Review: Reformation of the Church by Iain Murray (part 2 of 12)

This post is the second of what will ultimately be twelve essays interacting with Iain Murray's book The Reformation of the Church.
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The second section of Iain Murray’s The Reformation of the Church is titled “The Rule for Reformation—The Word of God.” Martin Luther argues, over against the Roman doctrine of the infallibility of the Church and the Pope, that all human men are sinners subject to error, and that therefore their writings must be submitted to the judgment of Scripture. William Cunningham lays out the Regulative Principle established by the reformers—the doctrine that all the Church’s practices in worship must be positively found Scripture, and he goes on to apply it to the matter of church government, arguing that the Scriptures set out a particular form of government to which we must hold. John Hooper, writing during the Vestment Controversy in England in the 1550s, gives four criteria which must be met for something to be considered a “thing indifferent,” and concludes that the wearing of special priestly garments does not meet the criteria and is therefore prohibited by Scripture. John a Lasco delves into the vestments issue more deeply, showing how their use is prohibited by the abolition of the Aaronic priesthood in Christ. Finally, an excerpt from the Geneva Service Book of 1556 gives several scriptural proofs for the Regulative principle.

It has been said that the formal principle of the Reformation was the authority of Scripture alone. It is the authority and sufficiency of Scripture for faith and practice with which these selections are concerned. The more I reflect on sola scriptura and read the writings of these men who were so dedicated to being ruthlessly subjected to the dictates of the Bible, the more I come to understand how fundamental God’s Word is to the Church.

From Scripture itself, we see that God’s people are always created by God’s Word—from his creating word recorded in Genesis, to his covenanting word to Abraham that called a people out of the world to Himself, to his re-creating Word, Jesus Christ, who regenerates God’s people and justifies them. God’s word also sustains and sanctifies his people, providing the spiritual nourishment needed to transform them by the renewing of their minds and conforming them into the image of His Son. It is entirely natural then, that God’s Word should be the power that drives the reformation of His people. Studying the Reformers’ dedication to Scripture makes me delight all the more in God’s goodness in giving us His word and strengthens my desire to know it and teach it.

I found Hooper’s treatment of the Regulative Principle and its relationship to “things indifferent” thought-provoking. He defines things indifferent as things that “bring no profit when done or used, but no harm when not done or used.” Interestingly, though it seems natural to assume these things are not to be found in Scripture, Hooper says just the opposite. Things indifferent “must have their origin and foundation in the Word of God,” else they may not be used in the Church. This understanding seems almost contradictory, for why would God institute something in the Bible if it brings no profit? Hooper gives no example of a thing indifferent that meets the conditions he sets forth—the only specific thing discussed is the use of vestments, which he finds prohibited by the abrogation of the Aaronic priesthood. Perhaps this confusion is because Hooper’s manuscript is incomplete, but while I think he does an admirable job of debunking the use of vestments, I must confess I don’t understand his treatment of “things indifferent.”

Lastly, I found the brief selection from the Geneva Service Book very instructive. After hearing the Regulative Principle asserted in the first few readings (and in other sources), it was helpful to see specific instances from Scripture and church history where it was applied.

Review: Reformation of the Church by Iain Murray (part 1 of 12)

This post is the first of what will ultimately be twelve essays interacting with Iain Murray's book The Reformation of the Church.
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In his introduction to The Reformation of the Church: a collection of Reformed and Puritan documents on Church issues, Iain Murray lays out his reasons for publishing this volume of collected works. He outlines how questions of the internal life of the Church were being discussed widely in England at the time of the volume’s publication, driven largely by an ecumenical movement that raised these topics in an attempt to “burst the bands” of denominationalism (p. 7). Murray points out that the Reformers and Puritans wrote extensively on the Church, and that their works had virtually disappeared from the conversation by the early twentieth century. This volume is intended to remedy that deficiency, providing the perspective of the men who perhaps more than anyone else in history had to consider the nature of the Church as they dealt with the world-shaking implications of the recovery of the gospel of justification by faith alone.

