| Thomas Netter, the leading intellectual opponent of John Wyclif (1330-1384) and his followers the Lollards, is usually viewed as an advocate of "Tridentine theology." It has previously been believed that he opposed Wyclif's notion that all truth was contained in Scripture (sola scriptura) with the doctrine, later elaborated at the Council of Trent (1545-1563), that Christian truth was contained "partly in Scripture and partly in the Tradition of the church.";This study shows that Netter, who in his personal life followed the traditional English Carmelite roles of preacher, confessor, public servant, and controversialist, was also theologically quite conservative. Far from proposing a new system to refute Wyclif's claims, Netter in effect used Wyclif's own weapons of Scripture and patristic commentary to arrive at exactly opposite ecclesiological conclusions.;Underlying their debate was the concept of the "primitive church" (ecclesia primitiva). Wyclif claimed that the church of his own day had departed from the pristine faith of the ancient church and had fallen into corruption and decay. Netter, on the other hand, used Scriptural and patristic witnesses to point out the essential continuity between the church of his time and the ancient Apostolic church. By so doing he showed clearly how an historic exemplar could be used, not just as an instrument of radical dissent, but also as a buttress of orthodoxy.;The result of his insight was a massive compendium of ecclesiology, the Doctrinale Antiquitatum Fidei Catholicae Ecclesiae, a work which provided theological and historical justification for many doctrines and practices of the church, especially those which had come under special attack from the Lollard heretics: the doctrine of Eucharist, the power of the papacy, and the legality of mendicant religious Orders. The Doctrinale was to play a major role in the suppression of the Lollards and was also influential in later controversies generated by the Protestant Reformation. |
