Summary: This episode of CS is titled Erasmus. As we begin this 86th episode, I once again want to do a brief, and I promise it will be brief, summary of the threads that conspired to weave the tapestry of the Reformation. Others might refer to them less as threads that weaved a tapestry as those that frayed in the unraveling of the Church caused by those trouble-makers called the Reformers. The reason I feel compelled to do all this summarizing as we launch into the Reformation period in Europe is because of the massive sea-change that’s coming in Church History & the need to understand it wasn’t just some malcontents who woke open day and decided to bail on a healthy church. Things had been bad for a long time and the call for reform had been heard for a couple hundred years. The Western European Church of the 14th & 15th C’s experienced a major crisis of authority. This crisis came from challenges both within and without. They combined to plant seeds of doubt in the minds of many about the credibility and legitimacy of Church leaders. Let’s review some of the things they’d done, or that happened to the Church, that created the crisis. (more…)
