{"id":30831,"date":"2018-01-11T06:00:22","date_gmt":"2018-01-11T11:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=30831"},"modified":"2018-01-10T20:43:42","modified_gmt":"2018-01-11T01:43:42","slug":"the-protestant-reformation-the-protestant-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2018\/01\/the-protestant-reformation-the-protestant-revolution\/","title":{"rendered":"The Protestant Reformation & the Protestant Revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"R1_RealRevolution.jpeg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Yesterday\u2019s post on the Reformation of America<\/a>, made me realize that the distinction between revolution and\u00a0reformation applies also to the history of Protestantism.\u00a0 Luther\u2019s \u201creformation\u201d was about correcting the church by returning to its first principles.\u00a0 But then a \u201crevolution\u201d broke out, in which Christians overthrew one model of the church after another in favor of ever-new theologies and\u00a0practices.\u00a0 To this day, the revolutionary approach prevails, with the impulse to cast out the old ways of \u201cdoing church\u201d in favor of completely new approaches to worship, the Christian life, and church growth.<\/p>\n

\n

Five hundred years ago, Luther set about \u201creforming\u201d a church that had become corrupt, legalistic, power-hungry, and culture bound.\u00a0 He did so by re-emphasizing the essential foundations of Christianity:\u00a0 The Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Son of God, who died and rose again to save sinners.\u00a0 And God\u2019s Word, His revelation of His will, His actions, and His grace, communicated in human language.<\/p>\n

Luther did not throw out the liturgy of the historic church.\u00a0 Rather, He reformed it around God\u2019s Word.\u00a0 This meant not only removing elements that conflicted with Biblical teaching but also making the Word the centerpiece of the liturgy.\u00a0 Worship consisted of Bible readings, sermons, hymns, all in the vernacular language.\u00a0 Luther retained the elements and responses of the liturgy because they are nearly all direct quotations from the Word of God.<\/p>\n

Luther reformed the sacramental system around the Gospel of Jesus Christ.\u00a0 The sacraments were not longer to be thought of as meritorious actions that human beings do.\u00a0 Rather, they are physical and effectual manifestations of Christ\u2019s saving actions.<\/p>\n

Luther\u2019s other reforms were of a similar nature.\u00a0 Lutheran churches still looked and acted much like the church of Rome, at least externally, though the meaning and the theology had undergone a \u201creformation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Soon, though, many Protestants felt that \u201cLuther didn\u2019t go far enough.\u201d\u00a0 They demanded a revolution.\u00a0 Anything<\/em> associated with Roman Catholicism was to be eliminated and replaced with something brand new.<\/p>\n

The church of Rome worshipped with a liturgy, so we will not.\u00a0 Catholics had crucifixes and made the sign of the Cross\u2013as did Lutherans, since\u00a0they\u00a0testify to the\u00a0Gospel of Jesus Christ\u2013so we will not.<\/p>\n

Catholics had a high view of the sacraments, as did Luther, so we will not.\u00a0 A new non-sacramental kind of Christianity was developed.<\/p>\n

Once revolutions break out, they tend to repudiate their initial instigators as being insufficiently pure.\u00a0 Robespierre started the French Revolution\u2019s reign of terror, but then himself was guillotined for being insufficiently radical.\u00a0 The Russians who overthrew the Tsar were themselves overthrown by the Bolsheviks.\u00a0 So Luther and Lutherans were dismissed for being \u201ctoo Catholic,\u201d and the floodgates were opened.<\/p>\n

Some Christians\u00a0began saying that the Anglicans didn\u2019t go far enough.\u00a0 Then that Calvin didn\u2019t go far enough.<\/p>\n

Catholics held to the historic creeds\u2013as did Lutherans, Anglicans, and Calvinists\u2013so we will reject those too.<\/p>\n

Eventually, some said that the Baptists didn\u2019t go far enough, that they were insufficiently subjective.\u00a0 Besides, being a Baptist or a Wesleyan or a Pentecostalist, etc., are all denominations.\u00a0 We will reject denominations.<\/p>\n

Now, in all fairness,\u00a0it\u2019s a legitimate question to ask regarding changes to the church, \u201chow far is far enough?\u201d And certainly the Christian faith creates a revolution in the heart of sinners, destroying the old and creating new life.\u00a0 So revolutions are not always bad.\u00a0 And most of these revolutionary Christian movements were reformist in that they continued to emphasize the Word of God and the Gospel, even though they understood them differently.<\/p>\n

