Welcome back to Marscast, the podcast from MidAmerica Reformed Seminary, where we engage with theology, culture, and church history through a Reformed perspective. I'm your host, Jared Luchborn. Joining me once again is Dr. Alan Strange, president, interim president, and professor of church history here at MidAmerica. Thanks for joining me once again, Dr. Strange. Good to be with you. Hello to all of our listeners. Thank you for letting us come into your cars, your homes, your exercise rooms, wherever it is that you're listening to us. Thanks. In this episode, we're beginning an exciting new chapter in our series on church history as we explore the forerunners of the Reformation. Now, the Reformation is often seen as a turning point in the history of the church and the world, but how do we understand this monumental event? Was it the end of the Middle Ages or the beginning of the modern age? Scholars have different views, so Dr. Strange, enlighten us. Explore the various perspectives on the Reformation's place in history. Right, well, we probably will do a bit more of this when we get to the Reformation proper, so it's going to be just a bit now because we're still in the Middle Ages when we're talking about forerunners of the Reformation, we're still in the Middle Ages, and of course that's a whole question of maybe we stay in the Middle Middle Ages with the Reformation. That's part of what you're asking. But I don't consider, ever how you consider the Reformation, we're not there properly, of course, until we're at Luther. I know this gentleman knows it. He's a great student of church history. And by the way, you should listen to his podcast on that. Just a little plug. He is a good student of church history. He's the church historian's dream. because he takes it up himself. So yeah, there are different views of what's going on here. Let me just say this about the study of the Reformation as we move towards it, and I think it's good to talk about it at this point. Many secular historians, not Christian historians, but secularized historians, See the Reformation when you talk about that movement. I think it's helpful for our listeners to know, and this would then be true of really all of church history, but take a movement like the Reformation, the particular thing that happened as we see it in Luther, in Calvin, in Zwingli, in Knox, the so-called, those four magisterial reformers. Secular historians tend to see the Reformation as caused by all sorts of material as opposed to spiritual factors. In other words, many people talk about the political causes of the Reformation, the social causes of the Reformation. The Marxist historians, of course, talk about the economic causes of the Reformation. And even those who acknowledge, among these kinds of secular historians, who acknowledge the religious factor as a dominant factor, don't necessarily consider that or see the religious as really being a struggle over truth. In other words, it's just different people's religious views which impacted them. We think, as Christians, that this actually has to do with what the truth is, ultimately. That the Reformation was, in no small measure, a recovery of truths that had either lain dormant or had been neglected or had been developed in other ways. And so with that you get debated among historians of all sorts the question of whether the Reformation was the end of the Middle Ages. Some of the earlier sources of that, Ernst Trelsch, The great German sociological thinker, historian, argued, was a primary arguer, and many have followed in his train, that the Reformation is is kind of a culmination of the Middle Ages because the Middle Ages is seen particularly to be as an age of faith. It's often referred to as. And what you have once you get the Enlightenment and all of that is something more that gets tagged as an age of reason, right? And you get this whole dichotomy and what seems to be a war between reason and faith. So, Troutsch sees this as the the end of that period, kind of the summum, the high water mark. of this period of faith. And it is a matter of people contending. I mean, the people at the time thought they were contending for the truth. Luther didn't think this was a nothing argument. He thought it was a life or death matter of the truth. That's why he says, let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also, the body they may kill. God's truth abideth still. His kingdom is forever. And I take the trouble to quote that. I know we're not talking about Luther yet, But I think that's arguably one of the greatest lines in any hymn, because I think it's a good summary statement of the Christian faith. So yeah, so he would be one who would say it's the end, and Wilhelm Dillte, again going back into the 19th century, really particularly argues that it is the beginning of the modern era. And he argues it's the beginning of the modern era because there's this, there is the unraveling, there's the perception of the unraveling of, the beginning of the unraveling of Christendom, of the of the kind of project that was the Middle Ages, that you had in Aquinas, for example. So you have Luther telling people to search the scriptures and to follow them in terms of their conscience, to let their conscience be bound by the Word of God alone, not by what the Bishop of Rome says it means. So the crisis of authority that occurs in the Reformation, people often put it that way, is seen by a number as being emblematic of the modern era. This crisis of authority and questioning of it. So, that's why I think they would say it's particularly the beginning of the modern era. The question should be asked, what was going on in the world at this time? Because the Reformation didn't happen in a vacuum. Europe was undergoing profound changes with the rise of the Renaissance, which brought renewed interest in classical learning, art, humanism. How did these cultural shifts lay the groundwork for the religious upheaval that was to come? There's a lot to say here. Let me just say this. The Renaissance, the Reformation, the modern era did not spring full grown as Athena from the head of Zeus, so to speak. I think you're indicating that development. So let me just say a couple of things. The feudal system F-E-U-D-A-L, the feudal system, began to decline with the growth of trades, the rise of the gills, of banking, of printing, you can think of the Gutenberg press in the middle 1400s, and the growth of towns indicating that society was shifting from a more purely agricultural way of life to a way of life that would become more urban and industrial over time. Accompanying this were rapid social changes. You hadn't had, since the fall of the Roman Empire, in many places, a significant middle class. I mean, you did back in the time of the Roman Empire. And part of the dissolution of a society is the disappearance of the middle class. And now you have a rise of a middle class in Europe, in the towns and cities, and an increase of educational opportunities coupled with the rise of the professions. Not