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RETRIEVE
REFORMATION RESOURCES | Does the Augsburg Confession Teach Anything Outside of Scripture? Defensio Augustanae Confessionis | by Friedrich Balduin; translated by Todd Rester
REFORMATION OUTTAKES | Inky Reformation
by Zachary Purvis
II. CONVERSE
POEM | Prolegomena | by Larry Woiwode
ESSAY | Can Baptists Be Catholic? An Evangelical Baptist Perspective | by Rhyne R. Putman
ESSAY | Retrieving Catholicity: A Reformed Perspective | by Scott R. Swain
ESSAY | The Catholicity of the Anglican Tradition | by Justin S. Holcomb and Jared L. Jones
III.
PERSUADE 40 ESSAY | Exposing and Healing Rifts in the American Church | by Stephen Roberts
POEM | Deserted Barn | by Larry Woiwode
IV. ENGAGE 48 ESSAY | A Startling Soliloquy: In Memory of Larry Woiwode | by Gregory Edward Reynolds
POEM | Hawk’s Nest | by Larry Woiwode
BOOK REVIEWS
The Nicene Option: An Incarnational Phenomenology | by James K. A. Smith
Reclaiming the Reformation: Christ for You in Community | by Magnus Persson, translated by Bror Erickson You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World | by Alan Noble
220-222,
No other magazine brings together confessional Lutheran, Anglican, Reformed, and Baptist representatives to discuss the significant biblical and cultural issues of our day. We’re committed to helping you hone your theological thinking and share your insights effectively with others. Your support allows Modern Reformation to keep this conversation going strong.
S WE APPROACH the end of 2022, it seems appropriate to remi nisce. Looking back, 2022 has been an exciting year for Modern Reformation . We’ve celebrated thirty years with a redesign of the print maga zine and website, we’ve published some signif icant content—tackling tough but important issues in a spirit of humility and fidelity—and we’ve engaged in many discussions with our readership. I feel especially inclined to reminisce as I write what is my final Letter from the Editor for MR. I have taken a teaching position at Yel lowstone Theological Institute and leave MR full of fond memories and gratitude. I am also filled with much confidence for MR ’s future; our cup truly overflows.
We’ve spent much of this past year remi niscing, looking back at historical aspects of evangelicalism. We will do so again in this final issue of 2022—yet somewhat deeper this time as we ask what it means for our Reformation traditions to be catholic . I say deeper because to ask this question takes us back beyond the sixteenth century to the beginnings of our faith tradition. The term “catholic” ( καθολικός ) is not a New Testament term, but very early on began to be used to describe the church. The first extant instance comes from Ignatius’s Epis tle to the Smyrnaeans (c. 110). By the end of the second century, “the church catholic”(ἐκκλησία καθολική ) had become a more technical desig nation, as in Stromata (VII.17) by Clement of Alexandria (d. ca. 215):
The true Church, that which is really an cient, is one . . . from the very reason that God is one, and the Lord one. . . . There fore in substance and idea, in origin and in development, we say that the ancient
and catholic church [ἐκκλησία καθολική] is only one, agreeing as it does in the uni ty of the one faith.
AIn its more technical sense, “catholic” des ignates the unity and continuity of Christian teaching and corporal fellowship through time. So then, what does it mean to say that our own Reformation traditions are catholic? We’ve asked several representative scholars to help us think through that question: Dr. Scott Swain (Re formed), Dr. Rhyne Putman (Baptist), and the Rev. Dr. Justin Holcomb and the Rev. Jared L. Jones (both Anglican).
This issue also represents a season of mourn ing for the Modern Reformation family. We began 2022 with much excitement as the esteemed poet laureate of North Dakota, Larry Woiwode, became MR’s new poetry editor. Then sadly, on April 28, Larry died at the age of eighty after a short illness. Although we grieve, we are not with out hope. Out of love and gratitude for the man and the poet, this issue includes several tributes to Larry Woiwode, including a personal reflection from Dr. Gregory Reynolds and three of Larry’s poems, selected by Mark Green.
As you read through this issue, we invite you to pause and reflect. Amid the troubles of our time, we invite you to pray Psalm 77:11 with us:
I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your wonders of old.
Joshua Schendel Executive EditorI.
Learning from the wisdom of the past
This edition of Balduin’s 1623 work Defensio Augustanae Confessionis (Wittenberg: Paul Helwigius, 1623; fols. G4v–H4v) was a response to Cardinal Peter Pázmány, S. J. (1570–1637) and his Hungarian polemic against Protestants titled Hodegus Ig azságra-Vezérló Kalauz (Wien: Posonban, 1613); other editions Bratislava (1623 and 1637) and Trnava (1766). Pázmány devotes six chapters in book four of his volume to a general refutation of the Lutheran Augsburg Confession; see Hodegus (1613), 325–67. Balduin’s Defensio is a direct response to Pázmány on this issue. It was originally a series of Latin disputations delivered publicly at Wittenberg that Balduin authored and presided over with a student respondent.1
63. So far, we have refuted those things that the Esauite alleged our confession taught beyond Scripture; now we will see what sort of thing he thinks is taught there contrary to Scripture.2 First, he says this is contrary to Scripture, “that the confession teaches that doing something in divine worship without God’s command is a prohibited audaciousness.” I respond: But how can it be contrary to Scripture what Christ himself teaches in the words expressed in Scrip ture (Matt. 15:9), “In vain they worship me teaching the doctrines and com mandments of men”? However, he objects the authority of Paul, who denies he has a commandment about this, that someone should be outside marriage. Yet he counseled that it would be better to remain such. Likewise, he did not have a commandment that he was ever to travel to Jerusalem from a vow, that he was to shave his head, and to desire other similar actions to please God, yet he did all those things. But I respond: The rule of Christ, which our confession repeats from his very mouth, is speaking about the commandments of men in divine worship. But the apostolic counsel that he gives concerning virgins does not concern any other part of divine worship, but he gives the counsel due to a present necessity, as he says in verse 26, because of course Christians had been exposed at that time to many persecutions and dangers, to which virgins were less exposed than spous es. Moreover, it should be noted that at some point the papists should be accus tomed to proving their evangelical counsels from that passage of Paul, as is evi
dent in the case of Bellarmine (tom. 2, bk. 2, ch. 9, on monks).3 However, those counsels refer to God as their author, which, if this is true, how can our Pázmány oppose this passage to the divine commands? Paul’s vow was instituted by God himself for the Nazirites (Num. 6) but was freely used by Paul, not as part of the divine law, but as a bodily exercise whereby he was serving not God but the Jews; partly so that they would not think that he was entirely averse to the Mosaic law, as some thought he had committed a crime (Acts 21:21ff); and partly so that they would not be averse to the gospel of Christ and his ministers (Acts 18:18).
64. Next, he says that it is contrary to Scripture because our confession teach es that vowing chastity vows an impossible thing. I respond: But how can it be contrary to Scripture what Christ himself approves of, since he says regarding the gift of continence, “Not all receive this word” (Matt. 19:11), and, as experience testifies, how many votaries satisfy this vow so that it is necessary to permit them to have concubines, as we heard above? The Esauite opposes the authority of Paul who urges that a virgin should remain outside of marriage. But Paul counsels this on account of the present necessity and not for any except those who have the gift of chastity. And thus he added, “I want everyone to be as I am, but each person has their own gift from God, one certainly in this way, but another in that way” (1 Cor. 7:7–8). But regarding incontinence, he says in verse 9 that “if they are not continent, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn.” Moreover, this is most true, that virgins unable to be continent outside of wedlock pollute themselves with adultery. Moreover, Paul did not urge a vow of chastity upon such a virgin. Indeed, he does not even have one word about that vow.
65. The third point is of the same stuff,4 for he says that it is contrary to Scrip ture that our confession stated, “The one who lives in celibacy acts contrary to the commandments of God and nature itself”—of course, if he does not have the gift of continence, for that must always be added, since Christ said about the continent that the one who can receive this should receive it (Matt. 19:11)—“for it is a common precept that everyone should have his own wife.” I respond: But how is this contrary to Scripture since the apostle Paul so expressly taught this in Scripture (1 Cor. 7:1)? “On account of fornication,” he says, “each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.” The Esauite opposes not so much us as the apostle himself. “But if this is true,” he says, “then when the apostle counsels regarding celibacy, he counseled something contrary to God and nature.” The apostle did not counsel everyone broadly but those capable of continence; he urged something else for those who do not possess this gift, as we previously demonstrated.
66. Fourth, he says that it is contrary to Scripture what our confession teach es, that “the one who believes in Christ is saved without works, by faith alone.” I respond: But how can this be contrary to Scripture because Paul so expressly teaches it, saying, “We hold that a man is justified by faith without the works of the law” (Rom. 3:28), and again, “A man is not justified by the works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ.” 5 And again, what the apostle James says—that “a man is not justified by faith alone” and that “faith apart from works is dead”
(James 2:24, 26)—is not so much opposed to us as to the apostle Paul. But James is not treating of a person’s justification before God, about which Paul is speaking, but about a person’s justification before his neighbor; that is, he is not handling the causes of justification but the declaration of righteousness, which happens by works that witness about the faith of the person justified. For he speaks this way in verse 18, “Show me your faith without works and I will show you my faith from [my] works.” Moreover, it is most true because that declaration happens through works, without which faith is dead; for just as it is known that a man is alive from his respiration, so from a man’s works it is known that he lives before God. But that is not at all contrary to Paul, who is speaking about the causes of justification and not about the declaration of a man as justified; and in this way our confession speaks, on whose side Paul himself is dug in.
67. Fifth, he says that it is contrary to Scripture that our confession says, “Whoever would sin against conscience does not remain in true faith.” I respond: But how is this contrary to Scripture? Because Paul openly writes, “If you live according to the flesh, you will die” (Rom. 8:13). Living according to the flesh is sinning against conscience; dying is losing the faith that grants eternal life. And the divine John says, “Whoever sins is from the devil” (1 John 3:8). What does the devil have in common with faith? But the Esauite opposes that passage of John: “Many of the leaders believed in Christ, but nevertheless they loved the praise of men more than of God” (John 12:[42]), from which he infers that faith and sins against conscience can exist simultaneously. The faith of those leaders was not a true and saving one but a hypocritical one. For true faith exerts itself through confession and an earnest love of Christ, on account of which a believer suffers all kinds of hardships in the world. But those did not confess him, says John, so that they would not be ejected from the synagogues (12:[42]).
68. Sixth, he says that it is contrary to Scripture that our confession teaches that no one can fulfill the law of God. I respond: But how can this be contrary to Scripture because Scripture expressly says that there is no one who does not sin (1 Kings 8:46; Eccl. 7:21); and Christ himself says that Moses gave you the law and none of you keep the law (John 7:19)? That man objects the saying of Christ, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matt. 2:30), and of John, “His com mandments are not burdensome” (1 John 5:3). But Scripture does not contradict itself. Therefore, Christ and John are speaking about the regenerate, to whom the commandments of God are not burdensome, and not as if they could perfectly fulfill them. For this is applied to all men from what has been said prior. But be cause God deals with them in a singular way, he leads them by his Holy Spirit into his ways, guarding them from immense lapses, covering their infirmities with the righteousness of his Son, and counteracting the defects of their obedience with his most perfect one.
