This paper deals with the nature and character of the Reformation, judging from various interpretations on the european Reformation. Scholars have pursued the influences of the Reformation on social conditions in medieval Europe nations and of the Reformation on modern developments. In history of interpretation on the Reformation, there are two salient contrasts. Protestant scholars have argued that the Reformation was the restoration of the original purity of the Christian church, while the Roman Catholic scholars generally regarded the Reformation as religious division or schism. In more recent scholarship the evaluations of the Reformation has given way to recognition that there was an attempt to term with the Reformation in sense of the ecumenism. Therefore the Reformation movement are not fully understood if seen only in terms of Christendom split without account being taken of its historical, political, social, and economic contexts and influences.
This paper notes that an ecumenical movement appeared in the sixteenth century in order to repair the breach of Western Christendom. The paper demonstrates that the nature and character of the Reformation is closely interacted with modern developments of Western society. To understand correctly the Reformation, it is necessary to take account of both Christian church and cultural conditions and many things that affect each other. The paper argues that spirit of the Reformation is not limited to the european society of the sixteenth century, but it applies to the regions which needs to change and to reform.
Pointing out that there are some cautions in trying to understand the Reformation, this paper contends that the Reformation was not division of Western Christendom, but watershed of history. The Reformers tried to shape the key to the faithfulness of the church in new paradigm. They never were dissidents or heresies but revolutionaries who shout the renewal of the religion and society as a whole.

• 김주한(한신대학교) | Kim, Joo Han