← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Texas Dissident
Thread ID: 13192 | Posts: 8 | Started: 2004-04-15
2004-04-15 17:37 | User Profile
[url=http://www.christianity.com/partner/Article_Display_Page/0,,PTID307086|CHID561434|CIID1415876,00.html]A Call for a Second Reformation[/url]
by Michael S. Horton
One of the most frequently asked questions we hear at ACE is, "Why are you calling for a second Reformation?" As we look forward to the dawn of the third millennium of Christianity, many visions are being offered--a lot of grand plans being made. In Christian circles, we hear the buzz surrounding the year 2000, from end-times speculations to the confident boast that we will reach the entire world for Christ by that magical year.
With all of these visions competing for our attention, why are we looking backward? Why does ACE place so much emphasis on things that happened behind us instead of focusing on the future? ACE does spend a lot of time dragging dead people into the discussion. After all, through their writings that changed the world, they are still our contemporaries, helping us wrestle with our modern challenges and opportunities.
But why as second Reformation? What was so special about the Reformation that makes a second one so worthwhile? Well, the reason is simple. Through the Middle Ages, Christianity became entangled with the vines of superstition, ignorance and spiritual lethargy. Popes came to their thrones often through backroom pay-offs and once in office, became fathers of the church in more ways than one. Eventually, the scandals became so commonplace that the masses began to ignore the seriousness of the hypocrisy, except for a host of jokes that kept medieval stand-ups in business and their audiences in stitches.
Several movements arose to combat these serious problems. A number of monastic renewals launched campaigns to call the clergy to greater devotion and piety, while the Italian preacher Savonarola stirred up zeal in Florence. Convincing his spell-bound audiences that Christ would return within the next year, Savonarola led a moral crusade in Florence that climaxed with a great bonfire in the middle of the city square, as the citizens brought their great works of art and literature, their cards and dice, and their sheets of secular music, to be placed on the massive pyres. When the preacher's end-times scheme failed, the moralist was himself placed on a bonfire.
There was even a Christian school movement, led by a group known as The Brethren of the Common Life, and these folks were convinced that reformation and revival would come as believers adopted a religious lifestyle and kept to a regular set of daily spiritual disciplines. Two men who would later become bitter opponents in the debate over predestination and free will were both trained in these schools operated by the Brethren of the Common Life. Their names were Erasmus and Luther.
In spite of all the grand schemes for reformation, revival and renewal, every campaign was short-lived. Why? Because, as Luther later said, they were all concerned with symptoms rather than the illness. Was Rome morally, politically and institutionally corrupt? Of course it was, but it was doctrinally corrupt, having lost the understanding of the Law and the Gospel, Luther observed. That is the source of the problem. It was when Luther uncovered the theological scandal that quite literally all hell broke loose and the fragile Roman scaffolding began to creak.
The essentials of the Reformation were doctrinal. It was part of the Renaissance call to return to the original sources, so it made sense that Christian scholars return not only to the great classics of western civilization, but to the biblical text itself. The Reformation, therefore, was a "back-to-the-Bible" movement. But they went back to the Bible not simply as an end in itself, but in order to recover the essential truths that the Bible proclaimed and that the church had either forgotten or actually rejected.
Those essentials were "scripture alone," "Christ alone," "grace alone," "faith alone," and "to God alone be glory." Notice how the modifier "alone" appears in each of these slogans. After all, the medieval church still believed in Scripture, in Christ, in grace, in faith, and in God's glory. The church has never denied these articles of faith and has, in fact, forbidden others to do so. It was the word "alone" that brought Rome and the Reformers into conflict. Scripture is the only ultimate authority in faith and practice; Christ is the only Mediator between God and sinners; faith is the only instrument of our justification, and God is the only one in this whole business who deserves any credit or praise. These slogans form the core of the Reformation.
The question I want to ask you is this: Do you believe that these are still the essential doctrines of Christianity as we embark on the new millennium? Do you believe that the Reformation got these doctrines out of balance with other doctrines? Or do you believe that the Bible teaches that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone because of Christ alone to the glory of God alone, and that this is the Bible's central message from Genesis to Revelation? If it is the Bible's central message, then must be as central for us as it was for the Reformation in the sixteenth century.