It is quite appropriate that Murray chose to contribute to the conversation about the Church by recovering the writings of the Reformers. At a time when the Archbishop of Canterbury explicitly denies the sufficiency of Scripture for “the proper conduct of life and the ordering of the church, [p. 8]” nothing could be more appropriate than the testimony of men whose lives, works, and, for many, their martyrdom, were driven by the conviction that Scripture was indeed sufficient—and supremely authoritative—for shaping the character of the Church.

One might question the effectiveness of the volume as a contribution to the target discussion. After all, how much influence could it have with those who explicitly deny the authority or sufficiency of scripture or both, when Murray himself states that “the documents provided in this book…will be of help only to those who are prepared to bring everything to the judgment of Scripture [p. 9]?” Upon further reflection, however, perhaps it indeed contributes much to the great conversation about the Body of Christ. Clearly this conversation is much wider than mid-twentieth century debates about ecumenism, and input from the Reformers and Puritans should be useful to practically every Christian, whether clergy or layman, who wants to think carefully and biblically about the Church.

In Section I of the book, entitled “The Nature of the Church,” Murray presents excerpts from works by John Calvin and a number of English reformers who were martyred for their faith, many during the reign of Mary Tudor in the 1550s. The selections focus on arguing that the Roman Catholic Church is not the true church and on laying out the distinguishing marks of a true and faithful visible church. The authors differ slightly on the second point—all of them who deal with it include faithful preaching of God’s Word and right administration of the sacraments, while Nicholas Ridley adds charity and “faithful observing of ecclesiastical discipline [p. 19].”

Ever since the Reformation, evangelical Protestants have referred to these practices as the marks of a true church. Are these the only necessary and sufficient marks, or were they asserted over against Roman Catholic error? That is, apart from the context of the reformation, if we were asked to list the scriptural marks of a true church today, would we come up with these three (preaching, sacrament, discipline), and would there be any others?

The logic of the Reformers’ argument, becomes clear when one considers the role that each of these practices serves in the Church. God’s Word creates His people, and His self-revelation in the Bible is the only way we are able to know Him and his salvation in Christ. Preaching, therefore, creates, sustains, and perfects God’s people The ordinances, in turn mark out the boundaries of God’s people. Baptism witnesses the conversion of a believer and his entrance into the fellowship of the church, and the Lord’s Supper displays the continued fellowship of believers with one another in the unity of Christ. Church discipline maintains the purity of God’s people, guiding believers to continued repentance and cutting off from fellowship those who evidence their unbelief by refusing to repent.

To a Reformed evangelical in the twenty-first century, the arguments that these Reformers draw out of Scripture seem natural, basic, even obvious. At the time, however, they would have been astoundingly controversial for their distinct contradiction of Roman Catholic doctrine. In a time when contradicting Rome was rather hazardous to one’s health, one can hardly help admiring these men for their deep commitment to God’s Word. They clearly feared God, rather than men, and we would do well to learn from their faithful example.

Habakkuk 1:1-11: Two Perspectives

For as long as sin and its effect have been at work in the world, people have looked around them at the evil and misery they see, and asked the question “Why?” The people of God have often asked it of Him, and a similar one: “How long will you tolerate this?” This is precisely the question that the Old Testament prophet Habakkuk raises at the beginning of the book that bears his name. Two sermons, one by Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, and the other by Andrew Davis of First Baptist Church, Durham, NC, each look at Habakkuk 1:1-11 and seek to explain and apply it to the congregation. Each deals with the text, each applies the 2600-year-old story to modern life, and each presents the Gospel. One of them, however, explains the text in relation to the rest of the message of the Bible, and for this reason it is a better sermon.

Driscoll’s sermon, to begin, is somewhat unusual in that while it is an hour long, approximately forty minutes of it is taken up with what is essentially an introduction. He briefly explains Habakkuk’s attitude and his first question in vv. 2-4, and then spends over half an hour trying to paint a picture for the congregation, trying to get them to understand and identify with Habakkuk’s perspective. As Habakkuk saw the suffering and injustice in his world (as Driscoll says it), he wants the congregation to consider the suffering and injustice in their own. So he relates numerous anecdotes: a widow blaming God for taking her husband and thrusting hardship upon her, stories of disorder and chaos and frustration in his own life the previous week, suffering and violence on the TV news, abusive and indolent fathers, corrupt police, greedy lawyers, power-mongering politicians and judges, arsonist firefighters, laws that discourage marriage, organ-transplant surgeries gone wrong, con artists who scam the elderly, magazines and advertisements and sex-ed programs encouraging children and adolescents to perversion and immorality, and more.

