18 - The Reformed Tradition

Summary

The Reformed tradition, from the beginning, systematically refashioned medieval Catholicism according to what it believed to be the pattern laid out in the Bible and the early church. Reformed Christians saw Scripture as a comprehensive manual for Christian faith with relevance for political and social issues as well as strictly theological ones. Compared to other Christian traditions, they gave the Old Testament more direct relevance to life in Christian community and spoke of the entire sweep of salvation history as the story of one people of God – heirs of the same promises, subject to the same judgments. This habit powerfully influenced not only the theology of American Protestantism, but Americans’ sense of their identity as a nation. The polarity between the desire for “more light” and confessional Reformed orthodoxy defines the space in which all versions of Reformed Protestantism exist.