69. Seventh, he says that it is contrary to Scripture that our confession teaches that all have been born according to nature because they are born in sin—that is, without the fear of God, without confidence toward God, and with concupis cence—and from the corpus of the teaching of Philip, he adds that concupiscence
is a thing condemned and by its own nature worthy of death.6 I respond: But how is this contrary to Scripture, in which the most holy David confesses that he was conceived in sin (Ps. 51:7), and Paul calls concupiscence simply sin (Rom. 7:7)? Moreover, all sin is lawlessness ( ἀνομία , 1 John 3:4) and worthy of a curse and death (Deut. 27:26). The passage of Paul is objected whereby we are said to be purged by baptism from all sins (Eph. 2:26) so that there would not remain in us anything liable to damnation (Rom. 8:1). But we answer with Augustine, “The concupiscence of the flesh is dismissed in baptism, not such that it does not exist, but so that it is not imputed,” which opinion is cited in the law of Gratian, On Con secration, distinction 4, chapter “Non ex quo.” 7 Moreover, it is said in Romans 8:1, ὀυδὲν κατάκριμα: There is no condemnation for the regenerate; not as if there was not any sin in them that would be worthy of death, but because those remaining sins are covered by the righteousness of Christ and are not imputed to believ ers resisting them through the Holy Spirit. “In fact, all the commandments are considered done, when what is not done is pardoned,” as again Augustine says.8
70. Eighth, he says that it is contrary to Scripture that our confession says, “Our justification does not even in the least bit depend upon a true and saving repentance.” Our confession nowhere teaches this, but it denies that a remission of sins depends upon the condition of our worth or of our works, as is clear from articles 8 and 20. It is not at all contrary to this doctrine in the least, because Scripture teaches that he must perish who does not repent (Luke 13:5) or who does not produce the fruits worthy of repentance (Luke 3:8). But who of us ever denied this?
71. Finally, he says our confession completely falls apart when [it says] that everyone who believes has their sins forgiven them and has attained the grace of God. But how is this contrary to Scripture? Did not Christ say to the paralytic, “Take heart, son, your sins have been forgiven you” (Matt. 9:2)? Paul also writes with great fullness of assurance, 9 “I am certain that neither death nor life, nor angels nor princes, nor powers, neither the present nor things to come, neither width nor height nor depth, nor any other creature can separate me from the love of God” (Rom. 8:38)—which words of Paul the divine Bernard transfers to each and every believer: “You should be certain,” he says, “because neither death nor life, nor anything else that the apostle as much manifoldly as boldly enumerat ed, could separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus.” 10 To these, the words of Paul must certainly not be opposed, wherein he commands us “to work out our salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12). For there he is not treating of a servile fear that flees from God, and he does not promise his grace and good will to [such a] person, but he is treating the filial fear that reverences God as his Father so that he would not in any way offend him. And so that former fear is partly an Epicurean security and partly a spiritual pride and arrogance, so that we would not grow haughty in confidence of the gifts but that we would depend entirely upon God’s mercy. Nor must that passage of Sirach be opposed, “Concerning propitiated sin, be not without fear” (Sir. 5:5). 11 According to the Greek text, the words are meant in this way: “Concerning indulgence, do
“The concupiscence of the flesh is dismissed in bap tism, not such that it does not exist, but so that it is not imputed.”
—St. Augustinenot be excessively secure, so that you would heap up sins on sins.” 12 Therefore, these words are opposed to the security of those sinning who promise themselves impunity due to the mercy and longsuffering of God. But that has nothing in common with the filial confidence of the godly toward God. Most awkwardly of all, he is opposed “because, if someone certainly ought to believe that his sins are forgiven, he ought not to ask more fully for the remission of his sins.” Now, because we sin daily, we also seek remission daily, just as David witnesses about all the saints (Ps. 32:6)—which petition, because it is from faith, furnishes no reason why we should doubt the listening [to our requests] that Christ also promised with an oath (John 16:23).
72. These are what our Pázmány thinks are contrary to Scripture in the Augs burg Confession (Confessio Augustana). Pázmány, that outstanding interpreter of sacred letters, in which [objections] he openly and exceedingly shows forth his most base infantility and how many things in the papacy are taught against the express [witness of the] Scriptures, so that they are not believed. So he has shown in short compass that: there could be some [aspect of] divine worship that may not be divinely prescribed to us; that the vow of continence may be simply possible for all; that faith could stand with sins against conscience; that not all [people] propagated according to nature are born in sins, and so forth; all of which manifestly contradict Holy Scripture. Therefore, let us congratulate ourselves because this so scrupulous Aristarchus could not find in our confession anything contrary to Scripture, which testimony must not be condemned—that it is in such agreement with the holy letters that not even the gates of hell could prevail against it.
Dr. Todd Rester (PhD, Calvin Theological Seminary) is associate professor of church history at West minster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. He serves as the director for the Junius Institute for Digital Reformation Research and works as a translator for the Dutch Reformed Translation Society.
1. For my translation of chapter IX, see Modern Reformation (May/June 2022): 26–29. For Balduin’s entire response to Pázmány’s work, see Balduinus, Phosphorus Veri Catholocismi (Wittenberg: Johannes Gormannus, 1626). Balduin’s Defensio (1623) is found verbatim in its entirety in Phosphorus (1626), 403–576. On the significance of Pázmány, see R. Johnston, H. Louthan, and T. Ó hAnnracháin, “Catholic Reformers: Stanislas Hosius, Melchior Khlesl, and Peter Pázmány” in H. Louthan and G. Murdock, eds., A Companion to the Reformation in Central Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 210–22. On the commissioning of a Latin transla tion of Pázmány’s Hodegus so that Wittenberg might refute it, see László Barta, “Adatok a Kalauzra Adott Wittenbergi Válasz Készíteséhez” in E. Hargittay, ed., Pázmány Péter és kora (Piliscsaba, 2001), 268–73; cited in Johston, Louthan, and Ó hAnnracháin, 215n42.
2. Cf. Pázmány, Hodegus (1613), 347–48.
3. Robert Bellarmine, S.J. (1542–1621), tome 2, controv. 2, bk. 2, ch. 9, Disputationes de controversiis Christianae Fidei, 4
vols. (Ingolstadt: Adamus Sartorius, 1601), 2:450–467.
4. ejusdem farinae: lit. “of the same flour”
5. Emphasis in original Latin: NON justificatur homo ex operibus legis, NISI per fidem Iesu Christi
6. Conscupiscentia sit res damnata, et sua natura digna morte ; cf. Philip Melanchthon, Corpus Reformatorum: Philippi Melanchthonis opera quae supersunt omnia, ed. K. Bretschneider and H. Bindseil, 28 vols. (Halle: A. Schwetschke & Sons, 1834–1860), 26:351–2.
7. Augustine, De nuptiis et concupiscentia, 1.25 in PL 44:429–30; Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence in NPNF 1, 5:274; cf. Gratiani Decretum, pt 3, dist. 4, ch. 146.
Augustine, Retractiones, 1.19 in PL 32:613.
magna
Bernard of Clairvaux, “In Festo Pentecostes, Sermo III” §7 in PL 183:333.
De propitiato peccato ne sis sine metu
De venia, ne sis nimium securus, ut peccata peccatis cumules.
EARLY IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY , Thomas Platter traveled with five friends through Switzerland, stopping in a small village en route to St. Gallen to at tend the Mass. After Vespers, the early evening service, one of the priests called them heretics because they had come from the city of Zurich, which no longer considered the pope as the head of the church. When Platter asked this priest why he thought the pope was head of the church, the priest answered, “Because St. Peter was pope at Rome and has given the papacy there to his successors.” Platter replied, “St. Peter was very likely never at Rome.” Then Platter pulled his New Testament from his bag and showed the priest how in Romans 16 the apos tle Paul sends greetings to so many but does not mention Peter, who was, accord ing to the priest’s own assertion, the most eminent among Christians in Rome. But, the priest objected, when Christ met Peter outside Rome and asked him where he was going, Peter answered, “To Rome, to allow myself to be crucified.” When Platter asked the priest where he had read this, the priest said that his grandmother had often told him the story. Armed with a rapier wit, Platter re sponded, “I perceive truly that your grandmother is your Bible!” 1
Like John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments and accounts from other martyrologies, this story is sharply defined. Platter may well have embellished it when he record ed it in his memoirs, as he likely did when he described his boyhood routine of sneaking away at night from his rope-maker apprenticeship to read books by Ho mer and Pindar in Greek. But the story is also illustrative, even if it is somewhat staged. For the Reformation was nothing if not the recovery of the book—namely, the Bible. The priest did not rely on the New Testament but on the apocryphal second-century Acts of Peter. Moreover, he came to this source indirectly through family and oral tradition.
Platter was, in fact, a young Protestant and a humanist. He carried with him in his rucksack a freshly printed copy of the New Testament. He was equipped with critical faculties of reading and interpreting because he always privileged the written and now the printed word. Before long, he settled in Basel, Switzerland—a thriving hub of Renaissance print culture. With three new friends, he bought a printing shop and taught himself to become a master printer. In 1535 and 1536, he printed the first edition of John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion .
In some circles, the shift from script to print through Gutenberg’s movable type is no longer considered quite so world shattering as scholars once claimed. The rise of mechanically reproduced texts on its own did not give birth to modern culture or exclusive shape to the Renaissance, the Reformation, or the Scientific Revolution.2 Yet, print played an important role nonetheless, not least by giv ing the Bible a more prominent presence and by allowing Protestant teaching to spread as it did.
Martin Luther was, of course, a regular visitor at printing shops and fully aware of the revolutionary aspects of the enterprise. While he did learn the pro cess, he also seemed to somehow know instinctually that a treatise of eight pages was ideal for faster printing. He invented a new form of theological writing in the German vernacular that was lucid, accessible, and short. With Lucas Cranach, he transformed the title page that provided books from Wittenberg with a striking and easily identifiable brand. Soon, he became the most published author in the history of Christianity and a mass media event in himself.3 “The pen is light,” he affirmed. “All that is needed is a goose feather, found anywhere”—though “the whole body and soul work at it too.” 4
No one was busier than Luther and company. Humanists and statesmen, teachers and churchmen, these the Reformers labored unceasingly and with diz zying speed. In April 1507, Luther sent his first letter, and in April 1564, Calvin dictated his last will and testament. The period in between swarmed with millions of Protestant documents, many of which were handwritten while many others were printed. From first to last, the Reformation world over flowed with ink.
Learned Martin Bucer, for example, was unmatched as an administrator of the Reforma tion in Strasbourg and Oxford. “I am amazed, for I have never seen Bucer inactive,” confirmed Calvinist Italian exile Peter Martyr Vermigli, who spent weeks in Bucer’s household. 5 Nev er one to miss an opportunity, Bucer crammed each of his biblical commentaries to the brim— so much so that Bucer, Calvin sighed, “does not know how to take his hand off the writing pad.” 6 Calvin himself was the master of brevity. Yet he was a prodigious writer overall and almost always worked in a hurry. “I hardly know what I may have written here,” Calvin once confessed in the postscript to a note for Pierre Viret, a Reformed churchman in Lausanne, “because my eyesight is so blurred” from constant writing.7 The bent nibs wielded by the Reformers often accompanied them to the end. Ulrich von Hutten, the solider-poet who fought Desiderius Erasmus and the papacy, died on a tiny island in Lake Zurich. “He left nothing of value,” Zurich Reformer Huldrych Zwingli observed, “noth ing but a pen.” 8
Printing offered new careers and widespread influence; it certainly enabled Platter’s dramatic encounter with the priest and helped get new Protestant pam phlets into untold hands. Printing itself, however, was not able to change hearts and minds. Luther and others characterized the church not as a “pen house” but as a “mouth house” that hears and speaks God’s word.9 He identified the proper organ of the church as the ear—not the eye or the pen—for the church lives in this age by hearing the promises of God and beholding them by faith. He described preachers as those who shout the word from the pulpit in two kinds of speech: law and gospel. And when he tried to explain the Reformation, he did not turn to the harnessed power of print but to the gospel of Christ: “I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my Philip [Melanchthon] and [Nikolaus von] Amsdorf. . . . I did nothing. The Word did everything.” 10 The story of the medium ultimately cannot be substituted for the story of the message.
Zachary Purvis (DPhil, University of Oxford) is lecturer of church history at Edinburgh Theological Seminary.
1. Thomas Platter, Autobiographie, trans. Marie Helmer (Paris: Armand Colin, 1964), 56–57.
2. Cf. Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).
3. Andrew Pettegree, Brand Luther: 1517, Printing, and the Making of the Reformation (New York: Random House, 2015).
4. Martin Luther, “Sermon on Keeping Children in School,” 1522, in D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1883–2009), 30.2:573 (hereafter WA).
