For all the Saints who from their labors rest

Two excerpts from the blog of the editors of Touchstone on this Reformation Day.

Reformation Day for a Mere Christian

by Russell D. Moore

What I do know is that, whatever your view of the Reformation, it's obvious to see that some of the things that drove Luther to anger (and to despair) are everywhere present, to this day, often even in the most "Reformation-centric" evangelical churches.

Hardened rebels against God rest easy in a prayer said at Vacation Bible School, or a card signed at confirmation class. And guilty consciences stand paralyzed outside, fearful that Christ can only save those who look or dress or speak a certain way. And, through it all, American Christianity has become a vast conspiracy to sell one another products.

The combination of the damning power of cheap grace with the accusing agony of performance-based righteousness before God exists in every wing of the church. That's because it's not a medieval problem, but a primeval one.

Reformation Day Reflections on Calvin and Calvinism

by Jordan Ballor

Earlier this month Dr. Richard A. Muller, the P.J. Zondervan Professor of Historical Theology at Calvin Theological Seminary, gave a lecture in which he asked and answered the question, "Was Calvin a Calvinist?" In this far-reaching and comprehensive address, Muller succinctly summarized his decades of work demolishing the myths and historical fallacies of a great deal of secondary research.

A basic way in which the relationship of Calvin to the broader Reformed tradition has been misconstrued, including his relationship to predecessors, contemporaries, and followers, is in the idea that Calvin's work, or a particular aspect of his work, serves as an index for judging the rest of so-called Calvinism. Calvin’s theology (or a part thereof) becomes the sole standard of arbitration, the gold standard of determining the level of some contemporaneous or following figure’s adherence to Calvinist orthodoxy.

As Muller contends, such elevation of Calvin’s work mistakenly “assumes that later Reformed theologians either intended to be or should have been precise followers of Calvin rather than also followers of Zwingli, Bucer, Oecolampadius, Bullinger, and others, and not merely followers of Calvin in general or Calvin of the tracts, treatises, commentaries, and sermons, nor the Calvin of the 1539, 1543, or 1550 Institutes, but the Calvin of the 1559 Institutes.”

A related error is that figures like Bucer, Bullinger, Vermigli, or Wolfgang Musculus, all of whom were older contemporaries of Calvin and who disagreed with him sharply on such important issues as the relationship of the civil and ecclesiastical magistrates, the use of excommunication, and the doctrine of the Lord's Supper, either did or ought to have judged themselves in relation to the work of their junior colleague in Geneva, who was younger by some decade or more than many of these other eminent figures.

So, Semper Reformanda I guess.