesting this, but I've interacted with enough theological modernists and Barthians to know that's how they would think. They can 'respect' the Confessional heritage and the medieval witness but they believe the Church has learned more and moved on from that stage of orthodoxy - or perhaps even the notion of orthodoxy itself.