5. Peter Martyr Vermigli, Loci communes . . . (Heidelberg, 1613), 1071; Marc Lienhard and Jakob Willer, Straßburg und die Reformation (Kehl: Morstadt, 1981), 57.
6. John Calvin to Simon Grynaeus, 18 October 1539, in Ioannis Calvini opera omnia quae supersunt, ed. G. Baum, E. Cunitz, and E. Reuss (Brunswick: Schwetschke, 1863–1900), 10b:404.
7. Calvin to Pierre Viret, 25/28 October 1542, in Ioannis Calvini opera omnia quae supersunt, 11:460.
8. Huldrych Zwingli, Huldreich Zwinglis sämtliche Werke, vol. 8 (Leipzig: Heinsius, 1914), 127.
9. Luther, “Sermon on the First Sunday in Advent, Matthew 21:1–9,” 1522, in WA 10/1.2:48.
10. Luther, “Sermon on the First Monday in Lent,” 10 March 1522, in WA 10/3:18–19.
Discussing from perspectives of the present
The great green earth revolves and in Its turn to us reveals not active fate
Nor recompense on scoria ground But quiet talks at the gate.
Our lanes of back-east pastureland
Listen in on winter light, As haunted as I feel haunted by The 9/11 strike I
Carry still, and then come snowy Hoof creaks, horses drawing near, The scent on barnyard clothes
My swamp of inland wetland fear
For my own; while close-in coyotes Expostulate on Wagner’s themes
And jackrabbits dive in dodging wisps Swift as brainless smithereens;
Spooked antelope return to graze
With calves in wary winter herds, Their ears alert to rifle bolts
And flash-ups of birds
North Dakota, state of hardy Sons at ease on sunlit ice, Home to grandfolk immigrants
Whose blessings strike us twice or thrice;
For offspring here are worded folk Who heard it at the grocery store
Or from the priest or minister
Tolling gospel truth and more,
And here our hearts remain diverse, But divided since the steam and rail
And rush of trains arrived and left Half the land as bare as paint; we bale
And feed and farm and ranch, and pull
On pairs of taped-up overshoes Or green-stained cowboy boots
To drink our winter beer or booze
At Friday rancher-rigger fights
Although in homicides we rate Lowest in the forty-eight—one
Per year, but that in utter hate
In backing trucks, cattle trailers
ATVs in cavalries,
And blankety-blank round balers
Somber seeing the northern lights And sunsets in tricolor strands, Resignation the mainstay of our Solitude; it never stands
To reason then that sons and daughters End in Minneapolis
Or on a foreign shore to stem The fractured tide of hapless polis
Discontent. So in 2002
I reach through my increasing years
To progeny who hold the line
Five thousand miles from my fears.
“Prolegomena,” “Deserted Barn,” and “Hawk’s Nest” by Larry Woiwode were all previously published by North Dakota State University Press and are printed here with kind permission.
WE’RE NOT BAPTISTS YET . We still have a lot of questions.” The couple sitting across from me in the pastor’s study had been visiting our church so long that I had wrongly presumed they were already Baptists who were just new to the area. But over the course of our conversation, I discovered that these thoughtful Christians were from a different tradition. They had clear and pointed questions about what Baptists believe and why. We discussed some of the key differences our respective traditions had about baptism, church gover nance, and denominational service. At the end of the conversation, we accepted the fact that we had well-informed disagreements, and we closed by affirming one another as brothers and sisters in Christ and praying for one another.
Whether or not this couple will decide to seek out covenant membership with our church is a matter between them and God, but I will always rejoice in having opportunities to fellowship and worship with other committed followers of Jesus. This recognition, I think, is what catholicity looks like in practice. We may have doctrinal disagreements with other believers, but we can always be charitable and gracious in the way we interact with them.
Evangelical catholicity (with a little “c”) is about seeing God at work outside of our particular tribes. Through Scripture and the creeds and confessions of the church, we simply affirm that there is “one holy catholic and apostolic church”— the universal church for whom Christ died (1 Cor. 12:13; Eph. 5:23). Baptists may prioritize local, individual churches, but we also affirm believers from other historically orthodox Christian traditions as brothers and sisters in Christ. Catholicity, as evangelical theologians have used the term, is both similar to and distinct from ecumenicism in the past. The terms “catholic” and “ecumeni cal” share a related etymology: both katholikē and oikoumenē describe something universal or worldwide. Both catholic and ecumenical pursuits are about the true Christian church across time, space, and traditional or denominational lines. But ecumenists have often sought visible or institutional unity that blurs, distorts, or discards the theological distinctives of various Christian traditions. 1 Evangelicals in general, and Baptists in particular, are often reluctant about jumping into this kind of uncritical ecumenism.
Baptists disagree about a lot of things, and there is no common view on how Baptists should approach the concept of catholicity. Here I am only offering one potential perspective on what it means to be Baptist and catholic. Many Bap tists outright dismiss the idea, concerned that it could lead to the kind of wishywashy ecumenism that has ruined mainline churches in the West. Other Baptists, usually of a more progressive bent, welcome and embrace something more like mainline ecumenical efforts, even seeking reconciliation between Protestants and Roman Catholics.2 I belong to a group of evangelical Baptists who “believe
“
that all Christians should pray for and seek Christian unity across ecclesial and denominational lines and that Baptists should not reflexively reject principled, ecumenical dialogue with other Christian traditions.” 3 We also believe that Bap tists bring a unique perspective to this conversation—that our distinctives can contribute to the renewal of the broader Christian tradition.4
Those engaged in conversations about catholicity must ask appropriate ques tions about the aims of such an exercise. If the goal of catholicity is the mutual recognition of other Christians as belonging to true churches and acting peaceably toward them, then Christians ought to aggressively pursue catholicity, seeking what Wesley called “union in affection.” 5 On occasion, this can extend into formal gospel partnerships between Christians of various theological traditions. But if catholicity means organizational unity achieved by abandoning our distinctives, then this is a hill too far.6
For Baptists, practices of the local church are not mere adiaphora (i.e., theo logical matters that make no real difference). We hold deep convictions about what it means to be a member of a church, how one enters its covenant communi ty, and how that church operates under the lordship of King Jesus. These distinct beliefs do not necessarily keep us from cooperating with Christians from other traditions in arenas that advance God’s kingdom or promote the public good. We often practice what Timothy George has called “ecumenism in the trenches” on social and political issues like abortion or biblical marriage.7 We can also partner with interdenominational parachurch organizations that have shared evangelical commitments. But these Baptist distinctives usually keep us from pursuing more formal associations with non-Baptistic evangelicals.
Baptists herald regenerate church membership as the foundation of all church practices. Regenerate church membership means that “a local church’s mem bership should be comprised only of individuals who provide credible evidence they have repented of their sins and trusted in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.” 8 Only born-again Christians who have had personal conversion expe riences should be counted as members of Christ’s body and the local covenant community. Baptists believe that the pattern of church membership modeled in the book of Acts is that “you must believe before you can belong.” 9 For this rea son, Baptists are reluctant to participate in close communion with churches who extend covenant membership to individuals based on familial relationships or national citizenship. However, this does not prevent us from recognizing regen erate Christians in other church traditions.
Baptists likewise argue that the ordinance/sacrament10 of baptism is only for those who profess faith in Christ—what is commonly called credobaptism. Those who are Baptist out of family tradition or convenience may be willing to concede this point when asked whether this should be a requirement for covenant membership or communion. We who are Baptist by conviction are less likely to make any such concession. We remain convinced that Scripture gives us only one pattern for bap tism: faith in Christ followed by its public profession through water immersion.
Baptists may disagree with other evangelical Christians about the method and proper candidates for baptism, but we have historically agreed with them about its meaning. With other evangelicals, we confess that baptism pictures “the gift of the Holy Spirit, the remission of sins, the washing of sins in the blood of Christ, union with Christ, union with one another, and entry into the visible church.” 11 With the rest of the Christian tradition, we gladly recognize “one Lord, one faith, and one baptism” (Eph. 4:5).
In Baptist churches, the congregation rules. The decision-making power of a church does not reside with a bishop or a group of elders. Though it employs democratic processes, congregational polity should not be seen simply as a mat ter of majority rule. The people of God who have covenanted together in a local church are entrusted with seeking out God’s will in decision making for their church. Baptist churches commit their decisions about membership, ministry, discipline, and missions to God’s leadership through his word and his Spirit.
Catholicity defined as organizational unity is impossible on this side of eternity for a tradition whose most distinctive ideas are built around the practice of the local church. But catholicity centered around the proclamation of the gospel and the advancement of God’s kingdom is a feasible and desirable goal. This type of catholicity can only strengthen and renew every tradition involved. I want to offer three facets of gospel-centered catholicity that Baptists share with Christians in other reformational traditions. Like a good Baptist preacher, I made sure that they all begin with the same letter!
Evangelical Christians of every stripe may disagree about “the hows and the whys of the gospel,” but we all agree about “the who of the gospel” and “the what.” 12 We all agree that sinful people cannot make themselves right before God by their
“The intention of congregational polity is that the congregation gov ern itself under the lordship of Jesus Christ and the leadership of the Holy Spirit, under the delegated au thority of pastors and deacons, but with no governing ecclesial bodies exerting authority over the church.”
—R. Stanton Norman, The Baptist Way“There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”
—Ephesians 4:4–6
own good works. God has acted to redeem sinful humanity through the sacrificial death and victorious resurrection of Jesus Christ. We may disagree about how the atonement works, but we all affirm that Jesus died for our sins. We may differ on what it means for God to elect us unto salvation or the order of his decrees, but none of us would deny that we have been “predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Rom. 8:29 ESV). Furthermore, all reformational churches ac knowledge that we are saved by Christ alone, by grace alone, through faith alone, for God’s glory alone.
Not all Baptists have expressed appreciation for the wider theological tradition of the church. Many have been anti-creedal, in no small part because of a flawed understanding of what the Reformers meant by sola scriptura 13 But contempo rary advocates of Baptist catholicity have argued for a recovery of the broader Christian tradition and the Baptist tradition as part of a two-pronged strategy to renew Baptist life and evangelical Protestantism.14 We have much to learn from one another.
The Great Tradition is the transmission and reception of biblical truth in the Christian church across time and space. This tradition includes creeds, confes sions, liturgy, hymnody, sermons, theological writings, and much more. While Baptists provide only one tributary of this Great Tradition, we all flow from the same stream. All orthodox Christians can celebrate and affirm the ecumenical creeds and the theological consensus of the first five centuries of Christianity (consensus quinquesaecularis). 15 The common object of our worship is the Triune God. We all assert the union of divine and human natures in the person of Je sus Christ, who “for us and for our salvation . . . came down from heaven [and] became incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary.” We all believe in the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. We all celebrate the Supper (even if we differ about its meaning). We all long for the glorious second coming of Jesus and the bodily resurrection from the dead.
Baptists also share the theological legacy of the Reformation with other evan gelical Protestants (Baptist thought has been shaped by both Magisterial and Radical Reformers). Alongside all other reformational churches, we adhere to the supreme authority of divinely inspired and inerrant Scripture (sola scriptura). We also affirm the total depravity of humanity and the need for God’s enabling grace. These elements of consensus illustrate that we are doctrinally united by more than we are divided.
Evangelicals are bound together by the same mission: to reach a world desperate ly in need of Christ. Our missionary strategies may be different, but we all have the same divinely mandated task (Matt. 28:19–20). It requires urgency and a
willingness to work through our secondary differences. The framers of the Lau sanne Covenant (1974) clearly stated the connection between evangelical catho licity and the Great Commission:
We affirm that the Church’s visible unity in truth is God’s purpose. Evangelism also summons us to unity, because our oneness strengthens our witness, just as our disunity undermines our gospel of reconciliation. . . . We who share the same bib lical faith should be closely united in fellowship, work and witness. We confess that our testimony has sometimes been marred by a sinful individualism and needless duplication. We pledge ourselves to seek a deeper unity in truth, worship, holiness and mission. We urge the development of regional and functional cooperation for the furtherance of the Church’s mission, for strategic planning, for mutual encour agement, and for the sharing of resources and experience.16
Jesus himself highlighted the importance of visible unity in mission when he prayed for us to “be one even as we are one . . . so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me” (John 17:22–23 ESV).
