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Modern Reformation November/December 2024 Vol. 33, No. 6
To all the staff, designers, contributors, readers, and donors for your faithfulness in the past and commitment to pursuing a bright future by the grace of God:
Thank You
4 FROM THE EDITOR-INCHIEF | Why We Still Need Modern Reformation | by Michael Horton
66 BACK PAGE “Give Praise to God” | by James Montgomery Boice
For a modern reformation . . .
I. We must return to God’s word as the only sufficient and unfailing rule of faith and life.
10 ESSAY | God’s Word Alone | by Jared L. Jones
II. We must recover the doctrines of grace, especially justification through faith alone in Christ alone by grace alone.
20 ESSAY | To the Glory of God Alone | by Eric Landry
III. We must commit to catholicity and confessionalism.
32 ESSAY | Becoming a Re-Formed Catholic | by Joshua Schendel
IV. We must renew biblical worship and discipleship.
40 ESSAY | “On the Day Called Sunday” | by Joshua Pauling
V. We must embrace the church’s global character and mission.
50 ESSAY | A Global Modern Reformation | by Simonetta Carr
56 ESSAY | Where Do We Go from Here? | by Brannon Ellis
Endsheet illustration by Anna Heitmann Editor-in-Chief
Why We Still NEED MODERN REFORMATION
by MICHAEL HORTON
One of the advantages of living long enough is passing along stories. My grandparents lived with us until they died, telling stories that shaped me and my interest in history. Modern Reformation began in my living room, as a bulletin of sorts before it grew into an actual magazine. Modern Reformation was simply a print expression of what we were trying to do with White Horse Inn : to provide a common witness to the truths of the Reformation from Lutheran, Baptist, Anglican, and Reformed traditions as a kind of “coalition of the willing”; brothers and sisters who share the core convictions of the Reformation while nevertheless disagreeing on important points, bombarding evangelicalism with the truths of the Reformation in conversation with contemporary debates.
Soon into its existence, the great Methodist theologian Thomas Oden called us part of the “old fogeys,” and Lutheran scholar and MR contributor Gene Edward Veith characterized the magazine as an example of a “postmodern orthodoxy.” Over the years, one of the leading reformers in the Episcopal church, Bishop Fitz-Simmons Allison, wrote me regularly to say how much he saw MR as a light in a dark place.
Even in its earliest versions, Modern Reformation entered the central debates of evangelicalism at the time. We started when TV evangelism was at its height, but beginning to come crashing down. The volume I edited, The Agony of Deceit, came out at just the right moment. While the national press was focusing on moral and financial intrigue, we put the spotlight on doctrine.
Then we held the first conference in which representatives of the open theism position engaged with defenders of classical theism. Right at the beginning of the open theism movement, before it was a “thing,” leaders such as Clark
Pinnock, Richard Rice, and others were kind enough to present their case and let us fire away. The editor-in-chief of Christianity Today attended that small conference, commenting on how we defined the points of serious division. In fact, during the years when Christianity Today was the periodical of record for evangelicalism, we were regularly consulted for a “Reformation take” on what was happening.
This included the Evangelicals and Catholics Together initiative. Even some Reformed stalwarts claimed agreement with Catholics on the gospel. Modern Reformation was at the center of this debate, acknowledging cooperation on a host of issues where there was genuine consensus but sharply rejecting agreement on the gospel. Once again, MR was quoted as the go-to source for the opposition on this question.
But Modern Reformation has not merely focused on defensive polemics. “Modern” in the title underscores our belief that the great doctrines of Scripture as expounded by the likes of Luther and Calvin can bring life and truth to our own time and place. So, over the years, we have focused on issues that concern believers today, but with a theological undergirding that is missing from almost all of current evangelicalism.
And that’s basically what we’ve been all about for three decades: vigilance against all challenges to historical Christianity, especially as interpreted by the Reformation confessions. But it’s a modern reformation we’re after, which has meant trying to understand where we are in a very different context than the sixteenth century. We don’t just want to repeat the Reformation, which is historically impossible anyway. Yet the main theses of the Reformation are still the central teachings of the gospel that are always targeted by contemporary theological movements that seek to conform the faith to the spirit of the age.
As Modern Reformation evolved, it attracted the leadership of remarkable editors. Shane Rosenthal was the first. After Ben Sasse stepped
down from running the whole shebang, he wanted to stay on as MR editor. He was succeeded by the noted historian Dr. Darryl G. Hart and then Dr. Mark Talbot, professor of philosophy at Wheaton College. Our longest-serving editor, Eric Landry, served two different times and helped usher MR through a tumultuous season. The magazine underwent two different redesigns when Dr. Ryan Glomsrud and then Dr. Joshua Schendel took over. Most recently, Dr. Brannon Ellis has given us a renewed focus on thinking theologically about all of life.
Our editors and writers have been stellar proponents of this vision and leaders in their own fields. We have been determined over these three decades to provide content that is reliable, not faddish. Yet we are also concerned that there is inadequate training for the battles we face both in the world and in the church. We have tackled controversial topics but always with the question, “Who are the experts on this topic?” Our list of contributors attests to the success of MR in recruiting specialists who also know how to bring their Reformation convictions and scholarly expertise to bear on issues fundamental for Christian faith and practice.
As I look back on the incredible successes of these editors, and of what MR has accomplished because of them, I’m humbled to imagine that a photocopy operation back in the 1990s has become one of the most trusted sources of theological analysis and instruction in our world today.
We’re not going anywhere. But we’re listening very closely to our “many counselors” who tell us that our content needs to be delivered through media we could not have envisioned when we began. It’s about the message, not the medium, and so (even though we’re sad to lose such a beautiful print publication) we’re excited about the new plans unfolding right now.
After this issue, Modern Reformation will no longer be a print magazine. That’s true of a lot of periodicals today. We could spend a lot more money on keeping the magazine in print or, in -
stead, we could reach a lot more people at substantially less cost. In the interest of reaching the widest possible audience, we’re pivoting to the new media in which content today is most widely and effectively delivered. MR the print magazine is a gem for me, as it has been for so many. However, our mission is what matters and the two questions we have to ask ourselves at all times are these:
Is it faithful?
How many people have access to it?
In a new era, MR will continue to provide the content people rely on but in a different medium that allows for more people to read it.
Modern Reformation is special. It has contributed—and will contribute—to the ongoing conversations for which Reformation theology has a unique take. I could not be more excited about the future of this magazine in its new form.
Michael Horton is editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation and the J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary California in Escondido.
The Many Faces of Modern Reformation
Over more than three decades, we regularly updated MR’s design and format. This not only kept things interesting. It was an effort to continually hone the medium to better serve our message— which, as you can see from glancing at these covers, has remained remarkably consistent.
I.
We must return to God’s word as the only sufficient and unfailing rule of faith and life.
A modern reformation will be characterized by an intelligent, believing, prayerful return to the wisdom and power of God’s Spirit speaking in the Scriptures.
GOD’S Word ALONE
by JARED L. JONES
EVERY ADVENT, millions of Americans will at some point sit down and participate in a long-honored and nearly sacred ritual: watching The Christmas Story . This classic holiday film—no, myth—is chock-full of moments that depict what Christmas means, not theologically but emotionally to nine-year-old boys. This is nowhere truer than the segment of the movie involving Ovaltine.
Do you remember the scene? Ralphie finally gets the Ovaltine Decoder Ring (along with the official acceptance letter and seal of Annie Ovaltine). His mind races as to what important message may be coming down the pike for him. “The fate of the world may hang in the balance,” his older self narrates. He listens on the radio for the numbers “from Annie herself” and hurries off to the bathroom to try to decode the message. His heart races as he lines up the decoder ring with each number and begins to write out the letters:
BeSURETODRINK YOUROVALTINE
“Ovaltine?” Ralphie says to himself as the realization sinks in. “It’s just a crummy commercial!”
Ralphie’s disappointment at being promised an important, even vital, message and instead being sold something is both understandable and unfortunately all too common for people today. We constantly feel overpromised and under-delivered. Like the Facebook friend who messages you after fifteen years to see how you’re doing—only to let you know of the incredible opportunity to get in on the ground floor of her new essential oils program—we cannot help but feel that we’re constantly promised something great only to realize it’s just another gimmick.
Churchgoers have also felt this dilemma. We have multiple things held out to us: programs, books, clubs, campaigns—all with the promise that this will change our life—only to leave us feeling understandably disenchanted when we discover that these were just marketing schemes to entice us to click.
I believe this has had massive implications for modern evangelicalism’s approach to Christian doctrine, particularly its doctrine of Scripture.
In an environment where the promises of personal and church growth revolve around programs and new methods, many a churchgoer (and many a pastor) has been left with a relatively arbitrary relationship to Scripture. Now, to be clear, most evangelicals today still believe in Scripture. It’s a box they still check Yes . But too few know what to do with Scripture. In other
In an environment where the promises of personal and church growth revolve around programs and new methods, many a churchgoer (and many a pastor) has been left with a relatively arbitrary relationship to Scripture.
It wasn’t that festivals, spiritual practices, fervent worship, or the like were necessarily bad, but they had gotten to the point where God himself, the true and living God, had been lost in the midst of it all.
words, after I’ve acknowledged I believe it to be true, what exactly am I supposed to do with it, much less expect of it?
In many ways, the church today is in a similar position to the church that the Reformers inherited and were attempting to change. The medieval Catholic Church was far from spiritually dead. There were programs, festivals, methods, practices, books, guilds, crusades, everything a medieval Ralphie could have imagined. There was also a growing cynicism as people began to notice that the secret message turned out to be “just a crummy commercial” for the giant Catholic Church machine. Eamon Duffy, in his famous work The Stripping of the Altars , describes the pre-Reformation church in England as almost a paradise of spirituality. There were spiritual practices galore. Whole towns would jump in on the party. Festivals and feasts marked the life of the entire village.
The regulated and regular piety of the middling sort, geared to the daily and weekly observances of the parish churches and the steady patterns of urban living, could accommodate both the seasonal cycles of Advent and Easter and the sober pursuit of virtue, day in and day out, urged in the devotional material which . . . poured out. For townsmen and countrymen alike, the rhythms of liturgy on the eve of the Reformation remained the rhythms of life itself. 1
It was, as Charles Taylor put it, “enchanted.”
But the Reformers saw all of this as a problem. It wasn’t that festivals, spiritual practices, fervent worship, or the like were necessarily bad, but they had gotten to the point where God himself, the true and living God, had been lost in the midst of it all. They saw the medieval Catholic Church similarly to how the Old Testament prophets saw Israel:
“The multitude of your sacrifices— what are they to me?” says the Lord.
“I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the fat of fattened animals;
I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.
“When you come to appear before me, who has asked this of you, this trampling of my courts?
“Stop bringing meaningless offerings! Your incense is detestable to me.
New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations— I cannot bear your worthless assemblies.
“Your New Moon feasts and your appointed festivals I hate with all my being. They have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them.
“When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you; even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening.” (Isa. 1:11–15)
God is not conjured up, Isaiah says, by the fervency or frequency of your spirituality. In fact, you can be extremely energetic spiritually and God might just be completely absent.
