What happened to the generations after the Reformers (1500s)? The first post-Reformational wave that found the theological shoreline of the Church might be called: Classic Protestant Orthodoxy (A.D. 1550-1700, particularly the English Puritans of the 1600s).
In the 1600s, God gifted His Church with a number of great creeds and confessions in which the doctrines of the Reformers were categorized more systematically. The writers of the creeds and confessions were the spiritual children and grandchildren of the Reformers. While these men were decidedly reformed theologically, there was a slight measure of discontinuity with the Reformers. This discontinuity might be summarized like this: “The Reformers confessed their beliefs; the Protestant Scholastics believed their confessions.” This era reintroduced a measure of the Aristotelianism of Aquinas.
On a personal note: The English Puritans of the 1600s are among my favorite Christians in one of my favorite periods of Church History. To read more about the Puritans, I highly recommend either of the following two books: “A Quest For Godliness” by J.I. Packer (Crossway Books, 336 pages), and “Who Are The Puritans?” by Erroll Hulse (Evangelical Press, 197 pages). Warning: the Puritans are nothing like the caricaturizations that vilified the true Puritans that most today swallow without investigating the truth!
Further, 17th century confessions are of supreme value for at least two reasons. First, they were written by teams of the brightest and most articulate minds in Church history. Second, they give the modern Church a sound and solid rock on which to anchor our beliefs and practices. This is supremely important in our day when so many ignorantly and pridefully desire to cast off anything old, in favor of anything that is new—no matter how unbiblical, untested, and downright foolish it might be.
Next time: Reaction to Protestant Orthodoxy (Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries).