Question

What basic ideas did most of the protestant reformers share?

Answer 1

Key ideas shared by many of the Protestant reformers:

- The Bible is the source of truth.  There were efforts by John Wycliffe in England and Martin Luther in Germany to translate the Bible into the language of their own people for people to learn God's truth for themselves.

- Salvation is a gift of God's grace, rather than something earned by human efforts.  (The reformers still preached that we should do good works, but did not claim those works as a source of our salvation, but a fruit of it.)

- The office of the papacy was damaging to the church. Many reformers saw what the Bible called "Antichrist" in the position and actions of the popes.

- The clergy are not of higher value than lay people in the church.  The church consists of all God's people together.  And the church exists where God's Word exists, not just where the Roman Catholic Church was in place.

Those are a few ideas espoused by Protestant reformers.