So, what were people in Old Testament Israel and the medieval Catholic Church to do? What are we supposed to do today? The Reformers had an answer: return to Scripture. For them, Scripture wasn’t only a box to check to say that they believed it to be true. It was the source, the sum, and the salve to the spiritual life, particularly to the exhausted spiritual life.
First, the Protestant Reformers saw the Scriptures as the source of the Christian life. The goal of the Reformers was to functionally get out of the way of the word as it did its work in the lives of those who heard it. They believed it would accomplish this work, because it isn’t just a simple collection of ideas. Within its pages, people would find God himself.
Thomas Cranmer, the archbishop of Canterbury responsible for midwifing the birth of the Reformation in England, compiled a series of homilies to be used in churches until pastors could be trained how to properly preach sound doctrine. The first of these homilies, written by Cranmer himself, was on the power of God’s word: “The Fruitful Exhortation to the Reading and Knowledge of Holy Scripture.” In his section on why the Scriptures are so important, he wrote:
For in Holy Scripture is fully contained what we ought to do and what to eschew, what to believe, what to love and what to look for at God’s hands at length. In these books we shall find the Father from whom, the Son by whom and the Holy Ghost in whom all things have their being and keeping up.2
The Reformers had an answer: return to Scripture. For them, Scripture was not only a box to check to say that we believed it to be true. It was the source, the sum, and the salve to the spiritual life, particularly to the exhausted spiritual life.
We aren’t simply reading these books to get new ideas. Rather, within this book, we find directions on how we are to approach the Triune God. We not only find direction on what to love, what to reject, what to do, what to believe, but we also find God himself, present within his word: God who is Father, Son,
Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556), archbishop of Canterbury, 1533–1555.
The church was not the mediator between Christ and his flock, and the parish priest was not an extension of the pope’s authority. Rather, the priest was a pastor who shepherded Christ the mediator’s flock until he returned to get them.
and Holy Spirit. The Scriptures are not simply repositories of ideas or cold doctrine. They’re the place in which God promises that he will be found. Second, the Reformers believed the Bible was the sum of the Christian life. The Scriptures contained all things necessary for salvation. In the same homily, Cranmer said, “There is no truth nor doctrine necessary for our justification and everlasting salvation but that is, or may be, drawn out of that fountain and well of truth.”3 For Cranmer and his contemporaries, this radically reshaped their approach to the spiritual life. No longer was our spiritual energy and focus to be drawn from our own activity in church and society, but rather our spiritual energy must flow from believing the word of God.
When people realized that the only things the church could impress upon its people were those that could be proven from Scripture, suddenly everyone’s calendars opened up!
Understanding that the Scriptures contained all things necessary for salvation also freed the conscience of the believer. This created the context within which a Roman Catholic parish priest could now finally become a pastor. As the Reformers returned to the Scriptures, they recognized that it and it alone had authority over both the church and the Christian. Therefore, the Christian conscience could only be bound by the Bible. This set the proper limits and context of the church’s authority. The church was not the mediator between Christ and his flock, and the parish priest was not an extension of the pope’s authority. Rather, the priest was a pastor who shepherded Christ the mediator’s flock until he returned to get them. This minister, or under-shepherd, could only speak Christ’s word to his flock, could only demand obedience to Christ’s command, and could only commend faith in Christ as the mark of his true sheep.
This shift in pastoral responsibility also created a vacuum in society. When people realized that the only things the church could impress upon its people were those that could be proven from Scripture, suddenly everyone’s calendars opened up! People no longer had to spend every waking moment obsessed with their “spiritual activities” beyond what God’s word required, but could simply enjoy the gifts of God’s creation. In a real sense, the “secular” world isn’t a bug of the Reformation, but a feature. Christians could now simply pursue any legitimate vocation as honoring to the Lord. We could love and lead our families well, knowing that God is Lord of all of life and will give us wisdom from his word for all our various callings.
In these and other ways, the Reformation’s recognition that the Scriptures are sufficient for salvation contributed massively to reshaping the church and society in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Its effects are still felt today.
This leads me to my final point: As the church’s ultimate guide and authority, the Scriptures became the salve for the Christian life. Since the Scriptures are where God is found in gospel grace, and since the life of the believer is to be governed according to Scripture, only there—but truly there—can God’s people find peace. Through his word our Lord provides rest.
A church, family, or individual Christian whose spiritual life is focused on the word of God read in community is going to be a church, family, or individual at rest. They will find rest in these words because these words actually provide God’s rest. Hebrews 4 tells us that “there still remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God,” and exhorts us to make every effort to enter that rest. How does one make an effort to enter into rest? Hebrews 4:12 tells us:
For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
The Christian who hears the word of God is invited into the Sabbath rest of God’s people. “Today if you hear his voice” (Heb. 4:7), you can enter into the eternal rest of God: no programs, no prayer cloths, nothing extraordinary at all. The Spirit employs the simple hearing and receiving of God’s holy word and the promises contained therein to bring about complete regeneration and transformation and complete rest.
Martin Luther, reflecting on the Reformation and his participation in it, said this:
Since the Scriptures are where God is found in gospel grace, and since the life of the believer can only be governed according to Scripture, only there—but truly there—can God’s people find peace. Through his word our Lord provides rest.
I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philip and Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it.4
For Luther, it was the living and active word of God that did all the work— even while he enjoyed beer with his colleagues.
I have seen the living and active word have a powerful effect in my own ministry. A few years ago, I was a chaplain at a Christian school. I was meeting weekly with a student trying to figure out if he was a Christian who wanted to read the Bible together. So, we would meet—without beer—and read Luke out loud to each other while I offered brief thoughts. I really didn’t think much of it, to be honest. It was kind of a ho-hum part of my week; I was involved in seemingly more important things like teaching ethics and leading chapel services.
One day, before he arrived, I remembered we were supposed to meet and thought, “I hope he doesn’t show up today. I’ve got too much going on.” Great pastoral move! Sure enough, at our normal time slot, there was a knock on my door. But that day he asked if we could read from the Passion narrative instead (it was Holy Week, so he had been hearing a lot about it). I said, “Sure,” and we skipped ahead in Luke to read the crucifixion story.
In Luke’s telling of the Passion, there’s a common refrain that if Christ is who he claimed to be, he could have saved himself but couldn’t (or wouldn’t) do it. This occurs in the text over and over again. And as I was reading the passage out loud—again, my heart not really in it, just going through the motions—suddenly, I heard the student sniffling.
I looked up and he wasn’t just sniffling; he was crying. And he kept saying to himself, “Why didn’t he save himself? Why didn’t he save himself?”
Let us commit ourselves, once again and always, to return to this word as the source, sum, and salve of our ministry. The Scriptures are the power of God for salvation, containing everything necessary for us to know and believe to be saved, carrying the healing message that brings rest to a burdened and weary world.
I realized in that moment that although I, as the minister, was completely checked out of the situation, the Holy Spirit was not. And through the simple reading of God’s word—even by a minister who didn’t want to be there—something profound was happening in this student’s heart.
And so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. (Isa. 55:11)
It is this powerful word—the word proclaimed directly from God’s mouth, through the Scriptures, through the minister or the fellow believer, into the ears of sinners—that brings dead hearts to life and calls prodigals home. Let us commit ourselves, once again and always, to return to this word as the source, sum, and salve of our ministry. The Scriptures are the power of God for sal-
vation, containing everything necessary for us to know and believe to be saved, carrying the healing message that brings rest to a burdened and weary world. We need not further exhaust our congregants with programs upon programs, discipleship plans, small groups, or vast spiritual re-enchantments of the world. They get all they need through the word—read, preached, and made visible in the sacraments among God’s gathered saints. Let our people flourish in their homes and vocations as they enjoy and honor God in creation. Ralphie doesn’t need one more “crummy commercial.” He needs to hear and rest in the good news of the answer to my student’s question: “Why didn’t he save himself?” Because, my friend, he was saving you.
Jared L. Jones is rector at Holy Cross Episcopal Church in Sanford, Florida.
1. Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, 2nd ed. (Yale University Press, 2005), 51–52.
2. Thomas Cranmer, The Books of Homilies: A Critical Edition, ed. Gerald Bray (James Clarke, 2015), 7.
3. Cranmer, Homilies, 7.
4. Martin Luther, Second Sermon, March 10, 1522, Monday after Invocavit. Luther’s Works, vol. 51, ed. J. J. Pelikan, H. C. Oswald, and H. T. Lehmann (Fortress Press, 1999), iii–78.
We must recover the doctrines of grace, especially justification through faith alone in Christ alone by grace alone. II.
The doctrines of grace not only exalt the good news of Jesus Christ to its proper place of prominence, but they also drive us back to him as the only foundation of our assurance, holiness, maturity, and fruitfulness—to the glory of God alone.
TO THE GLORY OF GOD ALONE: THE DOCTRINES of Grace
FOR A MODERN REFORMATION
by ERIC LANDRY
ICAN STILL REMEMBER the staircase I was sitting on when I was “born again . . . again.” Like many who discovered the Reformation after growing up in broad evangelicalism, I loved Jesus and knew my Bible, but I had very little assurance of salvation, nor did I really know how the story of the Bible held together. I could beat you at Bible trivia but couldn’t tell you how to relate the Old and New Testaments or why there’s hope for a Christian struggling with remaining sin. But on those stairs in Southern California more than thirty years ago, I heard a Bible teacher explain two kinds of righteousness: one according to the law and another according to grace. That is, rather than being made right with God by what I do for him, I am made right with God because of what he has done for me. And since then, everything has been different.
I imagine that’s what experiencing the Reformation was like for many of the people who were there as it first grew and blossomed. The enchanted world of medieval Catholicism wasn’t often a happy place filled with delight in God. Instead, it was a struggle to keep up with the rites and rituals necessary to keep an angry or disappointed God pacified. Even the most pious among the Christian populace wondered how long they would suffer in Purgatory before being able to behold the face of God, smiling at last. The worship and preaching in the local churches did little to offer comfort or a bigger vision of God’s work in the world.
But then the bright light of the Reformers’ message began spreading through the hearts, homes, and churches of Europe. Gathering together to discuss “the latest ideas sweeping the land”—as the classic White Horse Inn introduction used to say—the Reformers and their disciples did more than just argue theological minutiae. Instead, they built one another up in the pure proclamation of the gospel, propelled people into ministry and vocation, sent out missionaries, reformed towns and cities, and strengthened churches and families. The Reformation wasn’t just a renewal of doctrine. It led to a transformation of people’s lives and the world they lived in. Could something similar happen today? Could we really see a modern reformation? I know many others who have had similar experiences to mine. Maybe theirs wasn’t on a staircase or in a Bible study, but it was by listening to a podcast or attending a friend’s church or even through a fresh look at what was once thought to be familiar passage of Scripture. Whatever our personal experiences with coming to see the truth and beauty of Reformation Christianity may be, for a modern reformation to take place, we need to do more than love the history of the Protestant Reformation. We need to recover
The Reformation wasn’t just a renewal of doctrine. It led to a transformation of people’s lives and the world they lived in.