Finally, Driscoll comes to considering the passage, and he has three main points. The first, from vv. 1-4, is “Habbakuk’s Complaint.” Habakkuk cries out to God in prayer because he is wearied and sickened by the evil he sees around him. Driscoll encourages the congregation to consider that “this world stinks,” and join Habakkuk in going to God. Point two, from vv. 5-11, is “God’s Castigation.” God responds to Habakkuk’s prayer, saying that He too is frustrated and angered by the sins of people, and that he is going to respond by sending the Babylonian army to destroy them. Driscoll spends several minutes explaining the fearsome character of the Babylonians presented in these verses, translating the description into modern terms so his audience can understand them. Finally, his third point is “Christ’s Cross.” Driscoll here explains the gospel: just as God called his people to repentance through Habakkuk, so too he calls us to repentance through the preaching of His word. Jesus Christ died on the cross as a substitute, paying the penalty for the sins of all His people.

Davis’ sermon, by contrast is at the same time much shorter (32 minutes) and much more closely exegetical. He begins with a short recounting of the historic triumphalism that characterized Western society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and then goes on to set forth some of the questions that the horrors of the twentieth century raised. Is there any meaning to history? Is God holy? Is he sovereign? Is he good? The book of Habakkuk, Davis explains, contains “Modern Words from an Ancient Scroll.”

Davis also has three main points. First, from vv.2-4, “Why Does a Just God Tolerate Injustice?” He briefly recounts the history of Israel—God’s promises to Abraham, her righteous heritage as God’s chosen people, Israel’s continual rebellion and sin, most recently that of kings Manasseh and Jehoiakim. Habakkuk considers the depravity of the Israelites, and asks God how long he will tolerate their rebellion. Second, God delivers his response, “The Babylonians Are Coming!” God sovereignly replies, saying he is going to raise up the Babylonians, a fearsome and wicked people, to punish Judah for her sins. Finally, from this passage we see “Five Lessons On History.” History is under God’s control, it follows His divine plan, it follows his divine timetable, it is bound up with the Kingdom of God and fulfilled in Christ, and justice is always done in the end.

There is a distinct difference in tone between these two sermons that reflects the different perspectives of their authors and the churches in which they were preached. Driscoll’s sermon is hip, funny, at times irreverent, and relevant. Oddly, in his forty-minute intro that he says is intended to paint a picture of suffering, there is as much wit and humor as soberness and grief. This surely detracts from the effect he says he is trying to produce, and leads one to wonder if he isn’t just as interested in entertaining his audience as enlightening his congregation. In the sermon overall, Driscoll’s language indicates that Habakkuk’s message is as much about the bad things that happen today as the evil that he saw in his own time. Davis’ tone, by contrast, is far different. He is far more focused on God’s word than current events, as he doesn’t reference them after the third minute of the sermon. Where Driscoll uses current events and hip language to interpret Scripture, Davis uses Scripture to interpret itself.

There is also a fundamental difference in the way these two pastors treat the problem that Habakkuk is complaining of. Driscoll sees Habakkuk looking around him and seeing sin and evil in the world, and he’s sick of it, so he asks God how long he’s going to let him (and perhaps other good people) suffer. Davis, on the other hand, sees that the problem is not just evil in general, but sin. And more importantly, the sin of God’s own people. The people of Judah were his own chosen people, called by His name, but they were rebelling against God. In their wickedness, they were defaming God’s name and lying about His character. Habakkuk, from this perspective, is not just being noisily uncomfortable, he’s concerned about the character and the glory of God Himself. He wonders why God tolerates this wickedness because he knows that God is holy and just, and forestalling the display of his judgment doesn’t make sense.

