Sword & Trowel 2018: Issue 1 GREAT ADVANCES


In this article, we will be looking at some of the seeds of Christian thought and practice that were sown or scattered by the Reformation, but did not immediately take root and bear fruit. It would belong to a subsequent generation to reap the harvest.


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INCE NO historian is neutral in his or her beliefs and values, but always works from within a par-


ticular worldview, I will be speaking here from within my own under- standing of what constitutes the best kind of Christian thought and prac- tice. And as I am a Reformed Baptist, this unavoidably colours what I see as seeds that later bore good fruit. One further qualifi cation: when I speak of seeds of Christian thought and practice scattered by the Reformation, I am referring to what historians call the Magisterial Reformation. That is to say: the Reformation as given a voice by Reformers like Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin, who embraced an organic alliance between church and state for the purpose of Christianising society. In this outlook, church and state were practically two sides of a single coin. That coin was the whole body of citizens in any given political


SOWN BY THE REFORMATION


– by Dr Nick Needham –


entity, from the smallest free city (like Zwingli’s Zurich) to the largest nation-state (such as the England of Queen Elizabeth I). The whole citizen body was re-


garded as Christian by profession; the twin institutions of church and state were different manifestations of that Christian citizen body. Each institution – the ecclesiastical and the governmental – had its own purpose, but both institutions comprised the same body of people. There were admittedly different views among the Magisterial Reform- ers about how exactly church and state should connect with each other. In particular, the mature Lutheran view came to be that the Christian state should regulate the affairs of the church, whereas the mature Re- formed view argued for institutional independence of each from the other, so that the church should regulate its own affairs. But both Lutheran and Reformed accepted that church and state were coextensive within a single citizen body. This was in spite of the best insights of Martin Luther’s theology. Now I am sure we know that the Radical Reformation, especially in its Anabaptist form, mounted a sus- tained frontal challenge to this whole


Great Advances Sown by the Reformation page 15


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