Reformation and reform

[Deleted Name] writes:

I’d like to understand your use of the word “reform” in recent discussions on religion. The problem is that in the mouths of some, reform means watering a religion down and excising the nasty bits, while for others it means returning a religion to its original purity and fervor. Perhaps part of the problem is that in most of the world, both Catholics and Protestants call the sixteenth-century schism “The Reformation,” but each group believes something very different about what the goals and accomplishments of the “Reformers” were. Protestants believe they were returning to the original beliefs and practices of Christians, more or less, while Catholics believe that the Protestants rejected essential elements of the faith. I think the second definition is the true one, and that it is Protestants who decided that movement was a Reformation. But, as I say, since most of us call it that, the meaning has become confused.

Anyway, when I hear people say “Islam needs a reformation,” I usually say, “Islam already had a reformation, it’s called Wahhabism.”

So I would like to know how you define “reform” and how that fits in with your understanding of what the sixteenth-century “Reformation” was.

LA replies:

Reformation is a pretty confused word. Ordinarily “reform” is used in the sense of fixing something and changing it to some degree, but not remaking it on a fundamental level. Thus these definitions of reform in my WordWeb dictionary:

• A change for the better as a result of correcting abuses

• A campaign aimed to correct abuses or malpractices

• Self-improvement in behavior or morals by abandoning some vice

All these meanings involve getting rid of something bad that has grown up around the good essence of a thing, and returning to the good essence.

But at the same time, there is an obvious problem with this ordinary use of “reform” since to “re-form” something would mean literally to remake its form, i.e., to remake it fundamentally, not just to fix some things about it. So that’s the first confusion. Maybe we could resolve the confusion by saying that the ordinary word “reform” means fixing and changing something and betting rid of abuses, and that “reformation” means re-forming and re-making something, i.e., changing its fundamentals.

You said:

> Protestants believe they were returning to the original beliefs and practices of Christians, more or less, while Catholics believe they rejected essential elements of the faith.

While I do not have deep knowledge of these issues, it seems to me that there is truth on both sides of this argument. Certainly it is false that the Reformers were simply returning to the original beliefs and practices of Christianity, because they changed the fundamentals of the faith. For example, they redefined the central sacrament of Christianity which had existed from the very beginning of the Church, the Eucharist. At the same time, they did get rid of many well-known practices and doctrines of the Church that were not biblical. So, using the definitions I provisionally adopted above, we could say that when the Protestants changed the fundamentals of Christianity, they were engaged in a (bad) reformation, and that when they got of indefensible accretions, they were engaged in a (good) reform.

So, if you have a religion that you think is true and that you believe in, like Christianity, a reformation of that religion is by definition bad, because it means you are re-working the fundamentals of the religion and thus harming or even destroying it as a religion; but a reform of a good religion, returning it to its fundamentals, is good. If there’s a religion that you think is bad, like Islam, a reformation of that religion, meaning getting rid of its fundamentals, would be good. But a reform of a bad religion, getting rid of the accretions that do not fit its bad fundamentals and going back to its bad fundamentals, would be bad.

And, getting back to the start of this discussion, when people call for an Islamic reformation, they mean what I am calling here a reform, which would be, and has been, bad (for us). Wahhabism, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Iranian Revolution, bin Ladenism—these are reforms of Islam, ridding it ot its accretions, getting back to his original jihadist essence. A reformation of Islam in the sense I’ve used the word here is impossible because of the (as Muslims see it) divinely authoritative nature of the Koran and the hadiths that are the basis of all Islam.

- end of initial entry -

Constance S. writes:

You write: “While I do not have deep knowledge of these issues, it seems to me that there is truth on both sides of this argument. Certainly it is false that the Reformers were simply returning to the original beliefs and practices of Christianity, because they changed the fundamentals of the faith.”

How can you admit that you do not have deep knowledge of these issues and in the next sentence assert, with certainty no less, that the reformers changed the very fundamentals of the faith?

“For example, they redefined the central sacrament of Christianity which had existed from the very beginning of the Church, the Eucharist.”

…. A serious charge that I hope you can defend. Would you define precisely the nature of the central sacrament that existed from the “very beginning” and exactly how the reformers changed this sacrament that you refer to as the Eucharist (and is known also as the Lord’s Supper or Communion)

Please, you and [Deleted Name] are driving me crazy! Do some reading and develop some deep knowledge. Get understanding. Ask God for help in gaining wisdom in the things of God. That’s one prayer He will answer for certain.

LA replies:

I was trying to be honest about the fact that I am not widely versed in the vast subject of the Protestant Catholic divide. I am not ignorant either. For example, I know enough about the Eucharist to know that what Luther said about it in The Babylonian Capitivity was to destroy its essential meaning. As I wrote in my article, “The political religion of modernity”:

The Protestant Reformation changed the Christian experience on a profound level. For Protestants, salvation comes less through communion with God than through faith in a proposition about God, namely the proposition that Christ by dying for us has saved us from our sins. According to Luther, the mass is not an act of communion with Christ, but the sign of our faith in Christ’s promise of salvation. Even though Luther affirmed the Real Presence of Christ in the bread and wine, he radically reduced the meaning of the Real Presence, insisting that it was nothing more than a “memorial sign” of the validity of the divine promise: “You have seen that the mass is nothing else than the divine promise or testament of Christ, sealed with the sacrament of his body and blood.” [Martin Luther, The Babylonian Captivity of the Church.]