These five slogans together form a faithful and helpful summary of the conflicts around which the Reformation was structured and the conclusions they drew for how we trust and worship God as his redeemed people.
the clear preaching and teaching of God’s powerful message of salvation expressed in the five solas of the Reformation. Sola is the Latin word for “only” or “alone.” There are five famous Reformation solas. Salvation is:
• According to Scripture alone (sola scriptura);
• Through faith alone (sola fide);
• By grace alone (sola gratia);
• In Christ alone (solo Christo, commonly styled solus Christus); and
• To the glory of God alone (soli Deo gloria)
We often speak of the solas as if Calvin and Luther and the other Reformers sat down at a table in a pub somewhere to come up with five central ideas around which they could all unite. Even though they had differences on the sacraments or church government or the relationship of the church to the state, maybe these were the five things that bound them all together. While that may be true as far as it goes, it’s not what happened. Even though each major Reformer touched on all of what we know as the five solas in their writings and preaching, it wasn’t until the early 1960s that a German Catholic theologian spoke of all five solas in the way that we recognize them today. Nevertheless, these five slogans together form a faithful and helpful summary of the conflicts around which the Reformation was structured and the conclusions they drew for how we trust and worship God as his redeemed people. So, let’s look at what each of these solas means and how it’s vital to Christian faith and practice, by exploring what each looks like when embraced in the life of a local church.
Sola Scriptura
By making the point that the good news of salvation is “according to Scripture alone,” the Reformers didn’t mean that human councils and creeds were unimportant or that tradition shouldn’t have any role in our interpretation of the word. They didn’t intend to place an individual reader of the Bible at the pinnacle of authority. They wanted to make sure that Scripture held the preeminent place because, as the inspired and inerrant word of God, Scripture is the norm that norms all norms. No other person, document, movement, or experience trumps the clear teaching of the word of God. And when a particular passage doesn’t seem so clear? Then, within the community of faith and in light of the Spirit’s leading, we appeal to the Scriptures to interpret themselves as God’s living and active word.
A great illustration of this sola occurs very early in Reformation history.
In 1521 at the interrogation of Luther at the Diet of Worms, he declared his allegiance to Scripture, saying,
Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures and by clear reason (for I do not trust in the pope or councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted. My conscience is captive to the Word of God.1
Luther didn’t make himself the authority; he submitted himself to the Bible, even at the potential cost of his life.
What does it mean for a congregation to practice this sola today?
The marketing and entertainment makers seem to have more sway over our churches than Scripture does. Our values, our families, even our Christian communities today are often shaped more by the culture in which we live than the word by which we live. Yet the Bible is the only inerrant, unfailing rule of life. Recovering this sola in a church community means that we’re governed in the way we worship, in our preaching, in our family lives, and in our personal behavior by what Scripture says. We should receive wise guidance and give due deference to our confessional tradition, to the voice of the broader church, even to common sense—but never to overrule Scripture. Positively, this sola helps a congregation to see that all that is necessary for its individual and common faith and life is contained in Scripture. We don’t have to search for extrabiblical sources of revelation. Our people don’t have to wonder what God’s will is for them, or find comfort and assurance elsewhere than in his word. Consciences should be bound to nothing except
Our values, our families, even our Christian communities today are often shaped more by the culture in which we live than the word by which we live.
Yet the Bible is the only inerrant, unfailing rule of life.
"Luther at the Diet of Worms" (1877), detail, by Anton von Werner.
what’s laid down in Scripture or by good and necessary consequence derived from it.2
Sola scriptura gives our churches confidence to live boldly as the people of God in a world awash with confusion and contradiction.
Sola Fide
God accomplishes our salvation—and more emphatically for the Reformers, our justification—sola fide, “through faith alone.” Famously, justification by faith alone is the article by which the church stands or falls. That doesn’t mean it’s the only important Christian doctrine or even the most central. Rather, when it comes to salvation, justification by faith alone is the hinge on which all the other solas turn: We are justified by grace alone through faith alone because of Christ alone.
The Westminster Confession of Faith defines this sola carefully:
Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and his righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification: yet is it not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but worketh by love.3
Luther famously defined faith as a clasping of Jesus just like a ring clasps the jewel.
Calvin understood faith to receive Jesus just as an empty vessel receives treasure.
The importance of this sola is illustrated by the fact that Rome teaches that we are justified by grace alone, but not by faith alone. They believe that justification is infused into us in baptism, partially or totally lost as we sin more or less seriously, and regained through the use of the sacraments as part of our growth in sanctification. This is why this sola is called the material principle of the Reformation. It’s like Atlas, J. I. Packer says.4 Without it, the world falls apart. Because Christ’s vicarious righteousness is the only ground of justification (as we’ll discuss shortly), then it is only by faith that we lay hold of Christ, trusting in his righteousness and not ours. Luther famously defined faith as a clasping of Jesus just like a ring clasps the jewel. Calvin understood faith to receive Jesus just as an empty vessel receives treasure.5
While sola fide is wonderful news, as a pastor I know it’s one of the hardest messages to convince our hearts to embrace—whether individually or in our life together as God’s people. Something in us demands to be responsible for some part of our right standing with God. The great Princeton theologian Charles Hodge humorously said that he didn’t fear the ghost of Pelagius (rejecting grace alone) as much as he feared the ghost of semi-Pelagius (rejecting faith alone). You and I by nature—and by false teachers or bad
counsel—believe that we must activate or empower the grace given to us. God gets us started, but we’ll take it from here. Sadly, this kind of attitude in a church doesn’t lead to holiness or delight in God. Instead, it breeds a self-righteous, judgmental, secretive, and despairing culture in a congregation. Because deep down we know we’re unable to perfectly, personally, and perpetually do the things that God requires.
For those who know anything of God’s holiness and their own sinfulness, this doctrine is both good news and the ground of our worship, enabling us to sing along with the old hymn, “Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to the cross I cling; naked, come to thee for dress; helpless, look to thee for grace; foul, I to the fountain fly; wash me, Savior, or I die. Rock of ages cleft for me. Let me hide myself in thee.” Faith is our act but not our work. It is the hand that receives, not accomplishes. It acknowledges our debt to God rather than puts God in our debt. The Holy Spirit works faith in us and by faith unites us to Christ so that we become the beneficiaries of all his saving work. Because salvation is through faith alone, it’s the work of God alone. In this way, we’re assured that he will one day finish the work that he began (Phil. 1:6).
***
Sola Gratia
When we say we’re saved “by grace alone,” we mean that in salvation we’re rescued from God by God himself. Motivated by his love rather our just deserts, our Heavenly Father sent his Son to save us from our sins, pouring out his Holy Spirit to bring us to Christ. God has released us from our bondage to sin and raised us from spiritual death to spiritual life. This means that salvation is not in any sense a human work—its source and sustenance are God’s free gift. Our good ideas, our best efforts (not even those called forth by God) are unable to bring the spiritually dead to new life. Spiritual slaves cannot of ourselves attain the freedom of faith.
Even though Roman Catholicism has always taught that we’re saved by grace, the papacy and its representatives obscured and corrupted this teaching before and during the Reformation by—among other practices—selling indulgences. “As soon as a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs,” the traveling mercenary monk Tetzel said. By adding our good works to the mix of attaining salvation, the message of salvation by God’s grace was polluted.
Human capacities are gifts belonging to the image of God. Our ability to do all manner of amazing things in the natural realm (even now, in spite of our rebellion) is a gift of God’s common grace. But naive confidence in fallen human ability in salvation is a lie of the devil. Even among otherwise orthodox Christians, there’s a widespread sense that we have some role to play in motivating our own salvation—that something in us or done by us
Even among otherwise orthodox Christians, there’s a widespread sense that we have some role to play in motivating our own salvation—that something in us or done by us draws God’s grace and ensures our redemption.
draws God’s grace and ensures our redemption. That’s why we’re drawn to the smiling preachers who promise our best life now if we simply obey biblical principles. That’s why we’re suckers for every conference or curriculum that promises freedom from sin and perfect families. That’s why our evangelism too often sounds like a beer commercial: Try Jesus, he’s great! Anytime we’re thrown back onto ourselves or believe it’s up to us, we are acting as if sola gratia isn’t true.
To recover the Reformers’ spirit in our congregations, we must preach and teach that God’s grace in Christ is not merely necessary for salvation but is the sole source, motive, and cause of salvation. We must recover the assurance that comes when we hear that the basis of our redemption is in Jesus and not in ourselves, because “if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace” (Rom. 11:6). Sola gratia allows us to be humble and grateful before God, and generous and nonjudgmental toward one another, because “who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?” (1 Cor. 4:7).
A papal indulgence granted to the faithful who visited a chapel in Silesia (1500).
Solus Christus
Solus Christus or solo Christo means “in Christ alone.” The Reformation recovered the classic Christian emphasis that salvation is accomplished by and stands secure upon the work of Jesus alone. His sinless life, substitutionary death, and resurrection vindication are sufficient to justify us and restore us as children of the Father.
The Reformation called Christians back to Christ as the only mediator between God and man. The Roman Church taught that Christ is mediator, but also that alongside him stand Mary and countless saints and other intercessors. These other intercessors helped save believers from Purgatory, where the souls there detained are helped by the intercessions of the faithful. Because the saints aren’t only honored heroes of the faith but also instruments by which God dispenses favor, saints are to be venerated and invoked and their relics are to be venerated.6
The Reformers didn’t refuse to honor their faithful forebears but insisted that, since salvation is accomplished by Christ alone, our faith must look to him alone. As Calvin said in the Institutes,
Christ stepped in, took the punishment upon himself and bore the judgment due to sinners. With his own blood he expiated the sins which made them enemies of God and thereby satisfied him. . . . We look to Christ alone for divine favour and fatherly love! 7
Our congregations struggle with this one too—even those of us who belong to reformational churches. Our editor-in-chief Michael Horton diagnoses “Christless Christianity” in churches where therapeutic, political, or entertainment Christianity reigns supreme. What is it in us that draws our eyes away from the sufficiency of Christ to the cheap trinkets and false delights of Vanity Fair? Ultimately, it is unbelief. Just like Israel, we struggle to believe that God is truly for us. And like Adam and Eve, we want to decide for ourselves what is good and right. To counteract these natural tendencies, even among Christians, there must be a commitment to relating to one another and serving in the church from a place of cross-shaped weakness. It’s only as we know our need for Jesus to be our Savior (every day of this pilgrim life) that we will turn again and again to find our comfort, satisfaction, and righteousness in him. As soon as we forget that precious cross, we will go in search of other saviors and other lords.
In response to the Reformation slogan of solus Christus , let’s rededicate ourselves to the unalloyed good news of the gospel: Christ crucified for sinners. When we do so, the preaching of the local church will be Christ-
It’s only as we know our need for Jesus to be our Savior (every day of this pilgrim life) that we will turn again and again to find our comfort, satisfaction, and righteousness in him. As soon as we forget that precious cross, we will go in search of other saviors and other lords.
centered. And the fellowship of the local church will be a haven of refuge for people who long for real community where the masks of hypocrisy can fall away. And the mission of the church won’t be a line item in the budget but will be embraced by all as a way of life, because we’ll know that this good news truly is the heart of the gospel. ***
Soli Deo Gloria
Soli Deo gloria means “to the glory of God alone.” We can understand this final sola as a summary of the others, and therefore of the whole tenor of the Christian approach to redemption: Since salvation is of God and has been accomplished by God and received by faith, it is ultimately for God’s glory and we must always glorify him for it. Our lives must be lived coram Deo —another common Latin phrase popular with the Reformers—“before the face of God” in trust, submission, prayer, work, play, and worship.
