In his recent scholarly study Professor Gerhart Ladner has delineated the Christian idea of reform is it was expressed and acted upon in the Patristic Age. As a study of the mediaeval period readily indicates, the idea of reform, written of in diverse ways and manifested in a multitude of movements, was also of major significance for the earlier and high middle ages. The efforts of these pages will be directed toward an analysis and exposition of reform ideology in the thought of one very interesting and versatile man of the twelfth century—Anselm of Havelberg.

The writings of the Bohemian Brethren dating from the sixteenth century and the end of the fifteenth accuse the founding generation of their Unitas of a spirit-breaking perfectionism and an unwarranted idealism (“high thinking”) about the moral achievements, or inner “corrrection” (opraveni) available to those born anew in Christ. According to the later documents, the expectations which were placed upon the early Brethren by their spiritual leaders were “above measure and sobriety,” made them live in constant fear and anxiety, and took away from them the hope of salvation. The revolution which took place within the Unitas toward the end of the fifteenth century liberated the Brethren from the demand to carry out to the letter the injunctions of the Sermon on the Mount as spelled out in Matthew 5: 21–48, permitting them to have an active part in the political and social order of the day. It also released them from the apparently unbearable pressure to show their new birth by lives free from sin. The revolutionary official Agreement of 1495 setting aside the authority of the Brethren's older writings refers to the abiding frailty of even the greatest saints and states that the hope of salvation cannot be based on the achievement of perfection by the Christian.

In his inaugural address at the Union Theological Seminary, Robert T. Handy called attention to the present possibility of reexamining the whole course of church history from unitive perspectives. Handy pointed out that “the church historian in an ecumenical era can with particular profit devote special attention to the unitive hopes, dreams, and actions of the past.”

R. G. Collingwood has suggested that the basic contrast between the Greek view of nature and what he calls the Renaissance view, springs from the difference between their respective analogical approaches to nature. Whereas, he argues, the Greek view of nature as an intelligent organism was based on an analogy between the world of nature and the individual human being, the Renaissance view conceived the world analogically as a machine. Instead of being regarded as capable of ordering its own movements in a rational manner, and, it might be added, according to its immanent laws, the world, to such a view, is devoid both of intelligence and life, the movements which it exhibits are imposed from without, and “their regularity due to 'laws of nature' likewise imposed from without.” Coiling- wood concludes, therefore, that this view presupposed both the human experience of designing and constructing machines, and the Christian idea of a creative and omnipotent God.

It is being said on every hand that the church is remiss in its moral responsibilities in our time. The church is conspicuous because of its failure to give ethical perspectives either to the world revolution of Asians, Africans, and Latin Americans rising to prominence or to America's revolution of minority groups. There are many to bemoan, however, and few to offer constructive solutions.

Research in the realm of Mennonite thought, history and biography has been increasing since the beginning of this century and particularly since World War II. Approximately 120 doctoral dissertations alone were written in Europe and America since World War II dealing with some aspect of Anabaptism-Mennonitism. Numerous factors could be given as reasons. In Europe some confessional and denominational prejudices are disappearing because of the changing pattern of the European religio-cultural and political life. Some liberal Protestant theologians have become interested in the Left Wing Reformation and stimulated research in this field. On the other hand, the more tradition- bound scholars also have inspired the younger generation to investigate Anabaptism. The improved status of the Free Church in Europe has, since the great upheavals resulting from World Wars I and II, stimulated research. The old notion that the state church is the church and the splinter groups are sects is on its way out in European thinking. In America the theological and denominational atmosphere has more or less been of the nature of “to believe and let believe.” Anabaptism, as a Left Wing of the Reformation, has found more attention in the realm of research than any other group of its size since World War II.