Commemorating the Reformation after 500 Years: Just a Misunderstanding?

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Adventist Theological Society

Daniel Reynaud

The Reformation and Adventism: A License for Change or a Recipe for Chaos?

I'm from the upside down part of the world.

So I'm going to explore this afternoon some things, some consequences of the Reformation that pose a distinct challenge to us.

So my talk won't be as warm or fuzzy and also has far fewer pictures.

It's a common place for historians to see the Reformation as unleashing chaos.

Many historians have commented on this, 1 of them recently wrote about the English Reformation that religious unity was widely seen as absolutely essential.

How could a movement that claimed to be from God have such divisive effects.

And historians have noted how the Reformation divided Europe, split communities, made government troublesome, and led to incredible violence.

2 relatively recent books have taken this concept of exploring the breadth and the depth of change that the Reformation has provoked or unleashed.

Alistair McGraw's Christianity's dangerous idea, written by a former atheist who studied science and in the course of studying science realized that an atheistic worldview could not explain what he discovered as a scientist.

He became a Christian, Now is an ordained Anglican priest, professor of science and religion at Oxford University and holds a mere 3 doctorates in molecular biophysics, in theology and in intellectual history.

He is without doubt a leading theologian and apologist and he's also an extremely articulate opponent of the aggressive so-called new atheists such as Dawkins, Dennett and Hitchens.

I want to explore some of the ideas in this book and another book by Brad S Gregory.

Gregory's book, The Unintended Reformation, is written by a Catholic.

Gregory is a Catholic scholar, he is a professor at Notre Dame University, a specialist in Reformation history and has won multiple awards and critical acclaim for his historical works and I read both of these books with interest, certainly not with total agreement, But there were points where I thought their insights were valuable, and I thought there were points where their arguments were something that we should pay attention to.

Sometimes because we might agree, and sometimes because we might not.

So first of all let's have a quick look at some of the ideas in McGraw's book.

The dangerous idea of McGraw's title is, as the blurb says, the radical idea that individuals could interpret the Bible for themselves and it spawned a revolution and a revelation that is still being played out in the world stage today.

In other words, when Luther took the idea of sola scriptura, the priesthood of all believers, the right of individuals to read the word for themselves and be convinced in their own minds, he didn't merely change the shape of theology, the organization of the church but it has influenced every aspect of our lives right across the board.

As he says, since every Protestant has the right to interpret the Bible, a wide range of interpretations cannot be avoided and since there is no centralized authority within Protestantism, this proliferation of opinions cannot be controlled.

I've asked both my church history classes last and this semester, how many Christian denominations are there in the world today?

And if those present will be silent for a moment, any guesses?

How many different Christian denominations are there in the world?

This is the 1 church and 1 body that Christ established and a large proportion of those 2, 000 are Protestant.

So it's a fairly commonplace observation to make that the Protestant Reformation unleashed this torrent of denominations and again he says who has the right to decide what is orthodox and what is heretical?

It's easy in the Catholic Church, the Pope says so.

But if each person in Protestantism is a priest before God, the priesthood of all believers, if each believer is expected to read the word, it is probable that each believer may come up with nuances if not larger differences from each other.

For many early Protestants, this was a dangerous idea that opened the floodgate to a torrent of distortion, misunderstanding, and confusion.

So, McGrath then focuses on some characteristically Protestant questions.

Everyone agrees that sola scriptura is at the heart of the Reformation, is at the heart of Protestant thinking.

The question is how does it work in practice?

McGrath on just 1 issue identifies at least 19 distinct Protestant responses, answers to the questions that Charles Darwin evolutionary theory has provoked, 19 responses.

We have many Christians who start with the Bible and end up with different ideas, most notably the first reformers Luther and Zwingli ended up calling each other some rather dreadful names in language I can't repeat in this company because of their differences in the interpretation of Scripture.

A second characteristically Protestant question is what is biblical?

Does biblical mean anything that isn't in contradiction of the Bible or does it mean only that which is endorsed by the Bible.

The first allows things to occur, practices, which aren't specifically mentioned.

The second forbids anything that isn't spoken of in the Bible.

