We now come to the conclusion of my book analysis of Brad Gregory’s The Unintended Reformation. Let me say up front that I do not think Gregory was attempting to pin every ill in modern society back on the Reformation. Obviously, quite a lot of good things came out of the Reformation. And for that matter, as Gregory himself clearly shows, no one has illusions that the Medieval Catholic Church and society was some sort of perfect embodiment of the Kingdom of God. There was plenty wrong with it.
That being said, there were a number of things that the Medieval Catholic Church got right, and there were a number of things that the Reformers got wrong. But that is always the case in history—it is inevitable. Even though I am no officially Orthodox (I joined the Orthodox Church ten years ago), I still readily acknowledge that much of my outlook of life comes from my Evangelical upbringing, and I am grateful for that. I just do not think it is wise, whether you are Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, or any one of the over 20,000 different Protestant denominations out there, to deny the flaws and failures within your particular branch of Christianity. Oftentimes, it is when we are honest about those things that we can then branch out and grow further in our faith.
The Problem with Medieval Christianity
In any case, the first thing in his concluding remarks that Gregory points out is that the ultimate failure in Medieval Catholic Christianity didn’t lie in any specific doctrine, but rather in the simple fact that far too many Christians—be they priests or laymen—simply did not live out the Christian life that that the Church bore witness to. The Church taught the importance of practicing the virtues, it taught about cultivating an on-going relationship with Christ, it taught an appreciation for God’s creation, as well as many more things—but when it got right down to it, far too many professed Christians simply failed to live out what they claimed to believe.
For that matter, that is a problem for the Church in every era. Even today, what’s the biggest complaint non-believers (and even many believers!) have against Christianity? Isn’t it hypocrisy? Isn’t is that professed Christians don’t, in fact, act or live like Christ? What was Martin Luther’s fundamental complaint against the Catholic Church? Yes, people know about indulgences—but why did the Pope issue them? To make money. And what did Luther find so repulsive? The so-called Vicar of Christ was living more like a king, and not at all like Christ.
The Problem with the Reformation
Since that was the case, it was probably inevitable that there was going to be some sort of uprising against the corruption in the Medieval Catholic Church. For that matter, many of Luther’s initial complaints were supremely valid. But where the Reformers went wrong, as Gregory points out is that:
“They thought that doctrinal error lay behind medieval Christendom’s moral shortcomings. They believed that human life was so troubled not merely because of the manifest failure of so many sinful Christians to live up to the church’s teachings, as so many medieval reformers had said. It was also they many of the church’s teachings were themselves false, as those condemned for heresy in the Middle Ages had also claimed” (368).
In other words, instead of seeing that the problem lay in good old-fashion sin, the Reformers thought the reason for the corruption was that the Church’s teachings were wrong. Therefore, the prescription the Reformers put forth was “Let’s get our doctrine correct, then we won’t have corruption in the Church.” They then proceeded to throw out all Church Tradition and teaching, claim “Sola Scriptura,” and get into hostile debates and yes, even wars, with fellow Christians who had doctrinal disagreements—you know, because other Reformers started with “Sola Scriptura” and got different answers. How could that be? Because they threw out 1500 years of Church Tradition, and in effect, every Reformer became his own Pope, relying on his own reason and authority to interpret Scripture.
Because of this, the schisms, wars of religion, and yes eventually even the highly secularized modern society we now live in, were all unintended consequences of the Reformers’ claim of “Sola Scriptura.” To clarify this even more, consider this:
- The Reformers’ claimed “Sola Scriptura”
- But in reality they based their understanding of Scripture on each Reformer’s own limited, autonomous reasoning
- They also refused to acknowledge this, and each Reformer claimed his particular view wasn’t just his particular view, but rather the result of the illumination of the Holy Spirit, and therefore, the other guy (who claimed the same Holy Spirit) wasn’t just wrong, he was working for the Devil
- This led to the wars of religion in Europe for two centuries
- After those 200 years, by the time of the Enlightenment, people were sick of killing people over doctrinal differences, and so the “new rule”: keep religion private, and have the state be secular
- And this led to the addition assumption that “faith,” since it is a private affair, is ultimately subjective, as is all religious claims, and therefore isn’t “true” in the sense that objective facts are true
- And what does our modern society consider “true”? Science! But in trying to make science the determiner of all truth, we have elevated science to do something it simply cannot do: speak to metaphysical truths and life questions.
