To those
who this next bit of labeling may mean something, I have been well immersed in
the Protestant tradition for quite some time.
My first introduction to Christianity came in the form of the Left
Behind books with all of their Dispensationalistic theological undertones. After I became a Christian, I went from being
clueless, Arminian-Baptist, Emergent, Heretical-Baptist (since I visited the
pubs from time to time), Reformed Baptist, to strongly Reformed in the
Christian Reformed tradition, to Christian Reformed with strong Anglican
leanings, to a Protestant who has strongly fallen in love with the Christian
East and the early Church. I have been
all over the place; a journey that I am not necessarily proud of.
It is not
as though I view Christianity through a strongly guided Post-Modern lens,
attempting to find my own truth wherever I can find it. I am actually someone who believes that
denominational heritage is important and who places a much higher value on
tradition than most of my Christian brothers and sisters do. Even though there has been a lot of talk
about blurring denominational lines and, essentially, bleeding all of the
denominations together, I would have to say that I am opposed to such an
idea. To me, redesigning and redefining
the Church is not something that we have the wisdom or the authority to
do. To me, fracturing ourselves off from
history and redefining ourselves in history or, doing what we have always done, is misguided and useless. Fracturing and redefining is what we have
always done, particularly as Protestants.
It hasn’t worked for us in the past and it won’t work now or in the
future. The task before us is not to
ignore history, but to decipher whose history is more “correct.”
I have come
to the realization in recent years that my journey theologically and
denominationally has been so vast because I feel like I haven’t arrived
yet. In the words of Bono, “I still
haven’t found what I am looking for.” I
have not found the culture of Christians who can even begin to relate to the
worldview that I have come to know that my own experience of God over the years
has forged into me. No matter where I
have been, I have always felt like an outsider, always felt like a
foreigner.
At first, I
thought that this was just my own personal problem; that I am seeking to
resurrect my old non-conformist ways from my high school days or that I am just
too wishy-washy theologically. However,
as time has gone on, I have come to meet countless Christians who feel the same
way that I do about Protestantism today, even if it is for differing
reasons. There is an overwhelmingly
large group of people in our country who would consider themselves Christians
and Protestants but who legitimately feel as though they do not fit into the
Protestant church in North America today as it
is. As sincere as they are, something is
always “off” for them. Our church
culture can no longer afford to ignore people like these, nor their prophetic
voice. It is no longer sufficient to
label this group of people as “Post-Moderns” or shallow Christians because many
of them are neither of the two. Many
of these are people who sincerely love the Lord, love the Church as best they
can, and are doing their very best to follow Christ in this life. Even though this is the case, many of them find
it a tremendous struggle to feel at home in the church today. They are people who know the Lord and
adequately understand that many of the people in the congregations they come
across are absolutely fake and, rightly so, they are disgusted by the state of
the modern Church today. Perhaps they
feel as I do; that something drastically large is missing from the
Protestantism that they have experienced.
I wouldn’t
be writing this book if I did not sympathize with this crowd. To me, there is something missing from the
Protestant world today…the 1,500 years of theological and ecclesiological
influence and history that came before the Protestant movement even began. Most Christians have absolutely no concept of
the history, or perhaps more importantly, the teaching and tradition of the
first 1,500 years of the Church as it was established by our Lord Jesus and
progressed by the Holy-Spirit throughout the ages. Many people nowadays might have some
knowledge of Martin Luther, John Calvin, Thomas Cramner and other people that
triggered the Reformation movement about 500 years ago, and others might have a
great deal of knowledge about these historical figures. However, many people in the pews are
absolutely clueless whenever it comes to a man like Irenaeus, who was the
disciple of the disciple of the Apostle John.
Nor, do they know much, if anything about Athanasius or the extremely
important role he played in the early Church.
What about Irenaeus, Athanasius, the Cappadocian Fathers, John
Chrysostom, or the theological giant of the Eastern Church named Maximus the
Confessor?
What is
very intriguing to me as well is that it is well documented that the Reformers
were not attempting to start a new church from scratch, but to reform the
already existing Church by appealing to the Church Fathers and by following
their ways and teachings.
