Forerunners of the Reformation

We live in a time of theological confusion, calling for a renewed focus on the cross of Christ. Join Reformation Bible College for the twenty twenty seven winter conference on January fourteenth and fifteenth. Gather with like-minded Christians, the faculty of RBC, and guest teachers to explore the atoning work of Christ, the sure foundation for our worship, unity, and witness. Visit reformationbiblecollege dot org slash cross. The reformers themselves looked back on the Middle Ages and asked the question: What prepared for our work?

Who anticipated something of our work? Who were forerunners of the Reformation? Martin Luther was not the first person to speak out against the corruptions and theological problems of the medieval church. In fact, there were a number of reform movements that took place well before men like Calvin, Luther, and Zwingli were even born. Movements that would lay the groundwork for the Protestant Reformation.

Hi, this is Josh Mann, weekend host of Renewing Your Mind. And for the next two weeks, we'll be diving into the history of the Protestant Reformation. Both of the messages that you'll hear today and next Saturday are from Dr. Godfrey's exploration of church history. This study includes six teaching series with more than 70 messages, covering the early church right up to our modern era.

You can add all of these series and messages to your digital library today when you donate in support of Renewing Your Mind. You'll also receive a digital study guide for each series to help you go even deeper into the subject matter. Make your gift today at RenewingYourMind.org to get both of these resources. Here's Dr. Godfrey now on the forerunners of the Protestant Reformation.

Well, we are about to complete what I think of as our mad dash through a millennium of church history, and we've been able to touch some of the high points. We've been able to look a little more deeply at some points along the way. But as they said of the Armenians' sermon at the Synod of Dort, he finally reached the part for which we had all been waiting. The end, and so we have come nearly to the end. But I want to think with you a little bit about one last thought about the Middle Ages, and that is what has come to be called the forerunners of the Reformation.

We know that in the 16th century, God raised up Martin Luther to begin a profound and amazing biblical reformation of His Church, but The reformers themselves looked back on the Middle Ages and asked the question: What prepared for our work? Who anticipated something of our work? Who were forerunners of the Reformation? And they looked back to a number of individuals, probably most importantly to John Wycliffe, who was once called the Morning Star of the Reformation. The sky was still dark, but there was one bright star shining in the Middle Ages, preparing for the coming of the Reformation.

Since the Reformation, there have been some who have attacked the idea of forerunners, and it is an interesting and at least controversial sort of category. There weren't any theologians in the Middle Ages that completely. Shared the Reformation point of view before the Reformation came.

So, are they really forerunners? There weren't any who were calling for a complete change in the life of the church.

So, were there really forerunners?

Some historians have said, was the Reformation really inevitable from a human point of view? Might the Reformation not have happened? Might the Reformation have been stamped out? What does it mean to talk about a forerunner? But however controversial that concept is, I think it is still a useful one.

I think we want to say, as Protestants, I certainly want to say, as Protestant, we are not a bunch of latter-day Christians. That is, we don't believe the church died out and had to be resurrected by the reformers. We believe that Christ fulfilled His promise that He would build His church, and the gates of hell would not prevail against it. And what we see in the Middle Ages is indeed a time of growing superstition, of growing confusion, of a clouding of the gospel. But I don't believe that gospel was ever stamped out.

And when I think about forerunners of the Reformation, what I'm Particularly, thinking about is those who continue to bear witness to a much more biblical, Augustinian, grace-oriented understanding of the gospel, and we've talked about a few of those as we've gone along, haven't we? Even Thomas Aquinas is a man who stood up for the saving grace of God, for the electing purpose of God. But we don't usually think of Thomas in that category of forerunner, because Thomas wasn't in any sense a real critic of the Church in his own day. He didn't stand outside of the sort of center of developing theology in the Middle Ages, and we tend to look. As forerunners for individuals who are somewhat more critical, not only do they testify to grace, but they perceive, they see that the church is increasingly in trouble.

And it's to a person like John Wycliffe then that we can turn as a forerunner, not only as a believer in grace, but also as a critic of the church. And Wycliffe is a particularly interesting example of that. John Wycliffe was born around 1328. I always think that's interesting. It means we don't know exactly when he was born.