The problem is, we are facing a church today that is even in a worse situation than that of the medieval church. Just look at each of those slogans in the light of today's realities. First of all, the so-called evangelical, Bible-believing Christians in America are the spiritual heirs of the Protestant Reformation. And yet, according to their responses to recent surveys, their views are much closer to those of medieval people before the Reformation. The battle-cry, "Scripture alone," is rarely heard even in these conservative Protestant churches today, as pop-psychology, marketing and management principles, pragmatism, consumerism, sociological data, and political crusades tend to have the greatest authority in the churches. "Christ alone" is challenged by the voices of those who, following our culture of religious pluralism, insist that Jesus is the best, but not the only, way to the Father. In fact, 2/3 of the evangelicals in America said that we all pray to the same God whether we're Buddhists, Moslems, Jews or Christians. "Grace alone" has fallen prey once more to the moralism and self-confidence of the human heart. The popular phrase in the medieval church was, "God will not deny his grace to those who do what lies within their power." A modern equivalent is, "God helps those who help themselves," and according to the Barna surveys, 86% of today's evangelical Christians affirm that medieval Roman Catholic conviction. And as for the Reformation battle-cry, "Faith alone," which was the central concern, how far has the preaching of justification by faith alone fallen from the priorities of the modern evangelical church, as the major centers of evangelical power have now publicly acknowledged that the doctrine of justification by faith alone no longer presents an obstacle to fellowship with those who deny it. Evangelical seminary professors now freely attack the doctrine by which, as the Reformers declared, the church stands or falls.
And as for the slogan, "to God alone be glory," religion today is human-centered rather than God-centered. Once again, even the churches are focused on how God can make us happy and satisfied. Who would have ever thought that men such as Robert Schuller could deny man's utter lostness and need for unmerited favor and yet be ordained in a self-professed Reformed denomination and receive the endorsement of major evangelical ministries? And yet, he clearly rejects the Reformation's slogan, "to God alone be glory," stating that "the Reformation erred in that it was God-centered rather than man-centered."
Folks, we are in the same stew that the Reformers found in the medieval church. We are not slavishly devoted to the sixteenth-century Reformation, but we do believe that it was the single greatest recovery of apostolic Christianity since the death of the apostles themselves. By God's grace, they returned God's Word to the world stage in all of its authority, conviction, grace and redemption, bringing that long-awaited renewal to the Body of Christ that so many had sought through more superficial avenues.
With the Reformers, we at ACE also believe that the problems the church faces in the new millennium are at the root doctrinal. It is a theological crisis we're talking about here, as God and his saving work in Christ are shrouded in ignorance and apathy.
The Generation That Forgot God
I recently had the opportunity to preach from the Book of Judges where we find the familiar refrain, "In those days Israel had no king. And everyone did as he pleased." One notices in that passage a recurring theme: God's people are prone to wander and to worship other gods. In Judges chapter 2, the author recounts the steps in Israel's apostasy: First, we read, "A generation arose that did not know either God or what he had done for his people." Ignorance of God's attributes and of his saving work led to the next stage of apostasy, we read, the stage of accommodation, as the people then began to make their faith less awkward, less strange to their new Canaanite neighbors. They began accommodating God's Word to the "felt needs" of idolaters, and this opened them up to actual apostasy, as Israel turned from Yahweh to follow other gods. They trusted in themselves and in the idols of their pagan neighbors and refused to place their faith in their only God and Redeemer.