But it was only a matter of time before\u00a0some Protestants, following this revolutionary spirit, also discarded the Word of God and the Gospel.<\/p>\n

In Protestant seminaries and research centers, higher critics of the Bible began rejecting its authority.\u00a0 The Gospel of salvation for eternal life made possible by Christ gave way in mainline Protestant churches to the social gospel, creating a utopian heaven on earth by means of political activism.<\/p>\n

The ultimate expression of revolutionary Protestantism was made by the liberal theologian Paul Tillich, with his \u201cprotestant principle.\u201d\u00a0 In a review of Tillich\u2019s book The Protestant Era<\/em>, Irving Kristol summarizes it this way<\/a>\u00a0(my bolds):<\/p>\n

The second clause [of Tillich\u2019s theological statement] proclaims the \u201cProtestant principle,\u201d which in turn consists of the \u201creligious obligation\u201d and the \u201creligious reservation.\u201d The religious obligation is to work God\u2019s will on earth, to establish justice and love in economic and social relations (Tillich is a devout socialist), and to hasten the day of messianic redemption. The religious reservation is to protest against any absolute claim to truth made in the name of a relative, historical reality\u2014whether that reality be a totalitarian state, a religious institution, a dogmatic creed, or a social movement\u2014and it is thus possible to be loyal to the Protestant principle without belonging to a Protestant, or any other church. There is an inevitable trend in human communities toward idolatry\u2014the worship of certain institutions and beliefs as having absolute and unquestionable validity, as being at long last \u201cthe final word.\u201d What the Protestant principle asserts is that the only absolute truth is this: man can never attain absolute truth<\/strong>\u2014\u201cthe final word\u201d is always with God and it comes as a judgment upon man. The Protestant era, Tillich says, is coming to an end with a thunderclap of moral and social collapse; but whatever the religious forms that the future will throw up, they too will be subordinate to the Protestant principle.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For Tillich as for other liberal Protestants, all doctrines, all truth claims, all theologies, are \u201cidolatrous.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0(They really do speak this way.)\u00a0 And that\u2019s what it means to be Protestant, a revolution first against Rome and eventually against the Christian faith itself.<\/p>\n

All that remains is to pursue social justice.\u00a0 Religious revolutionaries thus merge with social revolutionaries so that the two become indistinguishable.<\/p>\n

Certainly, the various strains of evangelical and conservative Protestantism\u00a0hold to a different religion than that of the liberal theologians.<\/p>\n

But even conservative Christians today still tend to approach change in the church in terms of revolution rather than reformation.<\/p>\n

Our worship services do not connect to contemporary Americans, we are told.\u00a0 So do we ask, how can we improve them?\u00a0 How can we convey\u00a0 God\u2019s presence and His holiness more effectively to people today?\u00a0 That would be the Reformation approach, identifying what Christian worship is supposed to be, and then making changes accordingly.\u00a0 But the more common response today is \u201clet\u2019s find a new way to worship!\u201d\u00a0 Throw out the hymns, the liturgies, and the ecclesiastical\u00a0practices of centuries.\u00a0 Let\u2019s come up with something completely different.<\/p>\n

We see this pattern in other areas of church life\u2013in pastoral care, discipleship, education, church government, social ministry, etc., etc.<\/p>\n

Might we try identifying what the church has done in those areas in the past and why it did so and what were the underlying principles?\u00a0 \u00a0And then revise our practices so that they bring out those first principles more effectively?<\/p>\n

This would preserve the church, making today\u2019s contemporary congregations continuous with the historic church, allowing new approaches to\u00a0build on the accomplishments of the past,\u00a0give inspiration and guidance to today\u2019s methodologies, and prevent the church\u2019s foundations\u2013Christ Jesus crucified for sinners and the Word of God\u2013from being obscured.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Illustration by LatheeshMahe (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday\u2019s post on the Reformation of America, made me realize that the distinction between revolution and\u00a0reformation applies also to the history of Protestantism.\u00a0 Luther\u2019s \u201creformation\u201d was about correcting the church by returning to its first principles.\u00a0 But then a \u201crevolution\u201d broke out, in which Christians overthrew one model of the church after another in favor […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":30834,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,38,47],"tags":[5452,1290,6049,6050,1819,4352,2960],"class_list":["post-30831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church","category-reformation","category-theology","tag-church-history","tag-liberal-theology","tag-paul-tillich","tag-protestant-principle","tag-protestantism","tag-reformation","tag-revolution"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Protestant Reformation & the Protestant Revolution<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Protestant reformation sought to return the church to its own first principles. 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