Monday, September 22, 2014

Remember the Reformation

Over at my Reformation500 blog, I’ve been working through Richard Muller’s Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics series. I’ve acquired this set through Logos Bible Software, and while it was costly, it was every bit worth the price.

Over there, I’ve been working through Volumes 1 and 3 (“Prolegomena” and “Doctrine of God”). Those deal a lot with epistemology and metaphysics and how the Reformers dealt with the Medieval discussions and how the “Reformed Orthodox” really tried to clarify the Medieval discussions from a truly Biblical perspective.

Muller’s Volume 2 deals with “the Doctrine of Scripture” – and I think that’s a good thing to review in the light of some of the things that are going on in our day. Of course it may be said that “this was all from a pre-critical era” and that’s true, but it’s still important to see how the individuals from this era of “Reformed orthodoxy” worked their best to understand all of the history of the church before them.

Muller’s central thesis is something like this:
among the Medieval writers, the Reformers, and the “Reformed Orthodox” (those writers, roughly from the late 16th through the early 18th centuries who followed, systematized and “codified” the Reformation), there are many continuities and some discontinuities. Muller’s purpose is to trace these continuities and discontinuities in their historical context – it was “an inquiry into the development of the contents of the orthodox doctrines of theology, Scripture and God” (and he notes that it was begun in 1978/79 under a post-doctoral research grant from the Mellon Foundation—Muller, (2003). Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise And Development Of Reformed Orthodoxy; Volume 1: Prolegomena To Theology (2nd ed., p. 20). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic).

I think this is one of the most important things we can study today – and by “we”, I mean “Christians in general”. For too many Christians, “now” is all we know. (And maybe a little bit of the New Testament). But too many of us forget the struggles of the past.

One of the saddest things I’ve ever read was this from Bavinck:

Around 1750 Reformed theology everywhere fell into decay (Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 1, Prolegomena, John Bolt, General Editor, John Vriend, Translator, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, p. 189).

What caused this decay? I went into some detail in the blog post linked in the paragraph above. However, what was lost along with it was not only “Reformed theology”. It was all of the writings of these men. In their eagerness to build academic institutions around Protestantism, they wrote in Latin – and now Latin has been lost to most of the world, and with it, their writings.

Muller is doing great work to correct this, to bring their thinking to an English-speaking world. My guess would be, however, that Muller is only touching the tip of the iceberg.

I want to be clear to position myself correctly here. I’m not advocating a program that says “unless we implement a church government of the type that Calvin advocated, we’re falling short”.

I’m suggesting that the church today – the whole church – will benefit from understanding the issues that these men (the “Reformed Orthodox”) struggled with, and wrote about.

I have a different program in mind, and it goes something like this:

* * *

In about a month, we’ll be talking about October 31 as the 497th anniversary of what’s traditionally known as the beginning of the Reformation, when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses on the door of the Wittenberg Castle. That door was something like the discussion board of the 16th century: and Luther, by nailing his theses, was not really launching a Reformation, he was merely signaling his desire to have a discussion.

That was not a momentous event, but what followed certainly changed the world. As I’ve seen it, we need to remember how all of that went down. And in “remembering” such a complicated chain of historical tides and events, a “Reformation Day” is not enough. When “the day” comes, it will be important not only to celebrate a day, but to understand what happened – before, during, and after the Reformation, that changed the world (the European world, that is), away from being Rome-centric, and toward being “Gospel-centric”.

Toward that end, I’ve advocated that should be thinking in terms of a “Reformation Season” – it’s not a constant thing, but in our agitated digital world, more and more people have questions as they begin to see hints of “the 500th anniversary of the Reformation”.

In the coming months and years, then, it’s going to be more and more important to understand the best and truest church history – in all eras of the church. We live in our own times, to be sure, but we have, in the form of church history, examples of how individuals from a good and godly era, when these things were taken far more seriously than they are today, handled disputes in their day.

Over the years, I’ve focused quite a bit on understanding the earliest church, especially as it relates to the “nonexistent early papacy” and how that “office” came into existence and later into power. I think that’s a foundational understanding in order to understand how it could be said, contra Rome (and contra Dr. Carl Trueman and his comment to the effect that “Roman Catholicism is the default position”), that “Roman Catholicism is a historical aberration from which the church recovered, after a tremendous amount of struggle” and “Roman Catholics are truly the paupers of Christianity”.


The reality of it is that the birth and standardization of the monoepiscopacy was a 2nd-century development (and “the papacy” a 4th- and 5th-century development) that may have been helpful at one time, but which then became kind of fossilized without understanding, leading to complacency and then eventually a kind of raw exercise of power, almost devoid of knowledge.

There is a “story” out there – which says, “Christ founded the church, the papacy (Matt 16:18) and the episcopacy; this succession of bishops ruled by divine institution, and the Reformation was a challenge to this legitimate authority)”.

But we now know that “story” to be highly problematic in a historical sense. Contra that “story”, the following is more historically accurate:

1. There is, “one and only one church” founded by Christ.
2. This church did not have “bishops” and “bishops” were not part of its constitution. But “bishops” developed to address a specific situation, and that specific situation passed, eliminating the strict need for that form of authority.
3. The concept of “apostolic succession” was an add-on that perpetuated an “authority structure” that was not what Christ (Biblically) intended for the church.
4. The Reformation understood that there was “one and only one church” apart from this false “authority structure”.
5. The Reformation church maintained continuity with the “one and only one church” in the face of polemical attacks against the Reformers that were (and continue to be) based on “apostolic succession”.

In the program I am outlining here, “apostolic succession” was a second-century polemical invention that was useful in helping the church of that era to define itself vs. the gnostics and other religion groups of the day.

Understanding the “continuities” from item #4 require the kind of detailed analysis that Muller is doing. He is, in summary fashion, covering the issues and theologies of many hundreds of years’-worth of church history, from perhaps hundreds of different writers.

And finally, that (#5) the polemical charges that come from Rome’s direction, are historically baseless.

* * *

While keeping all of this in mind at the same time is a daunting task (2000 years of history is a long time), it’s important in our day as a means of giving the church today some understanding of what it’s supposed to be and to do in the world.

We need to keep in mind (a) what needed reforming in the Medieval church, (b) what the Reformers were addressing, and (c) the ways in which those individuals following the Reformers tried to understand and clarify what the Reformation was all about.

To that end, over the next weeks and months, Lord willing, I will be presenting selections here and at Reformation500 from Muller on a continuing basis.

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