Johann Sebastian Bach is arguably the greatest composer in the history of Western music. His devout faith shaped his life, career in church music, and view of the purpose and place of music. He knew that music could be a powerful tool for the proclamation of the gospel. As a committed Lutheran, he knew that his daily work ought to bring glory to God, so he inscribed the initials SDG (representing soli Deo gloria) at the end of most of his musical scores.
You (or your church worship leader) may not be such an obviously God-glorifying musician as Bach. But one of the great insights recovered during the Reformation is that any God-pleasing vocation could and should be done in gratitude to God and love for our neighbors. The divide between “professional Christians” and the secular world is an artificial one. Electricians and engineers are no less “called” than pastors and theologians. The same is true in the church. While not all are called to ordained ministry, all believers are called to some God-given and God-glorifying work as God’s priests and ambassadors. The first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism asks, “What is the chief end of man?” And the famous answer—“Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever”—is true no matter our vocation. At the end of all your work, you should be able to inscribe SDG because you know that your life is lived to the glory of God alone. As with the other solas, this final one doesn’t depend on us in order to be true. While we glorify God, we’re not giving him something he didn’t already have. He’s the one who accomplishes this aspect of the fruits of salvation as surely as the others. The Reformation slogan soli Deo gloria assures us that God will be faithful to us because he cannot deny himself (2 Tim. 2:13).
A close-up of one of Bach’s manuscripts showing “SDG,” Soli Deo Gloria
Conclusion
What might happen if a person, a family, or a church decided to make these five solas central to their Christian walk? Not only would we become more intentionally God-oriented in every area of our lives, but we would also see deeper purpose to the pilgrim lives God has called us to live. In a culture of aimless nihilism, where even true believers often sit on their stairs struggling with confusion and doubts, perhaps the greatest apologetic a Christian or church can offer today is found within the five solas of the Reformation. Having been made right with God through faith alone by grace alone in Jesus alone, our lives will be ruled by the Bible alone so that we can live for the glory of God alone. Amen.
Eric Landry is the chief content officer of Sola Media and former executive editor of Modern Reformation. He also serves as the senior pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas.
Electricians and engineers are no less “called” than pastors and theologians . . . . While not everyone is called to ordained ministry, all believers are called to some God-given and God-glorifying work as God’s priests and ambassadors.
1. Luther’s Works, vol. 32, ed. G. W. Forell and H. T. Lehmann (Fortress Press, 1958), 112.
2. WCF 1.6.
3. WCF 9.2.
4. J. I. Packer, “The Reformed Doctrine of Justification,” Soli Deo Gloria: Essays in Reformed Theology: Festchrift for John H. Gerstnter, ed. R.C. Sproul (P&R, 1976), 14.
5. See Martin Luther, On the Freedom of the Christian, and John Calvin, Commentary on Galatians and Ephesians
6. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), 902.
7. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Westminster John Knox, 1960), 2.16.2.
III.
We must commit to catholicity and confessionalism.
The Protestant Reformers didn’t abandon the catholic (“universal”) faith or the church; they called both Rome and the Anabaptist Radicals to true catholicity. This doesn’t mean that we who are committed to reform will all agree, but it does mean that our unity isn’t found in personalities, causes, or cultures but in communities of shared confession: “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Eph. 4:5).
BECOMING A Re-Formed CATHOLIC
by JOSHUA SCHENDEL
WERE ONE TO JUDGE by recent Protestant publications dedicated to the themes of catholicity and confessionalism, one could fairly conclude that the Anglo-American Protestant world is witnessing something of a “catholicity movement.” (Whether one could conclude the same by appeal to the life and manners of Protestants is not so clear—but that’s for another discussion.) The catholicity of various Protestant traditions has been the recipient of renewed attention of late. There has been much dialogue and debate concerning it. And this, it seems to me, is good.
Over its history, Modern Reformation has been no stranger to these conversations, even a leading participant in them. As Dr. Horton reminded readers in the March/April 2003 issue, “the church’s catholicity concerns all Christians.” And yet, as I pondered these conversations and Modern Reformation’s part in them, I was struck somewhat by a curiosity—what could almost be an irony—in the very title of the magazine. For many in our day, neither the terms “modern” nor “reformation” spring to mind continuity with the past or cohesion with a greater whole. If anything, such a title seems to belie consistency with the magazine’s affirmations of a proper catholicity and its regular promotion of confessional Protestantism.
I’d like to share some of my ponderings on these two terms: How they are often thought of (even by us confessional Protestants) but shouldn’t be, and how they ought to be understood.
Modern
There are a variety of senses of the term “modern,” both common and technical. Let me draw attention here to a pervasive one. To be “modern,” as Charles Taylor has it, is to have a certain historical consciousness, that of “having overcome a previous condition.”1 It is, in other words, a fairly encompassing sense, even if not always at the conscious level, of a deep disjunction between oneself and what has come before. In such a state of mind, the modern person is, in Joseph Minich’s recent description, “existentially homeless”; any “sense of belonging to and participating in history” has been for him or her foreclosed.2 And in such a state of mind—considering the past, as it does, just long enough to dismiss it as the problem now overcome—the instinct is to innovate. Any problems of the present, so far as the modern mind is concerned, are new, and so the solutions must likewise be de novo. One does not look to past sages for insight, but to one’s inner genius.
To be modern is to have a fairly encompassing sense, even if not always at the conscious level, of a deep disjunction between oneself and what has come before.
The Reformers were concerned with God and his work of salvation wrought in history, to which they belonged and in which they participated.
Catholicity— inasmuch as it refers to the Christian faith in accordance with the whole, the whole of place and of time must include our modern time.
This is decidedly not the sense of “modern” intended in the name Modern Reformation. In the September/October issue of 2017, Dr. Horton argued that it was not the Reformers who promulgated this sense of “modern,” but the Anabaptist Radicals: “Our modern world can be understood at least in part as the triumph of the Radicals. . . . I have in mind a utopian, revolutionary, quasi-Gnostic religion of the ‘inner light’ that came eventually to influence all branches of Christendom.” Horton shows that the Reformers were concerned with God and his work of salvation wrought in history, to which they belonged and in which they participated. This stood in contrast with the “enthusiastic” religion, concerned as it was with the now revolutionary moment, with the “inner” and so immediate connection with the divine. Following the Reformers, MR has sought to show its readers the deep roots of their Christian heritage, enwrapping the globe and spreading through time. Such a Christian heritage, if I may emphasize the point of the metaphor, is not fragmentary or partitive. “For all things are yours,” Paul reminds the church at Corinth, “and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s” (1 Cor. 3:21–23). The Christian heritage according to the whole is the birthright of the believer. So, then, “modern” in Modern Reformation refers not to the modern historical consciousness but more simply to this contemporaneous moment, the “now” time in which God has placed us, which is part of a historical whole. The Christian heritage is for this now time as much as any other time. One can see, then, that far from being inconsistent with catholicity, this sense of “modern” is in fact implied by it. Catholicity—inasmuch as it refers to the Christian faith in accordance with the whole, the whole of place and of time—must include our modern time.
In such a time as this—this “modern time” when the once seemingly vast expanse of Enlightenment-style individualism has now proved an arid land indeed and many, seeking reserve, return again to the old tribalisms of blood and soil—Paul’s reminder that all things are ours is once again needed. Christians are members not of a part but of the whole Christ. They belong to what is greater than themselves, greater still than their various tribes or tributary traditions, greater even than their time and place.
Reformation
If “modern” is taken to refer to the contemporaneous moment, and therefore by inference to the Christian tradition according to the whole (catholicity), “reformation” directs our attention toward the what that is according to the whole. That is, reformation has to do with Christian doctrine and practice that is catholic.
Historians of the sixteenth century have noted often enough that at least by intents and purposes, the magisterial Reformers were not after a revolution: an overthrowing of all that had come before. They saw themselves as
belonging to the catholic Christian church. They primarily argued this point on the ground of doctrinal continuity. As Aza Goudriaan has put it, the Reformers contended “that the Reformation remained within the boundaries of Christian orthodoxy and thus was a part of the one catholic church in terms of a succession of doctrine (rather than a succession of bishops),” though he notes as well that there were those who argued for liturgical and church order continuity also.3
Of course, doctrinal continuity with the past is not so simple as reproduction of the language of the past. Terms as signifiers are conventional; they are modified and altered over time in accordance with the conventions of that time and place. Furthermore, any tradition, so far as it is living, grows and develops. The Reformers saw their task as something like clearing wild growth from a garden in which they wished to propagate native species. Where the growth and development in the Christian garden had in their estimation been healthy—namely, in the early ecumenical councils, the ancient creeds, and some of the teachings of the fathers—the Reformers desired to tend, cultivate, and protect. Where thorns and thistles appeared, uprooting was required.
The Reformers saw their task as something like clearing wild growth from a garden in which they wished to propagate native species.
“In the Vineyard of the Lord” (c. 1573), by Lucas Cranach the Younger, detail showing Luther and other Reformers cultivating the garden of Christ’s church while their opponents (in the upper left) uproot or neglect it.
They carried out this work, perhaps chiefly, in the development of their dogma codified in their confessions. At just this point, one can see where catholicity dovetails with confessionalism. As Richard Muller has demonstrated, the confessions of the Reformation period were intended as the codification of “a complete and detailed system of theology” that included the orthodoxy in the “larger body of received doctrine” which the Reformers believed they had inherited. This received doctrine they “adjusted” to “the needs of Protestantism, in terms dictated by the teachings of the Reformers on Scripture, grace, justification, and the sacraments.”4
Detail of the first question and answer of the original German edition of the Heidelberg Catechism (1563).
The creeds and confessions of the Christian tradition, as witnesses to the word of God, are that by which we may be brought into conformity with the truth.
In other words, for the Reformers, the process of writing confessions was a process of forming identity, an identity that included the pattern of sound doctrine they had received from their predecessors. The confessions then became a primary way of forming the next generation in that identity.
The Reformation era confessions, then, were attempts to codify the deposit of catholicity: orthodox teachings. And inasmuch as they “are still channeling early Christian theology, especially by their acceptance of early Christian creeds,” these confessions shape and form the modern believer in the truth that cannot be shaken.5
Such a formation is important for every generation. But it may be particularly so for ours. In that September/October 2017 MR article I referred to above, Dr. Horton observes that the revolutionary spirit of the Radical Anabaptists has so shaped our contemporary theological world that “we are all enthusiasts.” We have all been misshaped by that first sense of “modern” in both our theology and in our practice. We need to be reshaped. The creeds and confessions of the Christian tradition, as witnesses to the word of God, are that by which we may be brought into conformity with the truth. That is, a re-formation of the heritage of the Christian faith is one of the great needs of the hour, so that the modern Christian may be re-formed in the truth.