None of our tribes hold the monopoly on the good news of Jesus, the in terpretation of Scripture, or the missionary task. May God grant Baptists and other Christians the kind of gospel-centered catholicity we need to carry out the mission of the kingdom.
Rhyne R. Putman is associate vice president of academic affairs at Williams Baptist University and the author of When Doctrine Divides the People of God (Crossway, 2020) and The Method of Chris tian Theology (B&H Academic, 2021).
1. Rhyne R. Putman, When Doctrine Divides the People of God: An Evangelical Approach to Theological Diversity (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), 24–27.
2. See Steven R. Harmon, Towards Baptist Catholicity: Essays on Tradition and the Baptist Vision (Carlisle, UK: Paternoster, 2006); Harmon, Baptists, Catholics, and the Whole Church: Partners in the Pilgrimage to Unity (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2021).
3. Matthew Y. Emerson and R. Lucas Stamps, “Conclusion: Toward an Evangelical Baptist Catholicity,” in Baptists and the Christian Tradition: Towards an Evangelical Baptist Catholicity, ed. Matthew Y. Emerson, Christopher W. Morgan, and R. Lucas Stamps (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2019), 355.
4. This is related to the mission statement of the Center for Baptist Renewal, where I serve as a fellow. See http://www .centerforbaptistrenewal.com/ for a wealth of resources on the topic of Baptist catholicity.
5. John Wesley, “The Catholic Spirit,” J 5:493, proem 4.
6. The helpful categories mutual recognition, conciliar unity, and organic unity appear in Harding Meyer, All May Be One: Perceptions and Models of Ecumenicity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999).
7. Timothy George, “Catholics and Evangelicals in the Trenches,” Christianity Today 38, no. 6 (May 1994): 16.
8. Anthony L. Chute, Nathan A. Finn, and Michael G. Haykin, The Baptist Story: From English Sect to Global Movement (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2015), 330.
9. Chute, Finn, and Haykin, The Baptist Story, 331.
10. Baptists have historically used both of these terms, though there are theological reasons for the preference of one over the other.
11. Matthew Y. Emerson, “Baptists, Baptism, and the Christian Tradition,” in Baptists and the Christian Tradition, 204.
12. Putman, When Doctrine Divides, 240.
13. For a summary of these views and a critical evaluation of them, see my article, “Baptists, Sola Scriptura, and the Place of Christian Tradition,” in Baptists and the Christian Tradition, 27–54.
14. This is part of the stated purpose of the Center for Baptist Renewal. See “Baptist Catholicity and Renewal,” http://www .centerforbaptistrenewal.com/baptist-catholicity-renewal.
15. This term was coined by the Lutheran theologian Georg Calixt (1586–1656).
16. The Lausanne Covenant (1974), art. 7.
THE CHURCH IS THE CROWNING achieve ment in the work of salvation, planned by the Father, accomplished by the Son, and brought into reality by the Spirit (Eph. 1:3–14). The Father’s “plan for the fullness of time” is to sum up all things in heaven and earth under the headship of Jesus Christ (Eph. 1:10). This plan is realized, in part, in a covenant community that is the body, building, and bride of Jesus Christ, its head (Eph. 1:22–23; 2:20; 5:23). In this covenant community, the grace purchased by Christ the redeemer (Eph. 1:7) is poured out by Christ the ruler in the fullness of the Holy Spirit (Eph. 1:22–23; 5:18) to the glory of God the Father: “To him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen” (Eph. 3:21).
According to common Christian confession, the defining features or “marks” of this covenant community are unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity.1 These four marks are vital indicators of the church’s being and well-being. Not only do they indicate the identity of the true church, distinguishing it from oth ers falsely claiming these marks, but “there is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Eph. 4:4–6). These four marks also indicate the vocation of the church. Under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and endowed with the gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit, the church is called to pursue unity and holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity.
Today, the catholicity of the church continues to be both gift and task. On the positive side, Christianity continues to be a global phenomenon, a sign of the church’s catholic identity. The growth of the church in the Global South is especially encouraging, and many Southern Hemisphere churches have exhib ited courageous leadership in calling Western churches on the brink of apostasy to remain faithful to the Lord Jesus Christ in the midst of a secular culture. On the negative side, false teaching and sectarian division run rampant among some of the fastest growing churches around the globe. Prosperity preachers put the fourth petition of the Lord’s Prayer (“Give us this day our daily bread”) in the place of the first petition—an act of idolatry if ever there was one (Matt. 6:31–33; Col. 3:5). Churches in North America continue to reckon with sins committed against African American brothers and sisters, dating back to the transatlantic slave trade, while those most animated in professing the centrality of the gospel sometimes struggle to situate the gospel within a broader catholic framework for faith and life.
Under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, the sole head of the church, the future of catholic Chris tianity lies in joy fully embracing the whole counsel of God and the whole people of God.
What is the path forward for churches eager to embrace their catholic inheri tance and fulfill their catholic calling? Part of the answer lies in diagnosing where individual congregations and denominations stand vis-à-vis a properly defined notion of catholicity. As we observed above, the catholicity of the church can be corrupted by addition or subtraction. Do our congregations and denomina tions exhibit unhealthy tumors on the body of divinity—whether in the form of strange teaching or in the toleration of sinful behavior—that must be excised for the sake of the church’s health and survival? Do our congregations and denomi nations display signs of moral and theological malnourishment through failures in catechesis or lack of brotherly love? If our churches are to realize the integrity that the God of peace intends for them (1 Thess. 5:23), then catholic wholeness must be restored.
However we may answer these diagnostic questions with respect to our own churches and denominations, the prescription for recovering catholic wholeness and health remains the same. Under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, the sole head of the church, the future of catholic Christianity lies in joyfully embracing the whole counsel of God and the whole people of God. But where do we begin?
In the mid-1520s, as the result of various parish visitations among Lutheran churches, Martin Luther concluded that a one-sided emphasis on preaching the gospel of justification had left many German Christians theologically and spiri tually malnourished and underdeveloped. “Despite the fact that the gospel has returned,” Luther lamented, “they live like simple cattle or irrational pigs.” 2 The Reformer’s response to this crisis of theological and spiritual formation was to publish two catechisms in 1528, the Small Catechism and the Large Catechism. These catechisms taught, in a form accessible to uneducated laypersons, the basic elements of catholic Christianity: the Apostles’ Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord’s Prayer.3
In seeking to retrieve the catholic substance of the Christian faith today, we can do no better than to begin where Luther did: in teaching the Apostles’ Creed, which summarizes our faith; Jesus’ double love command, which summarizes our duty; and the Lord’s Prayer, which summarizes our hope. Thankfully, many churches already possess in their confessions and catechisms rich resources for instructing the people of God in the catholic substance of our common faith.
These three summary forms of catholic Christianity not only provide objec tive coordinates for the church’s catholicity, but they also provide a subjective orientation for the Christian life, directing us on the path to Christian wholeness. As noted above, Augustine traced the triad of faith, love, and hope back to the Lord himself, “the true foundation of the Catholic faith,” and the teaching of “sacred scripture.” 4 For Augustine, this triad marked a trajectory for the Chris tian life as a whole, from its inception in faith to its consummation in the beatific vision of God.
When a mind is filled with the beginning of that faith which works through love, it progresses by a good life even toward vision, in which holy and perfect hearts know that unspeakable beauty, the full vision of which is the highest happiness.5 Faith that embraces the Triune God as he offers himself to us in the gospel, love that follows Jesus’ path of devotion to God and service to neighbor, and hope that looks with eager expectation for the appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ—this, according to Augustine, “is what the whole body of doctrine amounts to.” 6 This, we might add, is what Christian wholeness amounts to as well. If this is what it means to embrace the whole counsel of God, then what might it mean to embrace the whole people of God?
The confession of Jesus as Lord is the fundamental unifying principle of the church’s catholicity, the authoritative center that defines the circumference of this society’s reach (1 Cor. 1:2). Particular congregations may instance more or less pure expressions of this confession and, in certain cases, may so betray this confession as to become false churches (Rev. 2–3). 7 All endeavors aimed at ex tending fellowship between churches must flow from this confession (Eph. 4:5) and must aim at deepening our mutual embrace of this confession (Eph. 4:13).8 This is why the well-meaning but naive counsel to minimize theological differ ences between churches for the sake of deepening catholic society is futile. At the end of the day, the result of such a strategy is to sacrifice catholic society as well. As Vermigli observes, Christian unity is “worthless without the unity of faith.” 9 “One Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Eph. 4:5)—this is the gift and calling of true Christian ecumenism, of true catholic unity among churches. Catholic substance provides ballast to catholic society.
Only a mature grasp of the content of the Christian faith, wedded to a spirit of brotherly love, is up to the task of discerning where real agreements and disagree ments exist between various churches, how we might capitalize on agreements, and how we might overcome—or at least learn to tolerate where possible— disagreements. Mature theological judgments on these matters made by mature Christians are the means to the kind of mature Christian unity that Paul envisions in Ephesians 4:13: “Until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowl edge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”
In many cases, doctrinal differences are not the barrier to deeper expressions of catholic fellowship. Instead, pedestrian social sins pose the major roadblock. Rivalry, suspicion, and lack of brotherly love inhibit catholic society among God’s people. Whenever and wherever these sins are observed, we do not need to appoint a denominational committee to realize catholic wholeness. We need to repent.
In other cases, churches suffer from more vicious, more deeply ingrained habits of social disintegration such as racism, resentment between social classes, and so forth. These vicious habits are sins against our baptism (Gal. 3:27–28) that must be exorcised in obedience to our baptismal vow, renouncing Satan and all his pomp. In their place, virtues—such as godliness, justice, and temperance
“In [the church’s] oneness, the Spirit does not undo the unity that exists among believers but rather maintains and confirms it.”
—Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics
(Titus 2:11–14)—along with love in all its forms (1 Cor. 13) must be cultivated in view of Christ’s first and second comings. “Behold, the Judge is standing at the door!” (James 5:8).
In considering opportunities for deepening catholic fellowship between churches, it is also important to remember, as Herman Bavinck observed over a century ago, that not every denominational difference constitutes an actual ecclesiastical division . 10 Differences of geography, language, culture, and even ecclesiastical order may, in certain cases, be cherished as signs of Christ’s univer sal Lordship over all peoples in all places.
The catholicity of the church is both gift and task. It is a gift of the gospel of Jesus Christ to be received by faith (Eph. 4:5), and it is a task of Christian love to be pursued with all humility, gentleness, and patience (Eph. 4:2). The catholicity of the church is also an object of Christian hope, ultimately guaranteed not by the faith and love of the church but by the Lord himself who gave his life for the church and effectually intercedes on its behalf, “that they may all be one” (John 17:21). In the Spirit of the Son, we may ask the Father for the fulfillment of this hope as well.
May our most great and wonderful God, who begat his own eternal Son Jesus Christ, our redeemer, by eternal generation and sanctifies him to us by eternal predestination, that he may be our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption—may that same God also bestow upon us the spirit of wisdom, that growing stronger by his power we may increase in the saving treasures of this knowl edge and wisdom unto the unity of faith and recognition of him, until we become a complete man according to the proper measure of the stature which is fitting for that most distinguished and glorious body in Christ Jesus our head and Savior, for his glory. Amen.11
Excerpted from Scott R. Swain, “Retrieving Catholicity: The Gift of Wholeness and the Task of Love in a Fragmented World,” Modern Reformation (November/December 2020).