This leads to the most fundamental and important difference between these two sermons. While Driscoll considers the message of this text in virtual isolation from the rest of the Bible (and mostly in isolation from the rest of the book), Davis carefully, masterfully, places it in the scope and sequence of redemptive history. While Driscoll adequately explains how this passage illustrates the justice of God and how it points to Christ, Davis shows how God’s justice, as well as his holiness, love, sovereignty, and mercy, is played out in history as God works out his plan to save a people to Himself through Christ. Because Davis’ perspective is so much more comprehensive, he is able to show how the first eleven verses of Habakkuk contain a richness of truths about God and His character, about history, about the Kingdom of God, and about what it means to be one of His people.

That Davis has a better knowledge of Scripture seems clear, and it affects the message. Driscoll’s sermon, while I would take issue with his tone and method, does an adequate job of explicating the text and a good job of presenting the Gospel. For this reason, it might make a good evangelistic address. In the church, however, preaching to the people of God, Davis’ is certainly preferable for the depth of insight and commitment to Scripture that it displays.

Review: The Bruised Reed by Richard Sibbes

Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the second person of the Trinity, is presented in Scripture as an inescapably fearful figure. The vision of Him that John records at the beginning of Revelation left John on his face as though dead, and considering Christ as the great Judge who will destroy His enemies at the last day has caused many more men to be utterly abased and driven to despair. But, strangely, gloriously, Jesus is also the Comforter, the Wonderful Counselor and Good Shepherd who is wondrously tender with His sheep. It is this tender, comforting side of Christ’s nature that Richard Sibbes is primarily concerned with meditating on in The Bruised Reed, and it is indeed a wonderful meditation.

Sibbes’ text is from Isaiah 42:

Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my spirit upon him: he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench: he shall bring forth judgment unto truth.

From this passage, and especially verse three, Sibbes elaborates beautifully on the person and offices of Christ as the Servant of God who treats His people with the utmost care as He sustains and purifies them, bringing forth “judgment unto truth.” The bruised reed, Sibbes says, represents a man who is in misery because of his sin and is despondent but for the hope he has in Christ. Christ will handle this person, bruised by his sin, gently, until through the misery he is purged of sin. Likewise, the smoking flax stands for a Christian in whom, though the flame of the Holy Spirit is kindled, it is weak, and the fumes of sin’s effects make him miserable. In the same way, Christ will not quench this believer, but will fan into flame the spark that he possesses until it grows and burns away all sinful impurities and he becomes a bright light shining forth the glory of God. As Jesus is so gently shepherding us, he is bringing forth the judgment of His gracious kingdom in us and through us, and one he will have brought it forth to victory and His kingdom will be consummated.

Everyone who struggles with sin—and that means every true believer—should find this book tremendously encouraging and comforting. There are times when each of us is in misery because of his own sin and its cancerous effects in our lives. In these times, we need more than anything else what Sibbes provides: a meditation on Christ and His work in our lives. Focusing on Christ, not on ourselves, is key to finding comfort and assurance when we feel particularly “bruised.”

Perhaps the only criticism that may justly be offered against The Bruised Reed is that it is not as narrowly exegetical as he seems to be at first blush, or as one would normally expect from a sermon. Sibbes lays out a wealth of comfort, encouragement, inspiration, and truth in these pages, but it is not always clear that it all comes from the Isaiah text. A great deal of the significance Sibbes finds in the images in this passage seem to be related to the meaning of the text primarily in an allegorical way, rather than literally or typologically. For example, his image of sparks (from the flax) by nature flying upwards as a symbol of the “Spirit of grace carry[ing] the soul heaven-ward and sett[ing] before us holy and heavenly aims,” does not seem to be the originally intended meaning of the passage. Additionally, some of the other passages he cites throughout the text don’t seem to closely support the point he intends them to make. For example, he uses 1 Corinthians 3:17, making a point about a Christian being “a sacred thing,” when the context of the passage clearly indicates that it refers to the corporate body of the church, not to individual Christians.

For all this inexact application and occasional stretching the meaning of the text (and it is really a minor problem), the book is still packed chock-full of wonderful nuggets of truth that I will be meditating on for some time to come. One of the more helpful is a point that he makes throughout the book, speaking to the man who is so painfully aware of his sin that it makes him miserable, and causes him to question whether there really is any true faith and repentance in him. He says,
Fire, where it is present, is in some degree active. So the least measure of grace works, as springing from the Spirit of God, who, from his operations, is compared to fire. Even in sins, when there seems nothing active but corruption, there is a contrary principle, which breaks the force of sin, so that it is not boundlessly sinful, as in those that are carnal.

