The Protestant Reformation - good news?

 

The study of Reformation Europe makes many Christians wish that they had lived in the 16th century. Name 1) Some good reasons for not living in the sixteenth century and

2) Some ways in which we can live more deliberately as Christians today because of the events of that century. How should it and how should it not make a difference?   

Some good reasons for not living in the 16th century include the climate of religious intolerance and violence.  Religious affiliation and observance were compulsory and imposed on the people by the state, especially it seems, in Protestant countries.  There was no freedom of conscience, except perhaps in England during the reign of Elizabeth, where the windows to people’s souls remained shut to the state, so long as they publicly conformed to the monarch’s religion (as enforced by parliament).  One may have thought that Luther’s appeal to conscience at the Diet of Worms would have inspired a broader and more sensitive approach, like that of Melanchthon who, for example, permitted a community of nuns to remain in their convent and live according to their rule.  Alas, most Reformed thinkers seem to have taken Luther’s theology and left his sensibilities, leading to the suffering and death of many Catholics, Anabaptists, and unorthodox persons such as Servetus (a kind of unitarian).

My personal experience, having grown up as an evangelical in Quebec and having studied in several evangelical Bible colleges has left me with the impression that all that most evangelicals have retained from their exposure to 16th-century history is the Protestant critique of Catholic abuses, which serves to confirm them in their pre-existing anti-Catholic bias.  However, what seems to be lacking is an awareness of and an appreciation of the Reformers' concern to restore genuine catholicity to the Church, à la Cranmer, Calvin, Luther, etc.  The Magisterial Reformers were seeking to reform the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church of the Creeds; they were not throwing out the baby with the bathwater.  It is interesting to note that the term “evangelical” in the 16th century was synonymous with “Protestant”.  Today in North America, “evangelical” seems to denote a particular kind of Protestant - one who believes in credobaptism, the imperative to evangelize, the need for personal conversion and the centrality of Scripture.  An “evangelical” Archbishop who presides over an established church which practices paedobaptism and sits in the House of Lords (à la Cranmer) is an oxymoron for today’s evangelicals.  Though Luther is hailed as the “evangelical” hero of the 16th century, I have often wondered how Luther would be received if ever he was to appear in a 21st-century North American evangelical context – what with his views of baptism, the Lord’s Supper and the “two-kingdom” approach to politics.  I tend to think that if only evangelicals were more familiar with Luther’s theology – as opposed to the simple fact that he dared to rebel against the Pope – they would abandon their allegiance to him.  Most evangelicals that I know are oblivious to the existence of the Creeds of the ancient Church and how the 16th-century Reformers attempted to interpret Scripture in light of the (early) Tradition.  Few Reformed evangelicals that I know are aware of how much they owe to 16th-century interpretations of the thought of Augustine, for instance.  All this to say that I believe that a study of the Reformation should lead contemporary evangelicals to have a greater appreciation of Tradition, or at least to become aware of the historical contingency of their particular denomination, whose roots are to be found, chances are, not in the Magisterial traditions, but rather in the Dutch Anabaptist and English nonconformist, Puritan traditions.  One might dare to hope that such awareness could just possibly lead to something that failed to happen in the 16th century – a pan-evangelical (if not pan-Protestant) ecumenism.  “May they be one…” as our Lord prayed.  “They will know that you are my disciples by your love for each other”.  May it be so.