Conclusion
With these reflections in place, I’d like to call for the cultivation of a catholic instinct and sensibility (or, as the ancients would have put it, an “intellectual habit”). One of the dangers inherent in discussions of catholicity is that it is an abstract noun. Thinking about catholicity takes us to the land of theory. That’s fine so far as it goes. But if we remain only in the land of theory, we may fail, as Dr. Horton warned readers in the March/April 2003 issue, to “recognize with dreadful regularity our own role in compromising [catholicity’s] security, in small and large ways, at the most local and sometimes also at the broadest levels.” We need to think about catholicity, yes; but we need also to become catholic.
Becoming catholic means developing an instinct, a kind of first reaction, an impulse, in our learning the Christian faith to seek the wisdom of the past, the truth of God’s revelation as it has been passed down in Scripture and through the Christian tradition, and to submit to it. This instinct does not come to us naturally, as it were, and so will need to be developed. This is difficult, no doubt. For it requires proper identification of the good to be pursued (truth), often by ignoring the ever-threatening urgency of the moment, and then patience and constancy. It requires that we throw off the delusion that we are the masters, that we are in charge of putting our ideas together for our own self-expression. It requires an act of intellectual submission to a teaching authority, to first become learners so that in time the truth might be more fully formed in us and then expressed by us. But by doubled efforts, this instinct may become for us a second nature.
When it has been developed and its impulse then pursued, a fuller catholic sensibility may flourish. That is, the maturing (and further shaping) sense of belonging to the greater whole of which we are, as God appoints, a significant part—the enlarging sense that the whole of the Christian faith is ours. Not the constricted and combative view that the confessions and creeds of the Christian church are merely the preservation of patterns of words of bygone eras, for which we take up arms. Not the conceited and consumeristic view that says the confessions and creeds are simply the stores of the past theological judgments that we, being heirs of, may sift and sort, taking what we like and discarding what we don’t. Ours is the mounting view that as monuments to the truth of God, as sure guides, these lead us on the way to knowledge of God.
Modern and Reformation are not strange bedfellows with catholicity and confessionalism. Indeed, to be “modern” and “re-formed” in the sense we’ve discussed is really to take our place among the people of God and fulfill the words of the psalmist:
I will utter hidden things, things from of old—things we have heard and known, things our ancestors have told us. We will not hide them from their descendants; we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord. (Ps. 78:2–4)
Joshua Schendel is professor of theology at Yellowstone Theological Institute and the author of The Necessity of Christ’s Satisfaction (Brill, 2022).
1. Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Harvard University Press, 2007), 28.
2. Joseph Minich, Bulwarks of Unbelief (Lexham Academic, 2023), 188–89.
3. Aza Goudriaan, “Reformed Theology and the Church Fathers,” in The Oxford Handbook of Reformed Theology, ed. Michael Allen and Scott R. Swain (Oxford University Press, 2020), 9–23; cited 14–15.
One of the dangers inherent in discussions of catholicity is that it is an abstract noun. . . . We need to think about catholicity, yes; but we need also to become catholic.
4. Richard Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725, 4 vols., 2nd ed. (Baker Academic, 2003), I.33–34.
5. Goudriaan, “Reformed Theology and the Church Fathers,” 10.
We
must renew biblical worship and discipleship. IV.
Truly reformed worship emphasizes the centrality of word and sacraments as God’s ordinary means to enliven and equip disciples of Jesus. This leads to mature disciples who know what they believe and why they believe it. And reformation leads to a renewal of the doctrine of vocation, in which not just church ministry but every legitimate kind of work or social function is a distinct calling from God through which he both provides for us and blesses our neighbor.
Biblical Worship and Discipleship
by JOSHUA PAULING
JUST AS THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION sought to restore doctrine and worship practice in accord with Scripture, so too a modern reformation must do the same. For a modern reformation to fully flower, there must not just be a return to biblical doctrine, but also a widespread Spirit-wrought renewal in biblical worship and discipleship. And thankfully, we have been given the divinely instituted pattern for this renewal on apostolic authority: “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42).
From the church’s earliest days, this has been the paradigm. The church gathers as a body of believers to receive word and sacrament and respond in thanksgiving, prayer, and praise. This holistic reception of and participation in God’s salvific acts in time and space comes to us via the spoken and sacramental word—in mundane, tangible things like words spoken, water poured, bread and wine received. Here, heaven touches earth as the corporate body is swept up together into the great faith-creating mystery of Christ and him crucified. It’s beautiful. It’s universal. It’s timeless. It’s just as relevant and conceivable in the twenty-first century as in the first century. It’s just as possible in a rural village as in a major city. It’s just as attainable in a new church plant as in a beautiful cathedral. It never runs dry. Our Lord’s pattern for Christian worship keeps on giving. It is his life-giving word and promise, overflowing in love to his people through his ordained means that shape and form us into his image as his disciples.
You know this. You need this. And, hopefully, this essay will remind you why you should want this too. It is your inheritance. It is your lifeblood. When the church gathers for worship, you are brought into the beating heart of the universe: the very life-giving center of the cosmos from which all things flow. This is where the world is set aright—and we are too. We are the people who gather around the true and living God who gives us his very life and love. Let’s not get side-tracked by our visions, plans, or pet projects that never fully satisfy us anyway. What if, instead, we focused on what the Lord gave us to focus on? Not only has Christ given us the clear biblical pattern, but the church throughout the ages testifies to the same: devotion to the apostles’ teaching, the breaking of the bread, and the prayers.
Writing in the 150s AD, Justin Martyr describes the structure of Christian worship in his apology to Emperor Antoninus Pius:
And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased,
When the church gathers for worship, you are brought into the beating heart of the universe: the very life-giving center of the cosmos from which all things flow. This is where the world is set aright—and we are too.
Reclaiming the apostolic pattern [for worship] transcends the contemporarytraditional divide. It anchors us in Christ and where he deigns to meet us.
the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen.1
In A History of Christian Worship, William Maxwell summarizes what we can glean about worship from Justin’s writings: “The balance was kept between the sacramental and Scriptural elements: both the reading of the Scriptures with instruction and the consecration and reception of the bread and wine were integral parts of the rite. Without either it was incomplete.” 2 Kenneth Wieting similarly explains that “this is exactly how the Holy Spirit led the early church persistently to hold fast to Christ,” as the church “continually devoted herself to the teaching of the apostles, to the common participation in the Eucharist wherein the risen Christ was recognized, and to ‘the prayers,’ which framed the service of these gifts to the baptized.” Wieting adds that “this weekly devotion to the presence of Jesus by His gathered church continued down through the centuries” as the people of God received “the twin peaks of the Divine Service, first the word of Christ, then the meal of Christ.”3
The main elements of Christian worship are present from the beginning.4 Basing our worship services on these apostolic elements not only clearly and faithfully delivers the gospel, but it actually is the process by which disciples are formed. Moreover, it insulates us in large part from the storms of worship wars and trend chasing. Reclaiming the apostolic pattern transcends the contemporary-traditional divide. It anchors us in Christ and where he deigns to meet us.
The Apostles’ Teaching: Hearing the Word
We encounter the first of the “twin peaks” of Christian worship in the word of God read and preached. A disciple heeds the word of his master. We gather to hear his holy word, to hear what the king has to say. And after hearing the king’s word read, it is explained and applied to the people. In what is much more than an academic lecture or motivational speech, the sermon is Christ speaking through the preacher. It is not just a word about God. It is a word from God. And that word from God does what it says. It kills and makes alive as the law thunders forth to impenitent sinners and the gospel comforts and heals the weak and heavy laden. It teaches, reproves, corrects, and trains us in righteousness (2 Tim. 3:16). Christian preaching is an encounter with the living God that, following the apostolic pattern, includes both gospel indicatives
and sanctification imperatives based on what the biblical text being preached actually says.
We shouldn’t create a false dichotomy between announcing the gospel of God’s free forgiveness of all sins and exhortation to holy living in Christ. 5 If the apostles did both, so can we. Read any sampling of sermons from the great preachers of the church throughout the ages and this becomes abundantly clear. As the living word does its work of dividing between soul and spirit, joints and marrow (Heb. 4:12), the table is being set. The food is being prepared and so are we. Which is why Christian worship since its earliest days has consistently included word and sacrament together. To end Sunday worship without the Lord’s Supper is like preparing a family meal together and then not eating it.
***
The Breaking of the Bread: Receiving the Sacrament
The second of the “twin peaks” of Christian worship is to partake of the Word enfleshed, for which we are prepared by hearing the word proclaimed. For most of church history, it would have been inconceivable and coun terintuitive to depart from this historic pattern and separate the spoken word from the sacramental word. 6 What if churches across denominations reclaimed the pattern of having the Lord’s Supper each week? What if our piety and practices were formed and shaped by the Christ of the Eucharist? This would be nothing short of revolutionary for our people. We would be brought further into a life of discipleship by participating in the life and pattern of Christ the crucified, being renewed and strengthened with this pure gospel gift of his own body and blood.
Reclaiming this practice is to embrace our ancient Christian and Reformation heritage, which highlights and upholds the union of word and sacrament in Christian worship. Maxwell reminds us of Luther’s view that Christian worship was “a weekly celebration of the Lord’s Supper, with sermon and communion.”7 He also summarizes Calvin’s position: “A minister’s task and office was not only to preach and instruct, but also to celebrate the Lord’s Supper every week, and to teach and urge the people to communicate weekly.”8
***
The Prayers: Responding in Thanksgiving and Praise
Peppered throughout the twin peaks of Christian worship are liturgical prayers and songs of praise. These responsive elements have been vital
For most of church history, it would have been inconceivable and counterintuitive to depart from this historic pattern and separate the spoken word from the sacramental word.
The church has been chanting, singing, and praying prayers and hymns “in honour of Christ” . . . for millennia. Why cut ourselves off from such treasures?
components of Christian worship since the earliest days. In AD 112, Pliny the Younger reported on Christian activities to the Roman emperor Trajan. He wrote that the Christians were accustomed to meet “regularly before dawn on a fixed day to chant verses alternately amongst themselves in honour of Christ as if to a god.”9 The church has been chanting, singing, and praying the Aaronic Benediction, the Lord’s Prayer, the Kyrie, the Magnificat, the Benedictus, the Agnus Dei, the Gloria, the Sanctus, the Phos Hilaron, and countless other liturgical prayers and hymns “in honour of Christ” for millennia. Why cut ourselves off from such treasures? Why not let our voices unite with those who have gone before us?
Biblical Christian worship includes such responsive prayer and robust singing that is theologically rich and poetically pleasing. It complements the preached word and brings it to life for the people as their story and their song. This is another element of worship the Reformation helped to reclaim, as the language and grammar of the church’s liturgy, prayers, and songs disciples forms her disciples.
On the Day Called Sunday: Stepping into True Time and the Eternal Day
In conclusion, I’d like to return to Justin Martyr’s letter to Antoninus Pius:
Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from the dead. For He was crucified on the day before that of Saturn (Saturday); and on the day after that of Saturn, which is the day of the Sun, having appeared to His apostles and disciples, He taught them these things, which we have submitted to you also for your consideration.10
Gathering for Sunday worship brings us into the eighth day, where we step into the eternal day of rest: the day of Christ’s resurrection and the ushering in of the new creation. Luther also picks up on this eighth-day symbolism.
