Reformed Baptist

JerryL · May 7, 2008

What is “Reformed"?

Generally, all the churches that grew from the sixteenth-century revolt against the Roman church, can be called reformed. However, the term "Reformed" specifically designates that branch of the Reformation of the western church originally characterized by a distinctively non-Lutheran, Augustinian sacramental theology with a high ecclesiology but little regard for ecclesiatical tradition that is not traceable to the Scriptures or the earliest church. Those churches in the "Reformed tradition" are regarded as being in the line of churches that grew from the Reform in certain Swiss free cities and cantons, in non-Lutheran Germany, and in Hungary, Bohemia, and southern France in the early and mid sixteenth century.

The leaders of this branch of the church understood themselves to be "reformed" in two ways: first, they were "reformed" from what they believed to be the defective practice of Christianity promulgated by the corrupt Roman Catholicism of the day. Sometimes, this position is summed up in the phrase "Ecclesia Reformata, semper reformanda," which means "the Reformed church, always to be reformed." In the context of the sixteenth century (and the mind of the Reformers) this phrase does not mean that the church is always morphing into something new with the passage of time (a common misconstrual in our own day). Instead, this seventeenth-century motto is consistent with the Reformers' idea that they were not innovating, but "turning again" to the form of the church and belief originated by Jesus Christ, lived out by the first disciples and early church, and born witness to in the writings of the Old and New Testaments shorn of later additions.

Second, as implied above, Reformed means rejecting the idea that tradition can provide a sufficient form for matters of belief. Instead, the Reformers insisted that "the Word of God" was the only ultimate source of appeal in matters of faith, and that all other sources of knowledge, including a church's tradition, had to appeal to this central source.

Where did Reformed theology originate?

John Calvin, perhaps the greatest theologian of the Reformed tradition, did not see himself as creating a new "school" of theology. He saw himself, and other Reformed pastors, as carrying on the work of the apostles. Even his own work as a sixteenth-century reformer was, in his view, derived from that of Martin Luther, who he termed "most respected father." Calvin's magnum opus, the Institutes of the Christian Religion, was not a work in which he advanced all his own ideas about the Christian faith, but freely used the work of other theologians from all periods of church history in order to construct his own theological system. Reformed theology is, then, first and foremost a Christian Theology, not meant to cast away the ancient learning of the church, but to draw it close and renew appreciation and allegiance to it.

No one should assume that Calvin either began the Reformed Tradition or that Calvinist perspectives constitute the totality of Reformed thought. Remember that when Calvin stopped in Geneva in 1536 (having only recently come into the Reform himself), he was prevailed upon to stay by Guilliaume Farel. Farel was one of the founders of the Reform in Geneva, which happened the year before Calvin's arrival. In Zurich, Heinrich Bullinger, took over the position of lead pastor for that city in 1531, 12 years after Huldrych Zwingli initiated the Reform in that city. When Calvin was banished from Geneva in 1538, he went to Strasbourg where he learned immense amounts from the leading pastor there, Martin Bucer. Bucer had fostered the Reformation of the city in 1523.
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