just the teaching profession, but we can think of doctors and lawyers and architects, those professions. Also going on in terms of the politics, an incipient nationalism was beginning. You could say it paralleled the weakening of the papacy. Maybe just speaking about that for a moment, the weakening of the papacy, you had had the so-called Avignon papacy from 1309 to 78, where because of French dominance, The papacy was taken out of Italy altogether, out of Vatican, but out of Italy and was relocated in the south of France. Now that's nice for vacationing, but it's not where the papacy had been, and that was quite a threat. And it returns to Rome, but there's all this back and forth And what you actually get, you get a council that's called in 1409 the Council of Pisa is called and it deposes a couple of people who are now claiming to be Pope. and names another, but none of them step back, and now you have the crisis of three popes. And the council, that's not regarded these days by the Roman Catholic Church, by the way, as a genuine council. They did assert the authority of the council over the pope, and then you had the Council of Constance in 1414 to 18, and the Council of Basel, which went through lots of changes from 1431 to 1449, those councils sought to establish Pisa, Constance, and Basel because of all of this confusion in the papacy, the papacy being carried to southern France, sought to establish the authority of councils over the papacy. So there was a desire, and this may be surprising to our listeners, but everybody in the church did not agree that in the Roman Catholic Church, that the Bishop of Rome was the undisputed head of the whole church, that they would say, yes, he had a proper sort of headship, but the real controlling authority and power in the church was an ecumenical council that would meet. But those councils were not able to carry the day. Ultimately, when all was said and done, it came back to the Pope again. But there was a lot of dissatisfaction in Europe with what they often would refer to the Pope as an Italian prince because he was so involved with politics, not to mention papal scandals. We'll say a little bit more about that. But in the midst of all this nationalism and the so-called Holy Roman Empire, we talked about that before, being weakened in the face of the national identities. Germany is not a unified nation. Italy is not a unified nation. That's not going to happen until the 19th century. But they're just getting senses in the duchies and in the provinces of those places of their own identity and not just being part of this Holy Roman Empire. The black death comes in 1348 to 49, and that's going to have enormous influence. It killed about a third of Europe. But what it did was it really changed the social and economic conditions. A lot of people died, and there was great hardship. But that paved the way for a lot of people, even in the countryside, to move into the towns and become more tradesmen, or to go into crafts, the guilds, really burgeoned after that. So you have all of this sort of stuff going on, and then you have the factors leading to the Reformation. So you've hinted at this as much. Before the Reformation took hold, there were deep problems within the church itself. What was wrong in and with the church during this period? Yeah, I think it's, Jared, safe to say something like this. Skeletons in the closet began to accumulate in the church, and then they weren't able to be kept in the closet. So things started to emerge, particularly, so with, you could say with morals and doctrine. Those are kind of the two areas. You can think of the earlier papal problems of conciliarism versus those who were curialists, the papal curia, that was his cabinet in Rome. and the Curialists wanted the Pope to be supreme against the Conciliarists. That gave way to scandalous papal immorality. Somebody like Alexander VI at the end of the 1400s had numerous mistresses and illegitimate children, and this was open, and he put those people in places even of authority in the church. And then you had somebody like Julius II who was so involved in the politics. You had the states there, the papal states, as they came to be called. So the Pope had actual control over a fairly good sized, a good chunk of land, not just in Vatican City, but around. If you go look at an old map, you could Google that and see where the papal states were exactly. So he's a potentate, a political potentate as well as that. And we'll hear a little bit more about Julius when we talk about Erasmus, because I want to read you something he wrote. But also with respect to doctrine then, You have a semi-Pelagianism comes to hold a lot of sway, not an Augustinianism of God takes the initiative, but some ways in which we can work for our own salvation. That comes into fore as well as all the problems with Mary. And I would say this, and we'll develop this more when we get to certain figures in the Reformation, but a sacramentalism or a sacerdotalism developed that gave short shrift to the work of the Holy Spirit in His sovereignty and human inability apart from the work of the Spirit, teaching that God's grace comes to us ex opera operato by the working of the work of the sacraments. I say we'll talk more about that, but those were some of the real problems with the church. Give us an early glimpse into the voices and movements that then paved the way for the Reformation. We'll explore them more in our next episode, but give us a clue here. Right. Well, there's folks like in England, Thomas Bradwardine. He's the Archbishop of Canterbury. Gregory of Remini in Italy and France, and then John Wycliffe, John Huss, and we'll talk also about Erasmus. As we've explored the historical context leading up to the Reformation, it's crucial to remember that the Church is always called to examine itself. The problems that Dr. Strange highlighted—moral corruption, doctrinal drift, and institutional politics—serve as a good reminder that every generation of believers must remain committed to biblical truth and spiritual integrity. The lesson for us today is clear. We must continually return to Scripture, allow the Holy Spirit to guide our understanding, and resist the temptation to prioritize institutional power or worldly influence over genuine spiritual transformation. As we see, the Reformation was a renewed commitment to the pure gospel of Jesus Christ, a commitment that calls each of us to humility, scriptural faithfulness, and a deep reliance on God's grace. Well, in our next installment, we'll look at the remarkable figures who challenged the church's status quo. We'll explore John Wycliffe, often called the Morning Star of the Reformation. We'll meet John Huss, who courageously carried forward Wycliffe's teachings, and discover colorful characters like Girolamo Savonarola and Erasmus, who, in their own way, challenged the church to return to its spiritual roots. I'm Jared Luchibor. This has been an episode of Marscast. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.