Scott R. Swain is president and the James Woodrow Hassell Professor of Systematic Theology at Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando, Florida. He is author of The Trinity: An Introduction (Crossway, 2020) and editor, with Michael Allen, of The Oxford Handbook of Reformed Theology (Oxford University Press, 2020).
1. The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (AD 381).
2. Martin Luther, “Preface to the Small Catechism,” in The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, ed. Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000), 348.
3. See Carl R. Trueman, Luther on the Christian Life: Cross and Freedom (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2015), 164–70.
4. Augustine, Enchiridion, 275, 274.
Augustine, Enchiridion, 274.
Augustine, Enchiridion, 275.
Westminster Confession of Faith, 25.4–5.
Westminster Confession of Faith, 26.2.
Vermigli, “Commentary,” 36.
Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 4:317–19.
Franciscus Junius, A Treatise on True Theology (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage, 2014), 234.
THE Catholicity OF THE ANGLICAN TRADITION by JUSTIN S. HOLCOMB and JARED L. JONES
WE LIVE IN AN AGE OF denominations and distinctions, and many bemoan the seemingly constant influx of new de nominations by way of church splits and schisms. The total number of Protestant denominations today varies based on who is doing the talking (and often based on their denominational affiliation as well!), but most estimates put it well into the thousands. This can give the impression of a fractured, chaotic church; and while it is certainly the case that Protestants have never been accused of being monolithic, it is wrong to think they have no unifying beliefs whatsoever.
While there is much to be said about the problem of schism, there may be more to be said about the core beliefs that unite Christians. We can acknowledge the existence of schism in the visible church, as the hymn “The Church’s One Foun dation” (written by Anglican minister Samuel John Stone) so eloquently puts it:
Tho’ with a scornful wonder, men see her sore oppressed, by schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed. We also proclaim the truth that the church is unified. As the same hymn says,
The church’s one Foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord; she is His new creation by water and the Word.
Despite the existence of denominations, Christians confess that the church still has unity. The church’s unity is not in buildings, finances, bishops, presby teries, or popes. These may all be visible representations of unity, but the unity of the church is an invisible, spiritual unity. The church’s unity is in Christ himself. God creates the church and sustains it by his word and Spirit. In this essay, we will sketch out how Anglicans view themselves as part of this universal church so that we can see what we hold in common with all Christians rather than what sets us apart.
The original Reformers in the Church of England did not consider them selves “Anglican.” They were not trying to create a new theological distinction, method, or culture. They saw themselves as Christians who happened to live in England. Their desire was to be faithful to the faith handed down from the Scriptures and the church. They were not schismatic. Catholicity was of utmost importance to them.
The Anglican posi tion holds that the traditions of the church are good and should not be abandoned (contra the Anabaptists and Radical Re formers), but they should be brought under the authority of Scripture (con tra Rome).
This is not to say that the English Reformers had no theological distinc tions. Some have tried to glaze over the Reformation in England, acting as though it never really happened or was not altogether a Protestant Reformation. But by the time of Queen Elizabeth’s Act of Conformity, the Church of England was a distinctively Protestant church, both politically and doctrinally. But the Protestant faith of the English Reformers was not set over and against the tra ditions and creeds of the church. It was understood to be the true inheritor of catholic faith.
One prominent seventeenth-century bishop, Lancelot Andrewes, encapsu lated this quest for catholicity when he said we hold to “one canon reduced to writing by God himself, two testaments, three creeds, four general councils, five centuries, and the series of Fathers in that period . . . determine the boundary of our faith.” 1 Here Andrewes lays out succinctly what the Anglican divines saw as “Anglicanism”: the Scriptures, the creeds and ecumenical councils, and the church fathers.
The classic statement of Anglican doctrine, the Thirty-Nine Articles of Reli gion, echoes this desire for catholicity. In terms of tradition, the articles are cath olic; that is, like the other Protestant confessions of the Reformation, the articles agree with the great ecumenical councils of the church in their statements about Jesus Christ and the Trinity. They depart from the other confessions in the visible forms of their church—in their use of the prayer book and their view of church government (archbishops, bishops, priests, and deacons). The “Anglicanism” that emerges in the articles is not trying to reject tradition, but rather to reform it.
As an example of the articles’ attempt to uphold tradition, Article VIII, “Of the Creeds,” explicitly affirms their acceptance of the great ecumenical creeds:
The Three Creeds, Nicene Creed, Athanasius’ Creed, and that which is commonly called the Apostles’ Creed, ought thoroughly to be received and believed: for they may be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture.
Notice, however, how that is worded. The creeds are accepted on the grounds that they are proved according to Scripture. They are not accepted simply because they are tradition for tradition’s sake or some appeal to the magisterium of the church. Rather, as Protestants, they believe that Scripture has the final authority on all matters of faith and doctrine in the church and that the ecumenical creeds are part of that. The Anglican position holds that the traditions of the church are good and should not be abandoned (contra the Anabaptists and Radical Reform ers), but they should be brought under the authority of Scripture (contra Rome).
The Thirty-Nine Articles provide a place for the authority of tradition. Although that role is not nearly as authoritative as in the Roman Catholic Church, it is more so than in many of the radical sects of the Reformation and even than many of the Puritans desired.
The Anglican Reformers also saw themselves in line with the church fathers. Even in some of their most distinctively Protestant writings, they did not see
themselves as inventing something new but rather continuing in the faith of the earliest church fathers. In the Book of Homilies, the official book of sermons giv en out to ministers, Thomas Cranmer wrote the homily on justification. Within this explicitly Protestant sermon, we see that Cranmer did not think he was do ing anything particularly innovative or new, but rather that he was echoing the doctrines of the church fathers as passed down through the ages:
These and other like sentences, that we be justified by faith only and without works, we do read ofttimes in the most best and ancient writers. As beside Hilary, Basil and Saint Ambrose before rehearsed, we read the same in Origen, Saint Chrysostom, Saint Cyprian, Saint Augustine, Prosper, Oecumenius, Photius, Bernard, Anselm, and many other authors, Greek and Latin.2
Even Anglican sermons on justification by faith alone (how much more Prot estant can you get?) were seen as rehearsing the thoughts of the church fathers!
The Catechism of the first Prayer Book was also notably catholic. Eamon Duffy has noted that nothing in the original catechism could not have been said by any Christian after the year 1215.3 The catechism didn’t hit any “Reformed” distinctive or doctrine; it consisted of the Apostles’ Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord’s Prayer. So, while Church of England clergy had to assent to the explicitly Protestant Thirty-Nine Articles, there was a clear distinction between the beliefs required by the clergy and those required to be a part of the church in the laity. For the laity, all that was required was for them to profess these three ancient Chris tian statements. Any catechumen who could pray the Lord’s Prayer, confess the Ten Commandments, and profess the Apostles’ Creed was a welcomed member of the Church of England, regardless of their personal beliefs on the eucha rist, justification, or church governance.
This has often been referred to as the Anglican “big tent.” At times, too much has been made of the “big tent” nature of Anglicanism; but the fact remains true that Anglicans have historically tried to create a religious com munity where Christians who did not see eye to eye on mat ters of doctrine could still worship together.
Anglicans uphold the ecumenical creeds as the tent under which all Christians share a common life together. To break from the ecumenical creeds is to break from the church itself. Under the tent, we may have different tables and seats in which we are comfortable, but we’re all in the party together.
Anglicanism has always viewed itself as catholic and in keeping with the ap ostolic faith. From the earliest Reformers to the Thirty-Nine Articles, the Book of Homilies, and the Book of Common Prayer, all of these have at their core an
The first Book of Common Prayer (1549).
Lady Jane Grey (c. 1537–1554)
earnest desire to be truly catholic. In fact, they saw even their Protes tant distinctive as the inheritance of their catholic faith, not an opponent against it.
An illustration of how the Anglican Reformers saw themselves as truly catholic Christians can be found in one of the great martyrs of the English Reformation. Lady Jane Grey was the wife of Edward VI, who briefly served as king of England after his father, Henry VIII, died. After her husband died, there was an attempt to make her the queen instead of Mary (who would henceforth come to be known as “Bloody Mary”). The plot failed, and Jane was arrested and ultimately sentenced to death for heresy because she refused to recant her Re formed convictions.
On the day of her execution, she brought with her some of the prayer books that had comforted her while she was in prison. And who were the authors of these prayer books? Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine. All fourth-century church fathers. In the moments leading up to her brave death for the sake of the Protestant gospel of God’s free grace for sinners based only on the meritorious work of Christ, this seventeen-year-old girl reached deep into the history and catholicity of the church to find prayers that brought her comfort in her time of need. This is Anglicanism.
Justin S. Holcomb (PhD, Emory University) is an Episcopal minister and teaches at Reformed Theologi cal Seminary. He has written or edited more than twenty books on theology, biblical studies, and abuse.
Jared L. Jones (MDiv, Reformed Theological Seminary) is an Episcopal minister currently serving as associate rector at All Saints Episcopal Church in Winter Park, Florida.
1.
Lancelot Andrewes, Opusc. Posthuma (1629), 91.
2. The Book of Homilies: A Critical Edition, ed. Gerald Bray (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 2017), 25–26.
3. The Prayer Book catechism, as Eamon Duffy points out, “might have been written at any time since 1215. . . . It said nothing whatever about the distinctive Protestant ordo salutis,
nothing about the Fall or original sin, it never discussed the nature of salvation, except in terms of duties toward God and neighbor, and it never once used the word faith.” Eamon Duffy, “The Long Reformation: Catholicism, Protestantism, and the Multitude,” in Nicholas Tyacke, ed., England’s Long Reformation, 1500–1800 (London: UCL Press, 1998), 43.
Thinking theologically about all things
IT OFTEN FEELS LIKE the church is dividing along political lines. When we declare a church to be conservative or liberal, we are often not referring to theological stances (as J. Gresham Machen did in his classic Christianity and Liberalism), but to political ideology and cultural stances. Those who try to hold these parties together in the church are usually held in contempt by both sides.
The fact that winsomeness is now demonized by many Christians (and with it, related attributes such as patience, gentleness, and charity) doesn’t help. Instead of looking for biblical and confessional boundary markers to establish whether unity is possible, we tend to exaggerate the deficiencies in camps and tribes besides our own.
These divisions are made more intractable because they are legion and cannot be reduced to a matter of culture or politics. Many divisions in the church are far subtler than an outright culture war. Age plays a large role and with it, the dominant worldviews that accompany each generation. Philosophical assump tions also play a large role. Every church has its share of rational polemicists and emotional pacifists, and some churches attract a far higher percentage of one than the other. And let’s not forget geography, which largely overlaps the other categories, as each region of the country has values all its own. Let’s look at a few of these less noticeable divisions.
While I was in seminary, I worked for a year in a Korean-American church. I know every church culture is different, but I’ve never seen a more pronounced generation gap than in that church. There was a Korean Ministry (KM) serving largely firstgeneration Korean immigrants and an English Ministry (EM) serving a broader spectrum of largely second- and third-generation Korean Americans. While mem bers of the KM tended to emphasize maintaining their traditions, the EM focused more on assimilating people into the broader culture. Each ministry in the church had its own pastors, spoke its own language, and upheld its own unique culture.
More and more, a similar generational division has permeated mainstream evangelical churches. The young and old no longer fight about worship styles but about how best to engage the culture. Those who came of age with the rampant hedonism of the sexual revolution and then the powerful backlash of the Moral Majority tend to view the culture as in need of retrieval. Those who came of age during or after the Clinton impeachment and the public obscuring of morality tend to view the culture as in need of leavening.
In this way, many churches are dividing along lines like the KM and EM that I experienced. The older generations grieve the loss of traditions deemed vital to both the church and culture, so they are fighting for their preservation for the sake of the gospel. In the same way, younger generations are looking for ways to faithfully assimilate with the broader culture. They are not as concerned about winning back the culture, but about effectively influencing their own unique cor ners of the culture with the gospel. These distinct perspectives color the way each generation approaches both politics and culture.
