The Reformation's Continuity With Earlier History

We've written a lot over the years about the Reformation's deepest roots, such as the Biblical and patristic ones. I want to quote John Davis concerning some examples of roots in the late medieval era, including among some individuals and groups who survived until the time of the Reformation.

His comments are relevant to a couple of controversies that have been getting a lot of attention in conservative Protestant circles in recent weeks. One of Joe Schmid's videos discussing his conversion to Roman Catholicism refers to how Protestantism supposedly "comes out of nowhere". Some of the responses to Gavin Ortlund's recent video on prayer to saints have suggested that nobody opposed the practice early on or that only Gnostics or similar sources did so. I've given many examples of church fathers and other pre-Reformation sources who were much more credible than Gnostics and agreed with Protestants in opposing prayer to saints and angels. See here. Since this post is focused on late medieval sources, see my discussions of the Waldensians here, the Lollards here, and the Hussites here. I'll be saying more about issues like these later this year, but, for now, here are some of Davis' comments:

"As more evidence comes to light, it appears that English Protestantism first flowered in areas having heterodox traditions [Lollards, etc.]. In the eighteenth century the Revd. John Lewis collected material for his Brief History of the English Anabaptists which included evidence of the Kentish and Norfolk sects, finding 'the Religion of the Protestants no Novelty'. Dr. Collinson has noted the Lollard antecedents underlying centres of Elizabethan Puritanism; the textile villages of the Stour Valley that sustained the Dedham Conference, and Cranbrook, the home of William Carder the weaver who had been the most important heretic of Archbishop Warham's persecution in 1511. In addition the Puritan leaders in London held cures in the part of the metropolis where the old Lollard conventicles had flourished, in particular St. Giles Cripplegate and All Hallows Honey Lane. Similarly, Dr. Thomson has summed up the legacy of later Lollardy as anti-sacerdotalism, anticlericalism, anti-papalism and puritanism....The Bohemian knights who waited upon Luther at Worms had behind them the influence of Hus, and the English reformers similarly had the tradition of Wyclif." (Heresy And Reformation In The South East Of England, 1520-1559 [Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press Inc., 1983], 2-3, 27)

Those are just some examples among many more that could be cited. And the connections involve more than just groups like the Lollards and Hussites. There were significant sympathies with the Reformation even among some of the people who remained Roman Catholic after the Reformation began. On issues where an anti-Protestant consensus eventually formed in support of Roman Catholic belief prior to the Reformation, there were other people who disagreed with that consensus earlier, centuries before the Reformation (e.g., opposition to prayer to saints and angels and the veneration of images leading up to the Second Council of Nicaea and afterward).

Late Medieval And Reformation Sources On The Perpetual Virginity Of Mary

TurretinFan and Dan Chapa recently produced a video discussing the diversity of views of the perpetual virginity of Mary held by sources of the late medieval and Reformation eras. It draws on some of the material in my recent posts here, here, and here.

The Diversity Of Views Of The Perpetual Virginity Of Mary In The Late Medieval And Reformation Eras (Part 2)

People have taken a lot of different positions on the perpetual virginity of Mary. A wide variety of views is found in the historical record during the timeframes I'm addressing. You could believe that Mary didn't have sexual intercourse, but reject her virginity in partu. You could believe in her perpetual virginity, yet not think that rejecting it makes somebody a non-Christian. You could affirm her perpetual virginity or oppose it to different degrees. You could be agnostic on the subject. And so on.

This post will discuss some examples of individuals who opposed the perpetual virginity of Mary. The next post will address sources who took other positions that are significant in one way or another.

More Pre-Reformation Support For Reformation Beliefs Among The Lollards

I've discussed their support for Reformation views in other posts, like here and here. And here's one about a book on Lollard heresy trials in the first half of the fifteenth century.

Limits On Our Knowledge Of Pre-Reformation History

It's common for critics of Protestantism to claim that various Protestant beliefs are absent in the historical record prior to the Reformation, were only held by a small number of people during that timeframe, etc. For documentation that those Protestant beliefs were more widespread than critics suggest, see here. But another point that should be made is that we sometimes have significantly little record of individuals and groups who plausibly, sometimes probably, held the views in question.