Even when sin is so hideously present that it seems to obscure all else—when the fire cannot be seen because of all the smoke—still we can find comfort in that the awareness of sin and conviction is itself an evidence of grace. Were there no Spirit within us—no fire—we would feel no conviction and misery—no smoke. So then, in some ways misery because of sin is something for which to thank God, because in it we know that He has given us new life and is busy refining us into the image of Christ, painful though the process may be.

Review: The Worship of the American Puritans by Horton Davies

In The Worship of the American Puritans, Horton Davies provides an in-depth study of the theology and practice of the Puritans in New England in the seventeenth century that is useful as a historical study, as an aid for any Christian who wants better to understand the background for many Reformed worship practices today, and as a glimpse of the wholehearted devotion of a people perhaps more dedicated to Godliness than any other in American history. As he examines their religious calendar, sermons, singing, prayers, administration of the sacraments, marriages, funerals, ordinations, and even their architecture, several themes or beliefs emerge that pervaded Puritan life and shaped every area of their public worship. Among these are their belief in divine sovereignty and predestination, their concern for “visible sainthood” and maintaining a pure church, and their application of the regulative principle which resulted in a relentless determination to subject everything they did in worship to the rule of Scripture.

Davies seems to make much of what he regards as a paradox in Puritan theology. On one hand, they were rigorous Calvinists, with a firm belief in man’s natural depravity and the complete sovereignty of God in electing men to salvation. On the other hand, their extreme emphasis on holy living made it seem as though good works were an essential part of salvation. Furthermore, very few Puritans seem to have had much assurance of their salvation, as they often subjected themselves to intense soul-searching, wondering if their professed faith were true and they were indeed among the elect. To Davies, the very idea of a covenanting Calvinist—one who commits to live a life of visible sainthood in the community of believers—is somewhat paradoxical.

However, the paradox is explained if one looks at the Puritans’ beliefs from the standpoint of the Reformation commitment to fully submitting to Scripture. The Puritans believed in election and personal holiness simply because they saw both taught in Scripture. They understood that God has chosen to save a people to the praise of His glory, and that being saved by God entailed growing to be more like Christ. Since the purpose of salvation was God’s glory, they understood that salvation produced good works—not the other way around, as so often seems to make sense from a sinful human perspective.

The Puritans’ struggles with assurance, however, are somewhat troubling. They believed, rightly, that only God knew finally who the elect were, but they seem to have gone beyond proper humility into persistent unbelief in this area. That is, they seem to have fallen, often, into focusing so much on their own works as evidences of election and true faith that they ended up undermining Calvinism’s emphasis on the objective work of Christ in salvation, over against human action.

Undermining of assurance is common in the evangelical world today. It is often based on poor theology and a bad understanding of the Gospel. When salvation is based on a prayer prayed, an aisle walked, or a card signed, it’s easy and common for the professing Christian, as he continues to struggle with sin, to question whether or not he really meant it. Even those who properly understand what it means to be a Christian, however, are not immune to assurance-sapping doubt. Even those who understand that continuing Christ-likeness rather than a decision is the evidence of true belief can despair of being truly elect in the face of their own sin. We must understand that all the demands, promises, and callings of a disciple are fully and finally fulfilled in Christ. In our quest for assurance, we must look first at Christ and His work before looking at our own lives. We must have Christ’s perfect obedience and His mediation as the lens through which we look at our own imperfect obedience. We can and should find assurance of our election, but we must find it in Christ, not in our own obedience or works or faith or visible sainthood. The Puritans, at least as Davies presents them, didn’t seem to understand this well.

Another thorny area of Puritan theology, as Davies’ work shows, is the nexus of their doctrine of visible sainthood, their Congregationalist ecclesiology, their understanding of covenant, and their theology of the sacraments. Davies points out that while Calvin believed a true church to exist wherever the right preaching of the word, proper administration of the sacraments, and proper discipline were practiced, the Puritans took it a step further in their understanding that the church was to be made up of visible saints—those who demonstrated their discipleship by public repentance and evidence of conversion. This concern for visible sainthood seems to be a product of their Congregationalist understanding of the local nature of the church. This understanding also led them to form their churches by covenanting together in commitment to rightly displaying the character of God by discipling one another and pursuing personal and corporate holiness.

