The Earliest Protestants and the Reformation of Education -- By: Mark A. Noll
Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 43:1 (Fall 1980)
Article: The Earliest Protestants and the Reformation of Education
Author: Mark A. Noll
WTJ 43:1 (Fall 1980) p. 97
The Earliest Protestants and the Reformation of Education*
It is now nearly 500 years since Martin Luther, the pioneer of the Protestant Reformation, was born. At Luther’s birth in 1483 the first voyage of Christopher Columbus to the uncharted New World was still nine years away. When Luther became a Roman Catholic monk in 1505, the first permanent settlement in British North America at Jamestown was still a century into the future. When Luther appeared before the German emperor in 1520 to declare that his “conscience was captive to the Word of God,” it was 110 years before the start of Puritan migration to America. When Luther wrote his first work on education in 1524, it was over 110 years before the Puritan authorities in Massachusetts passed the first American law concerning the education of children. And today it is over 300 years from the time of that law.
The Reformation, in short, took place a long time ago. Its world was greatly different from our own. Having admitted this, however, it does not mean that there are no lessons for us from that time. To the contrary, the commitments and actions of the Protestant reformers offer us much for modern Christians to ponder and, often, to imitate. This is particularly true for educational concerns. The reformers did not know how the world in general and the Christian church in particular would develop after their time. Nevertheless, their writings and actions offer sound guidelines for modern believers concerned about the place of education in a Christian view of life.
* This study was originally prepared in a slightly different form for the Christian Education Association as part of its efforts to increase an understanding of Christian education among the Christian public.
WTJ 43:1 (Fall 1980) p. 98
The Revolutionary Character of the Reformation and Its Threat to Education
The message of the Reformation was the message of the Christian gospel.1 As always when the gospel is proclaimed in its fullness, there were revolutionary results. The recovery of a Reformed Christian faith called for radical changes in the personal lives, the churches, and the society of the sixteenth century. Each of the Reformation’s main commitments—to justification by faith, to the priesthood of Christian believers, and to the ultimate authority of the Bible—led inevitably to new ways of looking at life.
The reformers taught, first, that salvation was God’s work from first to last. Justification came from God who in his mercy reached out to sinful mankind through his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. This biblical view of salvation—sola gratia, sola fide—revolutionized the ...
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