QOTD - Kümmel on the Reformation and Tradition
Concerning the Reformation’s call to go back to the scriptures Kümmel says,
Martin Luther declared before the Reichstag at Worm in 1521 that he eblieved neither the pope nor the councils alone, but only Holy Scripture and convincing arguments, and the toher reformers in similar fashion proclaimed the Bible as the sole authority over against the church’s teaching. While in this way the Bible was placed in the center as sole authority in such unprecended clarity, the rejection of the authority of the churchly tradition in favor of the Bible’s solitary authority by the reformation theology yet in essence was directed only against the doctrine and form of the medieval church, and for the reformers as for Protestant orthodoxy down to the middle of the 18th century, the conviction stood firm that the teaching of the Bible was in agrreement with the outlook of the faith and the confession of the early church.
Werner Georg Kümmel, The Theology of the New Testament, p. 14