The eighth day signifies the future life; for Christ rested in the sepulcher on the Sabbath, that is, during the entire seventh day, but rose again on the day which follows the Sabbath, which is the eighth day and the beginning of a new week, and after it no other day is counted. For through His death Christ brought to a close the weeks of time and on the eighth day entered into a different kind of life, in which days are no longer counted but there is one eternal day without
the alternations of night. This has been thought out wisely, learnedly, and piously, namely, that the eighth day is the eternal day. For the rising Christ is no longer subject to days, months, weeks, or any number of days; He is in a new and eternal life.11
We enter into that “different kind of life” in worship as the pull of secular time with work schedules, school agendas, and sports calendars is overtaken by a true and deeper love and a true and deeper time—the fullness of time, as Paul calls it (Eph. 1:7–10; Gal. 4:4). The heavenly and earthly realms conjoin in Christ as the events of redemption established before the foundation of the world break into real time-and-space history in the mystery of the incarnation. And we are connected to this great mystery in the church.
James K. A. Smith reminds us that “our imaginations need to be restored, recalibrated, and realigned by an affective immersion in the story of God in Christ reconciling the world to himself.”12 The church’s worship life does exactly that, attuning us properly to the Christ-event, helping us see the deepest and truest reality of all things. Even before relativity suggested that time bends, the church already was practicing it. 13 In some ineffably sacred sort of sacramental time travel, we participate in and are united to, as Paul says, Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. We were buried with him in baptism and are now dead to sin and alive to God (Rom. 6:3–11). We hear the very word of Christ that creates faith (Rom. 10:17). We experience a participation in Christ’s body and blood in the Eucharist (1 Cor. 10:16). Time is bending toward Christ at the font, at the rail, from the pulpit as Christ and him crucified becomes ours. “In worship we stand on the threshold between heaven and earth and participate in heaven’s liturgy,” William Cwirla writes. In our mysterious yet real participation in these divinely ordained means of grace we hear, feel, taste, and see that “the Word is present in all his creative and redemptive power: the baptismal water, the spoken Word of Christ, the bread and wine of the Supper.”14
If we want a modern reformation, then we must remember that biblical worship is anchored in the apostles’ teaching, the breaking of the bread, and the prayers. Discipleship happens as we’re shaped by the teaching and table of our Lord, from which a Christ-formed life flows. As Jesus gives himself to us in preaching, sacrament, and prayer, our lives further imitate his. Our language becomes that of law and gospel, prayer and praise, creed and Trinity. We taste and see what is true, good, and beautiful, and the truth grows strong within our very bones. Biblical worship is a microcosm of what our lives are meant to be, reshaping our affections and transforming us from the inside out, making us disciples: worshipers of God and servants of one another. The cycle contin-
“Through His death Christ brought to a close the weeks of time and on the eighth day entered into a different kind of life, in which days are no longer counted but there is one eternal day without the alternations of night.”
Martin Luther
If we want a modern reformation then we must remember that biblical worship is anchored in the apostles’ teaching, the breaking of the bread, and the prayers.
ues each week as we are pulled into the eternal rest of the eighth day in worship and then sent out into the world in our vocations. Christ is the liturgist, loving and giving himself to us. We then become liturgists to the world, loving and giving ourselves to our families, neighbors, and enemies. Christ gives us acts of mercy in worship; we give acts of mercy in the world.
The historic church plants its flag right here, and so should we. May the Lord make it so in our day.
Joshua Pauling is vicar at All Saints Lutheran Church (LCMS) in Charlotte, NC, as well as a classical educator and furniture-maker. He is the author of Education’s End: Its Undoing Explained, Its Hope Reclaimed, and co-author with Robin Phillips of Are We All Cyborgs Now? Reclaiming Our Humanity from the Machine.
1. Justin Martyr, First Apology, chapter LXVII, vol 1., in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, (1885–1887; repr., Hendrickson, 1994), 185–86.
2. William D. Maxwell, A History of Christian Worship: An Outline of Its Development and Forms (Baker, 1982), 13.
3. Kenneth W. Wieting, “Sacramental Preaching: The Lord’s Supper,” in Preaching Is Worship: The Sermon in Context, eds. Paul J. Grime and Dean W. Nasady (Concordia, 2011), 78–79.
4. William Maxwell writes, “The typical worship of the Church is to be found to this day in the union of the worship of the Synagogue and the sacramental experience of the Upper Room; and that union dates from New Testament times.” In A History of Christian Worship, 5.
5. For a good treatment of how preaching should do both, see Heath Curtis, Telling People What to Think: A Concise Homiletics for Lutheran Parish Pastors (Reredos and Ambo, 2024).
6. Wieting, “Sacramental Preaching,” 79.
7. Maxwell, A History of Christian Worship, 74.
8. Maxwell, A History of Christian Worship, 116.
9. Pliny the Younger, The Letters of Younger Pliny, trans. Betty Radice (Penguin Books, 1963), 294.
10. Justin also develops this concept of the eighth day at several points in his Dialogue with Trypho
11. Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, volume 3: Lectures on Genesis Chapters 15–20 (Concordia Publishing House, 1974), 140–41.
12. James K. A. Smith, Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works (Baker Academic, 2013), 163.
13. For a wonderful exploration of how the church has expressed “some kind of curvature of time, bending towards the One who was born to history ‘in the fullness of time’ and who is, at the same time before all things and the end of all things,” see James K. A. Smith, How to Inhabit Time: Understanding the Past, Facing the Future, Living Faithfully Now (Brazos, 2022), 76.
14. William M. Cwirla, “Unfolding the Meaning of the Liturgy,” in Preaching is Worship, 144.
We must embrace the church’s global character and mission.
The Reformers weren’t pursuing wordly success or narrow personal, ethnic, or national interests. They were pursuing Christ’s mission of building his church, a heavenly temple lovingly crafted of living stones gathered from every language and tribe (1 Pet. 2:5; Rev. 7:9).
A GLOBAL MODERN Reformation
by SIMONETTA CARR
ITHOUGHT I HAD almost finished writing my children’s book Church History when I discovered a brand-new world. As many had realized long before me, most books on the history of Christianity have focused on Europe and America, neglecting the rich account of God’s work in the rest of the world. Whenever continents like Africa, Asia, and South America were mentioned, it was only in the context of European or American missions.
Most books recognize that Christianity began and spread outside of Europe. Some of the greatest theologians of the first few centuries AD (such as Augustine, Tertullian, and the Cappadocian Fathers) were from North Africa and Asia Minor, and Christianity found its first expressions within their cultures. But textbooks are usually quick to shift their focus to Europe, forgetting the interesting work of theologians, poets, and missionaries such as Ephrem of Syria or the seventh-century missionaries from the Church of the East who went as far as China.
Additionally, while the stories of “forerunners of the Reformation” such as Jan Hus and John Wyclif have been told and retold, few know about Estifanos of Gwendagwende, who attempted a similar reformation of the Ethiopian Church during the same period. And yet Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon were aware of God’s work in Ethiopia and placed great value on their personal exchange with the Ethiopian deacon Michael.
Accounts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries abound in stories of Western missionaries to Asian and African countries. While these missionaries’ contributions were certainly crucial, little is known about the hundreds of locals who furthered their work, preaching the same gospel and founding lasting churches.
This lack of information might be one reason why many Americans and Europeans are oblivious to the astoundingly rapid expansion of Christianity in today’s so-called Global South or Majority World—the vast continents of Africa, Asia, South America, and Oceania. But as Christians in these continents are swiftly surpassing their Western brothers and sisters in number, their voices are becoming increasingly important on a wider scale. This is a reality that any attempt at furthering a modern reformation cannot ignore.
At long last, many scholars and organizations are turning their attention to these issues. But why should the ordinary Christian bother? Don’t we have more pressing matters to attend to closer to home?
As Christians in the non-Western world are swiftly surpassing their Western brothers and sisters in number, their voices are becoming increasingly important on a wider scale. This is a reality that any attempt at furthering a modern reformation cannot ignore.
Reading the accounts of how God has preserved and continues to preserve his church across the globe counteracts our widespread Western tendencies to pessimism and triumphalism.
God’s Church
The first thing I realized when I began to study the global history of Christianity is that the church is God’s work. Of course, most of us would readily admit this without further study. But reading the accounts of how God has preserved and continues to preserve his church across the globe counteracts our widespread Western tendencies to pessimism (“Christianity is dying”) and triumphalism (“We are the depositors of true Christianity”).
We find a clear example of God’s preservation of his church at the time of the decolonization of Africa (from the mid-1950s to 1975). As country after country began to reject many of their adopted Western customs in a rediscovery of their own heritage, several observers predicted that Christianity would also be discarded. Instead, the number of Christians in Africa continued to grow, largely under local pastors and elders. According to historian Adrian Hasting, these numbers escalated from about 25 million in 1950 to about 100 million in 1975. And the Center for the Study of Global Christianity estimates that there are over 734 million Christians in Africa today.1 There are similar statistics for Asia, South America, and Oceania. And there are similar stories of churches that continued to preach the gospel after Christianity was banned and foreign missionaries were forced to leave. These reports can only lift our hearts in praise to the One who is faithful to his promise of building a church that hell’s gates will never be able to withstand (Matt. 16:18).
A Universal Church
But our knowledge of the global church is not just profitable for our own encouragement. As the Nicene Creed teaches, we are a catholic (universal) church—a truth we must not forget. As such, we are called, among other things, to “count others more significant than” ourselves and to look “not only to [our] own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Phil. 2:3–4). This includes listening to one another, learning from one another, and appreciating our differences.
As fallen humans, we share a tendency to be self-absorbed and wrapped up in comfortable echo chambers. We need voices from other times and other countries to bring into fuller perspective our vision of reality. Just as C. S. Lewis talked about a “chronological snobbery,” which he defined as “the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age,” we can also recognize a geographical snobbery that can be described as the uncritical acceptance, even in Christian circles, of the assumptions and conclusions typical of our culture. 2 This is a danger that a humble and honest
exchange with our brothers and sisters in the Majority World can correct. Even common issues that we like to discuss among ourselves lose their familiarity and predictability when discussed in a different context—be it historical or geographical—and lead to deeper reflection. Often, the simple fact that other cultures have not created some of our familiar labels can help us to detach the same issues from our emotions and review them with greater impartiality.
Can Festo Kivengere’s I Love Idi Amin, written in exile after many of his friends had been tortured and killed, teach us anything about loving our enemies? Can the reflections of the South African church during and after decades of apartheid teach us how to overcome our social divisions and sinful racist tendencies? Can the letters of Chinese Christians, written under persecution, echo the forgotten exhortations to patience of the early church? Can the search for the national identity of the African churches teach us how to view our own identity without falling into the common trap of syncretism? Can we glean answers from the ongoing discussion of the widespread problem of violence against women in much of the Global South? And can we contribute to their discussions with humility and empathy, drawing from our own experiences and (often hard-learned) lessons?
Detail of a depiction of Constantine with the bishops who reaffirmed the Nicene Creed in 381.
Reading the Bible through the eyes of people who live in cultures similar to those of biblical times can jolt us out of our familiarity and bring us to a deeper understanding not only of one another but of Scripture.