The
question, then, that I have is this: “If
all of our major reformed theologians and leaders from the 1500’s started the
reformation in order to get the Church back to the ways of the early Church,
and they used the early Church Fathers as their guide; how much do we actually
know and understand of the reformation thinkers if we know nothing of the men
whose shoulders these reformed thinkers stood on?”
Protestantism
today seems to function as though it was bred in a vacuum, and it definitely
functions as though its tradition(s) is the only one that is the legitimate
God-ordained tradition (not that Protestantism has been anywhere close to
establishing and upholding one unified tradition within its many
fractures). It seems to carry within
itself a vague notion that all tradition and teaching within the Church, with
the exception of the first three to four hundred years of the early Church, was
completely corrupt and needed to be done away with, which is the result of a
justified, yet very over-reactive, severing from Catholicism. Also, people tend to think that the Church
was, in its infancy; off the mark, theologically immature, and nowhere near producing
the pedigree of fine theologians like Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin.
I even
recall studying Church history in my under graduate and post graduate studies
where, in both instances, the professors referred to the early theologians as
nowhere near the caliber of the theologians of the Reformation. “Athanasius was ok; Augustine was pretty
great…but Calvin…wow!!!,” they would say.
As a Protestant pursuing a religious course of study, I was always led
to believe that the early Church guys (never heard about the plethora of women
in the early Church to!) were great and all, but they’re not really worth
taking the time to study. It is best,
they would tell us, to study the Reformed guys instead. I have no doubt, after being a Protestant (for
12 years at the point of writing this book) that this is the general notion of
the majority of the people in our congregations, if they are even remotely
aware enough of a Church that existed for fifteen centuries before the coming
of the Reformation.
This is a
tremendous problem for us Protestants in so many ways:
First, our
people remain in ignorance of the history, teachings, methods, and traditions
of the portion of the Church that existed for three times longer than
Protestantism has so far. Ignorance of
our history is never a good thing for a variety of reasons, but in this case
because it produces pride; ignorant pride at that. Ignoring where we came from instills in us a
sense of not having to listen to the wisdom of those who came before us, but
that our wisdom is adequate enough.
Second, it
misses out on the teachings of the early Church Fathers that the theologians of
the Reformation would have taken for granted.
Contrary to what may be commonly assumed, again, the Reformers sought to
Reform the already existing Church, not start completely from scratch. There would have been teachings that were in
existence during their time that they would have taken for granted and most
likely not have elaborated on quite as much, since there would have been no
need to elaborate on what was already commonly accepted and even practiced.
Third, with
that said, we falsely assume that Calvin, Luther, Zwingli, Cramner and the other
Reformers were wiser and more theologically advanced than anyone from the first
1,500 years of the Church. Now, even
though I definitely have a great amount of respect for all of the Reformers, I
have a hard time swallowing the idea that any of them had a greater knowledge
base of the things of God than a man like Irenaeus, for example; who was the
disciple of Polycarp, who was the disciple of John the Apostle. It cannot be the case that the man who was
separated by one generation from the Apostle John, who was directly mentored by
the man who was mentored by the Apostle John, is less theologically advanced
than the men who came nearly 1,500 years after him.
Perhaps the
reason why the Church seems to have such little traction and carries so little
influence today is because we spend too little time studying the people who
both, through the power of the Spirit, established the Church and caused its
initial explosion on our little planet.
It is no secret how quickly the early Church expanded across the Roman Empire and beyond, changing our world
permanently. You are telling me that
these people who carried this movement of the Spirit out have less to say to us
today than men like Calvin and Luther?
Really? And, the methods and
traditions that they very clearly established…methods of worship, methods of
discipleship, that they duly established as the Church was exploding across the
globe, is not worth our concentrated study and time today? Really?
Perhaps if
we were to turn our attention to a part of the Church that we have for a long
time ignored, we would find that lost aspect to Protestantism in North America
(and beyond) that so many today are ardently searching for.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.