Ryan Salayer
· 40w
So if I’m understanding you correctly then the goal of the reformation was to return to what the early church 33 AD and on would have been like? I’ve read writings from some church fathers in the ...
Not quite. The goal of the Reformation was not to return to what the early church 33 AD was like, that would be counter-productive. The Lord has grown his church over the years. Along the way, certain institutions have veered away from the 'straight and narrow.' The goal of the Reformation was to reform the church _according to Scripture_ which, consequenty, meant going back to an Augustinian understanding of grace.
By way of analogy, they saw that Rome was doing geometry wrong. They didn't return to addition: they trued-up Rome's faulty axioms to be in alignment with Scripture, then proceeded to do geometry better. None of them would have wanted to throw away all that the church had learned and refined in the difficult controversies of the first few centuries.