For example, I've written a lot over the years about the beliefs of pre-Reformation groups like the Waldensians and Lollards. Yet, it's often the case that what we know about them comes from their opponents. We're going by trial records, for instance. Think of Norman Tanner's Heresy Trials In The Diocese Of Norwich, 1428-31 (London, England: Royal Historical Society, 1977). In their trial records, the Lollards Tanner wrote about were frequently asked about certain issues: who we should pray to, purgatory, issues pertaining to the sacraments, etc. But there were other issues that were never brought up, at least in the English portions of the trial records Tanner cites. I've documented widespread opposition to and agnosticism about the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Mary among mainstream patristic and medieval sources, for example, even into the second millennium of church history. How likely is it that Lollards who opposed praying to Mary, opposed venerating images of her, and so on never opposed the idea that she was immaculately conceived or the idea that she was bodily assumed to heaven? But if the church officials who conducted the trials didn't ask them about those issues, and we have no or inadequate records of the beliefs of those Lollards elsewhere, then we don't have any explicit testimony from them on those subjects. We should keep in mind how incomplete our records sometimes are and how plausible it is that the beliefs in question were more widespread than we can document with explicit testimony.

Were Christians united about a physical presence in the eucharist before the Reformation?

It's often claimed that every Christian, almost every Christian, or some other widespread consensus believed in a physical presence in the eucharist prior to the Reformation. Sometimes it's even suggested that a physical presence is the simple, literal reading of scripture that the universal church held to before Protestantism came along. I want to discuss some evidence to the contrary.

Other Anti-Roman-Catholic Views Of The Pre-Reformation Lollards

My last post discussed their views on the relationship between baptism and justification. There are many other topics on which they disagreed with Roman Catholicism.

The Oxford Dictionary Of The Christian Church (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) goes as far as to say that, for the Lollards, "The Scriptures were the sole authority in religion and every man had the right to read and interpret them for himself." (994) J. Patrick Hornbeck's book cited in my last post refers to affirmations of sola scriptura or something similar by Lollards (A Companion To Lollardy [Boston, Massachusetts: Brill, 2016], 74, 141, 149, 170). He provides many examples of Lollard rejection of the papacy and other Roman Catholic authorities.

There was Lollard support for the concept of an invisible church, consisting only of believers (113, 116, 170).

In my last post, I quoted Susan Royal commenting, "Every one of the seven traditional sacraments of the medieval church was called into question or even rejected wholesale by some lollards." (Lollards In The English Reformation [Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 2020], approximate Kindle location 3678). See chapter 4 in her book for a discussion of many examples. I've already cited some of her comments on Lollard views of baptism and justification, in my last post. She also gives examples of rejection of infant baptism and belief in the salvation of unbaptized infants (3879). Some Lollards denied that there's a physical presence of Christ in the eucharist (3773). Royal refers to how some Lollard views "inclined closely to Zwingli's later view of the Lord's Supper" (3800). Hornbeck's book mentioned above gives some examples as well. He rightly notes that there was a diversity of views of the eucharist and a lot of controversies surrounding eucharistic issues in the centuries leading up to John Wycliffe's time and the Lollard movement that followed (29). Hornbeck writes, "Yet to the extent that it is possible to glimpse lollards' views on the eucharist, it may be a valid assessment that most lollards tended to take one of two positions on the sacrament: either they argued that while Christ is spiritually present in the eucharist, so also are the material substances of bread and wine; or else they described the sacrament in figurative terms, stating that it merely commemorates the Last Supper." (121) He refers elsewhere to Lollard views that "the eucharist is Christ's body in only a figurative sense" (123), "merely a memorial" (183). And "It would be tedious to recount in detail every case in which a defendant confessed to believing that the substances of bread and wine remain in the consecrated elements." (124) Much more could be cited. Royal's book also addresses the other sacraments and how Lollards viewed them.

Hornbeck refers to how some Lollards held a view of predestination similar to John Calvin's (112). Hornbeck describes a "scholarly commonplace" of viewing the Lollards as holding a view of predestination that anticipates Calvin's, though Hornbeck challenges that scholarly conclusion. He thinks some Lollards held a view like Calvin's, but that many didn't.

I'm just giving some representative examples among many more that can be found in sources like the ones I've cited. Elsewhere in Hornbeck's book, there are references to Lollard opposition to prayers to the dead (138) and the veneration of images (139-41), for example.

Justification Apart From Baptism Among Pre-Reformation Lollards

I've written a lot over the years in response to the false claim that nobody believed in justification through faith alone prior to the Reformation or between the time of the apostles and the Reformation. See here, for example. The claim often focuses on the relationship between baptism and justification. We'll be told that all of the church fathers believed in baptismal regeneration or that none of the patristic or medieval sources believed in justification apart from baptism, for example. In recent months, I've written some posts about support for justification through faith alone, including justification apart from baptism in particular, in the first two centuries of church history. See here, here, and here. What I want to do in this post is discuss some examples at the other end of the spectrum, from the closing years of the medieval era.