Andrew Meredith’s Reviews > The Reformation as Renewal: Retrieving the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church > Status Update
Andrew Meredith
is 45% done
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.
— Mar 31, 2026 06:51PM
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.
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Andrew’s Previous Updates
Andrew Meredith
is 83% done
"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."
— Apr 17, 2026 11:25AM
Andrew Meredith
is 75% done
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.”
— Apr 16, 2026 09:21AM
Andrew Meredith
is 70% done
"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
— Apr 14, 2026 07:09AM
Andrew Meredith
is 65% done
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.
— Apr 10, 2026 12:22PM
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.
Andrew Meredith
is 60% done
"The Reformers would not recognize the modern impulse to keep doctrine at bay until the Scriptures are understood."
— Apr 08, 2026 12:45PM
Andrew Meredith
is 52% done
"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
— Apr 05, 2026 11:47AM
Andrew Meredith
is 37% done
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."
— Mar 30, 2026 06:43PM
Andrew Meredith
is 33% done
"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."
— Mar 28, 2026 10:35AM
"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."
Andrew Meredith
is 29% done
Comparing and coordinating the theologies of Duns Scotus, Ockham, and Biel, Barrett traces the decay of scholasticism that Luther reacted so strongly against.
— Mar 27, 2026 09:16AM
Andrew Meredith
is 23% done
And now it's time for a brief section with Barrett extolling the wonders of Platonism...
This is where I get skeptical of "The Great Tradition."
— Mar 26, 2026 07:35AM
This is where I get skeptical of "The Great Tradition."
When Luther first launched his now famous campaign against indulgences and the gross corruption of those who sold them, he originally positioned himself as an informant to let the Pope in on "what was really going on out here." He sincerely thought the Pope was innocent and unaware of the practices, not realizing at the time that the explicit order for the behavior of the indulgence sellers came directly from the papal seat.
Luther blissfully did not realize his immediate peril as plans were put in place by Pope Leo himself to detain the young "heretic" and haul him to Rome. However Frederick, the local German ruler, was no friend of Rome, and he, aware of their plans, began to protect his newfound rising star. Again and again, Frederick kept Luther out of harms way.
When Luther found out the truth, he was not short of words:
“If there were no other base trickery to prove that the pope is the true Antichrist, this one would be enough to prove it. Hear this, O pope, not of all men the holiest but of all men the most sinful! O that God from heaven would soon destroy your throne and sink it in the abyss of hell!”