Winning the World

Session 1 By Their Fruits Shall You Know Them Employing Nicene Ecclesiology to Discern the Nature of Church Movements Today

Is the Reformation the Cause of Our Sorrowful Condition in the Church? The fundamental issue at stake in the Protestant Reformation was not that of justification, grace, sacraments, or Scripture, but the question of the nature of the church. It is true that the historical, political, economic, cultural, and religious influences bearing on the Reformation were exceedingly complex. It is also true that the immediate instigating factor was the attempt to rectify specific abuses in a decadent Renaissance Catholicism. It is true, finally, that Luther’s personal starting point was not the question of the church as such, but the question of salvation: how can one be certain of salvation in light of the perversity and pervasiveness of sin and the evident futility of good works to set one right before God? But Luther’s discovery of the answer in the Pauline theology of justifi cation by faith led to a new understanding of the church and a demand for radical reform of the whole of church life in accord with the gospel. Although Luther did not intend this reform to lead to schism, the issues were so deep, so complex, and so extensive in their implications, that in a historical sense one can say that division in the Western church had become inevitable. It was not the result merely of excesses on the Reformers’ side and of obstinacy on the Catholic side but of historical forces that were reshaping Europe. The Reform ation released creative new energies, produced genuine reform, and played an instrumental role in the emergence of modern consciou sness, but the consequences of the division of Christendom were also profoundly negative, since the division left a legacy of conflict, rivalry, continued splintering, and loss of religious credibility which encouraged the growth of secularism. One result is that it is not possible to speak of a single Protestant ecclesiology, since Protestantism itself soon divided into numerous movements, each with distinctive ecclesial features: Lutheran, Cal vinist, Anabaptist and Baptist, Anglican, Methodist, Congregational, Evangelical, as well as literally dozens of other rival sects that have continued to proliferate to this day. It is possible, nonetheless, to identify certain distinctive features that represent what is decisively new and theologically significant in Protestant ecclesiology. In so doing, one is forced to overlook many historical differences and to focus primarily on the great Reformers themselves.

~ Peter C. Hodgson. Revisioning the Church: Ecclesial Freedom in the New Paradigm . pp. 44-45.

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