Throughout the whole history of the church this has been the pattern with God's people, and the apostasy always goes in the same direction: First, the church fails in its duties to preach and teach, so that a whole generation grows up knowing neither God nor the things he has done for his people's salvation. In other words, they become theologically illiterate. Then they begin to make Christianity comfortable to secular trends--that is to say, more comfortable to their own hearts that are now being given to other gods. In 1 Timothy 3, the Apostle Paul reminds us, "In the last days men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God." And yet, even in this kind of environment, church growth leader George Barna urges the church that has forgotten her deposit, "I believe that developing a marketing orientation is precisely what the Church needs to do if we are to make a difference in the spiritual health of the nation for the remainder of this century...This is what marketing the church is all about: providing our product [relationships] as a solution to people's felt needs.... It is...critical that we keep in mind a fundamental principle of Christian communication: the audience, not the message, is sovereign... Our message has to be adapted to the needs of the audience." So how does Mr. Barna explain to the Apostle Paul how to adapt the Gospel to the needs of those who are "lovers of themselves, lovers of money and lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God"? Perhaps this marketing orientation in the church, simply called apostasy in other periods, requires the invention of a gospel of self-esteem, a prosperity gospel and a gospel of self-fulfillment, as the idols of self, of money and of pleasure replace the one true God in our hearts and in our churches. In our day, the idols of marketing, consumerism, pop-psychology, politics, pragmatism, and superstition plague our society, but they are also possess the people of God. "The audience, not the message, is sovereign," is the same as saying, "Man, not God, is sovereign." It is to live as Israel when it was said of her, "In those days, Israel had no king and everyone did what was right in his own eyes."
More than any other movement since the death of the Apostles, the Reformation was a recovery of the preaching of the Law, demonstrating God's righteousness and need for salvation, followed by the preaching of the Gospel, revealing God's saving promise in Jesus Christ. By recovering the Gospel of free grace and overthrowing the idols, the Reformation recalled the church to her only prophet, priest and king. As the doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith alone was recovered, worship was restored to its apostolic purity and simplicity. People heard the voice of God once more, not merely the echo of their culture, and there was a sense of God's greatness and goodness far and wide.
It was a movement in which the recovery of the biblical categories sustained major recoveries in all areas of church life, even spilling over into culture. The theology of the Reformation--by no means original with the Reformers of the 16th century, but recovering the rich storehouse of biblical truth ignored and crusted over with worldly fads--actually gave rise to so many of the blessings of the modern world that have, by their repudiation of that basis, become curses and idols of contemporary society. Politics, the arts, education, science, work and leisure, have not only lost their meaning; they have actually become actively engaged in breaking down the modern man or woman's delight in being human. As Andre Malraux, the French existentialist explained to the General Assembly of the United Nations nearly three decades ago, "The theologians have announced that God is dead, and now the rest of us must announce the death of man."
If we wish to recover a sense of the sacred, it will not be by turning to these idols for their favors, but by turning our backs on them entirely. I am not saying we must stay out of these arenas--far from it--but I am saying that we must stop looking for hand-outs and protection from them. Political entitlement and moral legislation, artistic propaganda, educational indoctrination, belligerence in the scientific community, and antagonism at work will not change anything; these tactics only serve to give credence to the caricatures.
When keys are lost, the most common advice is to retrace one's steps: "Where did you have them last?" The same is true when the church is in a period of serious crisis, as it is in our day. The culture that was shaped in large measure by a Reformation world-view has been unraveling ever since the triumph of the Enlightenment and the beliefs and structures of modern life that it produced. While the Reformation was hardly perfect, it was the last time God graciously returned the church to its proper course and the results, though not directly pursued, were incalculable in relation to the culture. And the effects continue to be felt in every discipline and enterprise to the present day.
University of Paris historian Pierre Chaunu remarks, "Yes, we are fashioned by the world of the Reformation." Harvard historian Steven Ozment credits the Reformation with the recovery of literacy and the centrality of the family in social organizations. In fact, he observes that the Reformation "was a struggle with many of the same problems that grip us today.... Whether one views the Reformation in terms of its literature, its laws, or the lives of the laity who embraced it, it portrays itself as the hand that interrupts unrealistic dreams and exposes false prophets. Protestant faith promised to save people above all from disabling credulity."
Stanford's Lewis Spitz has remarked of the Reformation that "few periods in the long history of Europe have had such a momentous impact upon the western world"8 and Yale's Roland Bainton noted, "Luther, as no one before him in more than a thousand years, sensed the import of the miracle of divine forgiveness... The Reformation was a religious revival. Its attempt was to give man a new assurance in the presence of God and a new motivation in the moral life." Oxford historian Owen Chadwick added, "The Reformation age, amid grievous destruction, swept away the clutter, pursued simplicity of vision, and directed the gaze of the worshipper towards that which truly mattered. After Luther it was not possible for either Protestant or Catholic to imitate some of the old ways of neglecting God's grace and sovereignty."