The Calvinists of course abstracted the Faith even further. By stripping Christianity of its outward form and beauty, and reducing the Eucharist from an act of participation in God’s being to a sign of faith in God’s promises, the Reformation made words the central focus of salvational experience. For the great eighteenth century preacher Jonathan Edwards, the proof of grace was an individual’s experience of “the divine excellency of the things revealed in the word of God.” [Jonathan Edwards, “A Divine And Supernatural Light”]. The divine word, and the assurance of salvation as experienced by the individual in his own conscience, rather than sacred acts and liturgy and images experienced through participation in the collective body of the Church, had become the primary vehicle of truth.

Let me add that I am not versed widely in many of the subjects I write about. I am not versed at all in military and strategic matters. Yet my observations over the last four years about our ongoing military situation in Iraq have been far more accurate than the statements of all kinds of highly placed people who know vastly more about such matters than I. One does not need expert knowledge to form judgments; one needs a grasp of essential principles, and the ability to think logically, to understand the meaning of words, and to see obvious contradictions and falsehoods.

However, now that I think about it further, I can see that my choice of words to which Constance objected, “While I do not have deep knowledge of these issues,” was not the best. It would have been better if I had said something like, “While I do not have wide and systematic knowledge of this subject,I do have an understanding of some of the central principles and issues, and on that basis I can say such and such.”

Clark Coleman writes:

I wish I had time for a lengthy discourse on the history of the Eucharist. I don’t, so I will just sound one word of caution. However well you might think you “grasp essential points,” if you are going to make pronouncements about history, you have to study the history. Several of your statements have phrases such as “original” and “from the beginning of the church,” and the only way to draw proper conclusions about how the Eucharist was from the beginning of the church is to study the history of the Eucharist. Your comments indicate that you have not done so. With a “grasp of essential points,” you can certainly say that Luther made significant changes in the Eucharist. You cannot say whether he got closer to, or farther away from, the original Eucharist without studying the history.

I do not think that Luther, Calvin, or the Roman Catholics practice the Eucharist as it was practiced in the first century, but that is part of a lengthy discussion.

I have some files of quotes from early church fathers about the Eucharist, arranged in chronological order, that show a development over three centuries towards the Roman Catholic doctrine. They are in Adobe FrameMaker format, but I could get them in PDF if you want to see them. I think the evolution from about 100 A.D. onwards is apparent from their quotes, and the doctrines and practices circa 400 A.D. are not at all what they were circa 100 A.D.

LA writes:

My understanding of the Eucharist and my criticisms of Luther’s radical redefinition of it come from: (1) The liturgy of the Eucharist; (2) my experience of the Eucharist in my own life; (3) the New Testament; (4) statements about early Church history in classes I attended on Church history and doctrine; (5) Luther’s text in The Babyonian Captivity. If Mr. Coleman can demonstrate that my statements are wrong, rather than just say that I don’t know enough to have a right to an opinion on these issues, I’m all ears.

Vincent Chiarello writes:

[Deleted Name] has raised questions whose answers may provide some clarification regarding the meaning and intent of using the words “reformation” and “schism” in a religious context. The Pulitzer Prize winning historian, Richard Hofstadter, wrote a book entitled The Age of Reform, but his idea of “reform” had no connection to the religious variety. I should also point out that, until the late 1950’s, in most Catholic schools, “The Protestant Reformation” was taught as “The Protestant Rebellion.”

If examined etymologically, the term “Reformation” in a religious sense was a word introduced into the vernacular during the French Enlightenment of the 18th century. From Luther’s break with Rome in 1517, and for more than a century of religious wars, ending with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, two incompatible Christian beliefs systems sought to establish, or retain, a spiritual monopoly. But it was the philosophes who legitimized the term “Reformation,” by which they meant a revival of religious experience of primitive Christianity, while at the same time condemning the institutional atrophy of the Catholic Church. It should be pointed out that some notable Catholics, Erasmus and Montaigne amongst them, concurred with these findings. It should also be mentioned that Voltaire was a product of a Jesuit education.

Owen Chadwick, a Protestant historian of the “Reformation,” wrote that “when churchmen (i.e. Luther’s contemporaries) spoke of reformation, they were almost always thinking of administrative, legal or moral reformation; hardly ever of doctrinal reformation. They did not suppose the Pope’s doctrine to be erroneous.” And here is the rub in the word “Reformation”: despite the challenges to the Church brought on by Luther, Calvin, Zwingli et al., there were no substantive changes in the liturgy, and/or the theological underpinning of the Catholic Church. None. In that sense, nothing has been “Reformed.” But the term “Reformation” also provided future historians with a sequel in the form of a Catholic Counter-Reformation, whose purpose was to bring about most of the non-doctrinal changes Chadwick mentioned.

[Deleted Name’] use of the term “schism” is misleading. From the 11th century until Lumen Gentium of Vatican II, the term “schismatic” had referred exclusively to the Orthodox Churches because of their “orthodox dissent,” although misjudgment of the intellect was also included. The classic Catholic account of schism is that of St. Thomas Aquinas: schism is the sin that leads people to separate themselves from that special unity that supernatural charity creates. But to be schismatic is not to be a heretic, and, conversely, heresy is not itself schism. The charge leveled against Luther and his Protestant epigones was “heresy,” but no similar accusation could be made against the Church, since Protestants developed no central authority to make such a pronouncement.

Finally, I cannot but opine on the comments of Constance S. Frankly, her words strike me as befitting a personality that Italians would describe as “aspero,” too brusque by half. Lord knows that Mr. Auster and I have our religious differences, but to write and tell him: Do some reading and develop some deep knowledge, is, to put it mildly, unkind and un-Christian.

LA replies:

I appreciate Vincent’s coming to my defense, but I don’t feel that Constance was out of line or rude. I made a statement she could reasonably attack me for, and that gave me the chance to reply and explain my position further.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 01, 2007 07:08 PM | Send