The Failure of the Protestant Reformation: An Observation Made in Fear and Trembling
As I read through the latest post at one of my favorite sites, a simple story about a unexciting church conference and an ordinary vote on whether the conference should merge with a neighboring one, it got me to thinking...
The more I read and study the Bible, the more I come to agree with Paul’s understanding of God’s master plan revealed and accomplished in the life of one specific Palestinian Jew, and the Church’s role within that plan, as Paul set forth most clearly in the Letter to the Ephesians:
With all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it.
Although I am the least of the saints, this grace was given to me to bring to the Gentiles the news of the boundless riches of Christ, and to make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things; so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.
The plan is to gather up all things in heaven and earth, in Jesus. One humanity. One church. One body, albeit in its “rich variety.” The Greek is polupoíkilos, a word that is difficult to translate but would be used to describe a garden consisting of flowers of every color imaginable. Paul is emphatic in Ephesians as well as throughout his other letters that “the Church” is to be one, one body, one entity, consisting of and bringing together the rich variety of all the peoples and cultures and languages of the world. It is to be the antithesis of the scattering of people at Babel. In Jesus, God shattered the bowl that the people who had been entrusted with His light had placed upon it, so that the whole house would now be able to see that light. The role of the church is to bring all of humanity, all those who have fled the house because of the darkness, back to the house, the one house. Because the ultimate role of the single, unified, catholic (again, with a small “c”) church in this world is precisely so that through that unified body, the principalities and powers who run this world, or think they do, can be shown that there is another King, and his name is Jesus son of Joseph, the crucified and risen one, the Messiah.
From the Trinitarian debates of the third and fourth centuries, to the Great Schism of the Eastern and Western Church, and most recently with the great split of Catholicism and Protestantism during the Reformation, the Church has placed the resolution of hugely important theological issues ahead of the even more enormous task of maintaining the unity of the Church, in its rich variety. Imagine for a moment if the great Prophets of the Old Testament, so frustrated with the blindness and disobedience of Israel, decided to break off into splinter groups in which the “true faith” could now be practiced. Would God’s plan to bring forth the Savior of the world from the Jewish people have been thwarted, or at least greatly delayed? And what if that Savior had chosen not to die for and at the hands of the people through whom He had come to redeem the whole world, but instead established the Reformed Temple? No. The Prophets saw that, above all else, Israel must remain a unified whole, so that God may fulfill His long promise to redeem the whole world through it. They wisely chose to try to cleanse Israel, not to divide her. They wisely recognized that the remnant who would allow itself to be cleansed would be the seed for the future glory of God’s people.
Similarly, Jesus did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. By living a life in utter obedience to the law, He became unto Himself a new law, a new temple, a new sacrifice, again, not to splinter the “chosen people,” but to allow everyone, the whole of humanity, to become members of that people. Remember, the first Christians recognized themselves not as Christians or a new offshoot of Judaism, but as Jews who gloriously recognized and confessed that the Messiah promised to their ancestors had arrived.
Today, however, the branches of the Church’s family tree are as numerous and divergent as a metropolitan street map. When looking upon us, the rulers and authorities of this world are not reminded that there is another King named far above them; instead they see that there are thousands of lesser local magistrates alongside and below them who they need not fear or take too seriously. And with much tempering and humility, I have no choice, when examining the history of the Church, but to say that the Protestant Reformation played a large role in bringing about that situation. Luther and his brethren had a monumentally important protest against the theology and praxis of the Roman Church, the momentum of which, at that point in history, had all but erased any trace of the gospel from within the boundaries of the gargantuan institution that it had become. Again, I truly believe that the Reformers were right, that the problems they recognized and sought to remedy needed to be found and remedied. But I believe the Reformers made one critical mistake. Rather than lift their voices of protest and allow God to work in His glorious way to cleanse the church as a whole, they made the critical error of tying to do God’s work for Him. God help me, how many times I have tried to do the same, with disastrous consequences.
Their failure was precisely a failure of patience, a failure of ultimate trust, of trust in the long-term goodness and might of God. It was, in short, a failure of faith. They demanded their righteous reforms to be implemented now, within their lifetimes, despite their King’s demonstration that our task is to plant the seeds that God will eventually harvest, and despite their ancestral forefathers’ teaching that the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the Church. The result was the second great schism of the Western Church, the severing of the arm and the foot from the already beheaded body of Christ.
And the further dissection has continued ever since. Why? Because one of the great and true Reformation proclamations was that people should be able to read the Bible and to worship in their own languages. The danger, since disastrously realized, is that people started to worship in their own isolated culture groups, and then sub-culture groups, and sub-sub-culture groups, when what God is longing to create is “one new humanity,” to gather up all things in heaven and on earth in His son, to declare that all those who believe and trust the Gospel of His son belong at the same table here on earth as a sign that they will one day sit at the table of the great banquet at the initiation of the new heavens and new earth.
