Andrew Meredith’s Reviews > The Reformation as Renewal: Retrieving the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church > Status Update

"Liberation from the papacy was not substituted with a captivity to the individual but the freedom to interpret the Scriptures with the church catholic (universal), according to the analogy of faith."

In Calvin’s own words, “When I ponder the intended use of churches, somehow or other it seems to me unworthy of their holiness for them to take on images other than those living and symbolical ones which the Lord has consecrated by his Word.”

"If the contest were to be determined by patristic authority, the tide of victory—to put it very modestly—would turn to our side." - John Calvin

The Anabaptists were an eclectic group of schismatics; some were unbelievably violent, some were seditious, most were separatist, some heretical, etc.

In short, they were everything Rome accused the Reformers of being. They threatened to legitimize every inculpation, and the Reformers strenuously opposed them for it.

"The Reformers would not recognize the modern impulse to keep doctrine at bay until the Scriptures are understood."

"I testify on my part that I regard Zwingli as un-Christian, with all his teachings for he holds and teaches no part of the Christian faith rightly. He is seven times worse than when he was a papist."—Martin Luther

A long, long chapter on Luther beginning with his early education and ending with the Diet of Worms.

Barrett is doing well defending his main thesis: Luther never wanted to leave Rome. He wanted to REFORM it from the crazy levels of corruption it had reached in his day.

The popular notion that the Reformers were anti-tradition is a gross mischaracterization. "No less than Rome, the Reformers stood for a tradition and were adamant they stood within the catholic tradition. Their conflict with the papacy was not a choice between Scripture and tradition, but a conflict between their view of tradition and the papacy’s view of tradition."

"Kristeller’s definition of humanism captures its essence: a return to classical antiquity with full confidence that its ancient perspective contained the seeds by which present society could be reborn."

"If classical antiquity contained the remedy, then dedication to the retrieval of classical sources—Greek and Roman—was essential. Ad fontes—back to the source—became the theme song of Renaissance humanism."

Comparing and coordinating the theologies of Duns Scotus, Ockham, and Biel, Barrett traces the decay of scholasticism that Luther reacted so strongly against.