The Problem with Modern Secular Society
And this leads to the problem in our modern society: philosophical naturalism. Simply put, philosophical naturalism is impossible to truly live out. As Gregory states, “Rights and dignity can be real only if human beings are more than biological matter” (381). And as he elaborates:
“But if nature is not creation, then there are no creatures, and human beings are just one more species that happen randomly to evolve, no more ‘endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights’ than is any other bit of matter-energy. Then there simply are no rights, just as there are no persons, and no theorizing can conjure them into existence” (381).
Ironically, on this point, young earth creationists like Ken Ham almost get it right. If there is no Creator-God, if human beings are nothing more than biological matter, than there is no such thing as rights, dignity, or morality. It is on this point that atheists like Richard Dawkins are so self-contradictory. On one hand he says, “The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference,” but then he decides to write an entire book, and make much of his life’s mission, arguing that religion is immoral and evil. Well, I’m sorry, Mr. Dawkins, you can’t have it both ways.
Of course, where Ken Ham goes wrong is that he equates evolution with atheism, and says, “If evolution is true, then there is no morality in the world.” That makes about as much sense as saying, “If gravity is true, or if photosynthesis really happens, then morality is an illusion.”
But here’s the point, and the problem, men like Dawkins and Ham both wrongly think that evolution is the same thing as philosophical naturalism, and therefore they both wrongly assume that if evolution is true, then the dignity of human beings and morality itself must go out the window. They do this because both have grown up in a secularized society that has lost the very metaphysical framework of truth that makes it possible to understand the natural world and science in their proper light.
The Problem with “The Academy” (and I would say “Society”)
Gregory points out that “the findings of the natural sciences…provide no legitimate intellectual grounds for an a priori exclusion of all religious truth claims from academic discourse.” Simply put, the natural sciences simply do not and cannot “disprove the existence of God,” but our modern society goes on the assumption that it does. Therefore, since even the consideration of the existence of a Creator-God is largely excluded in such discourse, that has a tremendous effect on society.
The exclusion of discussion on God protects our society’s hyperpluralism and our attempt to claim that “all views are equal” and “whatever is true for you” is okay. If there really is a God, then that will inevitably mean some ideas and behaviors really are not good, and some ideas and behaviors actually are detrimental to human flourishing because human beings are made in God’s image. If there really is a God, then there really is “Truth” with a “Capital-T.” So when consideration of God is taken out of public and academic discourse, any real concept of “Capital-T Truth” vanishes, and all that is left is the notion, “You can believe/do whatever you want, as long as you don’t hurt someone.”
That mindset is what Gregory calls “the modern ideology of liberalism,” and it is failing because ultimately it “lacks the intellectual resources to resolve any real-life moral disagreements, to provide any substantive social cohesion, or even to justify its most basic assumptions” (386).
If you don’t agree, consider this: our two presidential candidates are Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, each side vehemently hates the other candidate, and our modern American society is more divided along every conceivable line than it ever has been. I’m sure Gregory would say, “This is the fruit of modern liberal ideology.” I should note, that this kind of “modern liberal ideology” is actually within both political camps. Both sides are fueled by emotions, and both lack any real, coherent, intellectually thought-out understanding of society, or right and wrong for that matter.
Conclusion: Gregory’s Challenge to the Academy
In any case, Gregory ends his book with a challenge to the modern charade that one can be “objectively scientific” in all things. In my particular fields, Biblical Studies, this means that no one can be completely objective in one’s study of the Bible. The historical-critical scholars of the 19th century claimed that was possible…but it isn’t. Everyone brings their own assumptions and biases to the conversation, whether it is about Biblical Studies, politics, or anything.
Given that, Gregory states challenge for society in general, but also the academy in particular:
“It would require an intellectual openness on the part of scholars and scientists sufficient to end the long-standing modern charade in which naturalism has been assumed to be demonstrated, evident, self-evident, ideologically neutral, or something arrived at on the basis of impartial inquiry. It would require all academics not only those with religious commitments—to acknowledge their metaphysical beliefs as beliefs rather than to keep pretending that naturalist beliefs are something more or skeptical beliefs as something else” (386).
I believe I can clarify this fairly easily. It means, “Just be honest with yourself and with others than you aren’t God, you don’t know everything, and that your particular position about any given topic was not come to by cold, objective reasoning alone.”
If you can do that, you can then exercise a degree of openness and humility that will open the door to a lifetime of true learning. But that’s a tough thing to do, because we don’t like people questioning our assumptions—it’s too unsettling.
My advice—do it anyway. You’ll find yourself soon walking on water, whereas before you were in a sinking boat in the sea.
