Is the Reformation the Last Word?
Was the Reformation of the sixteenth century the “final word†of God’s post-canonical work in his church? Some of my fellow seminary students seem to think so. One of them recently remarked to me in the bookstore that it is “impossible†that any modern scholarship or movement in the church could make anything more than minor improvements to the theology and ecclesiology formulated by the Reformers. Is it to be our expectation that all growth and progression in these areas would reach a zenith somewhere in the middle (or late beginning? Who knows?) of the Church Age, with everything to follow merely a battle to hold on to that ground?
In the final chapter of James B. Jordan’s Through New Eyes: Developing a Biblical View of the World, Mr. Jordan briefly outlines his take on the trajectory of history as the Bible sees it. His overall thesis is that the course of history covered by the Bible itself is one of the gradual, inexorable growth of both the righteous (the Kingdom) and the wicked over time. While the “growth†of the wicked is actually in the direction “of degradation, not glorification,†the expectation of the righteous should be for progress over time, punctuated by periods of setback. Jordan sees this expectation as one that should continue into the present “church age.â€
He begins the chapter (titled “The Course of Historyâ€) with a survey of the growth of the Kingdom in biblical history. He traces this gradual progression from the few souls on Noah’s ark through the patriarchs (who had a promise, but no land), to the Davidic securing of the Land, and on eventually to the full internationalization of the Kingdom in the New Covenant. He goes on to point out the numerous examples of biblical symbols and visions that picture this gradual, inevitable growth of the Kingdom. Most striking, of course, is the vision in Daniel of the Stone that strikes the feet of the statue (representing the unbelieving kingdoms) and then becomes a mountain that (gradually) fills the whole earth. He also recalls the river flowing from Ezekiel’s Temple that begins as a trickle but widens as it flows until it becomes “a river that could not be forded†(Ezekiel 47:3-5). Finally, he mentions Jesus’ parables of the wheat and the tares, the mustard seed, and the leaven (Matthew 13).
But what of the history of the Church since the close of the canon? Can we really call what we’ve seen over the past 2000 years “progress.†What about the evil popes and the Crusades, etc.? Here Jordan applies the pattern he discerns in biblical history to church history. The history of the people of God, he says, is one of gradual increase over time, punctuated by periods of apparent decline or chaos. He sees the “bad†times for the church as times used by God not only to chasten his Bride, but also to help birth the next “establishment,†an iteration of the Church drawing on the best of the past, but better in itself than the sum of those parts. So rather than a smooth advance, Jordan says we should expect that as “an old establishment wears thin, and declines into stultification and error,†it will “be replaced by a new establishment that does fuller justice to the faith. Each new establishment takes up the strengths of the previous one, but transforms it into something new and more powerful, more glorious†(p. 287).
As examples, Jordan provides first the Constantine Establishment. Contrary to modern interpretation which generally tends to be critical of that period, Jordan characteristically it as a welcome refuge for the church after a period of great tribulation. Eventually, however, the Christendom established by Constantine declined. Jordan then sees an era of “good Popes†in the West who brought widespread peace to the warring tribes of Europe. When the Popes abused their authority, God raised up the Reformation. The Reformation yielded numerous benefits, but it too succumbed to its own abuses (too close ties to nationalism in Europe and denominationalism in America), leading to a loss of catholicity in Christendom.
In the final section of the chapter, Jordan ponders what the next “establishment†will be. He obviously fully expects that something will emerge (or is already emerging – and no hat tip to the “emergent†movement is intended!). He surveys the various Christian movements at the time of his writing (the opening of the 1990’s), and draws an analogy to the days of Samuel when the ark was in one place, the tabernacle in another, and the High Priest off in the fields with David. Jordan speculates that the people living near each of those back in that day would probably have thought that their “thing†was the one that everyone else needed to come to. But then David became king and brought them all back together in a whole new way. In the same way, Jordan thinks that out of the current morass of disparate movements within Christianity will emerge the next establishment, something no one could fully have anticipated.
If he’s on to something, then the Reformation, while undoubtedly one of the most important “establishments†in church history, is not anywhere near to the be-all and end-all that some would make it out to be. That is not to say that whatever emerges ahead under the direction of the Holy Spirit will repudiate the main contributions of the Reformation, but it may shed light on those contributions that couldn’t have been seen before. If that’s true, then to cling to any past establishment places one in danger of idolatry.