It wasn't that he actually his mother was in labor for years, but we're not we're not sure of the exact year in which he was born. He was born in the north of England, in Yorkshire. He was educated at Oxford. He was revealed to be a very bright student, a very clever student, and he began. To attract a variety of patrons and encouragers in his studies and in his work, but he also began in his theology to become critical of what he thought were dangerous tendencies in the life of the church, and he began to say things that sounded peculiar to some people within the church.

He began to say Christ is the only head of the church.

Well, it doesn't seem all that radical, but of course the Pope had come to claim that he was the representative of Christ on earth. On earth, the Pope was the head of the Church, and Wycliffe was increasingly critical of that idea. Increasingly uncertain that the Pope ought to be accorded all of the honor that he was accorded.

Now, remember, Wycliffe is living only about. A little more than a century after King John had formally handed England over to the Pope as the Pope's fiefdom, and now Wycliffe is saying, "I'm not so sure that this is the right thing to do. I'm not so sure the Pope has that kind of authority." And guess who liked hearing that? The King of England. He was sympathetic to this claim on Wycliffe's part that the Pope had gone beyond his authority.

Then Wycliffe said, "The Church is the elect of God. Church isn't everybody, and not everybody is elect. And the Church, in a proper understanding, is the elect of God. And this again begins to trouble some people. This is unusual language.

This isn't the kind of language we're used to hearing." And as more and more leaders of the church became critical of Wycliffe, Wycliffe became more and more radical to the point where he was willing to call the pope antichrist.

Now, point of fact, Wycliffe was not the first medieval theologian to call the pope antichrist. There had been others before him who, seeing the power, seeing the wealth, seeing the corruption in Rome, had said, "This is not the spirit of Christ. This is the spirit of Antichrist." But Wycliffe, in saying it rather boldly, did not endear himself to many church officials, particularly church officials with power. And the Bishop of London began an examination of his views, and then reported to Rome. And the Pope in Rome then condemned some nineteen propositions, supposedly taught by Wycliffe.

But Wycliffe continued to have his supporters not only around the king, but also supporters in the university city of Oxford. And after the Pope had condemned his theology, the University of Oxford said, "No, his theology is orthodox." Now again, you see, this is an indication the pope is still not the absolute sovereign in the church. People feel content to disagree with the pope at times. The Middle Ages is much more complicated than sometimes we give it credit for being. Wycliffe began to raise questions about the celibacy of the priesthood.

And said he could see no reason that celibacy ought to be imposed on the priesthood. He began to criticize monks for being forced to take perpetual vows, so they could never leave the monastery. He said none of this is in accord with the freedom and the mercies of Christ. And he began to get quite a following, because a lot of people said, "This seems to make sense." They saw the corruption of the morals of the clergy that forced celibacy had imposed upon them, and they began to say these things aren't right. It doesn't make sense.

It's not in the spirit of Christ. But then Wycliffe took another step that was even more radical and got him much further into trouble. In 1381, he began to write about the meaning of the Lord's Supper.

Now, the exact role of the pope, the exact composition of the church, exact requirements for clergy and for monks—these are things that were still somewhat open issues in Wycliffe's day. But to begin to talk about the Lord's Supper, he's running up against the Fourth Lateran Council, twelve fifteen. This is settled. The Pope has settled it. The Ecumenical Council has settled it.

It's settled for the Church. It's transubstantiation, and Wycliffe wants to reopen this issue. He argues that transubstantiation is a recent innovation. It's not the ancient teaching of the Church, Wycliffe said, but it's a relatively recent decision on the part of the Church. It's not a reliable decision.

It's not a decision that we ought to hold up, and he rejected transubstantiation.

Now, this was an act of rebellion of remarkable bravery and remarkable danger. He said, "Christ is not bodily present on the altar, but He is sacramentally, spiritually, and efficiently present, and that the sacrament." Brings no profit if there is not love in our souls, and so the whole notion that the sacrament operated as the medieval church taught ex opra operato, by the doing it is done. It's almost automatically that it brings grace. Wycliffe says, "No, you have to be a Christian. You have to be filled with the fruits of the spirit for the sacrament to do you any good." And so he begins to work this out more and more.

