Calling for a Return to the Doctrinal Ideals and Kingdom Ethics of the First Reformation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jTld1nmkq4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpVz4okhdRU
Several weeks ago I caught Jordan Cooper's videos dealing with the Ethiopian Orthodox man and the Knechtle's over questions regarding the Early Church. The videos of the exchange went viral and have been the source of considerable discussion. It's been something of a boon to Orthodox and Catholic apologists at the Knechtle's were demonstrably incapable of defending their position.
I recently finished Frederick Heymann's George of Bohemia: King of Heretics (1965, Princeton University Press). It's a weighty and laborious read but necessary for anyone seeking to understand the history of Hussitism.
Too often Protestants have fallen prey to 'successionist' thinking or rather tying the idea of succession to some kind of institutional or genealogical pedigree. The apostolic succession (if we want to call it that) is located not in a group, tribe, geographic location, or institutional/ecclesiastical continuity but in the doctrine of the apostles. Those who recognize and obey the Christ-granted oracular authority of the apostles or New Testament writers are the heirs of the apostles.
For obvious reasons this article on Waldensian Historiography captured my attention and I was thinking of Philip Schaff long before his name emerged in the article.
Romanticism took on many hues during the 19th century and while American Protestants poured most of their energy into crafting the narrative about the Mayflower Pilgrims or Pilgrim Fathers, they were not alone. Hostility to Roman Catholicism generated other historical debates over Church History and Protestants from the US and the UK, to France and beyond wanted a piece of the Waldensians.
The former Irish Roman Catholic priest Richard Bennett (1938-2019) has always been a figure of sympathy and respect in my book. He was so thankful to have been released from the bondage and false Christianity represented by Rome. His sincerity was palpable and it was almost impossible not to empathize with him and his emotional response to his deliverance from that bondage.
Many of the doctrinal points Melia wishes to make (which he does by means of collating numerous quotations and references) are troublesome to the type of Protestant history one encounters with someone like JA Wylie. Melia wants to show how Catholic the Waldenses were and thus drive a wedge betwixt the group as they appeared in history and the romanticised narratives of later historians.
And yet for someone like myself who argues the First
Reformation was essentially different on many key points than the Magisterial
Reformation, these claims made by Melia are not troubling in the least.
The Origin, Persecutions, and Doctrines of The Waldenses by Pius Melia. The original was published in 1870. The copy I read was a 1978 AMS re-print of James Toovey's 1870 edition published in London.
It's a short book but packed with useful information. The
Jesuit theologian pulls no punches. It is his intention to dismantle and
deconstruct many of the popular narratives surrounding The Waldenses. The book
despite its significant flaws is not without value.
Through the efforts of my son I was able to read Peter Brock's The Political and Social Doctrines of the Unity of Czech Brethren in the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries (The Hague, Mouton & Co., 1957).
Copies can be found but it's a somewhat rare
and expensive book. This is one of Brock's early works and probably not his
best known. Recognized as an authority on pacifism, he specialised by focusing
on many of the groups in Eastern Europe such as the Unity of the Brethren or
Unitas Fratrum.
Recovering the First Reformation - Toward a Proto-Protestant Narrative of Church History (XVIII)
While our Biblicist theology is necessarily high and has high
regard for revealed mysteries and supernatural efficacious elements and means –
our ecclesiology is about as low as it gets – but this in no way implies
casualness or irreverence.
Recovering the First Reformation - Toward a Proto-Protestant Narrative of Church History (XVII)
The time is now.
These essays have attempted to survey Church history and
re-cast it in a narrative frame at odds with the often tight, packaged, and frankly
sometimes disingenuous renderings provided by denominational partisans and the
advocates of Christendom – or the fiction that is often referred to as
Judeo-Christian civilisation. This revisiting and questioning of common
Protestant and Evangelical narratives of Church History is essential if one is
to understand and navigate the present context.
Recovering the First Reformation - Toward a Proto-Protestant Narrative of Church History (XIII)
Not all among the Czech Brethren and Waldensians greeted the
Magisterial Reformation with joy. Some were alarmed and not a little put off by
some of the ideas which they believed were being forced upon them by the
Reformers. There was (at least in the case of the Cottian valleys) a degree of resentment
with regard to the patronising attitude which they encountered from Guillaume Farel
and what would become the Calvinist wing of the Reformation.
Recovering the First Reformation - Toward a Proto-Protestant Narrative of Church History (XII)
The First Reformation it would seem embraced theological primitivism
– unelaborated and limited doctrinal concepts. Like the Early Church they
weren't terribly worried about seeming contradictions or doctrines that seemed
to defy sense-experience or logical categories tied to it.
Recovering the First Reformation - Toward a Proto-Protestant Narrative of Church History (X)
There is value in a further elaboration of this contrast
between the First and Magisterial Reformations and thus as an exercise it's
worth briefly surveying the latter's historical and ethical legacy as it
transitioned from the Renaissance era into modernity.
Recovering the First Reformation - Toward a Proto-Protestant Narrative of Church History (VIII)
The question of Waldensian placement becomes complicated as
they transcend the three epochs we're touching upon – the pre-Schism First
Reformation, the post-Schism shift and fragmentation, and finally the
Magisterial Reformation.
Recovering the First Reformation - Toward a Proto-Protestant Narrative of Church History (VII)
The Great Schism which erupted in 1378 generated a new wave
of dissent which while not unrelated to the earlier movements and impulses,
nevertheless generated more radical factions which for a season took up the
sword. These movements failed and yet in most cases the core ideas and
commitments endured and the survivors would eventually merge back into the
non-violent sword and coin rejecting, non-Sacralist and separatist posture of
the movement's first wave. They would not be challenged or tempted again with
regard to Sacralism until the time of the Magisterial Reformation.
Recovering the First Reformation - Toward a Proto-Protestant Narrative of Church History (VI)
Some would date the First Reformation to the era of The Great
Schism (1378-1417) when the papacy was split between the Avignon and Rome
factions. Lollardy proper (it is argued) arose in England during this period
and Czech Hussitism arose immediately after it. The already established
Waldensians also flourished during this era and some believe the period
represents a first wave of doctrinal protest movements – a case of all of these
groups (to varying degrees) appealing to the Scriptures to argue against the
developments within Catholicism.