There is also a philosophical divide in churches today. It largely, but not always, mirrors the generation gap. The twentieth-century worldview was dominated by modernism, which asserts that truth is fixed and can be ascertained and prov en through human reason. It was an age frequently consumed with the “facts,” whether deduced through logic or discovered through the natural sciences. Post modernism, arising in the late twentieth century, blew up many of these ideas with the reminder that all pursuits of truth are shaped by experience, biases, and innate presuppositions. It’s interesting to watch combatants in these two camps talk past each other on various social media forums, such as in this hypothetical argument:
Modernist: Facts are facts. This is a matter of truth, whether you like it or not.
Postmodernist: Whether or not it’s true, it’s colored by biases that must be explored.
Modernist: You’re arguing that truth is relative.
Postmodernist: I’m arguing that truth can’t be known and understood in a vacuum. You’re simply captive to your culture and are unable and unwilling to understand other points of view.
Even over the course of my own life, I’ve noticed a pronounced shift in the way Christians talk. In high school, I was always arguing for absolute truth in the face of moral relativism. That line of argumentation has largely been discarded on the ash heap of evangelical history alongside purity rings and praise songs sung in rounds. And to be honest, abstract argumentation was not particularly effective in attracting others to a gospel narrative rooted in real history.
This gap goes far beyond seersucker suits versus board shorts. For several decades now, Christians in major metropolitan areas, especially in the Northeast and on
the West Coast, have been living in exile within their respective cultures. Ware houses, coffee shops, and breweries are not only sites for worship or fellowship be cause of preference, but also because of availability. Christians from these areas are more at home with the stigma and hostility that comes with living at the margins. Christians in the South and Midwest, especially in rural areas and small towns, still hold some pride of place in their respective cultures. Most people attend church, respect family and authority, and think about the world com munally. They have enjoyed more space to nurture vital traditions and avoid the withering gaze of popular criticism. For these populations, the transition to cul tural exile has been more sudden, violent, and painful.
There is a common denominator to all three rifts: They are not about the authority of Scripture or the centrality of the gospel. When it comes to the Bible and the gospel, we’re largely on the same page even when it comes to our differences. Should we value tradition and grieve the loss of the prominence of the church and the cul tural capital of Christianity? Absolutely. Should we question whether traditions are biblical and creatively engage a hostile culture? Absolutely. Can we use both cultural philosophies to better engage the culture with the gospel? Absolutely. Are either modernism or postmodernism remotely Christian? Not at all. Truth is not gathered by humans before it is first given by God, and our pol lution of the process should lead to a greater humility and respect for the word of God. In more progressive cultures, the gospel must be upheld against deified sexualities. In more conservative cultures, the gospel must be distinguished from deified moralities. There is no culture that stands above the gospel. We are all made level at the foot of the cross.
If the church is to heal from its myriad rifts, then we must be honest about where the fault lines—and our own biases—lie. Am I standing on the solid ground of God’s word or on a pillar built of cultural assumptions that actually degrade it? This is why many of our denominations have confessions of faith. These are guardrails that keep us within the confines of Scripture and prevent us from wandering the weary paths of unexplored assumptions. We should always be more ready to test our assumptions against God’s word than to fight the unexam ined fight. Sometimes I simply need to understand where my parents are coming from—what they dealt with and what they are trying to recover. They belong to a different generation, cultural milieu, and maybe even a different geography. These factors shape how we each handle the gospel and culture, but none of them negate how the God of the gospel handles us. From start to finish, it is the grace of God in Christ Jesus alone that will heal his church.
Stephen Roberts is a US Army chaplain and has written for The Washington Times and The Federalist.
There is no culture that stands above the gospel. We are all made level at the foot of the cross.
I am a deserted barn,
my cattle robbed from me, My horses gone, Light leaking in my sides, sun piercing my tin roof
Where it’s torn, I am a deserted barn.
Dung’s still in my gutter; It shrinks each year as side planks shrink, Letting in more of the elements, and flies.
Worried by termites, dung beetles, Maggots and rats, Visited by pigeons and owls and bats and hawks, Unable to say who or what shall enter, or what shall not, I am a deserted barn.
I stand near Devil’s Lake, A gray shape at the edge of a recent slough; Starlings come to my peak, Dirty, and perch there; swallows light on bent Lightning rods whose blue Globes have gone to A tenant’s son and his .22.
My door is torn. It sags from rusted rails it once rolled upon, Waiting for a wind to lift it loose; Then a bigger wind will take out My back wall.
But winter is what I fear, when swallows and hawks Abandon me, when insects and rodents retreat, When starlings, like the last of bad thoughts, go off, And nothing is left to fill me Except reflections— reflections, at noon,
From the cold cloak of snow and Reflections, at night, from the reflected light of the moon.
GREGORY
APRIL 25, 2003 , was an ordinary Friday morning. I was making final sermon preparations for the coming Sunday when my next-door neighbor informed me that a friend of mine was going to re cite poetry in Concord that afternoon. Jim Bradley and I had discussed literature in depth for years. He was a University of Chicago graduate with an English major and a degree in theater from nearby Saint Anselm College, a Roman Catholic liberal arts school.
In the course of our conversations, I had mentioned my acquaintance with novelist Larry Woiwode. Jim said he had enjoyed reading Larry’s fiction back in the 1960s and ’70s in The New Yorker, which published fourteen of the forty-four chapters of his acclaimed novel Beyond the Bedroom Wall (1975). I first met Larry— who was an elder in one of our North Dakota churches at the time—at an OPC general assembly in 1991, when he was pleased to autograph Beyond the Bedroom Wall for me.
So I drove twenty-five minutes north to Concord and found Larry seated with three other poets laureate from around the country. New Hampshire poet laureate Marie Harris organized this first ever gathering of state poets laureate, giving it the odd title “Poetry and Politics.” So it was appropriate that this open ing event should take place at the New Hampshire Political Library.
I had never heard Larry read, although I remembered that he had a deep, powerful voice. He entered the book-filled room in his cowboy boots with a bottle of Moxie. He read Arthur O’Shaughnessy’s “Ode” and William Butler Yeats’s “The Second Coming.” O’Shaughnessy’s line “We are the movers and shakers of the world forever it seems” reminded me of former New Hampshire poet laureate Maxim Kumin’s greeting to the audience at the main event on Saturday, borrow ing from Shelley, “Welcome unacknowledged legislators of the world.” I remem bered that Ezra Pound had asserted that artists are “the antennae of the race.”
I should say, rather, that Larry recited these poems, not read, because he did it all from memory—and head and shoulders above the others with a voice like Richard Burton or John Gielgud. The others of course were good, but Larry’s recitation was clearly on another level. Later, I learned why from an email ex change with him:
I played the King himself, that is Richard II, on the main stage at the Univer sity of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, in 1963. In the mid-sixties I was in an off-Broadway play with Robert DeNiro, as seen in the memoir, What I Think I Did (2000).
Larry also recited “Letter of an Imaginary Friend” by North Dakota poet and columnist Thomas McGrath (1916–1990). It was a truly remarkable encounter.
After the event, I reintroduced myself to Larry and was pleased that he re membered me from 1991. He often found that ministers in Reformed circles were not great fans of novels or poetry, so perhaps my interest had stuck in his mind. He kindly autographed two more books for me, Acts (1993) and Poppa John (1983). But his autograph in Beyond the Bedroom Wall was the most memorable and says so much about Larry as a writer and a Christian:
For Greg, with gratitude for your interest; and gratitude that the family, too, is part of the Body of Christ.
I was not able to attend the other events of the conference, but on Sunday Larry called and asked if he could stay with us that evening. My answer was an easy affirmative. So I picked him up at the Highlander Inn near the airport, where the poets were all staying. He worshiped with us that Lord’s Day evening.
The afternoon and evening were filled with intense conversation, as I later recorded in my journal: “He is brilliant and creative. He is working on a new novel but would not talk about it.” This must have been A Step from Death (2008), a powerful memoir. We talked late into the night over tawny port. This was a rare kind of fellowship; and now reliving it, partly through my memory-jogging journal, is pure joy.
Since Larry had a late flight out of the Manchester-Boston Regional Airport, we had the day to ourselves. It was a gorgeous, warm, sunny day. We discovered that Larry was mentioned in an article in the arts section of The New York Times. He also made the front page of the state newspaper The Union Leader, in the cov erage of the poets laureate conference.
In our conversation, we discussed the Bard and covered Harold Bloom’s Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (1998) and The Western Canon (1994). The capstone of our fascinating conversation was a 1928 book that Larry recommend ed to me: George H. Morrison’s Christ in Shakespeare: Ten Addresses on Moral and Spiritual Elements in Some of the Greater Plays.
After lunch, I remembered that Shakespeare’s birthday of April 23 was be ing celebrated a few days late at Saint Anselm College, where each year the one hundred and fifty-four sonnets are read, thirty at a time, with a twenty-minute open mic between each session for ad hoc recitations from the plays. So I put the top down on my Miata and drove off to listen, or so I thought, to the readings.
Larry wanted to recite during one of the open mics, so I asked the person in charge, who welcomed the offer. So, Larry took my copy of the Oxford Shakespeare he had asked me to bring along and looked briefly at a certain text. It was King Richard’s soliloquy from Richard II, Act V, Scene 5, that he had not recited since a half century earlier in 1963. People were milling about, sipping coffee and con versing, as was usual during these breaks—until Larry’s soul-penetrating voice stopped everyone in astonishment. Larry shone, and everyone applauded wildly
when he was done. It was a moving moment. Some of the greatest experiences in life are completely unplanned, at least by us humans.
I shall forever treasure Larry’s signed copy of the beautifully published let terpress, handbound edition of his poetry chapbook Land of Sunlit Ice (2016). He thanked me for my positive review in Ordained Servant (June 2016). Promoting good literature in the lives of Christians—especially church officers—has been part of my mission in life and particularly in editing Ordained Servant. Larry Woi wode was a tremendous encouragement in that endeavor.
Larry, like John Updike, purposely never connected with literary circles. Af ter his stint in New York City, Larry’s home turf in North Dakota became the context for his inspiration. Like Polish poet Czesław Miłosz, he revered his hum ble home. As I noted in my journal, Larry’s “writing is brilliantly descriptive of person and place in natural human rhythms. He only adds insight as it comes naturally, not forced.”
Soon after Larry left, I acquired the lovely British first edition of the Morri son book he had recommended. Here, Morrison writes about Romeo and Juliet:
Shakespeare, with consummate art, carries over into the realm of poetry what in history was exemplified at Calvary. . . . Shakespeare would have us learn that love is the great reconciler. . . . Love was the mediator, love that did not count the cost; love that for the joy that was set before it went down into the darkness of the grave. And though Shakespeare does not point us to the road that leads to the place called Calvary, do we not catch a glimpse of that way of sorrow; and hear on it, far off, the footfall of One who loved unto the uttermost, and loving died, and dying achieved a mightier reconciliation than any that Verona ever knew. (137, 141–42)
As the lines from the Richard II soliloquy remind us:
“I wasted time, and now doth time waste me; For now hath time made me his numb’ring clock.”
But for Larry, being wasted by time is not the end, as his fiction and poetry always reminded us of a realm beyond this life with the Savior he trusted for everlasting life. Larry, thank you.
Gregory Edward Reynolds is editor of Ordained Servant: A Journal for Church Officers and pastor emeritus of Amoskeag Presbyterian Church (OPC) in Manchester, New Hampshire. He is the author of The Word Is Worth a Thousand Pictures: Preaching in the Electronic Age.
High here on Hawk’s Nest, No hawks fly tonight;
Songbirds heading south or west or east, Or where sons and daughters Have gone for good, Regain the sky, Winging up over cottonwood crowns and this hill’s weedy crest To flutter in mid-flight in front of our eyes.