He rejects transubstantiation. He rejects the necessity of oral confession to a priest, the sacrament of penance for the forgiveness of sins. He says there's no absolute need for a pope at all in the church. See, this is getting more and more radical and sounding kind of Protestant on several of these points. And then he began to say, "We really need the Bible in the language of the people.

We need a translation of the Bible into English. This is radical. Who knows what will happen if the Bible is translated? If people can actually read the Bible, if people can actually hear the Bible?

So, in in so many ways, Wycliffe was." Emerging as a major critic of the church and what the church had become, and how the church ought to be reformed, when we think of the Reformation, there's not just one Reformation in the history of the church. There were all through the Middle Ages calls for reformation in the church, and the call of Wycliffe was a particularly powerful one, and it was a call that attracted a Significant following.

So that hundreds and thousands of people began to follow Wycliffe and believe that what he was saying was true, and Wycliffe's teaching became so attractive to many that it was carried into Europe, and into various parts of Europe too. The teachings of Wycliffe spread. Wycliffe's followers would come to be called in England Lollards. I don't know exactly why somebody must know, but I don't know why they were called Lollards. But that's what they were called, and it's very interesting.

After the death of Wycliffe, after the condemnation of Wycliffe, after serious persecution of the Lollards as his followers, yet. Decade after decade after decade, we can read in the records of the Inquisition in England that people were handed over to the Inquisition as Lollards. It was never quite stamped out, and it's absolutely intriguing to me as a historian that when the Reformation comes to England, one of the first places where it just blossoms is in East Anglia. Where Lollardy had been strong, it's as if the ground remained prepared, hearts remained prepared, and East Anglia in the 17th century would become one of the strongest centers of Puritanism in England. People who loved the Bible, who wanted to hear the Bible, who who were devoted to the Bible.

This this effect of the life of John Wycliffe is amazing in its continuing influence and in its power.

Well, for his rejection of transubstantiation, he was imprisoned. He died in prison in 1384. But even then, they couldn't leave him alone. The issue was taken to the Council of Constance. And at the Council of Constance, Wycliffe was declared a notorious heretic.

And about a decade after that council, they dug up his bones from consecrated ground and scattered his ashes. There was to be no rest for Wycliffe. But Wycliffe wasn't seeking to rest in the dirt of the church. He was seeking to rest in the love of the Savior, and he was a remarkable witness to that.

Now, there again. He did not have a fully Protestant doctrine of justification. He did not articulate that. He was not able to articulate that. But what we find so clearly in Wycliffe is a a clear resting in Christ.

We are not saved by the doctrine of justification. We're saved by Christ. The doctrine of justification helps us understand how we're saved by Christ. And you see in the writings in the heart of Wycliffe this dependence on Christ, this devotion to Christ. And Wycliffe does say, we are not saved by our merit.

We are only saved by Christ. And he did also say, faith is the sum of theology.

So you see him moving in that direction, even if he doesn't come fully to articulate it.

So Wycliffe is perhaps in many ways the the greatest, the most prominent, in some ways the most influential of the late medieval forerunners of the Reformation. But there were other followers of Wycliffe in other parts of Europe, and one of the most remarkable of those was John Huss. John Huss, the great Czech reformer, who had heard of Wycliffe, who had read Wycliffe's work, and became increasingly convinced that Wycliffe was leading the church in the correct direction. Huss began publicly to preach what he had learned from Wycliffe in about 1402, and again a remarkable popular Rallying to Huss again, I think there were so many people who were feeling spiritually starved, who were feeling the corruption of the church, the inadequacy of what the church was teaching and trying to do, and so again, Huss was a very popular figure, and again found himself in trouble because of what he came to teach about the Lord's Supper, like. Wycliffe, Huss also stood against transubstantiation.

Also, began to be increasingly critical of the pope and the role of the pope in the life of the church. And again, the authorities tried to silence him. And he continued to be supported by many common people and by the nobility. And wrote a famous work on the church. Saying things about the church very much in the spirit of Wycliffe, again denying the leadership of the Pope as necessary, and the Council of Constance, the very one that condemned Wycliffe as a notorious heretic, then summoned Huss to come and to stand trial at the Council of Constance, and Huss's noble supporters in Bohemia said, "No, no, don't go.

