The reformation was an argument within western Christianity, not a rejection of all that had gone before. The Reformation is more easily understood as a convulsion that was from the beginning horribly flawed, however great the benefits it brought. The Reformation gave us the idea of progress: the hope that the future might be better than the past, and fundamentally different to it. For one of the things that the Reformation, which may have given us the idea of progress, makes clear, is that progress does not proceed by rational means. As Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch has argued, the actions of the reformers and their enemies were determined by their theological beliefs.

Source: The Guardian October 30, 2017 19:18 UTC