“The Influence of Patristic Literature upon the Reformation”, Part 2

Nathan Rinne has just published Part 2 of a series with the rough title of “The Influence of Patristic Literature upon the Reformation”:

“In his groundbreaking work on the Italian monk and theologian Ambrose Traversari (1386-1439) Charles L Stinger, professor of history at Buffalo University, describes the revival of patristic studies at the beginning of the 15th century.

According to Stinger, significant catalyst for that revival was the desire on the part of humanists to confront Aristotelian scholastic theology with what they considered to be a superior alternative.

While Stinger’s treatment of the topic ends with the Council of Basel-Ferrara-Florence (1431-47), he makes the somewhat startling claim that a revival in patristic studies would continue all the way into the 17th century as a discernable conflict between patristic and scholastic theology, a conflict that would only come to an end when Protestant theologians “began to return to [Aristotelian] dialectics to analyze the orthodox creedal formulations of the Augsburg Confession and Heidelberg Catechism.”…

Read the entire piece here.

Here is Part 1: “Was a significant aspect of the Reformation a revival of patristic theology?”