The Highway Forums General Discussion Open Forum Fathers of the Reformation

The Reformers were a team, and they are best understood as a team. Luther had the spark of insight; he was the most imaginative, the Reformer of penetrating genius. Crammer was the coutier among the Reformers. He knew how to manage the king and bring about reforms from the top. Melanchthon and Capito were more academic Reformers. They gave intellectual fiber to the Reformation. The quintessential scholar of the Reformation was undoudtebly Oecolampadius. Zwingli was the most politically astute, the Reformer who had a sense of the social implications of the Reformation. John Knox was the most daring piting himself against the House of Stuart and winning the whole of Scottland. Knox was an inspiring preacher as well as a man of action. But of all the Reformers, Calvin was the theologian. He was like Luther, a creative genius, but his genius was not to be found in imaginative flashes of insight, but in the systematic working out of the basic theology of the Reformation.