Click "Digg It" to let Digg.com users know they should read this post!
December 9th, 2005 at 10:00 am
(a) This seemed to me a helpful way to look at how theology might progress and yet hold on to useful things from the past.
(b) Interestingly, it is based on the pattern of history found in the Bible. Some will probably call him Hegelian, while others will “diss” his metanarrative (whatever), but it seems pretty solid to me b/c of its precedent in Scripture.
(c) I’ll buy anything you say if it helps me save time on studying.
December 9th, 2005 at 10:15 am
Jason’s last comment is re: the Old Testament History & Theology exam (sponsored by Jason’s “image and likeness”) for which our Gracious God has given us an extra four hours of study time (snow delay!). And to the fact that Jordan’s book was assigned reading for that class. Sometimes writing these little summaries is my way of doing a “brain dump” for an exam…and sometimes they end up here.
We had an animated discussion last night about the Jordan book at our study group meeting. Most of us felt that Jordan was often a little (or even a lot) whacked out in some of the logical strings he created between symbols. And we felt that his insitence that we unquestioningly adopt a pre-modern “biblical” worldview as our way of assessing everything in the world, while praiseworthy, was flawed in that Jordan seems to have very little about how the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ (and the sending of the Spirit) changes everything.
Nonetheless, as you agreed, his final chapter does give us a way of taking the biblical philosophy of history and extending it forward as a continuing story.
December 9th, 2005 at 12:42 pm
Jason, can you e-mail me offline? danielandlaura[at]earthlink[dot]net?
Thanks.
December 9th, 2005 at 4:19 pm
Mark,
Let me first say that I have found Jordan’s Through New Eyes to be extremely helpful. I read it at least once a year, and I’ve taught it to my students. But one thing that troubles me everytime I approach his text is how at times speculative theology is presented as biblical theology. He seems to make connections between texts that just simply don’t exist. By the time Jordan got to Sociology of the Church, it was even more evident. Who can forget his Passover blood-on-the-doorposts as the vagina waiting to birth the Church? Sadly, when I read a respected scholar like Peter Leithart blathering on about oil as liquid light, I let out a deep sigh.
I must admit that when I see people writing “Is the Reformation the Last Word”, I find it all quite silly. I mean, it was five hundred years ago after all. That’s half a millenium. Is there really anyone in the Protestant world (and I guess I’m talking about Protestant scholars in particular) that actually argues that there hasn’t been any improvement in our understanding of the Scriptures and theology since the reformers? So let’s dispense with the straw men. And Jordan’s recent infantile diatribe against anyone who dares question the Federal Vision proved to me that the intellectual brain rot may be terminal in his case.
But your advocacy of Jordan’s theory of development is really ironic. All Jordan is doing is visiting the Witch of Endor to summon up the ghosts of Philip Schaff and John Williamson Nevin and their theory of historical development. Is resurrecting the Hegelian and German Transcendental dead really the advance in theology you’re trying to make it out to be? And why exactly is standing around the corpse of Mercersberg Theology trying to revive it something that any bright Protestant scholar should be devoting himself to?
So let me ask you a question in return: Is Mercerberg Theology Really the Last Word?
December 9th, 2005 at 8:43 pm
EDIT: The comment that appeared here was logged in as me (my name and email address) BUT WAS NOT FROM ME. Therefore I have deleted it.
Mark
December 9th, 2005 at 9:52 pm
MarkyMark….if you haven’t read Rob Bell’s Velvet Elvis yet…you need to.
A lot of what he has to say touches on the idea of the “progress” of the church.
And how it must continue growing and changing.
Good read.
December 9th, 2005 at 11:23 pm
Mark,
Thanks for the elaboration. I think I’m violently agreeing with you. I’m entirely in agreement with you that it is a philosophical, not a biblical, or even theological, contruct. And as you identify, it destroys the Augustinian view of history. What disheartens me about those who are taking Jordan’s method seriously (Rich Lusk, Jeff Meyers, Mark Horne, Peter Leithart, et al.) is that they do think it is biblical theology they’re engaged in when they use Jordan. Again, Through New Eyes helped me see things that I doubt I would have ever encountered even if I had read Milton Terry of F.W. Farrar. But the quality of his work has taken a marked retrograde curve since then.
Regards.