Reading the Bible through the eyes of people who live in cultures similar to those of biblical times can jolt us out of our familiarity and bring us to a deeper understanding not only of one another but of Scripture. As Kenyan theologian Musimbi Kanyoro recognizes, “Those cultures which are far removed from biblical culture risk reading the Bible as fiction.”3
For example, the stronger emphasis on communal life and keener perception of the spiritual world that are typical of African culture can help us correct our individualism and hyper-rationality as we examine the Scriptures and our life together as Christians.
The dire challenges faced by many of our brothers and sisters in the Majority World may help us resize our problems and worries. My daily concerns disappeared when a friend from Nigeria told me how her pastor barely missed a bullet shot through his window and was later kidnapped (and providentially freed) by a band of locals.
Opening our lives and minds to our brothers and sisters in other cultures will take some effort. We feel a natural pull toward those who are like ourselves, and our present reality always seems compelling. But at a time when Christianity seems plagued with divisions and when social media amplifies our fears of having our suppositions questioned, recognizing that we are all living stones, built up together—with all of our differences—into the same spiritual house of God (1 Pet. 2:5) seems more urgent than ever.
We don’t have to overhaul our whole lives. Just recognizing that God’s work is larger than the space in which we like to limit him; keeping abreast of news from other countries and keeping those local churches in our prayers; reading a few books on global Christianity; including a greater variety of voices in our current discussions; and welcoming into our circles people who come from other cultures can enrich our lives and thoughts, lower some unnecessary protective instincts, and create a habit of openness and a humble disposition to learn from others.
Our Common Firm Foundation
At the same time, we who treasure the heritage of the Protestant Reformers should keep our feet firmly in the gospel that they recovered. Nigerian theologian Byang Kato warned against the tendency to lose sight of the objective, otherworldly nature of the gospel:
The inspired, inerrant Word of God gives us the Gospel and its working power in a nutshell in 1 Corinthians 15:1–4. It is not a part of any people’s culture. It is not indigenous to any soil. It is revealed propositionally and must be declared accordingly. The Jews did not have it. The Germans, the Americans, the Africans, the Europeans needed to get it through a messenger.4
Kato was a proponent of contextualization, which is an important tool to allow the gospel to be understood in different cultures. But he knew where to draw the line. So did Chinese pastor Wang Mingdao, when he saw that the gospel imposed by the state-supported church under the guise of a more Chinese form of Christianity was not the story of Christ but the progress of the Chinese nation. “They do not come out into the open and deny the doctrines; they simply interpret them in a hazy and ambiguous way. . . . We take our stand on Christian doctrine.”5
Other Christians on different continents have come to the same conclusions, reiterating the lessons learned by past reformers. As we forge forward in God’s exciting work of a modern global reformation, our basic question must be: How can we, the church universal, encourage each other to stay faithful to the gospel? The unity of the global church—as that of any local church—depends on this foundation.
Simonetta Carr is the author of numerous books, including Broken Pieces and the God Who Mends Them: Schizophrenia through a Mother’s Eyes, and the series Christian Biographies for Young Readers (Reformation Heritage Books).
At a time when Christianity seems plagued with divisions and when social media amplifies our fears of having our suppositions questioned, recognizing that we are all living stones, built up together— with all of our differences—into the same spiritual house of God (1 Pet. 2:5) seems more urgent than ever.
1. “Status of Global Christianity, 2024, in the Context of 1900 –2050,” available online from the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, tinyurl.com/5apc7a37.
2. C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1955), 201.
3. Musimbi Kanyoro, “Reading the Bible from an African Perspective,” quoted in Philip Jenkins, The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South (Oxford University Press, 2006), 68.
4. Byang H. Kato, “The Gospel, Cultural Context, and Religious Syncretism,” in Let the Earth Hear His Voice, Official Reference Volume: Papers and Responses, ed. J. D. Douglas (World Wide, 1975), 1216.
5. Wang Mingdao, “We, Because of Faith,” 113–14, quoted in Thomas Alan Harvey, Acquainted with Grief: Wang Mingdao’s Stand for the Persecuted Church in China (Brazos Press, 2002), 88.
WHERE DO WE GO from Here?
by BRANNON ELLIS
MODERN REFORMATION magazine isn’t going away, but it is changing. That change is still in its early stages and primarily concerns our choice of media. We’re shifting from a print subscription periodical sent to a few thousand people to a multimedia newsletter sent to tens of thousands (with much more room to grow). Our website, modernreformation.org, will be a bigger priority now. We’ll focus on publishing high-quality videos as well as our traditional essays, reviews, and other written content. And everything we do will be much more tightly integrated with the rest of the wonderful team and programs at Sola.
Change like this generates enthusiasm and anxiety. In preparing this final print issue of Modern Reformation, our team has experienced flurries of activity alongside periods of self-reflection. We’ve spent a lot of time wrestling with the Big Questions: Who are we? Where have we been, and where are we going? What matters most?
In this essay, I want to share with you, our faithful readers, some of the fruit of that reflection by looking backward and forward at MR’s mission, media, and message.
The Mission: For a Modern Reformation
The church’s mission statement is Matthew’s famous Great Commission, in which the risen Jesus both claims his authority as ruler over all and exercises that authority by sending his people to accomplish his ongoing work in the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus doesn’t leave us in the dark about what his work looks like:
Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matt. 28:16–20)
When King Jesus sent his church out with his word and Spirit, he gave us (as the communion of saints and as individual believers) everything we need for our mission of announcing the good news of the kingdom, serving his work of
When King Jesus sent his church out with his word and Spirit, he gave us (as the communion of saints and as individual believers) everything we need for our mission of announcing the good news of the kingdom.
When those of us who’ve been running the race for decades fall flat on our face once again—usually tripping in the very same places—we need to hear God’s forgiveness and favor pronounced upon us more clearly and more often, not less.
naturalizing new citizens under his heavenly rule who bear the sacred name of the Holy Trinity.
That mission and its character don’t fundamentally change when God’s people pursue reformation in existing churches rather than the initial formation of new churches. As confessional Christians, we emphasize that the ordained ministry of word and sacrament in corporate worship is God’s chosen instrument for saving sinners, gathering his people, and strengthening us in faith and fruitfulness. This applies no less in cases when the community is backsliding from the pure teaching of the Scriptures, has added unbiblical requirements that bind Christians’ consciences to merely human traditions, or has become entangled in the snares of worldly cares. Word and sacrament ministry is always the means by which God builds his church and strengthens it against the gates of hell.
At Sola, we’ve always been adamant that we’re not pursuing our mission instead of the church’s or apart from it. Jesus is committed to his church, and so to be committed to his mission means being committed to his bride. Here’s Sola’s official mission statement:
Sola Media serves today’s global church by producing resources for reformation grounded in the historic Christian faith.
By drawing on the riches of the Reformation to challenge and encourage thoughtful Christians around the globe to think theologically, MR fortifies these disciples and equips them to equip others. In this way, our desire is to support the church in its unique, God-given mission of making—and being— faithful disciples.
I want to take a moment to speak especially to the many MR readers who hold ordained office in the church or occupy other positions of teaching authority and influence. Because we who teach and lead are held to higher standards (James 3:1), it’s tempting to think that Jesus’ mission toward us changes when we become disciple-makers in addition to being disciples. We realize non-Christians, new Christians, and nominal Christians need to keep growing in the knowledge and grace of the gospel in order to be formed in the image of Christ. But this is no less true for committed, mature believers. Indeed, the greater responsibility you carry and the deeper maturity you’ve been given means you need to hear and believe the good news of God’s grace even more profoundly. When those of us who’ve been running the race for decades fall flat on our face once again—usually tripping in the very same places—we need to hear God’s forgiveness and favor pronounced upon us more clearly and more often, not less. Whenever “our heart condemns us” because we knew better and we still blew it, that’s when we most need to hear that “God is greater than our heart” (1 John 3:20). Knowing God in Jesus Christ defines progress in everlasting life no less than its beginning and end (John 17:3).
When it comes to the storms of temptation to waywardness, selfrighteousness, or doubt, disciples and disciple-makers all huddle together in the same leaky boat. None of us has any hope except to entrust ourselves to the One who strides upon the waters, who commands the wind and waves to be still.
The Media for the Mission: Or, What Would Luther Do?
Supporting the church in these ways has been MR ’s mission since the beginning. But since we’re undertaking such a major shift in media, it’s worth spending some time reflecting on whether this media shift might help or hinder our mission—indeed, whether our media choices might inherently shape or even distort our message.
In the technical vocabulary of traditional academic theology, media (plural for medium) is the Latin term describing the means, instruments, or tools by which agents accomplish their intended goals. The keyboard with which I type this essay and the page or screen on which you read it are media. Historian Richard Muller notes that when classic theologians discussed the role of media in shaping intentions, actions, and goals, they did so with the understanding that means are typically secondary and passive. In other words, media doesn’t usually play a leading role in directing motives and outcomes. And as passive, media are morally neutral in themselves, since intent lies with the agent and not with the tools they employ. My keyboard is involved in, but not responsible for, the motives and outcomes of my writing. These thinkers also realized, however, that some times the media we choose can so strongly affect how and why we act that they become more than mere tools. They become more like contributing causes in their own right.1
In recent times, philosophers and theologians have emphasized that media often play a more prominent role than we intend or even realize.2 If my key board makes it hard to type this essay quickly and accurately, then not only my motivation but the final product itself will be seriously affected by the unsuitability of my tools.3 I remember a friend in college who had so much evangelistic zeal that he wanted everyone who crossed his path to hear the good news of God’s grace toward undeserving rebels. So he decided to get a vanity license plate. I can still picture his beat-up old car rumbling across campus, SINNER emblazoned in dark blue letters against bright white enamel on its rusty rear bumper. All media will color the messages they carry—some times beyond recognition.
In fact, media shape the messenger as well as the message. As T. David Gordon reminds us in a recent MR essay, the ways we engage with our con temporary digital tools shape our souls just like working with physical tools shapes the calluses on our hands.4
In the technical vocabulary of traditional academic theology, media (plural for medium) is the Latin term describing the means, instruments, or tools by which agents accomplish their intended goals.
We can learn from the wisdom of older and newer thinkers here. Media is rarely—if ever—neutral in the sense of being indifferent or inconsequential. But neither is any medium inherently virtuous or vicious.
We can learn from the wisdom of older and newer thinkers here. Media is rarely—if ever—neutral in the sense of being indifferent or inconsequential. But neither is any medium inherently virtuous or vicious. God’s use of stone in giving the Ten Commandments to Moses, or God’s commands to Habakkuk and Isaiah to inscribe their visions on tablets (Hab. 2:2; Isa. 8:1), or instructions to Jeremiah and John to write down their visions in a scroll (Jer. 36:2), weren’t universal endorsements of the superiority of those media for all places and times. Reading those visions in a modern English print edition or listening to an audio Bible app doesn’t strip these prophets’ messages of their status or meaning as God’s very word.
There are, of course, many meaningful differences between sharing a message on a stone or wooden tablet or a papyrus scroll versus a print magazine or a YouTube video; but those real differences don’t make any medium good or bad in itself. The Ten Commandments reject the use of their own medium when stone becomes an instrument for idolatry (in the form of graven images, Exod. 20:4). We could have a debate about whether stone or papyrus or YouTube or license plates (or some, all, or none of the above) are suitable tools for communicating God’s word in our own day. But if the most consequential thing about these words is that they were inspired by the Spirit of God—rather than what media the prophets and apostles used to record and share them—then we likewise should see our own media choices as subservient to the mission they serve and the messages they carry.