This nexus of beliefs became problematic in connection with their understanding of the sacraments. Specifically, retaining the practice of infant baptism led to depreciation of the sacraments, impure church membership, and eventually the infamous Half-Way Covenant. They understood that visible sainthood and a discernable conversion experience were prerequisite to participation in the Lord’s Supper, but because membership in the church was gained by being baptized as an infant, after only a few decades the Puritans’ churches were full of unregenerate people who had to be excluded from communion and whose children were not eligible for baptism because their parents displayed no evidence of regeneration. This flawed ecclesiology and covenant theology is perhaps the most instructive negative example to be gained from the Puritans.

The Reformation of the Church

The Protestant Reformation was a world-shaking event. It changed the structure of society wherever its doctrines took root, and the recovery of the Gospel which was its central focus brought millions of people out of spiritual darkness and into the light of Christ. The doctrine of justification by faith alone, which Luther called “the article by which the Church stands or falls”, was at the center of the radically different Protestant understanding of what it meant to be a Christian. Three important areas of thought were particularly affected by sola fide: the understanding of the church, the pastor and his role, and the sacraments.

First, the Reformation turned upside down the doctrine of the church. In medieval Roman Catholicism (and in the Roman church to this day), the church was understood to be the visible structure of priests, bishops, cardinals, monks, nuns, and other ordained officials who all owed allegiance to the Pope, the Bishop of Rome and the Vicar of Christ. The Nicean attributes of the church—one, holy, catholic, and apostolic—were abused by Catholic theologians foundational to the claim that Rome’s visible structure was the only true church and that salvation could only be found in obedience to Rome and her dispensation of the sacraments.

The Reformation changed all this. The Reformers came to understand that ultimately, the bride of Christ is made up not of bishops and cardinals, but of those who truly repent of their sins and believe in Jesus Christ. Their understanding that the Roman church was corrupt and fundamentally apostate from the Gospel was revolutionary, for it showed them that a true church was distinguished by faithfulness to the Gospel, not allegiance to the Pope.

The Reformation also began to change how the church understood its relation to the world. The Roman Catholic Church had proclaimed its sovereignty over all merely human governments, and for much of the Middle Ages it did indeed control the political life of much of Europe. After the reformation, however, the Augustinian understanding of the distinction between spiritual, heavenly power and earthly power came to be understood once more. In England and elsewhere, the situation was in fact reversed and the secular monarch was considered to be the head of the national church as well. It would be some time later that congregationalism would lead to the disestablishment of religion and the modern understanding of a separate church and state.

The Reformation also resulted in a more biblical understanding of the pastor and his role in the church. In the Roman Catholic Church, the priest was believed to have important supernatural or magical powers, and he was a crucial part of mediating the grace of God to laymen. In the Eucharist, it was held, the priest re-sacrificed Christ by transubstantiating the elements of bread and wine into Christ’s actual body and blood. The priest was also supposed to have the power to grant absolution after hearing confession and assigning penance.

In the Reformation, the role of the priest shifted from performing the Eucharist to the preaching of God’s Word. Since Protestants no longer believed that the sacraments had salvific power, they understood that the priest couldn’t forgive sin or directly administer the grace of God the way Catholics believed he could. Rather, they understood that since salvation comes through faith alone and that faith comes by hearing the Word of God, the priest’s—now the pastor’s—most important duty was preaching the life-giving Word to the people.

