LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW - Concordia Lutheran Seminary

46 LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW XII
competing models of reform and renewal will be recognized as “the
Reformation”.
On close inspection sharp fissures show up even within these six patterns
of reformation themselves. Two parties, high and low respectively, are
clearly discernible in the Church of England by the death of the first
Elizabeth. The unity of the Lutheran pattern of reformation was almost
wrecked by the tensions between the Reformer and Melanchthon, and
Philipp and his followers have never accepted the divisive quality of the line
drawn by Luther at Marburg in 1529. Moreover, there was nothing
monolithic about the internal Roman renewal which got under way in the
1530s. Gasparo Contarini (1483-1542), whose affinity for Luther on the
matter of justification was pointed out by Karl Barth, 4 may not be confused
with Giampetro Caraffa, the gruesome father of the Roman Inquisition who
reigned as Paul IV from 1555 till 1559. Nor did the Radicals agree among
themselves.
Furthermore, even though the second through the sixth patterns of
reformation produced distinct and distinctive church bodies, we may not
overlook the existence between the six patterns of a certain crossfertilization
which refused to respect neat confessional boundaries. While
ostensibly heavily defeated by all the patterns of reformation which
displaced his own, Erasmus also succeeded in leaving his mark on these
subsequent models which took off in directions he would not go.
Melanchthon’s refusal to break with Erasmus at the time of the great
humanist’s dispute with Luther precipitated both the Formula of Concord in
the 16 th century and later Lutheran orthodoxy’s slippage from the Reformer
and Chemnitz in the next. The English Reformation was genetically
modified by every other pattern of reform except the Roman and the Radical.
Erasmus’ hand was felt throughout the process that lasted from Henry
through Elizabeth, and the early 20 th -century Anglican Modernist H. D. A.
Major was right to remark on the fusion of an essentially Lutheran liturgy
with Calvinist articles of religion and traditional polity in the shaping of the
English Church.
On 31 October we fitly focus on the pattern of reformation which
developed almost overnight shortly after an obscure professor in a remote
German university town proposed 95 Theses for disputation on this day 483
years ago. Imagination exercised on all sides of the Reformation divide has
inaccurately pictured the posting of the Theses as a deliberate act of revolt.
Yet while in the celebrated 95 Theses Luther showed considerable courage
in tackling a sensitive matter of pastoral practice and made some barbed
remarks in rebuke of the ecclesiastical powers that be, he nevertheless here
4 See Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/1; The Doctrine of Reconciliation, eds. G. W.
Bromiley & T. Torrance, trans. G. W. Bromiley (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1956): 624.