December 10th, 2005 at 1:41 am
First of all, Patrick, I didn’t write the post that you are “violently agreeing” with. Someone posted that and signed in with my name and email address (and Gravatar associates my picture with that email address). I’ve deleted the comment since I don’t see how that could have been done mistakenly.
That being said, please don’t think that I’ve bought into Jordan wholesale. I basically would have many of the same critiques as you. Jordan just goes plain whacko on way too many points.
However, having once been a theonomist myself, I’m sensitive to misrepresentations of their position, even if I largely disagree with it now. One of the most common false charges is that their postmillenial optimism is based in a Hegellian dynamic. I know from the inside out that they most certainly do not see the progress of the church as the result of “historic inevitability,” but rather the “inevitablity of the Spirit.” They believe that the progress of the Church is guaranteed by Scripture and therefore carried out by the work of the Spirit.
By basing my post in one chapter of his book, I was not intending to endorse his whole take on things. Rather, what he said simply stimulated thoughts I’d already had: if the Spirit is still active in the Church, then how can it be posited that a movement for a particular historical moment 500 years ago is the be-all and end-all for the Church?
As to your insinuation that I am raising a straw man…then several of the professors at my seminary should go get jobs scaring crows away from farm fields.
December 10th, 2005 at 1:17 pm
Uh, OK. I would suggest that you’re being prematurely dismissive about the Hegelian influence on Jordan in his circle. He and his crew have been the most active promoters of Mercersberg Theology, and particularly Schaff’s theory of historical development, which there really isn’t any argument was adapted from Hegel. You may label that as “false charges” all you want, but it doesn’t make those cold, hard facts disappear.
And I certainly have no doubt there are WTS professors running around saying that the Reformation is archaic and passe. But I also have no doubt that Machen would turn over in his grave if he saw what passes for Reformed theology at his seminary these days.
But to your original point: you keep implying that there are people out there claiming that the Reformation is the “last word” and the “be-all and end-all for the Church”. Once again I ask: who exactly are you talking about? Individuals like me that as ordained officers in PCA churches have sworn to uphold the Westminster system of teaching and doctrine? Theologians who think that Luther, rather than Trent, had justification right? Serious scholars who have read N.T. Wright and found him more hurtful than helpful? Pastors who think that Shepherd’s Pelagian redefinition of the covenant fosters legalism? Professors who think that multi-perspectivalism is nothing more than evangelical relativism? Who exactly are you arguing against? Inquiring minds want to know!
December 10th, 2005 at 1:51 pm
Whoa, Patrick! We’re building a growing pile of misunderstanding here!
My reference to certain WTS profs was my response to your straw man accusation. I was not referring to profs who think the Reformation is “archaic and passe”…because there are none! I was referring to profs who seem to support what I had quoted that student as saying in my original post: that the Reformation was the “last word” in Christian development, nothing major is yet to be defined or redefined by any present or future scholarship. So you had asked, “Who is saying, ‘The Reformation is the be-all and end-all’?” and my response was, “Certain WTS profs, apparently.” Do we have that clear now?
As to your comments concerning “Mercersberg Theology Schaff’s theory of historical development” I confess that you are out of my league. I have no idea what those are, so I bow to your judgment in that regard. If those things are indeed their line of support and if, as you say, they are inherently Hegelian, then I would join you in opposing Jordan, et al. Someone else who is studied in those philosophies will have to confirm that for me. Mike? Justin?
Granting that objection for the moment, I had already said in my previous post that I was using Jordan more as a springboard for my own thoughts than as my “proof text.” I have no intention of being an apologist for Jordan or his theonomic friends. And frankly, I find some of Jordan’s specific examples of “high points” in Christian history (e.g., Constantine), as laughable examples of his typically extreme historical revisionism. (Reminds me of an entire Journal of Christian Reconstruction issue many years ago that was entirely devoted to proving that Cromwell’s pogroms in Ireland were a good thing!). It has also been recently brought to my attention that Jordan was years ahead of Douglas Wilson in defending the practice of slavery in the American south. So perhaps I should repent of citing James Jordan as a source for my thoughts. Where did I leave my sackcloth and ashes?