This new focus on preaching meant that the standards for being a clergyman in a Reformed church were far different than those for being a priest in the Catholic Church. Though Rome may have had stricter official requirements, many Catholic priests were scarcely literate, since the mere recitation of the liturgy required little education and virtually no knowledge of the Scriptures. In contrast, to be ordained as a minister of the Word of God required thorough knowledge of the Bible and true theology, and substantial training in preaching and exegesis. Pastors were also expected to be examples of personal holiness and devotion to God, which was a stark contrast from the extreme moral degradation of the medieval Catholic clergy.
Finally, the Reformation had important implications for Protestants’ understanding of the nature of the sacraments. Whereas Rome had seven sacraments (baptism, confirmation, communion, confession, marriage, holy orders, and last rites), the Reformers rejected all but baptism and the Lord’s Supper, as these were the only ones instituted by Jesus in the New Testament. Though faithful administration of these were considered to be a mark of a true church, they were no longer considered essential for salvation. God’s grace in Christ’s atonement, they understood, was applied to the believer solely through faith, not by performance of any works.

The Protestant view of the Lord’s Supper differed from the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist primarily in their rejection of transubstantiation, though Protestant views varied. Luther continued to believe in the real physical presence of Christ’s body in the elements of the supper, though he understood this to be brought about by the faith of the communicant and not by the magical powers of a priest. Calvin and Zwingli denied Christ’s physical presence in the supper, understanding that Jesus’ physical body was at the right hand of God the Father in Heaven and instead teaching that Christ was spiritually present in the Supper and that the believing communicant fed on Christ in his heart.

The Reformers also rejected Rome’s belief that baptism regenerated the individual (usually an infant) to whom it was given. Though the Anabaptists in the Radical Reformation adopted believers’ baptism immediately, they were marginalized and persecuted throughout most of Protestant Europe. The Magisterial Reformers retained belief in infant baptism and articulated a new doctrine of covenant theology that understood baptism to be the sign of covenant membership and parallel to circumcision in the Old Testament. In the seventeenth century some Reformed Protestants began to embrace believers’ baptism, and Baptists eventually became one of the three major Reformed factions in England, with the Presbyterians and episcopalian Anglicans.

These three areas—the church, the role of pastors, and the sacraments—were perhaps the most notable of the doctrinal changes of the Reformation. They were tremendously important for the way the new Protestant churches developed and how they came to understand the Christian faith. They are perfect examples of the significance of the Reformers’ recovery of the gospel of justification by faith alone, and they are a wonderful picture of how Christ works to reform and perfect His Church.

Fundamentalism

In 1922 in New York City, Harry Fosdick preached a sermon entitled “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” At the time, Protestants were embroiled in a debate between liberal theology that had been on the rise for at least half a century and Fundamentalist theology, so named for its emphasis on “fundamentals of the faith” such as the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible, the virgin birth, divinity, resurrection, and second coming of Christ, and the substitutionary atonement. In his sermon Fosdick rails against the supposed intolerance of the Fundamentalists, arguing that Christians on both ends of the spectrum should be tolerant of each others’ views and avoid breaking fellowship with those of different opinions on these matters.

Though Fosdick has many good things to say, and his seeming zeal for spreading the Gospel is admirable, he ultimately is guilty of a dangerously errant view of the Scriptures, the Christian faith, and the place of tolerance in the Church. First, he has a poor understanding of the doctrine of Scripture and the nature of God’s Word. Fosdick accuses Fundamentalists of believing that the entirety of the Bible was “inerrantly dictated by God to men.” While there may have been a very small minority of Fundamentalists who held to this view in Fosdick’s day, it has never been the dominant or orthodox understanding of the mode of God’s inspiration of the Scriptures. This is simply a caricature by Fosdick that has little to do with the true Protestant doctrine of the plenary verbal inspiration of the Bible.

Fosdick’s counter-argument and his own understanding of Scripture contain both important elements of truth and significant problems. He compares the supposed Fundamentalist view to Islam’s doctrine that the Koran was written infallibly in heaven before being to given to Mohammed. He points out that this view of the origins of the Koran have stultified the culture of Muslim areas in enslavement to ideas like polygamy, slavery, God as an Oriental monarch, and the use of force on unbelievers. All of these things, he points out, are present in the Bible, but “are not final; they are always being superseded; revelation is progressive.” He says that the Bible is “the record of the progressive unfolding of the character of God to his people from early primitive days until the great unveiling in Christ.”