The great division of humanity in New Testament times was between Jew and Gentile. Today, we have Catholic and Protestant, Episcopalian and Lutheran, Presbyterian and Pentecostal, Methodist and Baptist, Southern Baptist and First Baptist, Calvinist and Arminian, and I can go on for the next ten pages. Mind you, all of these denominations and divisions have very important theological and practical points of emphasis. But does not the Pentecostal have much to teach the Lutheran about the significance of the workings of the Spirit, the Anabaptist much to teach the Pentecostal about the significance of the beauty of the way of peace in global issues, the Methodist much to teach the Anabaptist about the guiding of the spiritually weak by the spiritually strong? Do not Catholics have much to edify Protestants about the importance of tradition, even ancient tradition, the centrality of the sacraments, the value of liturgy, the immensely important role of Mary in the entire biblical narrative, and cannot the Protestant mindset serve to temper these central aspects of the Catholic faith to see that, though immensely important, they are seen in their proper context, that the gospel of Jesus Christ does not mean tradition, sacraments, and liturgy? And do not the Protestants have much to edify Catholics about the priority of grace and faith over works, about the fact that symbols and metaphors often loose their original meaning after a few centuries, let alone a few millennia, and take on entirely different “meanings” that the original users of them never intended, and that might even be dangerous, about the immeasurable priority of Jesus Christ over even the highest authority of the church in this world? And cannot the Catholic mindset serve to temper the Protestant propensity to divide over these issues, as well as the next theological issue on the other side of the horizon? Remember, my Protestant brothers and sisters, it is the Catholic Church who, since Vatican II, considers us “separated brethren,” but at least we are brethren, a status that very few Protestants would confer in return.
Of course the theological issues about which these denominations are often diametrically opposed are hugely significant and must be confronted. But are we not strong enough, as one body, to withstand these debates and trust that the Spirit of our God will guide us to the truth in His good time?
Yes, this will take an amazing, supernatural, miraculous form of strength. But primary to any other doctrine that divides us, do we not first believe as in the Apostles’ Creed which, second only to its Trinitarian confession, confesses to belief in “the holy catholic church, the communion of saints?”
Paul said that his heart was gladdened when he heard how the church loved one another, and that he wanted them to do it more and more. He didn’t mean that their feelings about one another should grow even warmer and fuzzier; he meant the kind of love that he saw revealed in Jesus Christ should grow stronger and manifest itself more consistently. And that kind of love simply cannot leave behind a majority of its brothers and sisters because it feels it has found a truth which they are not accepting. That kind of loves dies in order to bring that truth to its beloved.
Grace and Peace,
Raffi
The more I read and study the Bible, the more I come to agree with Paul’s understanding of God’s master plan revealed and accomplished in the life of one specific Palestinian Jew, and the Church’s role within that plan, as Paul set forth most clearly in the Letter to the Ephesians:
With all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it.
Although I am the least of the saints, this grace was given to me to bring to the Gentiles the news of the boundless riches of Christ, and to make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things; so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.
The plan is to gather up all things in heaven and earth, in Jesus. One humanity. One church. One body, albeit in its “rich variety.” The Greek is polupoíkilos, a word that is difficult to translate but would be used to describe a garden consisting of flowers of every color imaginable. Paul is emphatic in Ephesians as well as throughout his other letters that “the Church” is to be one, one body, one entity, consisting of and bringing together the rich variety of all the peoples and cultures and languages of the world. It is to be the antithesis of the scattering of people at Babel. In Jesus, God shattered the bowl that the people who had been entrusted with His light had placed upon it, so that the whole house would now be able to see that light. The role of the church is to bring all of humanity, all those who have fled the house because of the darkness, back to the house, the one house. Because the ultimate role of the single, unified, catholic (again, with a small “c”) church in this world is precisely so that through that unified body, the principalities and powers who run this world, or think they do, can be shown that there is another King, and his name is Jesus son of Joseph, the crucified and risen one, the Messiah.
From the Trinitarian debates of the third and fourth centuries, to the Great Schism of the Eastern and Western Church, and most recently with the great split of Catholicism and Protestantism during the Reformation, the Church has placed the resolution of hugely important theological issues ahead of the even more enormous task of maintaining the unity of the Church, in its rich variety. Imagine for a moment if the great Prophets of the Old Testament, so frustrated with the blindness and disobedience of Israel, decided to break off into splinter groups in which the “true faith” could now be practiced. Would God’s plan to bring forth the Savior of the world from the Jewish people have been thwarted, or at least greatly delayed? And what if that Savior had chosen not to die for and at the hands of the people through whom He had come to redeem the whole world, but instead established the Reformed Temple? No. The Prophets saw that, above all else, Israel must remain a unified whole, so that God may fulfill His long promise to redeem the whole world through it. They wisely chose to try to cleanse Israel, not to divide her. They wisely recognized that the remnant who would allow itself to be cleansed would be the seed for the future glory of God’s people.