If we can put Jordan aside, I’d still like to explore the idea of what it means for the Church that post-Pentecost we are promised the Spirit to teach us all things. The simple, Reformed-approved answer to that has always been “the Spirit teaches us through the Bible.” Amen. But in our time, we’re raising the question of what does that look like. We’ve got enough history behind us (and the study of lingquistic and literary criticism, despite their shortcomings) to realize that interpretation of what the Bible is saying to us is no simple, straighforward matter, and has seemed to vary somewhat with time, place, and general sitz im leben. Writers like Vanhoozer (Drama of Doctrine) are proposing that the interaction between Spirit and Text in the Church looks something more like a divinely-directed dramatic improvisation, based on a fixed script.
What does any of that have to do with my original post? If Vanhoozer, et al, are on to anything, then my point is that we should expect 500 years after the Reformation, since Jesus hasn’t returned, that we should be continuing to develop in our understanding of the meaning of Scripture and how we apply it to our own time and place.
December 10th, 2005 at 3:37 pm
OK. We’re cool. Thanks for the clarification and the elaboration.
December 10th, 2005 at 5:06 pm
“It has also been recently brought to my attention that Jordan was years ahead of Douglas Wilson in defending the practice of slavery in the American south.”
Where does Jordan “defend” Southern slavery? I recall reading — and I think this was in a thesis that Jordan did at Westminster — that though he didn’t believe Southern slavery was as universally egregious as one might think based on a film such as “Roots,” he believed it nonetheless seriously violated biblical law and brought judgment on the South.
Am I remembering wrongly?
December 10th, 2005 at 5:25 pm
Glad you piped in, “Paul B.,” if I have misrepresented Jordan. I heard that secondhand from someone who had talked with a student who had just read Jordan’s WTS thesis as research for a paper. That student is a regular reader/commentor of this blog, so I invite him to give us the real “poop” as he read it.
Oh, Justin??
December 11th, 2005 at 1:39 am
But aren’t changes in the OT structure of the righteous coupled with covenants? I mean, it’s pretty hard for me to buy this argument at all unless there’s some kind of presumption that there’s a new covenant inaugerating a new life/way/structure of the Church. The whole idea of Christ’s covenant is that it establishes an everlasting Church in Him. If the Church is just “repeating history”, then it’s missing a pretty big part in those moments that we’re citing as reasons for change to validate the changes. Not to mention it doesn’t explain why the old forms continue to hang on more powerfully than the new forms.
December 11th, 2005 at 9:38 am
AC:
I don’t think we’re discussing change on the level of covenants here. No one (I hope!) is expecting a New New Covenant. I’m talking more about change on the level of our understanding of God’s revelation to us. The proposal is not that the revelation changes, but that over time, with the Spirit’s guidance and tutelage, we come to understand that revelation better and better.
You should understand that whatever differences I may have with Jordan (and the list seems to grow as this thread grows!), he and I share one common perspective from our common Westminster education, and that is the redemptive-historical approach as developed by Geerhardus Vos, Herman Ridderbos, Richard Gaffin, and the present WTS faculty. The redemptive-historical perspective sees a progressive revelation over the course of biblical history. That is, while the seeds of God’s eventual answer to man’s problem where there from the beginning, what those seeds would spring up to produce was never completely clear until Christ himself came.
The question before us now is: With Jesus’ promise that the Spirit would lead us into all truth, is there some way in which a progression of growing understanding is to be expected throughout the church age?
It seems to me that Protestants inescapably must answer this yes. Our entire movement is based on the idea that the Church did indeed gradually decline into increasing darkness in the late Middle Ages, and that the Reformation was the Spirit’s awakening to a new understanding of the gospel that is indespensible to the future of the Church. Now some Reformed would protest that the Reformation was not a “new understanding” at all, but rather a call to return to the historic Christianity of the early Fathers. In some important ways, that is true. But it seems to me undeniable that in some other important ways, the Reformers did blaze new trails; the church that resulted from them looks nothing like the earliest church in some significant ways.
So if I have a “beef” in all this, it is that whatever you think of the details of Jordan’s proposal, it is pretty inconsistent of Reformed Christians to insist that reform froze in the 16th century.
By the way, AC, since you’re Catholic, you may be interested in Dr. Carl Trueman’s review of Mark Noll’s Is the Reformation Over? Noll sees many signs of Catholics and Protestants re-merging. Trueman says no: the basic division over justification by faith still remains at all the levels that really matter. Some insights of his that will be of particular interest to you: 1) The RCC has not made any significant change in its official fundamental doctrines since the Council of Trent, no matter what some unofficial ecumenical councils may declare and, 2) Roman Catholicism is the “default position” for Western Christianity. One should only be a Protestant if one has a really good reason to remain so, and most Protestants these days couldn’t articulate that reason for you if asked.