All of this is exactly right, but Fosdick demonstrates a poor understanding of Biblical Theology and the true nature of revelation. The two major acts of God with reference to man—redemption and revelation—go hand in hand, but they are not the same thing. Redemption has to do with the acts of God in space and time to save a people to himself throughout the generations of human history. Revelation has to do with the self-disclosure of God to men and follows the objective acts of God in redemptive history. The Bible is the written form of God’s self-revelation, and that revelation is indeed progressive. It starts with the relatively basic ways God dealt with the patriarchs, moves through the Law given to Moses and the age of the prophets, and finds its full and final expression, its glorious consummation, in Christ. God’s work of redemption goes on today in a subject-central way as he saves individuals to Himself, but Christ’s life, death, resurrection, and ascension mark the completion of His objective acts of redemption, and the completion of His special revelation.¹ Fosdick, with a bad understanding of this, wrongly sees the Bible primarily as a source of inspiration and private, spiritual importance that essentially has different meaning for the modern Christian than for the pre-modern believer.

His view of Scripture also reveals something of what he believes about God. As a Christian, he clearly does not believe that the Koran is in fact the inspired word of God. He believes it to be a work of purely human invention and believes that the (wrong) treatment of it as God’s word is responsible for the calcification of the Muslim world in a medieval culture. He applies the same reasoning to the Bible, implying that if the Fundamentalists won and the Bible were treated the same way, it would have a similar result. It seems, then that Fosdick sees the Bible (like the Koran) not as the breathed-out word of an eternal, omniscient, timeless God. If he did, he might understand that the Word is equally applicable to all ages regardless of when it was written, and whether it was actually dictated or less directly inspired. Taken to its logical end, Fosdick’s line of thinking seems to end with an essentially Deistic view of God.

Fosdick also has a poor understanding of the role of tolerance among Christians and in the Church. He lambastes the Fundamentalists for excluding liberals from Christian fellowship, saying that anyone is entitled to their opinions and asserting that a liberal like himself would never be so intolerant. He clearly thinks the Fundamentalists are wrong in their beliefs, but his attitude seems to be that the Fundamentalists should be tolerant even if they are in fact right. In so doing—and even in his own “tolerant” attitude—he completely neglects the duty of pastors and elders of the church to preserve true doctrine and maintain the true teaching of the faith once for all delivered to the saints. It is one thing to be “tolerant” of an individual who believes unbiblical and unorthodox doctrines—all Christians should indeed be tolerant of such a person, if tolerance includes welcoming them into the church and teaching them the true Gospel and right doctrine. The elders of the Church, however, neglect their calling and will be called to account before God if they allow false doctrine to spread in the church, especially if they allow it to be taught publicly.

Finally, Fosdick’s beliefs about the proper relationship of religion and science in the modern world are fundamentally flawed, though they are typical of the spirit of modernism that has plagued Christianity for more than two centuries. Fosdick is right when he says that “all truth comes from one God and is his revelation,” and in his assertion that believers must “see this [modern scientific] knowledge in terms of the Christian faith and to see the Christian faith in terms of this new knowledge.” He references the medieval controversy between the Roman Catholic Church, with its established Ptolemeian view of an earth-centered universe, and Galileo Galilei who advocated the Copernican sun-centered understanding of the solar system. Fosdick compares liberals to Galileo as the one trying to “blend the new knowledge and the old faith in a new combination,” and puts the Fundamentalists in the place of the cruel, dogmatic, repressive Church of Rome. This controversy, however, lies at the beginning of the modern spirit that places scientific “knowledge” and human reason above faith in the revealed word of God, relegating revelation only to the realm of private, internal, spiritual values rather than the source of all true knowledge.

The titular question Fosdick raises in this sermon is difficult to answer. It would seem that to some extent the answer is negative, as the spirit of modernism pervades much of today’s evangelical world. Many Christians today do indeed view the Bible as only having importance for their feeble, privatized religion that is relevant only one day per week. On the other hand, the orthodox faith is alive and well in many churches where biblical doctrine is still taught. Christ, after all, has promised to build and preserve His church, and He will guard her from false teaching. To the extent that “fundamentalism” is part of the faith once for all delivered to the saints (a dubious assertion, but one for another essay), then, the answer is, yes. Not only shall the fundamentalists win, they must win, for they are the true followers of the Lord Jesus Christ who believe His true Gospel.

¹See Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2000), 5-8.