Inventing Authority: The Use of the Church Fathers in Reformation Debates over the Eucharist

Introduction: Reformation of the Ancient Tradition, Interpreting the Fathers in the Eucharistic Debates

1 Z Reformation of the Ancient Tradition Interpreting the Fathers in the Eucharistic Debates Introduction Any notion of the Protestant Reformation as a religiously homogeneous, anti-establishment, anti-tradition movement is too simplistic. While the Protestant reformers’ conception of sola scriptura established the Bible as the primary standard authorizing Christian theology and practice, they did not conceive of rejecting wholesale the history of the church’s tradition . In fact, many reformers considered the early church fathers secondary authorities to Scripture as well as important teachers of biblical interpretation . Both Roman Catholics and Protestants found themselves needing to use authorities in the context of formal argumentation as a means of proving theological truth.1 Although the reformers cited the ancient Christian writers initially against the scholastic writers of the late medieval and early modern Catholic Church, the fathers quickly became tools of criticism within Protestant circles. The debates among Protestants demonstrated their willingness to wrestle with ancient writings, not to eradicate tradition but to reinterpret it in such a way as to claim it as their inheritance. Because the concentration of patristic references was highest in polemical writings, an examination of reformers’ use of the church fathers ought to take into account those places where references appear most frequently. In the midst of polemical debates when the weight of consensus was lacking , reformers recalled the patristic sources to serve as subsidiary authorities under Scripture. These ancient Christian writers were initially considered helpful authorities because they (especially Augustine) were seen as reliable interpreters of Scripture. As exemplary scriptural exegetes, they were the means of demonstrating the correct understanding of Scripture and 2 Inventing Authority therefore correct theology. References to the fathers became a way to substantiate one’s own reading of Scripture or to reject an opponent’s interpretation. One notable place in which the fathers figured heavily was the controversy over the Lord’s Supper, not simply between Catholics and Protestants , but also among the Protestants themselves. Reformers were not willing to give up the ancient authorities easily because, as challengers to the standard orthodoxy, they needed to reinterpret the church’s past and construct a “new” ancient tradition. What was at stake in the Reformation conflicts over the Eucharist was not a binary distinction between what is Catholic versus what is Protestant, but a definition of Christian orthodoxy that divided Protestant nations, towns, and families. In continental Europe, Protestant groups, particularly Lutherans and Calvinists (Reformed), developed alongside one another, sometimes in cooperation or coexistence and at other times in conflict. This book examines three sixteenth-century Lutheran and Reformed debates over the Lord’s Supper and the use of the fathers in these controversies . On the one hand, references to the ancient fathers are nothing new, since the medieval church had based its tradition on their works for centuries, and many Protestant reformers had first learned of the church fathers while they were still Catholics. On the other hand, the desire for change precipitated a reevaluation of the present. Against the backdrop of Renaissance humanist training, which prized antiquity, looking back to the time of the early church fathers (when Scripture alone was not conclusive) gave reformers a starting place to rewrite, or at least reinterpret, history and to present a tradition that supported new theological views. Recent Scholarship Scholars have generally recognized the work of humanists in providing increased accessibility to early Christian sources and fueling interest in them. Yet what kind of value did the ancient fathers hold for the Protestant reformers and why were the fathers most often recalled in the midst of polemical debates? While the interest in patristic sources was not new, some ancient Christian writers were being recalled in a new way—to provide ancestral roots to an emerging Protestant tradition. Medieval thinkers had also cited the church fathers, and many Protestant reformers were first exposed to the fathers through medieval sources, such as canon law or Peter Lombard’s Sentences. Gordon Rupp points out that, although the authority of Scripture is primary for the reformers, the appeal to the “old Fathers” is of genuine importance and “the typical scholarly work of Introduction 3 the 16th century is peppered with classical allusions and garnished with patristic quotations.”2 For years scholars have discussed the significance of the fathers for the Reformation, and many recent studies have focused on a specific reformer’s use of the fathers. A few books in this field...