We need you here." And the leaders, the Council of Constantin, said, "No, we promise you a safe conduct. You can travel safely here. You can travel safely home. We make you that promise. Just come, so your views can be." Examined so Huss traveled to Constance, and was put on trial there, and was condemned as a heretic.

And Huss said, "Well, thank you very much. I'm going home. You promised that I could go home." And the leaders of the church said, "Well, you understand, don't you? That promises to heretics are not binding." And he was martyred there in Constance, burned alive. In 1416, if you go to Constance, you can see the Hushstein, the stone on which he stood as he died a martyr.

I visited that in the 1960s. It was very interesting. There was a wreath there on the stone from the People's Republic of Czechoslovakia to honor the memory of a hero of the people. And it was nice the communists made some use of John Huss, but we know that he was a hero of Christ. And again, the work done by Huss laid a foundation that proved to be very helpful to the coming of the Reformation.

And you remember that Huss in Czech means goose. And so they used to say later in Germany that Huss laid the egg that Luther hatched, so the connection there remains significant. The last forerunner I want to mention very briefly is a man not so well known at all by the name of Staupitz. Staupitz was a teacher of Martin Luther. And Staupitz was Luther's superior in the Augustinian Order.

They became very good friends, although Staupitz was probably twenty years younger than Luther. Staupitz is important to remember because Luther felt he had learned so very much from Staupitz, and Staupitz really does begin to mark a very serious break with the old Roman theology. Staupitz never left the Roman Church. He died in 1524, but he always remained a friend of Luther. He helped protect Luther.

He exempted Luther from his monastic vows so that Luther would be safer. But the most important thing that Staupitz taught Luther, and he taught it in a treatise that he wrote on man's eternal predestination. Stauffers said, "God's grace does not make us acceptable to God. God's grace makes God acceptable to us. And that is an absolute revolution in theology." Now, Stauffers was not saying there are no problems in us, and all the problems are in God.

But Schleipitz was saying, we are alienated from God in our sin, and what grace does is not make us good enough to be acceptable to God. But grace opens our eyes, grace changes our hearts, grace draws us back to God, so that God, who previously was seen, was only as the severe judge, as the severe critic, now becomes acceptable to us. In Christ, that's what grace does, and I think that biblical reorientation of grace was absolutely profound in getting Martin Luther to think in more radically biblical terms than had ever really been done in hundreds and hundreds of years. It was a a paradoxical way of thinking that so appealed to Luther. Luther loved paradoxes.

Luther loved. Stating things in in radical ways that got people's attention, and and Staupitz in a way forged the way for him, and Staupitz was a a late medieval serious defender of Augustine of salvation by grace alone, salvation by the electing love of God alone, and that impact on Luther, helping him. Rethink to look again at the whole issue of grace and what grace does and what it means to be reconnected to God. That was a crucial contribution of Staupitz, and so we can see there were these continuing testimonies to grace. To the Bible, to Christ, there were voices raised that sensed the church had run astray.

The church was corrupt. The church had departed from the Bible in so many ways. All of this was providentially used, I believe, of God to to lay a foundation for the coming of the Reformation. The reformers never said the church had died out. There were always lights still burning in the church.

There were always testimonies to Christ and to His grace in the church, but the church was in a very weakened condition. And God, in His mercy, then raised up Martin Luther and others to reform that church and to bring it back to the Bible in wonderful ways. It's been said by some that to be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant. But this wasn't true for the Protestant reformers themselves. They looked at the church in their day and saw a burning need for reformation, a need to align both doctrine and practice with the clear teaching of Scripture and in keeping with the tradition of the ancient church.

And this is what it means to be Protestant today—to be always reforming ourselves in the light of God's revealed Word. Thanks for joining us today on Renewing Your Mind. The message you just heard is from Dr. Godfrey's series on the whole of church history. This study includes 73 messages and would be great for personal or group study for those interested in learning more about the history of the church down through the ages.

You can get this entire digital series today for your donation. And you'll also receive a digital study guide to help you work through each one of the messages. Just go to renewingyourmind.org to make your gift, and we'll send you both the digital teaching series and the study guide as well. And thank you for your generosity. What caused the Protestant Reformation?

That's the question that we'll be exploring next week as we continue our study in church history here on Renewing Your Mind.