It was out of this recovery of "first things" that Christianity not only gained a new hold over millions in a decaying and secularizing "Christendom," but was allowed to create massive improvements in the culture as well. It was Reformed Christians who restored Oxford and Cambridge and founded Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Brown, Rutgers, and a host of other universities as far away as Asia and Africa. These were the same, however, who launched the modern missionary movement as well as modern science. As the missionary heart of these Reformation heirs beat fervently for the lost around the globe, cultures were also transformed in the bargain. For them, there was a perfect harmony between the world and the Bible, reason and faith, doctrine and life. Look at every arena of confusion and disrepair in our day: education, health care, science, the arts and entertainment, philosophy and theology, the family. The Reformation revolutionized these spheres once and, if its rich resources are tapped again and brought to bear on the unique circumstances of contemporary life and struggles, it could have a similar effect in our own time.
But today, not only are we finding that Christian (or indeed any religious) claims for truth fall on deaf ears in the culture, we find decay in the church itself and a greater interest in success than in faithfulness.
If we are to see the culture change, we must look first to the church, beginning with our own families. I realize that this sounds escapist, but it is nothing of the kind. Nor is it to suggest that we should leave our secular occupations and become church-workers, since I have argued against that expectation throughout this work. But it is to say that before we can change the culture, we must recover the purity of doctrine and life that has always had a transformative influence in the world. We must stop accommodating to the very culture that we are opposing and attempting to transform, but to do that we must not only know our own theology; we must know the idols and understand the ways in which we ourselves are shaped more by the spirit of the age than by the Spirit of Christ. As families and churches learn the "whole counsel of God" all over again and recover the Law and the Gospel in the diet of preaching, teaching, and worship there will be a fresh integrity to the church's witness before a cynical world that has forgotten the last time it took the church seriously.
We should not expect to merely resurrect the Protestant Reformers or naively imitate that movement. There are unique challenges and our postmodern age presents a different context from that of premodern Europe. But the basic ideas are the same and are there for the taking. The Reformation did not set out to change the culture, and yet it is credited in varying degrees with the rise of democracy and human rights, modern science, the revival of arts and letters, the foundation of some of the world's leading universities, laying the seeds for the modern missionary movement, and liberating views of work, leisure, and the family. Conversely, many Christian movements today set out to change the culture, but they end up being changed by the culture--taken captive themselves, because the roots were too shallow.
Wherever there are Christians in the world who still care about truth and its impact in a culture of decay, there will always be an interest in theology and, in particular, the theology of the Protestant Reformation. No wonder Columbia University historian Eugene F. Rice, Jr. could remark that the Reformation's theology "strikingly measures the gulf between the secular imagination of the twentieth century and sixteenth-century Protestantism's intoxication with the majesty of God. We can only exercise historical sympathy to try to understand how it was that many of the most sensitive intelligences of a whole epoch found a supreme, a total, liberty in the abandonment of human weakness to the omnipotence of God."
May God grant the same consciousness to his people in our time, for God's sake and for the sake of the world.
Dr. Michael Horton is the vice chairman of the Council of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, and is associate professor of historical theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in California. Dr. Horton is a graduate of Biola University (B.A.), Westminster Theological Seminary in California (M.A.R.) and Wycliffe Hall, Oxford (Ph.D.). Some of the books he has written or edited include Putting Amazing Back Into Grace, Beyond Culture Wars, Power Religion, In the Face of God, and most recently, We Believe.
2004-04-15 17:45 | User Profile
[url=http://www.the-highway.com/lawgospel_Walther.html]The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel[/url] by C.F.W. Walther
2004-04-15 18:10 | User Profile
Tex, the "Second Reformation" will most likely be Christ's Second Coming. The apostasy we see nowadays throughout Christendom was perfectly predicted by our Savior, Jesus Christ, as recorded in Matthew's Gospel Chapter 24. We're witnessess to the "abomination of desolation" within today's Church.
