Christian Humanism and the Beginnings of the Protestant Reformation

This essay examines the relationship between Christian humanism and the Protestant Reformation. It argues that humanism furnished the educational, philological, and spiritual resources that shaped the reform movement, especially through renewed study of Scripture and the Church Fathers. The essay contends that Christian humanism provided the cultural and scholarly framework within which the Reformation arose and the network through which it spread, while the Reformation supplied the decisive theological force that gave humanism the means to reshape church and society.