The Reformation

Past Voices, Current Implications

Steven M. Studebaker, Gordon L. Heath, Steven M. Studebaker, Gordon L. Heath

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781725287075, 9781725287082
• eBook ISBN: 9781725287099
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Martin Luther's nailing of theNinety-Five Theses on the church door at Wittenberg was a pivotal moment in the birth of what would become known as the Reformation. More than five hundred years later, historians and theologians continue to discuss the impact of these events and their ongoing relevance for the church today. The collection of essays contained in this volume not only engages the history and theology of this sixteenth-century movement, but also focuseson how the message and praxis of the Protestant reformers can be translated into a post-Christendom West.

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Introduction

The German monk Martin Luther’s nailing of the Ninety-Five Theses on the church door at Wittenberg was a pivotal moment in the birth of what would become known as the Reformation(s).1 Five hundred years later, in 2017, numerous quincentennial celebrations at universities, seminaries, denominations, historical societies, and local churches around the world marked that iconic event. So, too, did the publication of a plethora of books.2 The Centre for Post-Christendom Studies at McMaster Divinity College was one such organization that hosted a conference commemorating the event; however, while the conference did provide attendees with the necessary history and theology of the movement in the sixteenth century, its focus was to think about how the message and praxis of the reformers could be translated into a post-Christendom West.

The reforms birthed, denominations founded, and trajectories established by Luther and others eventually moved far afield from Germany and the Holy Roman Empire to become a global Protestant movement of over eight hundred million followers in the twenty-first century. Many of those Protestants live in the global south and are experiencing the incredible growth of the church. As Philip Jenkins and others have noted, one of the most remarkable events of the post-world war era has been the demographic explosion of the church in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia. Churches in those regions face their own unique pressures, but the trajectories are, in many cases, towards the “Next-Christendom.”3 In the West, however, the telos is not so positive. Christianity is still the majority religion in terms of census results, but rapid secularization, a decrease in church attendance, a rise of “nones” (those with no religious affiliation), and, perhaps most alarming for many, a move from being powerful shapers of culture in the gilded halls of power to being on the margins (just one religious voice among many) has churches reeling. For centuries, churches relied on some sort of Christendom to bolster their privileged position, but those days seem over. It is a different world, with many old assumptions crumbling and new realities beginning to shape a post-Christendom West.

To be more precise, there have been two post-Christendoms in the West since the Reformation, and Luther—as the iconic reformer (or ringleader, in the eyes of his opponents)—has been blamed for both. The first post-Christendom was the permanent breakup of a unified medieval Christendom. Despite the divisions and dissenters of the medieval period, for roughly five-hundred years before Luther, Western Europe identified itself as a Christian civilization under the authority of the Catholic Church. There were attempts at solving the Reformation era theological controversies, but after the Council of Trent (1545–1563), Spanish Armada (1588), and Thirty Years War (1618–1648), it was clear that the division of European Christianity was permanent. Christendom, in terms of a structural, cultural, and spiritual unity, had been “destroyed.”4 For centuries that followed, Christianity remained powerful and central to culture and national identity, but the choice became allegiance to competing Christian confessions. The second post-Christendom is now, with the move of churches to the margins and away from power. Of course, its origins can be traced to a number of factors such as the Enlightenment, industrialization, urbanization, migration, and post-war angst, but the trajectories established by the Reformation had unintended consequences. As Brad S. Gregory has argued in The Unintended Reformation, “ideological and institutional shifts that occurred five or more centuries ago remain substantively necessary to an explanation of why the Western world today is as it is.”5 Stated simply, the religious revolutions of the sixteenth century charted a course to today’s Western secularism and pluralism.

With the complicity of the Reformation in the plight of decline of Christendom, one may wonder what Luther and the other reformers have to say to churches today. The Centre for Post-Christendom Studies’ conference sought to address that very issue by inviting various scholars to make links between the past and the present, with the purpose of drawing on the rich heritage of the sixteen and seventeenth-century reforms to equip Christians today. The expression ecclesia semper reformanda (the church must always be reformed), usually associated with Reformed (Calvinist) churches, may be generally appropriated to this theological and pastoral enterprise of re-imagining and re-applying the Reformation to a radically new cultural climate. The authors who contributed to this book acknowledge that the world of Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, John Calvin, and others is long gone, but they are also committed to the task of bringing their message to the modern world.

The chapters in this volume each originated as a presentation at the conference.6 A number of others were published in Post-Christendom Studies, the journal of the Centre for Post-Christendom Studies.7 The hope, of course, is that such publications nudge the discussion forward, and help churches today get a sense not only of their heritage (both good and bad), but the rich theological resources that could help shape their church’s ministry in a world that Luther would never have recognized.

Victor Shepherd’s first chapter introduces Luther and the religious ferment of the early-sixteenth century. He provides a sense of Luther’s angst over his alienation from God, and how his solution to his spiritual crisis was rooted in an “utterly gratuitous, sheer gift of God” rather than a hunkering down and working even harder at earning salvation. He details the intense opposition to his reforms, his courage in the face of such hostility (in contrast to Erasmus), and how the issue of indulgences was the catalyst for his Ninety-Five Theses. He also clarifies what the “Freedom of a Christian” is; “Christians, freed by Christ for their true nature—bound to Christ by faith and bound to the neighbor by love—live henceforth in radical self-forgetfulness.” The implications of Luther’s message were far reaching, and undermined much of accepted piety and theology; views on indulgences, saints, clergy, grace, faith, marriage, and sacraments were all re-cast to reflect Luther’s biblical vision. The lesson from his life, Shepherd concludes, is “for the church in a post-Christian context . . . to believe and proclaim that same message.”

James Keller seeks to explore the ecumenical content and value of the Ninety-Five Theses from three perspectives. First, he places the document in context, arguing that “Luther’s vision at the time of the Theses did not stray beyond the theological parameters of what at the time would be considered standard procedure.” Second, the Theses predate the Reformation, and were written to stimulate and inform a theological debate (sadly, one that never materialized). Third, the Theses themselves were “intended as an ecumenical mechanism for reform, not reformation.” Luther had no idea of what the future held, but he did intend to seek the renewal of the church through—in this case—theological debate. Rather than see him as a man on a mission to be a great reformer, Keller argues, Luther’s actions in Wittenberg in those early years are better understood as efforts to reform. He was, Keller writes, before being excommunicated, a “proto-ecumenist . . . who reflected on his ecclesial age with genuine gospel concern for all Christendom.” Luther’s early ecumenical vision, he concludes, is a way forward for both Catholics and Protestants.

Gwenfair Walters Adams provides a window into the way the struggle for the Reformation of the English churches played out at the national and local levels. The Church of the Holy Trinity, Long Melford, Suffolk and Roger Martyn’s role in this church tells the story at the local level. Thomas Cranmer’s r...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contributors
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Martin Luther and the Origins of the Reformation
• Chapter 3: Luther, the Ninety-Five Theses, and Ecumenism
• Chapter 4: Thomas Cranmer, Roger Martyn, and the Transformation of Worship in the English Reformation
• Chapter 5: Calvin, the Anabaptists, and Tradition
• Chapter 6: Anti-Semitism in the Reformation Era
• Chapter 7: Appropriating Reformation Tradition(s) Today
• Chapter 8: More “Unintended Consequences”
• Chapter 9: William Byrd and the Musical Reshaping of Liturgy in Reformation England
• Chapter 10: Imperishable Seed