2004-04-15 21:57 | User Profile
[QUOTE=xmetalhead]Tex, the "Second Reformation" will most likely be Christ's Second Coming. The apostasy we see nowadays throughout Christendom was perfectly predicted by our Savior, Jesus Christ, as recorded in Matthew's Gospel Chapter 24. We're witnessess to the "abomination of desolation" within today's Church.[/QUOTE]
Quite possibly true, X. St. Paul speaks to this in his second epistle to Timothy, chapter 3:
This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof:* from such turn away. For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith. But they shall proceed no further: for their folly shall be manifest unto all men, as theirs also was. *
First the warning, now let's see what Paul goes on to write about what we should do:
But thou hast fully known my doctrine*, manner of life, purpose, faith, longsuffering, charity, patience...But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.***
So here we read that Paul's first and foremost instruction is to know and continue in the sound, scriptural doctrine of salvation through faith in Christ.
Sola fide - the true power of the Gospel and core doctrine that most American churches have either lost or intentionally diminished as the original article addresses.
2004-04-16 13:08 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Texas Dissident] This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof:* from such turn away. For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith. But they shall proceed no further: for their folly shall be manifest unto all men, as theirs also was. * [/QUOTE]
Tex, this verse from the book of Timothy, Chapter 3, is a dead ringing prophesy for the current condition of our world, and specifically the leaders of the US. During Bush's press conference, he declared several times, "we're trying to change the world", which sent me flying backwards. The sheer denial of God's Will, or predestination if you will, frightened me because of my knowledge of God's Holy Word, such as the verses above. Yet, I submit that God is ultimately in control, and if it's His will to have George Bush say what he says, do what he does, mean what he means, then I submit not to man, but to God's Almighty Will. If there is an Almighty God, then we're close to a colossal event which some will perish in a most gruesome way, collective reparation for grievous sins committed by men who confess Christ with their lips but their hearts are severely corrupted by pride, greed, lust, etc. It could be something similiar to God's chastisement of ancient Israel wherein time and time again they disobeyed God's commandments and suffered terrible consequences. In some of my studies on our Founding Fathers, I discovered that Benjamin Franklin, who's sometimes credited for founding the first Fire Department, used to say that (paraphrasing) "if a house is burning, try to prevent it from spreading to other places, but let that house burn to the ground, for it is God's Will"....and therein lies the magnitude of differences between Franklin's people and times and our current politicians who assume god-like status.
2004-05-15 20:50 | User Profile
[url=http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/1464/lutherandarminian.html]LUTHERAN AND ARMINIAN THEOLOGY: THEIR DIFFERING EMPHASES AND THE RESULTING IMPACT ON WORSHIP[/url]
2004-05-15 20:57 | User Profile
[url=http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/1464/luther_warns_about_the_dangers_of_decision_theology.html]Luther Warns About the Danger of Decision Theology[/url]
2004-06-10 22:00 | User Profile
I wanted to bring this article back up top in the hopes that some who haven't had the chance to read it may now do so. I implore each of you to read it carefully and try to understand the deeper and signifcant points that Horton makes. Some may see the subject matter, namely Reformation Christianity, and then quickly click away and move on not giving it a full read or even a second thought. But please don't be short-sighted and pass through without giving it due consideration.
Indeed as Horton writes, if we've lost our keys, what is it that we do in order to find them again? We retrace our steps all the way back to the place where we know we had them. Folks, no other analogy could better fit where we are as a people, culture and society than this one. All kinds of self-proclaimed prophets, teachers and so-called leaders are able to diagnose the problem or the sickness that infects us, but then they fall short in their respective proffered cures, usually focusing solely on a specific symptom because they have no cure for the whole body's health.
Folks, there is only one cure that is able to cure the sickness that affects Western Man and bring forth full restoration of the noble inheritance we have squandered. Without any doubt, the cure is the True Faith once given to the Saints, namely historic, orthodox Christianity. Without this true, living faith our people are doomed. Western civilization is doomed, for it is the cornerstone of every achievement of that same Western Civilization.
I implore each of you reading this to think long and hard about when we, as a people, last possessed the keys now lost to us. Sure we face new challenges each day and will continue to do so in the years to come, but truth is truth and will never change. Building one's foundation upon that truth, both individually and collectively, is akin to building one's house on a solid rock able to withstand any violent wind or storm. Let us not be deceived by the liars of this age who proclaim there is a different path to cultural restoration for our people, because we know what is true and we know how we were when we were healthy.
James 1:21 " Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls."
The time is short and growing shorter. Take a stand now and let yourself be counted right where you are at, both for yourselves and for your progeny.