In this post I am going to crystalize Brad Gregory’s historical overview from the time of the Reformation to today in seven simple steps. For this is what he does in “Relativizing Doctrines,” in chapter 2 of his book The Unintended Reformation. So hang on tight…there’s a lot of ground to cover, and we’re going to break the speed limit.
Step 1: Medieval Christendom, circa 1500 AD
Gregory’s first point is that although medieval Europe held to a common identity in terms of Catholic doctrinal, devotional, and institutional terms, it was nevertheless quite robust in its diversity and customs. Anyone who has ever read Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales can attest to this: the general worldview was certainly one of Catholic Christianity, but Europe was not monolith in is customs and practices. There was quite the diversity in religious and cultural expression.
Step 2: The Reformers’ Rejection of the Institution Itself
What Luther and other reformers like Zwingli and Calvin ended up doing wasn’t just condemning a particular teaching or practice of the Catholic Church (although it could be said that what sparked the Reformation was Luther’s objection to the selling of indulgences). They ended up rejecting the very concept of church authority altogether. As Gregory puts it, “All Protestant reformers came to believe that the established church was no longer the church established by Jesus” (86).
The Reformers came to the conviction that Roman Catholicism, even at its best, was a perversion of Christianity. Any abuses or instances of immorality they saw “were seen as symptomatic signs of a flawed foundation, namely false and dangerous doctrines—that is, mistaken truth claims” (86). Or in other words, the reason there was sin in the Catholic Church was because the Catholic Church got their religious doctrine wrong. The Reformers thus set about trying to get back to the original Church by making sure they got their doctrine right.
Step 3: What Do You Put in Place of Church Authority? The Bible!
Alright then, if one completely rejects over 1,000 years of Church Tradition, what does one put in its place? The Reformers’ answer was their battle cry, “Sola Scriptura.” Yes, I know, if you’ve grown up within Protestantism, it is tempting to jump to the conclusion that if one questions “Sola Scriptura,” that one is suggesting to get rid of “Scriptura.” We have to be clear: the problem with the Reformation wasn’t its focus on the Bible; it was its insistence that the Bible alone was sufficient for determining and clarifying Christian doctrine and practice.
We know this is a problem because history has proven that it is impossible and not true. The problem started with the very way the Reformers presented the Bible. Luther called the Bible “nothing less than divine law,” and Karlstadt stated, “all preachers should always state that their doctrine is not their own, but God’s…. They can discover nothing out of their own heads. If the Bible is at an end, then their competence is also at an end” (87). Zwingli said that Scripture, “teaches itself on its own” (87).
Do you see the problem? The Reformers, by taking a meat cleaver and radically divided “God’s Word” with “man’s word,” essentially rejected any human interpretation or teaching of Scripture as being in opposition to Scripture. But the thing is, it is impossible to understand the Bible unless one interprets it. Karlstadt’s comments are dangerous because they are blurring the line between personal insights and God Himself. Karlstadt was essentially telling preachers, “What you say from the pulpit isn’t coming from you, it’s God,” the end result being, if you question what the preacher says, you are questioning God.
Similarly, contrary to what Zwingli said, Scripture does not teach itself on its own. I taught Bible in Christian schools for 16 years, and there were many times when a student would comment on a verse or Bible passage and state what he thought it meant, and I would have to say, “Actually, that’s not what it means,” and then explain to him the larger context so we could understand that verse better. But if that kid had been living back in the 16th century and had listened to Zwingli, that kid might have responded, “Oh I don’t have to listen to you—you’re just giving human opinion. I’m being taught directly from Scripture—that snake really talked; I don’t care about ancient Near Eastern context!”
Gregory puts it this way: “The reformers who rejected the Roman church distinguished sharply between God’s word and merely human writings and opinions. They insisted that Christians not presumptuously proffer their own views or impose their own ideas on the Bible, but rather submit themselves to God’s unadorned teachings. Zwingli criticized anyone who comes to scripture with his ‘own opinion and forwardness and forces scripture to agree with it.’ …Luther concurred, in a treatise defending the adoration of the Eucharist from 1523: ‘This is not Christian teaching, when I bring an opinion to scripture and compel scripture to follow it, but rather, on the contrary, when I first have got straight what scripture teaches and then compel my opinion to accord with it’ (88).”
The upshot of all this is simple: (A) the Reformers distinguished between “God’s Word” and “man’s word,” (B) the Reformers then insisted on rejecting human opinion and submitting to God’s Word, and then (C) the Reformers went about giving their opinion as to what God’s Word meant—but they refused to acknowledge it was their own opinion. They insisted that their opinion was God’s Word.
Step 4: Splintering and Schism Within the House of God
This is the key point to get. Gregory points out that because of the Reformer’s cry of “Sola Scriptura,” and their refusal to acknowledge that their own opinions and interpretations of Scripture were, in fact, their own opinions and interpretations, the result…not over time, but immediately, was the instantaneous splintering into rival denominations and “confessions.” Gregory correctly points out that it is misleading to think that there ever was a point in the early Reformation “when anti-Roman Christians had agreed among themselves about what scripture said and God taught” (91).
Simply put, there never was “a unified Protestant front.” Luther appealed to his individual conscience over Church Tradition, had claimed it was “Sola Scriptura,” and soon everyone was doing the same thing—claiming “Sola Scriptura” and proceeding to beat up everyone who didn’t agree with their own interpretation and opinion.
And they differed on a lot: the Bible, specific doctrines in regards to the sacraments, grace, works, the whole “predestination vs. free will” debate, the relationship between the Old and New Testaments, the list can go on. All of a sudden, every single minor point of disagreement became a major point of disagreement over which the Reformers were willing to split the Church apart.
