The Protestant Disposition

 #Reformation500 

I don't think I've ever felt more Protestant than when I was in Rome a few years ago. It wasn't the aesthetics of the Vatican, or anything like that. It was the knowledge that the buildings we were standing in had been paid for by the abuse of Christians in Germany and throughout Europe centuries earlier. 

It was confronting to see what the indulgences opposed by Martin Luther had actually paid for. It was confronting having come from Oxford (final photo) and seen the spots where Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer had died in the backlash against the Reformation. 

Being Protestant means many things (i.e. the five solas), but I think it involves a certain disposition: holding together how precious Christian unity truly is, and how nefarious church corruption truly is. 

It involves the recognition that gospel faithfulness can be compromised by religious hypocrisy. 

It's the abhorrence of the scriptures being held captive, and the delight in seeing them set free to in the lives of ordinary women and men. 

To be Protestant means exposing sin to the light – beginning with our own – so that it can't fester in the darkness. 

#AllSaints

Death in America

According to Stanley Hauerwas, Protestantism in America is dying. Uniquely, America is the "exemplification of constructive Protestant social thought"; the first country where Protestantism did not need to define itself against Roman Catholicism. Bonhoeffer described this as "Protestantism without Reformation."

Which is why Hauerwas believes we are now witnessing the death of American Protestantism. Protestantism has been closely linked to the American national identity, "For Americans, faith in God is indistinguishable from loyalty to their country." This has project has been very successful - too successful according to Hauerwas, so that it is dying of it's own success.

"More Americans may go to church than their counterparts in Europe, but the churches to which they go do little to challenge the secular presumptions that form their lives or the lives of the churches to which they go. For the church is assumed to exist to reinforce the presumption that those that go to church have done so freely. The church's primary function, therefore, is to legitimate and sustain the presumption that America represents what all people would want to be if they had the benefit of American education and money...It is impossible to avoid the fact that American Christianity is far less than it should have been just to the extent that the church has failed to make clear that America's god is not the God that Christians worship. We are now facing the end of Protestantism. America's god is dying. Hopefully, that will leave the church in America in a position where it has nothing to lose. And when you have nothing to lose, all you have left is the truth. So I am hopeful that God may yet make the church faithful - even in America." - Stanley Hauerwas, The Death of America's God

Hauerwas is very pessimistic about the affect of American synthesis between evangelical Protestantism, republican political ideology and commonsense moral reasoning. I'm not sure if this is what will come to pass, but there would be ramifications not only for American Christians, but for the church universal. America has been a powerhouse for Christianity for several decades now. Most missionaries around the world come from the US. Many resources (academic and popular) are produced in the US. Would a demise in American Christianity adversly affect world wide Christianity? Or would it provide the church in the Global South with the opportunity to step-up, and as Hauerwas hopes, grow the American church in faithfulness?

Thoughts?

Question: ecclesia reformata...

Question: does any one where the phrase 'ecclesia reformata est semper reformanda' come from? I've searched for it in Google, but couldn't find a source, although some people would argues it originates from the 17th century.

Often translated as 'reformed and always reforming', I have heard it used as a justification for change in church: "The reformers strongly believed in 'reforming and always reforming' as their heirs, we want to make that true today...so we're going to replace the pews with comfy chairs." (On this issue refer to MPJ).

Since so much weight has been given to this statement, it would be nice to now where it came from.

Also, if we're going to throw this idea around, it would be worth quoting it in it's entirety: ecclesia reformata est semper reformanda secundu Verbum Dei. Church always needs to be shaped by the Word of God, and if we forget this, then I can easily see ecclesia reformata est semper reformanda used to justify a whole range of culturally releveant but biblically prohibited things in church. Think about it.

Lonely Protestantism

Today's prophetic jewel comes from Katay in Theology Through History, talking about the hardening of protestant scholasticism (I can't spell) in the 17th century, and the rise of pluralism. Katay talked about what makes Roman Catholicism attractive for evangelicals is that we above all protestants like our guru's, and the "Romans" have the guru of all guru's, the vicar of Christ, and from him ex cathedra the ultimate source of biblical authority, whilst for protestants, it is just us, our conscience and our bibles (plus a few external, social influences). To be a protestant is to be very lonely. Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God.

Katay also talked about the three stages of leadership that we see in the New Testament that we see in the bible; first Jesus and his authoritative teaching, actions, and achievement, secondly the apostles and their authoritative announcement of Jesus, and thirdly the the apostles good deposit, and the "apostolic descendants", which continues down till today (and where we no longer have apostles to tell us what's what). In in response to a question about the ill's of pluralism and lack of authority, Katay said, and I quote:

"Our problem isn't so much denominationalsim, our problem is a lack of apostolic authority."

Comments? Thoughts?