The logic of Calvin's reform
If Luther's reform was triggered by a critique of indulgences, Calvin's was triggered by a critique of idolatry.
This year’s Reformation 500 celebration is hitched to an iconic event with mythical overtones: that singular moment in the fall of 1517 when someone hammered a list of “95 Theses Against Indulgences” to the door of the Wittenberg castle church in Saxony. While the historical specificities of the event remain unclear—whether Martin Luther actually did the nailing himself or whether the theses were mailed to the archbishop of Mainz—the general scene has never failed to capture the imagination. A spirited monk in a relative outpost of the Holy Roman Empire, far from the Roman See, stood up to vast networks of power in order to theologically denounce what he saw as both financial and spiritual exploitation.
As an occasion to pause and consider what the Protestant reforms have meant to the world, this scene from 1517 makes as much sense as any. But it’s important to remember its relative arbitrariness. Reform had been a common watchword among European intellectuals since at least the emergence of the Franciscans in the 13th century. A number of distinct reform movements arose before Luther and many more after him, and for each of them reform meant something different. As a result, the time of Reformation continues to yield heterogeneous legacies, all equally worth parsing as we think about what reform means today.
As the recent campaign slogans “Change we can believe in” and “Make America great again” attest, calls for reform function as necessary prerequisites for entry into public life in our own day. And now, as always, reform can mean drastically different things. It’s crucial to read the fine print. What perceived corruptions make reform necessary? What strategies might work best to carry out needed reform? And—most importantly—to whom is reform accountable?