December 11th, 2005 at 11:04 pm
Mark, that was some good reading. I nodded my head pretty much whole thing through, forgiving some obviously Protestant slanted positions along the way.
I started to post a lot, but you know my thoughts. I see everything through the Eucharist, so I could never be Protestant again. There’s only one Church that has been consistent in its teaching with regards to the Eucharist down through time, so that’s where I must be. And, really, that makes the rest easy.
BTW, did you hear about this: http://www.themessenger.com.au/news.html (Scroll down to the news article on Sept 23, 2005)
If traditional Anglicans can do it, maybe there’s some hope for conservative Calvinists
December 11th, 2005 at 11:17 pm
Interesting link, AC…but I was more enthused about the Sept 16, 2005 article on that page
December 11th, 2005 at 11:40 pm
Wait … I thought we couldn’t read the Bible … ah man, why did I bother converting to begin with? I hate book reports!
December 12th, 2005 at 7:31 am
December 12th, 2005 at 1:38 pm
Regarding the comment above about Jordan’s WTS thesis and Southern Slavery,
Mark, i’m really sorry if i misrepresented Jordan to you or to others…I only read a few chapters of his WTS thesis, but i saw that while he advocates a modern version of biblical “servitude,” he does say that slavery as it was practiced in the South was a perversion of biblical slavery…he doesn’t, for instance, think that race-based slavery is biblical at all. I think i mentioned that, but if not, let me repent here of any misrepresentation of Jordan’s views.
I hope that’s helpful.
December 12th, 2005 at 8:07 pm
Thanks, Justin. I was hoping you would come by and give us the straight story. No apology needed; as I said, I heard it from someone who thought that’s what you said.
December 14th, 2005 at 1:41 am
If you want more of Jordan on history and the future, check out his Crisis, Opportunity, and the Christian Future. He’s drawing a fair bit on Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy there, among others. Interesting stuff.
I used to be bothered by Jordan’s exegesis. But then, having studied Klaas Schilder (one of the fathers of “redemptive historical” preaching: see Greidanus, Sola Scriptura) and others, my objections diminished. When I first preached through Judges, I found a lot of helpful stuff in Jordan’s commentary but wasn’t persuaded by other things. The second time I preached through Judges, I discovered that a lot of those “other things” were pretty compelling to me. What happened in between is that I did more reading, thought a lot more about how the Bible communicates, asked more questions, etc.
Besides, Jordan will often say that his work isn’t intended as the final word, but that he hopes it will be a helpful word. Who else do you know who’s written about the things Jordan writes about — e.g., Jachin and Boaz, or the chariots of water in the temple, or the dietary laws of the Old Covenant, or … well, the list could go on to include most of his Biblical Horizons papers.
As for Jordan’s relation to theonomy, if you listen to his lectures on the subject you’ll find that he isn’t a theonomist. He has many objections to Bahnsenian theonomy.
December 14th, 2005 at 6:55 am
Gotta respect anyone who’s preached through Judges…twice!
I do think that Jordan’s book is indeed a good challenge to us to “see through new eyes, especially with the challenge that there may be even more unity to the Bible than we even thought. Certainly he challenges us to develop a healthy “first read” (reading the Bible as its original readers would have read it), and I think that’s why prof. Green had us read it. I think where some of my fellow students were put off, John, was in Jordan’s “cocksuredness” that some of his most speculative interpretations are “obvious” and therefore correct. You have to admit that he gets a little midrashic now and then, but as Enns and Green have taught us, a little midrash now and then is not necessarily a bad thing (cf. New Testament use of the old).
December 16th, 2005 at 5:13 pm
Mark,
Do you agree with Jordan’s assessment of the Reformation in light of new and changing trends that apparently Jordan sees occurring?
Also, are you a student at Westminster?
December 19th, 2005 at 7:22 am
T.B.V.,
I don’t know about my view at all being “in light of” any “trends that apparantly Jordan sees.” My point in this post, as I’ve said a few times in these comments, was not to defend Jordan point-by-point but to use his thesis as a springboard to consider the meaning (or even existence) of some kind of progressive understanding of the revelation in Scripture throughout Church history.
February 23rd, 2006 at 9:34 pm
Finally found some good infomation on the subject.