Similarly, Jesus did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. By living a life in utter obedience to the law, He became unto Himself a new law, a new temple, a new sacrifice, again, not to splinter the “chosen people,” but to allow everyone, the whole of humanity, to become members of that people. Remember, the first Christians recognized themselves not as Christians or a new offshoot of Judaism, but as Jews who gloriously recognized and confessed that the Messiah promised to their ancestors had arrived.
Today, however, the branches of the Church’s family tree are as numerous and divergent as a metropolitan street map. When looking upon us, the rulers and authorities of this world are not reminded that there is another King named far above them; instead they see that there are thousands of lesser local magistrates alongside and below them who they need not fear or take too seriously. And with much tempering and humility, I have no choice, when examining the history of the Church, but to say that the Protestant Reformation played a large role in bringing about that situation. Luther and his brethren had a monumentally important protest against the theology and praxis of the Roman Church, the momentum of which, at that point in history, had all but erased any trace of the gospel from within the boundaries of the gargantuan institution that it had become. Again, I truly believe that the Reformers were right, that the problems they recognized and sought to remedy needed to be found and remedied. But I believe the Reformers made one critical mistake. Rather than lift their voices of protest and allow God to work in His glorious way to cleanse the church as a whole, they made the critical error of tying to do God’s work for Him. God help me, how many times I have tried to do the same, with disastrous consequences.
Their failure was precisely a failure of patience, a failure of ultimate trust, of trust in the long-term goodness and might of God. It was, in short, a failure of faith. They demanded their righteous reforms to be implemented now, within their lifetimes, despite their King’s demonstration that our task is to plant the seeds that God will eventually harvest, and despite their ancestral forefathers’ teaching that the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the Church. The result was the second great schism of the Western Church, the severing of the arm and the foot from the already beheaded body of Christ.
And the further dissection has continued ever since. Why? Because one of the great and true Reformation proclamations was that people should be able to read the Bible and to worship in their own languages. The danger, since disastrously realized, is that people started to worship in their own isolated culture groups, and then sub-culture groups, and sub-sub-culture groups, when what God is longing to create is “one new humanity,” to gather up all things in heaven and on earth in His son, to declare that all those who believe and trust the Gospel of His son belong at the same table here on earth as a sign that they will one day sit at the table of the great banquet at the initiation of the new heavens and new earth.
The great division of humanity in New Testament times was between Jew and Gentile. Today, we have Catholic and Protestant, Episcopalian and Lutheran, Presbyterian and Pentecostal, Methodist and Baptist, Southern Baptist and First Baptist, Calvinist and Arminian, and I can go on for the next ten pages. Mind you, all of these denominations and divisions have very important theological and practical points of emphasis. But does not the Pentecostal have much to teach the Lutheran about the significance of the workings of the Spirit, the Anabaptist much to teach the Pentecostal about the significance of the beauty of the way of peace in global issues, the Methodist much to teach the Anabaptist about the guiding of the spiritually weak by the spiritually strong? Do not Catholics have much to edify Protestants about the importance of tradition, even ancient tradition, the centrality of the sacraments, the value of liturgy, the immensely important role of Mary in the entire biblical narrative, and cannot the Protestant mindset serve to temper these central aspects of the Catholic faith to see that, though immensely important, they are seen in their proper context, that the gospel of Jesus Christ does not mean tradition, sacraments, and liturgy? And do not the Protestants have much to edify Catholics about the priority of grace and faith over works, about the fact that symbols and metaphors often loose their original meaning after a few centuries, let alone a few millennia, and take on entirely different “meanings” that the original users of them never intended, and that might even be dangerous, about the immeasurable priority of Jesus Christ over even the highest authority of the church in this world? And cannot the Catholic mindset serve to temper the Protestant propensity to divide over these issues, as well as the next theological issue on the other side of the horizon? Remember, my Protestant brothers and sisters, it is the Catholic Church who, since Vatican II, considers us “separated brethren,” but at least we are brethren, a status that very few Protestants would confer in return.
Of course the theological issues about which these denominations are often diametrically opposed are hugely significant and must be confronted. But are we not strong enough, as one body, to withstand these debates and trust that the Spirit of our God will guide us to the truth in His good time?
Yes, this will take an amazing, supernatural, miraculous form of strength. But primary to any other doctrine that divides us, do we not first believe as in the Apostles’ Creed which, second only to its Trinitarian confession, confesses to belief in “the holy catholic church, the communion of saints?”
Paul said that his heart was gladdened when he heard how the church loved one another, and that he wanted them to do it more and more. He didn’t mean that their feelings about one another should grow even warmer and fuzzier; he meant the kind of love that he saw revealed in Jesus Christ should grow stronger and manifest itself more consistently. And that kind of love simply cannot leave behind a majority of its brothers and sisters because it feels it has found a truth which they are not accepting. That kind of loves dies in order to bring that truth to its beloved.
Grace and Peace,
Raffi
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