Barley fields and summer fallow Far away below Hawk’s Nest, And wheat fields following section lines as straight as rules, Land you’ve farmed for forty years or more, Or for your life, or for yours and your son’s, Squares of fire in the wind as the sun goes down dying in fiery light, Hawks have seen the change in it, Far away below Hawk’s Nest.
For all the talks high on Hawk’s Nest, Since cavalry bivouacs and arrow’s arcs, Of hopes for home and our nativeness branding us on our feet, and more,
All that remains here is Hawk’s Nest, This ship of rest, its mast tips red, and Indian lore
No longer lore nor believed in, Lorna, Les,
And this long hour of last light, Lord, and goodbye.
BAYLOR UNIVERSITY PRESS | 2021 | 253 PAGES (HARDCOVER) | $44.99
JAMES K. A. SMITH’S READERSHIP has surged in re cent years through accessible books, such as You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit (Brazos Press, 2016). You Are What You Love argues persuasively for Christian discipleship focused on habits, virtues, and rituals. Physical embodiment saturates Smith’s recommendations and links his older works to his newest, The Nicene Option: An Incarnational Phenomenology. This work, Smith explains, provides deeper justification for what he has written on a popular level, with an invitation to “a new depth of reflection” (8). “This book . . . could be read as the extended footnote. . . . In a sense, this book is meant to ‘show the work,’ so to speak—to provide a glimpse of the more careful analyses underlying the claims in my books for wider audiences” (8).
Through the centuries, philosophers have debated the relationship between words and re ality. Can signs, even words, represent reality (res) without in some way compromising or distorting the reality? Is there any union between sign and signifier? Can there be a link that avoids reducing one to the other (179)? The Nicene Option claims that the incarnation of the Son of God guides us here. The immense and eternal Son of God, who cannot be contained or reduced to a human body,
nevertheless became flesh. He is truly present in the flesh without being reduced to humanity.
At stake “is the possibility of revelation and incarnation” (183). Smith suggests “an account of language analogous to the Incarnation itself, which is a mode of manifestation that both makes God present to the immanence of human per ception but also retains the transcendence of the Wholly Other” (175).
If all this sounds academic, it is. The Nicene Option is not for the faint of heart because it en gages the notoriously dense world of continen tal philosophy.
A core challenge in continental philosophy has been to account for alterity and differ ence: How can we know the Other? How can we encounter that which transcends us without folding the Other into our sphere of perception, thereby reducing alterity to the sphere of the same? (236)
The Nicene Option thus builds on centuries of dialogue among figures, such as Ferdinand de Saussure (“The bond between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary”), Nietzsche, Heidegger, Kant, and Gadamer, among others. Smith focuses his efforts on more recent philosophers, such as Derrida, Husserl, Levinas, Marion, and Charles Taylor. Readers should come prepared, as Smith assumes a basic familiarity with these figures. This is no Philosophy of Religion 101.
Furthermore, The Nicene Option presents an incarnational phenomenology. Phenomenology is a branch of philosophy that emphasizes embod iment and personal knowing. It considers the subject—that we are not simply disembodied knowers but flesh-and-blood people with biases and various situations that shape how we approach the world. The first words of Smith’s afterword are quite striking: “There is no philosophical standpoint that is not, at bottom, confessional. Despite the pretension of Enlightenment claims, there is no neutral, objective, ‘pure’ reason” (235).
The first few chapters present Smith’s out line of “an Incarnational Continental Philosophy of Religion,” and the bulk of the book is devoted to the second major theme: “the Possibility of a Christian Phenomenology.” In chapter 1, “The Philosophy of Religion Takes Practice: A Meth odological Manifesto,” Smith argues for “con fessional” philosophy—that we should not be ashamed of our faith commitments. Furthermore, human beings are more than just thinkers; we ex perience religion not only in propositions but also in liturgical practices. We live out what we know; “understanding is ‘implicit in practice’” (26).
These initial chapters contain practical in sights into humanity. In chapter 2, “Secular Lit urgies,” Smith makes a compelling case that we are inherently religious creatures (38). This is a profoundly biblical point; we worship either the Creator or the creature (Rom. 1:25). Smith argues for the formative power of religious ritual, and he laments that we have absorbed an anthropology that divorces belief from behavior. He writes, “We become believers through ritual formation—and such formative rituals have the status of ‘litur gies’” (38). It is refreshing to see that philosophy of religion has caught up to what churchgoers have long realized: worship rituals shape us. Our knowing is embodied; we “sing” to know.
If Western philosophy is a footnote to Plato, then it could be argued that Western theology is a footnote to Augustine, especially given recent “retrieval” efforts. Smith engages Augustine ex tensively, particularly in chapter 8, “Beyond Epis temology,” and chapter 10, “Deconstruction—an Augustinian Science?” Although readers will likely not agree with everything Smith posits, he does make many compelling observations, such as lamenting today’s reductionistic anthropol ogy that focuses so much on knowledge that it neglects the will (154, 167). Relying on Augus tine, Smith argues it would be reductionistic to speak of “ethics, justice, and morality as instances of discrete decisions and acts; instead . . . a more persuasive and attentive moral phenomenology
needs to see the ethical terrain as one of character, not simply discrete ‘acts’ or ‘decisions’” (167). Thus “a persuasive moral phenomenology needs to provide an account of the formation of the mor al subject, and especially the formation of habits (virtues/vices) that then play a significant role in an account of decision-making attentive to these dynamics” (167). This is, in my opinion, part of what the Theological Interpretation of Scripture movement has sought to articulate: we ought to be certain kinds of people (2 Pet. 3:11) who typi cally grow in faithful churches.
Speaking of theological retrieval, Smith’s ninth chapter may be particularly timely, given recent arguments for a “Christian Platonism” (e.g., Craig A. Carter and Hans Boersma). Smith begins, “Our concern will be the relationship of Christian theology to Platonism. It is a curious phenomenon that, into the twenty-first century, the question of Christian theology’s relationship to Platonism remains an orienting and fundamen tal theme of reflection” (171). Here, Smith takes on Husserl and brings us back to his incarnational theme: “Husserl leaves us with two (heretical) op tions,” linguistic Docetism, where signs only seem to present the signified, or linguistic Arianism, where the sign is “reduced to immanence” (184). In contrast, Smith argues for the incarnational analogy: fully God and fully man, sign and signi fied united together truly.
Surprisingly, Smith ignores modern theolo gians who have discussed these matters, such as Barth, T. F. Torrance, and Tillich. Various theolog ical loci relate: from the nature of Christ’s presence in the Lord’s Supper to analogical language versus univocal. Sharing Smith’s insistence on embodi ment, Torrance, for example, discusses the parallel between the hypostatic union of Christ’s two na tures and the relationship between a word and its meaning, a sign and reality behind the sign.1 Incar national analogies have been applied to the Scrip tures’ dual nature as God’s word and the product of human authors. Just as Smith wants to avoid Docetism and Arianism, so too, as John Webster
has stated, we must avoid a scriptural Nestorian ism that sees the human word as “only extrinsically related to revelation. . . . The res chooses to present itself in this signum, the biblical text in all its gram matical, literary and historical features.” 2
The final two chapters of The Nicene Option chiefly interact with Marion and Levinas, tak ing up two major themes of modern philoso phy: the gaze and the gift. Touching again on the signs or words that we use to describe God, Smith considers the very possibility of Godtalk. With the second commandment in mind, he asks about the possibility of gazing at God through the signs that are words. Some may find this understanding of the second commandment idiosyncratic: Is there not a difference between a picture and a written or spoken word? But for Levinas, “As in Marion, the image is an idol precisely because of its semiotic failure: it does not point beyond itself” (214). Smith asks, “Can there be a non-idolatrous gaze?” (202). For him, this is a question of our ability to say anything about God without reducing him in some way. Must there be a “kenosis,” an emptying of God to reveal himself through human signs (209)? Smith asks, “Is there not an important difference between domestication and condescension?” (208). The answer may seem like common sense to most Christians (of course, we can speak about God!), but Smith interacts with philos ophers and gives a philosopher’s answer. He points us to phenomena: creation and incarna tion. Smith argues that creation and the incar nation prove that we can “gaze” (regard, attend) on God because an image does not exhaust the riches of reality: he affirms “a revelation of tran scendence which inheres in the image without being reduced to immanence” (222).
Overall, readers should appreciate that Smith thoughtfully engages modern philosophers, even on their own terms, rather than through exten sive biblical argumentation, and he deftly argues that the biblical (or “Nicene”) perspective makes sense of the world in a way that philosophy alone
cannot. The Nicene Option therefore provides a cogent apologetic. At the same time, due to the nature of a collection of essays and the way Smith presents the material, readers may feel like they are jumping into the middle of a movie. I wished Smith had given a little more history behind each question and how each philosopher fit into the puzzle. Likewise, The Nicene Option is limited by its narrow focus on philosophers. The line between philosophy and theology is thin, and theologians have been discussing the same questions. Theolo gians arguably have a more difficult task, for they must interact with both philosophers and other theologians. Thus The Nicene Option should be paired with a work like Michael Horton’s Covenant and Eschatology: The Divine Drama (WJK, 2002), which not only dialogues with many of the fig ures that Smith does but also with theologians who have considered similar questions.
Andrew J. Miller is the pastor of Bethel Reformed Presbyteri an Church (OPC) in Fredericksburg, VA.
T. F. Torrance, Divine Meaning: Studies in Patristic Hermeneutics (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995), 7.
See John Webster, Domain of the Word: Scripture and Theological Reason (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2012), 111–12.
1517 PUBLISHING | 2021 | 224 PAGES (PAPERBACK)
$21.85
MAGNUS PERSSON, A SUCCESSFUL PASTOR in the char ismatic church for many years, is now a minister in the Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Church. How did that happen? In Reclaiming the Reformation, Persson answers that question en route to of fering a larger call to reformational Christianity.
Persson structures the book around the perennial question: “What is central to the church and what are its most important marks?” (xi). He takes his cues from Luther’s 1539 “On Councils and the Church,” which laid out seven marks “that con stitute and characterize the church where Christ is present and active: the Word, Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, the Keys, the Office, the Divine Service (worship), and the Cross” (xii–xiii).
In the book’s first section, Persson urges Prot estants to recover their evangelical catholicity, since “the reformers . . . wanted to reestablish the genuine evangelical tradition.” Following Gustaf Aulén, he sees the “great break with the church’s catholicity” not in the Reformation but “in the new Protestantism . . . that began during the eigh teenth century [as] church art was whitewashed and the liturgy truncated. The Lord’s Supper be came ever more rare and finally fell into oblivion. The average contemporary Protestant too often turns away from such things that, according to the reformers, belonged to the church’s great treasure and were seen as common Christian property” (12). Contemporary Protestantism’s aversion to such things reveals the need to recover the sacra mental nature of the church, where God’s grace “is proclaimed and mediated through the Word, the table, and baptism” (21). Churches with an “individualistic private Christianity where one emphasizes the ‘personal relationship to Jesus’ as that which constitutes the Christian life” tend to turn “one’s search for justification and piety in ward” and stand in stark contrast to “the objective words of promise that are mediated through the Scriptures and sacraments” (23–25).
Persson then addresses each of the seven marks, starting with the word of God purely taught and rightly preached. “When the church neglects the biblical story of creation and the fall, the story of Jesus risks being turned into a moral istic improvement program which puts forth Je sus as a role model rather than as a savior” (57). Thankfully, “the historical and common Christian liturgy has been formed precisely for this reason,
so that the great story and the gospel message should not be lost but proclaimed through all that is said and done in the church’s worship ser vice” (58). This is one of the book’s consistent themes: that “what happens in worship exposes our theology” (158). Forms of worship “slowly but surely shape our thoughts, hearts, and actions” and “convey a message that either strengthens or weakens the gospel. The forms we use are there fore never neutral. They carry and mediate a message in themselves and shape us accordingly” (167). He concludes that historic liturgical forms most clearly “root us into the whole biblical story of salvation” (169).