Thirdly, what is the relationship between the Bible and tradition and this is a question we can't avoid.

Luther himself frequently spoke of the Bible and St.

But he was very, very clear that the only reason he was a champion of Augustine was that he felt Augustine's statements were consistent with the Bible.

In other words, In his mind, tradition was permissible only as it agreed with Scripture, in which case it could be brought into the argument.

But nevertheless, what is the role of tradition?

Next, which parts of scripture are literal and which are allegorical or metaphoric?

Now we agree for example that the book of Revelation should not be read in a purely literal manner.

It is stuffed full of images which need to be decoded but then we have some who go, as the scripture ends so it begins.

The first book is also metaphoric which needs to be decoded.

Which parts of the Bible are universal and which are time or cultural specific.

And this 1 isn't going to go away either.

Because 1 person's diktat from God is another person's cultural representation of how he came across in a particular context.

And finally, an issue which has come up in many of our speakers, the issue of authority.

Where does authority reside in a system that promotes the priesthood of all believers?

And how do you deal with people who differ from you so far that you perceive their beliefs to be dangerous?

So here we have a dangerous idea which has unleashed processes that makes it difficult to deal with dangerous ideas.

So Protestantism has turned to various authorities.

Now obviously the first main and authentic authority for Protestantism is what?

The problem is people based on Sola Scriptura can end up on opposite sides of the fence, then how do you decide?

And so Protestantism has typically pulled in various kinds of authorities to buttress its particular stand from this side or that side on sola scriptura and the first 1 that that denominations have lent on is creeds.

Here's what we believe and we're going to defend it.

Another 1 has been influential theologians and preachers, particularly founding figures, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, even more recently Billy Graham, figures like this that you can hang on and take their writings and say these are the authorities, these are the great minds of our faith and we'll use them to arbitrate.

Another way is to ordain the clergy to say the clergy has a special role and they have authority to decide what is right or wrong.

Does it sound dangerously familiar, some of these issues?

Fourthly, the community of believers is another approach that Protestants have taken.

Well yep, okay, it's alright for individuals to think what they think but let's let the community of believers determine the boundaries, determine which understanding is correct.

Then there are special authorities, people who have a direct line to God and this is something that our denomination is familiar with, prophets and it raises the question, how do we use the words and writings of prophets as authority and this is a really really good question because Ellen White is authoritative.

She herself insisted that her writing should be used in particular ways and 1 of the ways not to use her was to win theological arguments.

She wanted sola scriptura and I would like to say that we have been true to her words but that would make me an occasional liar.

And quite frankly, although we as a church are very clear about where we stand, there is a temptation for us to lean on each of these at times, is that true?

A temptation that we need to think through very clearly because while each of these can help inform if they in any way get between us and the word we've committed the very problem that we are protesting against.

So with this dangerous idea unleashed as McGraw explains, what are some of the key issues that Protestantism at large faces and he identifies the concept of unity in the face of various challenges and in fact Protestantism at the moment isn't really heading towards unity, it's fracturing more and more.

Because for Protestantism we used to have a known and common enemy, it was the Catholic Church.

So we knew who we were fighting against but lately as several presentations have pointed out the spotlight's gone off the Catholic Church as Protestantism's chief foe and now Increasingly we see ourselves as battling secularism and Islam as being greater threats to our faith.

And this ironically has opened up the path for dialogue with Catholicism.

Since we have common enemies, can we work together?

And then we have Catholic calls for unity based on the claim that the issues that have caused the Reformation are now over.

A petit malentendu as the French say, which is even more, I don't know, it just makes it smaller than the English phrase just a misunderstanding.

Tim malentendu is well you know we had this minor disagreement and now we've put it aside.

McGrath as you might expect being both a scientist and a theologian, has seen the Reformation as a key to the scientific revolution.

It is common today, particularly for Protestants, particularly for Protestants in America, to see science and religion at war.

Most historians of science absolutely and utterly disagree with that statement.

They say there is no inevitable conflict between science and religion.

They say actually the reason we had a scientific revolution was because we had a Protestant 1.

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The Reformation and Adventism: A License for Change or a Recipe for Chaos?

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