Traditional Christian Thought in Early Modernity

Abstract

Although the Protestant Reformation sought to turn to the church of antiquity as the desired ecclesiological and theological model for the newly established Protestant communities, the vital issues of patristic theology as reflected in Gregory Nazianzen and his Christological focus were no longer a problem in the sixteenth century. The doctrine of God as Trinity and the key aspects of Jesus Christ’s hypo-static union had been long established despite the constant claims of antitrinitarians and unitarians embodied, for instance, by the works of Michael Servetus. The very problem that bothered the Reformation was not Christology but rather ecclesiology. Everyone knew who Jesus Christ was, but not everybody was convinced about how he should be followed. The question of following Christ by attending the ancient Catholic church or by joining the new Protestant communities proved to be an issue needing a great deal of theological reflection. In addition to this, it was not enough to join either of the two main denominations; what really counted was how believers ought to behave in the churches they eventually decided to attend. This is why the doctrine of the church and the teaching of ecclesiastical discipline became a key aspect of Protestant theology in the sixteenth century and, at the same time, another classical example of traditional Christianity.