Why A Reformation?

What’s in a name?  If a New and Continuing Reformation after the pattern of the 16th and 17th century Protestant reformers is essential to the survival of true gospel doctrine, the name is very significant.  An understanding of the gospel heritage of the original Reformation and the necessity of a continuing reformation based on that heritage is what will bring a revival of the apostles’ doctrine in our day, resulting in much fruit borne for Christ’s kingdom.  It will also work against the tragedy of a thousand years of new darkness that the spirit of this age is passionately headed into without restraint, unless our sovereign God of all Grace intervenes.

Many think the gospel revival of the essential doctrines of the 5 sempers of the Reformation and the 5 points of Dort amount to very little.  Such teachers claim that the true gospel has stood firm in confession since the apostles, that all opposition to it in well-published human writings only seems prominent due to church-state power over the centuries to destroy or diminish the apostolic teaching.  But an investigation into real ecclesiastical and nonconformist history will prove otherwise.  The soteriology of post-apostolic bishops lacks the assurance and confidence of justification by faith alone, as well as a clear doctrine of the election of Grace.  The confessional statements of historic Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and independent Nonconformity are very strong on Christology and the Trinity, but also contain little that compares with the apostolic teaching on salvation and God’s eternal purposes in Christ bringing it to fruition.

Luther once wrote very moving works on the Freedom of the Christian and the end of the Babylonian Captivity of the Church.  The church-state persecution of the Reformation era ended up going against all the essential principles Luther espoused in these articles.  This shows us that Reformation is never static, it must always be New, Continuing, and Reforming further.  Most of the well-established Protestant church denominations have always tended to harden into a continuing city on this earth, which is their comfort zone assurance that they have ‘the truth’.  They give us very detailed confessions that are supposed to define the apostolic gospel and all associated doctrine precisely. While there may be much truth in some of these and even a clear system of doctrine affirmed in the main articles, such phenomenon tends to restrict orthodoxy to a compartmentalized and sectarian denominational institution (one or several).  Continuing reformation based on the centrality of the apostolic doctrines of Christ and His gospel is easily stunted by over-emphasis on “all church power is of God” (Charles Hodge) and treating as strangers to Christ those who are non-conforming to the anti-reformation implications of this notion.

The post-apostolic rule of bishops after the death of the apostles quickly turned to affirming correct doctrines of New Testament law, sacrament, and church authority as the basis of preservation of the established organizational institutions.  Those who had any other convictions were cast out. Following this example, the Reformation of the 16th century was stunted in its tracks from further growth in the same matter as the Apostolic gospel was stunted by the ‘church fathers’.  The ‘fathers’ ended up with 14 centuries of orthodox Trinitarian doctrine but very little gospel-centered soteriology to write about. Because of this phenomenon, some attempt to find the ‘true apostolic faith’ preserved in the non-institutional assemblies from all those centuries.  These same teachers claim that the 16th century Reformation amounted to nothing, since the preservation of the apostolic gospel was always pristine pure in Nonconformity.  But the apostolic gospel existed in Nonconformity only as a sickly dwarfed plant in a dry field, not the full corn in the ear. Those who try and portray that the apostolic gospel in its fullness was manifested in Montanism, Donatism, the Waldenses, Anabaptists, Mennonites, and other anti-establishment movements will find extreme disappointment in comparing the writings and confessions of those groups with the apostles’ doctrine.  

The standard of the 5-solas of the Reformation and the 5 points of Dort, simply stated, is the clear foundation of God’s sovereign intervention in history to restore the apostolic gospel.  That basic ‘Reformed’ foundation must be used as the basis of ‘Always Reforming’ in future generations. A lot remains to be done to honor the pristine clarity of what the Apostles taught in their gospel learned from Christ Himself and all the implications of that gospel in other teaching.  But those who will submit to the Lordship of Christ in this enormous commitment will never be disappointed in the ultimate fruit of their labors and study!

Article by: R.R. Higby, parachurch minister of the Gospel