Step 5: Appeals to the Holy Spirit, and Looking to Political Authorities to Keep the Peace
The fall out of the various Reformers all making different doctrinal claims, and claiming that their interpretation was based on the authority of Scripture happened immediately. As Gregory points out, wheels of all this were put in motion by Luther at Leipzig in 1519, when he said he’d oppose anyone—popes, councils, or Church Fathers—if he deemed them in opposition to the authority of Scripture and divine law. Of course, he failed to see that in reality he was opposing them because their interpretation of Scripture conflicted with his interpretation of Scripture.
Other Reformers like Zwingli, Bucer and Calvin followed suit. A Gregory puts it: “the fathers and ecclesiastical tradition were criticized and rejected or simply ignored wherever they failed to corroborate a given reformer’s interpretation of scripture” (96).
And the problem was that each given Reformer didn’t acknowledge that his particular interpretation of Scripture was, in fact, his particular interpretation. Instead, each Reformer had to make an appeal to something else to support his claim that he was right about Scripture—and that claim was to the Holy Spirit. Consequently, you had this sort of dynamic at work: Zwingli, for example would write, “I know for certain that God teaches me, because I have experienced it,” whereas Luther would respond with, “Beware of Zwingli and avoid his books as the hellish poison of Satan, for the man is completely perverted and has completely lost Christ” (98).
Wow…so the Reformers ended up (A) rejecting Church Tradition and (B) claiming “Sola Scriptura,” but when they started disagreeing with each other over any given doctrine or passage in “Sola Scriptura,” each one started (C) claiming illumination of the Holy Spirit, which really didn’t solve anything, because every other Reformer was claiming the same thing, yet coming to different conclusions; therefore, the only logical conclusion was that (D) the other guy is from Satan!
And as soon as that happens, you’re going to have conflict on the rise. So what the Reformers did to try to cut that conflict off at the pass was to make appeals to their local political authorities to enforce by law their particular doctrinal confessions. The end result was that throughout Europe various cities, territories and states would declare themselves “Lutheran,” or “Calvinist,” or “Catholic,” etc., and the political authorities of that given realm would treat anyone who didn’t subscribe to that particular doctrinal confession as a criminal.
But that didn’t really solve anything. In reality, it escalated the conflict, and pretty much over the next century or so “religious wars” broke out all over Europe. Calvinists literally killed Anabaptists, because Anabaptists believed in adult baptism, for example.
Step 6: Reactions to the Religious Wars
The reactions to all this can be generalized in two ways. On one side, there was the rise of “spiritualist Protestants,” who decided the answer to the conflicts was to abandon doctrine altogether, or at least relativize them, and instead focus on a brand of Christianity that emphasized emotional appeals to “feeling” the presence of God. They essentially said, “Doctrines and theology just tear people apart; just sit back, worship, and feel!”
Yes, this brand of Christianity is still alive and well in America, whether it be Joel Osteen, the TBN Network, or the sappy Christian worship music that longs to be held in Jesus’ arms and walk with him on the beach.
The other reaction can be seen in the development of the Enlightenment. The medieval Church said the Bible should be understood within the larger life and Tradition of the Church; Luther rejected that, and said the basis of Christianity was “Sola Scriptura”…as understood by his own reason…which he denied was his own reason, but instead claimed was the illumination of the Holy Spirit. This lead to over a century of hostilities and conflict throughout Europe.
Enter the Enlightenment thinkers: the problem wasn’t reason, but rather religions and the Bible itself. As Gregory puts it, “The real way out of the early modern Christian controversies concerning the answers to the Life Questions, it was and by some is still alleged, was not a Band-Aid, but an amputation: an unblinking, uncompromising application of reason along by modern philosophy and science” (112).
If the Reformers’ credo was “Sola Scriptura,” the credo of modern philosophy became “Sola Ratio”: Reason alone—complete autonomous reason—divorced from the confines of religion and faith, would be the key to happiness. From Descartes, to Hegel, to Emerson and beyond, “Sola Ratio”—philosophy as science—was the way out of the religious conflicts the Reformers had brought about.
Hence, faith, religion, and appeals to the spiritual world as a means of shaping society were seen as oppressive. Rationality and the material world alone needed to be the focus. Eventually, by the time the 19th century rolled around, men like Marx and Nietzsche were savaging even philosophy, for it was all abstract interpretation. As Marx said, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways; the point is to change it” (121).
Step 7: Welcome to Philosophical Materialism
And this is where modern “philosophical materialism” takes center stage. The problem, though, is that the philosophical materialist doesn’t see he is a philosophical materialist, for he rejects the validity of philosophy itself. Marx’s starting point was the assumption that the material world is all that exists. He then went about arguing that science and reason should shape society for its own good. But he failed to acknowledge that his assumption that the material world was all that existed was itself a philosophical assumption.
Ironically, this wasn’t too far different than the Reformers, who assumed “Sola Scriptura,” but who failed to acknowledge they were bringing their own opinions, interpretations and biases to their reading of Scripture. As Gregory said, and it’s equally true for Marx as it was for the Reformers, “…reason ‘alone’ is never without assumptions and a starting point, which are always vulnerable to critique and subversion because they are never self-evident” (123).
Get your head around that one.
In any case, to sum up this chapter, we can say that it was Luther’s (and other Reformers’) reliance on their own reason, and their divorcing of their reason from Church Tradition in the interpretation of Scripture, that led to the religious wars of the 16th and 17 centuries. The Enlightenment thinkers, in reaction to so much conflict, took things one step further: divorce reason from not only Church Tradition, but from Scripture and religion altogether.
Welcome to the Modern World…thanks Martin.
In the next post, we’ll look at how Gregory’s discussion of how secular authorities took control of the churches during the Reformation.
