Author:
Volker LEPPIN, Horace Tracy Pitkin Professor of Historical Theology, School of Divinity, Yale University, US.
Abstract:
The historical process from the late Middle Ages to the Reformation is usually considered to be a break. In fact, this is not historically true. Rather, the late Middle Ages collided between centralization and de-centralization, the immediacy and mediation of salvation, and the Reformation cannot be seen unilaterally as a confrontation of the immediacy of de-centralization against the centralization and mediation of Roman Catholicism. Both trends are present, both within Catholicism and among the many streams of the Reformation. It is from the tension-filled medieval church that the modern diverse denominations emerged. There is not an absolute break between modern denominations and the medieval church.
Keywords:
centrality, decentralization, immediacy, mediation, polarity
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