Worldviews: The Reformation as a Revolution in Worldview

 The Reformation as a Revolution in Worldview

The reformation movements which aimed to reform the church were begun by two theologians, Martian Luther and John Calvin in the early 16th century. The reformers see the church in polluted position. Many of Church practices were not from the bible but derived from Philosophical conclusions. Additionally, a growing number of scholars in the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries realized the Bible had lost its unique authoritative position in theology and in thinking about the Christian life and worldview issues. Prior to scholastic movement, medieval theologians use the bible to create theology. However, the use of Bible in making theology become during scholastic movement.
                    On the other hand the biblical humanists also laid great foundations for reformation to be born. Biblical humanist strongly emphasized to going back to original Biblical languages and the writing of the early church fathers. The combination of reformers’ emphasis on the authority of the scripture and biblical humanist’s proposal to go back to the original sources was clashed with the Church’s medieval synthesis and scholastic movement.
                     Under reformation worldview the scripture is the measuring standard for the practices of the church. For example, Luther’s statement of justification by faith was one of the most noticeable confrontations to the practices of the church in their time. Under the leadership of Calvin reformation become stronger together with five solas.
               Reformation worldview impact the church and her people to give their attention back to the scripture. According to the bible reformers reestablished some of the most important doctrine such as salvation by grace alone, justification by faith, universal priesthood of every believer, and supreme authority of the scripture. However, reformers also raise many issues and most obvious problem after reformation is interpretation of the scriptures. Two great divisions on interpretation of the scripture arise together with reformation such as Arminianism and Calvinism. The interpretation of the scripture becomes the biggest issues in post-reformation. Therefore, in post-reformation era bible interpretation from Greek and Hebrews become prominence in Christian academia. The interpretation on Christ’s atonement for man’s sin is one of the most obvious examples to see how much interpretation is important.  Some believe definite atonement while others hold on to limited atonement. Therefore, reformation worldview on God, the scripture, and man impact their interpretation of the scripture.

Ref:  
Revolutions in Worldview: Understanding the Flow of Western Thought. Editor Andrew Hoffecker