This means we need to avoid the twin extremes of being naive about media preferences, at one end of the spectrum, and of binding consciences to our preferred media, at the other. I can imagine an argument many centuries ago between biblical copyists cloistered away in an English monastery:
“No no, Eldred, traditional parchment is far more fitting for conveying the infinite value of Holy Writ, and the esteem in which we should honor it, than that cheap, newfangled paper.”
“Yet, Ranulf, how will merchants and bakers ever be able to afford such a luxury?
I share your high respect for God’s word—that’s why I wish it to reach men far and wide in the most accessible form possible.”
“What! And place divine revelation on the same level as the thousand guild meeting placards and town hall notices tacked up to every post on every crossstreet? Eldred, if we began distributing the Scriptures on such disposable materials, we would soon find them being handled as thoughtlessly as these.”
“Better to place a Bible in many dirty hands, Ranulf, than to place it in precious few clean ones . . .”
And round and round it goes. If this seems fanciful, just reread Eldred and Ranulf’s argument, replacing “parchment versus paper” with “print versus digital,” and it will begin to sound more familiar.
This argument about appropriate means of communication has always been lively. Socrates, in Plato’s Phaedrus, famously opposed the practice of teaching or learning anything truly worthwhile through writing, which allows the foolish to read a little about a lot and to confuse this surface knowledge with deep wisdom. 5 The pre-Reformation humanist Johannes Trithemius lamented the loss of the spiritual benefit of hand copying sacred manuscripts to the trendy ease of mass printing them.6 The Reformers complained (with good reason) about the ambiguity of relying on images of biblical characters and saints in stained glass to educate the illiterate. Roman Catholics complained (with less justification) about the difficulty for ordinary people to interpret Scripture in the vernacular. Whether either side in these various arguments over the years was right, both had a point—at least when it came to the complex question of knowing how and when to use which media.
That’s why the use of media is so often a wisdom issue. And if a wisdom issue, then an area of Christian freedom and discernment rather than compulsion. We must say, in the same vein as Paul’s instructions about eating meat or drinking wine, that all media are lawful in themselves but not all are beneficial or edifying to us or others (1 Cor. 10:23–33; also Rom. 14). We can enjoy responsible Christian freedom in this area all the more so when we’re not trying to displace or replace the church and its ordained “media” for salvation. God has ordained the particular means of word and sacrament for grace. In areas of Christian freedom, then, let’s evaluate media the same way. If we ask, “Are these means wise and good?” Then let’s respond, “Good and wise for what? ”
Christians have often been pioneers in creatively using new media in service to the church’s mission of carrying the gospel to the nations and teaching it to our children. The modern form of the book as we know it today (the codex) was first popularized by the early church in what my former colleague at InterVarsity Press Al Hsu has called a first-century “media revolution.” The new technology of the book made access to the Scriptures more durable, more
Christians have often been pioneers in creatively using new media in service to the church’s mission of carrying the gospel to the nations and teaching it to our children.
Luther would lean into whichever contemporary tools and technologies would allow him the greatest reach for the church’s timeless message without intentionally undermining that message (or the mission of its messengers) in the process.
convenient to carry, faster for finding and comparing specific passages—and easier to hide, if need be. 7 Historian Diarmaid MacCulloch has argued that, humanly speaking, the Protestant Reformation would have been inconceivable without the increasing popularity and affordability of reading due to the printing press, since “a religion of the book needs books.” MacCulloch also shares an observation from Calvin biographer Bernard Cottret that “the increase in Bibles created the Reformation rather than being created by it.” 8 Christians today continue to pursue creative missionary efforts in otherwise impenetrable countries through the use of radio broadcasts of Scripture and Christian teaching, which must be sophisticated enough to detect and counteract frequency jamming efforts by government authorities. 9 I’ve purposefully avoided offering examples from the digital domain, since these extremely powerful and disruptive new tools tend to be most controversial, but I believe the same principles of responsible Christian freedom apply.
So, W.W.L.D.? “What Would Luther Do?” The Wittenberg Reformer was famous for his media savvy. The title and subtitle of Andrew Pettegree’s fascinating 2016 book on the subject tells us nearly all we need to know when it comes to this aspect of the Reformer’s approach: Brand Luther: How an Unheralded Monk Turned His Small Town into a Center of Publishing, Made Himself the Most Famous Man in Europe—and Started the Protestant Reformation. Given the chance today, I can only suspect Luther would lean into whichever contemporary tools and technologies would allow him the greatest reach for the church’s timeless message without intentionally undermining that message (or the mission of its messengers) in the process.
Before it became a magazine, MR was a free newsletter, a bulletin printed and distributed from Mike Horton’s Biola University dorm room. Surprising as it may sound, then, our bold changes in MR’s format are more like a reformation than a revolution. We’re not turning our back on the past. We’re going back to our roots.
The Message of the Mission: Or, How Do We Move Forward by Going Back?
Since mission, media, and message are always distinct but never divided, as we bring MR into a future reflective of its mission and media roots, we should also ensure that we keep MR just as close to its founding message.
One way to tell what you’re passionate about is to consider what you can’t stop thinking about (and talking about). Over the course of more than thirty years, what has MR published about more often and more passionately than anything else? I’ll share here only a quick bullet list of our consistent emphases—because if I get going on any one of them, I may never stop!
• Theology—knowing the Triune God and seeing everything in relation to God—lies at the heart of the Christian faith and life.
• Thinking theologically—from Scripture, by the Spirit, through faith, within the communion of saints, in engagement with the culture—is vital for being a mature, fruitful disciple of Christ.
• The unity of Scripture’s storyline, its message, and its recipients all centers around God’s covenant promises made and kept in Jesus Christ, the faithful Adam, the eternal Son who took on our nature to be the only mediator between God and humanity as our prophet, priest, and king.
• The gospel truths embedded in the catholic faith and emphasized in the solas of the Reformation—centering on God’s effective pronouncement of justification solely on the basis of Christ’s righteousness received by faith alone—are essential for genuine reformation and renewal in our age (or any age).
• The law-gospel distinction is critical not only for understanding the Bible but also for our relationship with God and neighbor.
• Worship, evangelism, and discipleship through word and sacrament are the irreplaceable and exclusive mission God has entrusted to the church.
• Both personally and cosmically, we must uphold both sides of the tension of living in the time between the times: the overlap between Christ’s coming to inaugurate his kingdom and pour out his Spirit, and his future return to complete his work of making all things new.
• All Christians, not only those in ordained ministry, are entrusted with gifts and callings that glorify God and bless others inside the church and out.
• The nature and purposes of the everlasting kingdom of Christ and the temporary kingdoms of this world don’t exist in isolation from each other, but they should never be confused with each other.
These emphases distill so much of what MR’s editors and contributors have discovered to be good, true, and beautiful about our God and his ways as he has given himself to be known in his word. These are the excellent and praiseworthy things we delight in thinking about (Phil. 4:8–9).
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Conclusion
Like the Great Commission for the church, Sola’s mission statement summarizes what we do and how we do it. But there’s always a goal—there’s always a why driving us forward, motivating our mission as well as our media and message. For the church, that why surrounds the Great Commission like bookends:
One way to tell what you’re passionate about is to consider what you can’t stop thinking about (and talking about). Over the course of more than thirty years, what has MR published about more often and more passionately than anything else?
MR’s catholic and reformational emphases are so vital. They focus our faith on the Big Answers to the Big Questions, in which God tells us who we are, where we’ve been, where we’re headed, and what truly matters.
And Jesus came and said to [the disciples], “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matt. 28:16–20)
As Christians participating in the mission of the church, that’s our glorious why: the promise of everlasting communion with our risen king. For Sola, our why is encapsulated in our vision statement:
Our vision is to see reformation in hearts, homes, and churches around the world—so Christians know the good news of justification in Christ alone through faith alone and experience joy in the sufficiency of Christ, confidence in the assurance of salvation, freedom for their callings in the world, and relentless hope in Christ’s coming kingdom. Soli Deo Gloria.
As an MR reader, isn’t that what you long to see, not only out there in your family and your congregation but also in here—in the deepest recesses of your heart, where you still struggle to believe that God in Jesus Christ went to the depths of hell’s suffering to bring you to the heights of heavenly joy? That’s why we believe MR’s catholic and reformational emphases are so vital. They focus our faith on the Big Answers to the Big Questions, in which God tells us who we are, where we’ve been, where we’re headed, and what truly matters. I pray this vision motivates you to continue to partner with us in the mission of sharing this message for the sake of the church—even as we shift our media to share it as widely as possible. For a modern reformation, yes—but to the glory of God alone.
Brannon Ellis
is
executive editor of Modern Reformation.
1. Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Baker, 1985), 61–64, 187–89.
2. Caleb Wait provides a great introduction to these themes in “The Media Is the Mania,” Modern Reformation, July/August 2023.
3. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek, describes means that contribute strongly as “proximate causes.” It’s important that proximate causes, no matter how important, remain subordinate to primary intentions and goals. Muller uses the sacraments as an example.
4. T. David Gordon, “The Material Is Not Immaterial,” Modern Reformation, July/August 2023.
5. It’s not hard to notice the irony that we’re only able to contemplate Socrates’s words two thousand years later because Plato wrote them down for us to read!
6. Noel L. Brann, The Abbot Trithemius (1462–1516): The Renaissance of Monastic Humanism (Brill, 1981), 144ff.
7. Albert Y. Hsu, “Why Christians Are People of the Book: A Theology of Publishing,” available at tinyurl.com/modernreformation. Originally presented at the Academy of Christian Editors in September 2017.
8. Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Reformation: A History (Penguin, 2005), 72–73.
9. See the incredible article on Voice of the Martyrs Korea’s shortwave radio outreach to the Maldives, available online at tinyurl.com/VOMshortwave.
THE FUTURE OF MODERN REFORMATION IS AT YOUR FINGERTIPS
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Give Praise to God
by James Montgomery Boice
As a teenager attending a theology conference, Mike Horton walked up to James Montgomery Boice, an influential pastor at Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, and said, “Dr. Boice, I want to be a reformer like you.” That moment in the late ’70s ignited a mentorship, and partnership, that would span decades. It was in 1999 that Boice remarked to the music director at Tenth, “It seems to me if we are going to have a modern reformation, we will need some new music.” Boice’s first foray, “Give Praise to God,” is a fitting conclusion to this print run of MR, wonderfully capturing the end for which the magazine has existed: the glory of God.
Jonathan Landry Cruse, Poetry Editor
Give praise to God, who reigns above, For perfect knowledge, wisdom, love; His judgments are divine, devout, His paths beyond all tracing out.
Refrain
Come, lift your voice to heav’n’s high throne, And glory give to God alone!
No one can counsel God all-wise Or truths unveil to his sharp eyes; He marks our paths behind, before; He is our steadfast Counselor.
Nothing exists that God might need, For all things good from him proceed. We praise him as our Lord, and yet We never place God in our debt.
Creation, life, salvation too, And all things else both good and true, Come from and through our God always, And fill our hearts with grateful praise.
w. w. l. d. ?