Persson then turns to how the word is con cretized. In baptism, “we are thus united in Christ across all borders; neither time nor space, ethnic ity, gender, nor class are any longer markers of our deepest identity” (81). Similarly, “the Lord’s holy meal gives form to the whole gospel and makes faith physical and concrete. . . . The focus flees from us to God’s work through Christ; he comes to us and enters us from without. It is not about evoking feelings in the soul or about more knowledge in the head, but about actions that are repeated and which the gospel incorporates itself within the body” (107–8).
Next comes an exploration of the keys (con fession and absolution) and the office of the ministry. He sees confession as a key tool of the seelsorger (clergy) in comforting “the guilt-laden conscience” with the “freeing power of forgive ness,” and he concludes that “this mark of the church needs to be reestablished so that miser able and plagued souls can be freed and experi ence God’s forgiveness and grace” (116, 120). The keys conjoin with the office of the ministry, which should “not be reduced so that the pastor becomes some sort of comforting uncle, social worker, lec turer, or a general project leader” (143). Such an office is not one of power and privilege, but one of sacrifice and suffering. This cruciform pattern is the final mark of the church that Persson un packs using Luther’s theology of the cross as “the
interpretive screen through which the whole of our existence can be understood” (178).
Amid such a vigorous defense of the Reforma tion, a unique element surfaces in Persson’s vision for “a warm and bold Pentecostal spirituality that is deeply rooted in a solid reformational theology, formed and expressed by a common catholic litur gy and missional ecclesiology” (xv). He is sympa thetic to “the charismatic renewal [finding] paths into the different historical churches” where now “charismatic expressions exist side by side with the sacramental life” (32–33). Persson argues for a distinction between the Schwermers (enthusiasts), whom Luther harshly critiqued, and proper char ismatic expression, suggesting that Lutheranism is “sound and stable ground for a . . . spirituality that is both sacramental and charismatic” (39). This seems to be an uphill argument. Persson is right that “for Luther there was not a single area in the church and a not a single theological aspect where the Holy Spirit’s activity was not fundamental” (39). But didn’t Luther see the Spirit’s activity as never divorced from the word and external means? Consider Luther’s 1526 Trinity Sunday sermon: it is “the Spirit who reveals Himself in the external office which we hear and see, namely, in the preach ing office of the Gospel and of the Sacraments. We are to seek the Spirit not without and apart from the external signs, but know that the Spirit wants to work in, through, and with the external signs and office” (Luther’s Works, vol. 78: Church Postil IV [St. Louis: Concordia, 2015], 37–40).
Persson distances himself from charismatic excesses and makes it clear that “the reception of the Holy Spirit is . . . not a ‘second step’ that follows salvation” (42). Yet his overall argument embrac ing certain aspects of the charismatic movement and his interpretation of relevant scriptural texts seems unpersuasive. This, however, shouldn’t di minish the overall thrust of the book.
In Reclaiming the Reformation , one finds a warm and robust vision of how the principles of the Reformation can help build thriving churches and thick community around Christ’s word and
gifts. Persson’s convivial tone and wide range of denominational experiences make this a book that should be right for a wide variety of readers.
Joshua Pauling is a classical educator and head elder at All Saints Lutheran Church (LCMS) in Charlotte, North Carolina. He studied at Messiah College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Winthrop University.
You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World by Alan Noble IVP | 2021 | 232 PAGES (HARDCOVER) | $22.00
LATELY, THE USE OF APOLOGETICS has fallen on rough times. To be sure, classical, empiricist, and presuppositionalist apologetics are still useful schools of thought and their arguments are no less important. But those who are ready and able to wax eloquently about them, the ones who are wait ing to give a defense of the faith, find themselves all dressed up with nowhere to go. The questions about causality, teleology, and ontology, however important, are not being asked by my generation to the same degree they historically have.
Instead, the average Millennial and Zoomer is occupied with different phenomena. Our eyes are glossed over, strained from watching funny cat videos one second to watching citizens being bombed in Ukraine the next; our senses are part ly numbed from scrolling in between memes and news about another mass shooting. What is wrong with the “kids these days”? Perhaps it is this:
A defining feature of life in the modern West is our awareness of society’s inhumanity and our inability to imagine a way out of it. This
inhumanity includes everything from abor tions, mass shootings, and widespread cover ups of sexual abuse to meaningless jobs, broken communities, and TV shows that are only good for numbing our anxiety for thirty minutes. (1)
Or so says Alan Noble, professor at Oklahoma Baptist University and author of You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World.
Polished syllogisms and arguments for the existence of God are not always crafted toward animating jaded imaginations bent toward ni hilism. If you find such a bleak assessment hard to believe, then I invite you to read Noble’s latest work to discover not only the burdens of modern society but also the hope that imbues our lives in an inhuman world.
Noble’s remarks about the inhumanity of mo dernity may sound melodramatic to some, but he doesn’t write to wallow in the woes of society. Unlike other works that are critical or polemical, Noble takes no pleasure in pointing out what is killing us. Like the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, Noble merely acknowledges and points out the helpless modern estate. Amid the exis tential plight of the West, Noble examines one of its key myths with which it soothes its citizens: that “I am my own and belong to myself,” which “means that the most fundamental truth about existence is that you are responsible for your ex istence and everything it entails” (3–4). The “lie of self-belonging,” as Noble calls it, is the creed of modernity.
While Noble is not writing as an apologist, this book functions as what Tim Keller calls a kind of Christian high theory; that is, a theory that critiques the myths and systems of secular modernity. Noble doesn’t merely poke holes in the claims about the self, morality, and spirituality encountered in the West; instead, he follows the logic of its doctrines:
The freedom of sovereign individualism comes at a great price. Once I am liberated from all
social, moral, natural, and religious values, I become responsible for the meaning of my own life. With no God to judge or justify me, I have to be my own judge and redeemer. This burden manifests as a desperate need to jus tify our lives through identity crafting and expression. But because everyone else is also working frantically to craft and express their own identity, society becomes a space of vicious competition between individuals vying for at tention, meaning, and significance, not unlike the contrived drama of reality TV. (4)
For those born into the mythos of selfbelonging, belonging to a God who calls us to be a part of churches, keep ethical laws, and “die to ourselves,” sounds suffocating. Jesus’ yoke and burden can be as easy and light as he wants them to be, but it’s still something you have to hitch yourself to.
Throughout the book, Noble describes how the promises of belonging to oneself and express ing oneself play out in society. Noble summariz es: “[Our] society is a constructed environment built for humans who are their own and belong to themselves. Each of [its] elements, like the pagan gods of ancient Rome, promises to aid us in living a good life so long as we pay them proper devotion and tribute” (69).
Christians do well to take note of the hope less logic given by self-belonging, but they should also see what Noble is doing in his work: he is not rallying people to “look out” for these slogans, nor is he fearmongering to gain an au dience or attention. Rather, his work is one that lets the myths of the modern West crumble un der their own burdensome weight. At the end of his introduction, he does not give a thesis to the work as much as set a tone and posture for the journey we have ahead of ourselves:
I did not write this book as a critic positioned safely outside of society. It is very much the product of someone . . . affected by the same
problems, tempted by the same desires, and bur dened by the same anxieties I describe. . . . Fol low Christ. Follow in the footsteps of the wise, righteous elders in your life. And have grace for everyone. Lord knows we need it. (vii)
In a cultural climate where existential cynicism swallows up reasoned argument with a fog of ap athy, this might be the best strategy for apolo getics today.
So what must we do in a society of selfbelonging? Noble says we respond to our mod ern habitat often in one of two ways: the Way of Affirmation and the Way of Resignation. The dif ference between these groups can be described as the difference between those who see Sisyphus’s boulder and believe they’re able to win its game and push it to the top of the mountain, and those who give up before ever trying. Some believe that with the right productivity, guru’s advice, app, and meditation practice, they can game the system. This is the Way of Affirmation. Others, however, take a “sunk cost fallacy.” “They don’t choose to tap out of life because they think win ning is meaningless. They tap out because they are taught that winning means everything and they cannot envision any path to winning” (82).
The ever-eroding dread of working a deadend job while having student loan debt, the constant anxiety to optimize your life, feeling so burned out that texting seems like an insur mountable task, and the surest way to cope with life’s stressors is by binging another season of the show you’ve already seen a hundred times on Net flix. This is the Way of Resignation.
There is something to the idea that younger generations are not as resilient as former genera tions; but instead of making the same tired jokes about participation trophies, Noble’s work ac knowledges that the kids and grandkids of those who helped build the world of self-belonging are the ones killing themselves in record numbers. We need something deeper than mantras about washing our faces and picking ourselves up by our
bootstraps, and something better than shamefilled tirades. Noble points out,
Humans are incapable of completely, un reservedly desiring the good of someone else.
. . . Sometimes we only recognize how we have sabotaged ourselves long after the fact, when we can no longer protect ourselves or change our fate. We are uniquely capable of self-destruction and self-abasement. (126)
But the modern plight doesn’t need to end in what we and society are incapable of doing. As that old catechism reminds us, we don’t have to belong to ourselves. “We need to belong to some one who is perfectly able to desire our own good while desiring their own good, someone for whom there cannot be a conflict between our good and their good. . . . We need to belong to Christ” (126).
It’s this subtle candle flicker of hope that makes Noble’s work so striking and compelling. These sad discoveries do not extinguish Christian hope. The shining glimmer of You Are Not Your Own is how ordinary obligations in an inconve nient church community can provide us a means to live the good life amid a dark world.
For those who wonder how to respond righ teously to “the crisis of our time,” You Are Not Your Own may not supply pristine syllogisms or a laundry list of action steps—such a list would make us like Sisyphus again—but it offers words of wisdom from a fellow traveler who will help ready you on your way.
THE YEAR 2022 HAS BEEN an exciting one for Modern Reformation . We’ve celebrated our thirty-year anniversary with a redesign of the print magazine and website and published a new MR book. We’ve been privileged to feature some great writers this past year and have enjoyed lots of great discussions with our readership. Now, as we turn our attention to a new year, we are happy to announce that MR will be carried forward by a new executive editor, Dr. Brannon Ellis, who has taken over for Dr. Joshua Schendel.
Dr. Ellis brings with him a wealth of experi ence, including nearly a decade in the publishing industry. After graduating from Westminster Seminary California with an MA in historical theology in 2007, he completed a PhD at the University of Aberdeen in 2010 with the late John Webster. He published a revised version of his thesis as Calvin, Classical Trinitarianism, and the Aseity of the Son with Oxford University Press in 2012. That same year, he took a position as an academic editor at IVP. Then in 2014, he moved to Lexham Press where he worked as the acqui sitions editor. In 2016, he was promoted to the position of publisher, and under his leadership Lexham grew into the premium midsized imprint with which we are all familiar today. In 2018, Dr. Ellis became the director of original content for Faithlife, combining Faithlife’s mobile education department and Bible study magazine editorial team with Lexham Press.
Over the years, Modern Reformation has en joyed a distinguished line of executive editors
including Ben Sasse, Mark Talbot, D. G. Hart, and Ryan Glomsrud. Joshua Schendel has now joined that list and has much of which to be proud. Under his leadership, MR underwent a transfor mative redesign, and he also led our staff in re focusing our editorial vision. Now, Dr. Schendel has an opportunity to return to the classroom as a professor at a college in his beloved Montana. We are grateful for him and pray for God’s blessings on all his future endeavors.
Please join Editor-in-Chief Michael Horton and me in welcoming Brannon Ellis to the helm of Modern Reformation. We believe that the mag azine’s best days are yet ahead, and we’re excit ed to see what God will do in and through Dr. Ellis and the many friends and supporters who have been the mainstay of our work over the past thirty years.
Because of the generosity of our partners, we’re excited to announce that the entire White Horse Inn archive is now accessible to everyone. For free Please partner with us to continue this crucial work. And with a gift of $50 or more, we’ll send you a copy of White Horse Inn host Justin Holcomb’s 365-day devotional on the saving work of Christ, God With Us
