Primary Authors & Sources
From the German and Swiss Reformations through Scotland and the English martyr tradition, students read the sixteenth-century recovery of the gospel in its narrative, confessional, and martyrological forms. J. H. Merle D’Aubigné’s History of the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century is the classic narrative sweep from Luther’s Germany outward—events, princes, and the recovery of the gospel. Philip Schaff’s History of the Christian Church volumes on the German and Swiss Reformations (VII–VIII) supply the standard Protestant church-history account of doctrine, worship, and confessional formation. Thomas M. Lindsay’s History of the Reformation gives a denser modern survey of continental and British Protestantism. Thomas M’Crie’s Life of John Knox anchors the Scottish Reformation in a pastoral-political biography indispensable for Reformed identity. John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments preserves the English Protestant memory of persecution and confession under the cross. Together they serve preaching and teaching that know why the Reformation happened and what it cost.
What You Will Study
Students study the sixteenth-century Reformation in its Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, and Radical expressions, examining how God recovered the gospel of grace through Scripture, preaching, and confessional formation. The course covers Luther's breakthrough on justification, Calvin's institutional and theological labors, Zwingli and Bullinger in Zurich, the English Reformation, and Anabaptist movements with careful Reformed assessment of each stream. Readings include primary sources from Reformers alongside the Augsburg Confession, Heidelberg Catechism, and Thirty-Nine Articles. Students analyze political, economic, and technological factors while insisting that theological conviction drove the era's defining conflicts. Particular attention falls on sola scriptura, sola fide, solus Christus, sola gratia, and soli Deo gloria as the Reformation's enduring legacy for evangelical faith.
Course Objectives
Objectives include narrating major Reformation events and figures with chronological accuracy, comparing Lutheran and Reformed doctrines of justification, sacraments, and church, evaluating the Radical Reformation's contributions and errors, and articulating why the Reformation remains essential for Protestant identity. Students will write essays on indulgences, the authority of Scripture, and confessional Protestantism with primary source support. The course cultivates gratitude for martyrs and scholars who risked everything for gospel truth. Students will explain how the Reformation shaped Bible translation, congregational singing, and pastoral ministry patterns still visible today. Assessments require fair engagement with Catholic counter-reformation arguments and Reformed responses.
Ministry & Life Application
Reformation history anchors contemporary Protestants in the gospel recovered at great cost, equipping leaders to defend biblical authority and grace against recurring works-righteousness. House church pastors in the Florida Keys stand in a lineage of believers who chose Scripture and Christ over corrupt tradition. Pastoral ministry gains courage from knowing that ordinary pastors and laypeople changed history through faithful preaching and martyrdom. This course inspires confessional clarity in worship, membership, and discipleship. Congregations thrive when elders can tell the Reformation story as their own story of God's mercy breaking through human religion to save sinners by faith alone.