The Catholicity of the Reformation

Rating:
Summary: That All May Be One
Review: Reviewed by Leonard R. Klein
Two visions of the Church struggle for dominance in contemporary American Protestantism. The first view sees the Reformation as a completed fact, a success that has brought us freedom of conscience and worship and the worldly blessings of progress and democracy. Some who hold this view cherish catholic substance, while others argue that the form and tendency of the Reformation warrant continuing reformation away from the catholic tradition. But they all agree that the separation of Protestantism from Rome must be maintained.
The second view is articulated in The Catholicity of the Reformation, a series of lectures delivered in 1995 under the auspices of the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology in Northfield, Minnesota. This view is less sanguine about Protestantism. It does not accept the breach of the sixteenth century as permanent or, more important, as good. In this minority view, the value and integrity of the Reformation lie in its continuity with catholic tradition.
The writers collected in The Catholicity of the Reformation are with one exception Lutherans, and they are well positioned to argue that the catholicity of the Reformation is its true genius. While Anglicans might dispute the point, Lutherans can make a credible claim for being the most completely catholic of the Protestant communions to emerge from the sixteenth century. Liturgy, creeds, dogma, iconography, music, and sacramentality all survived the turmoil of the Reformation. The ancient episcopal order did less well, but the Lutherans were always willing to have it and kept it where they could. The struggle for Lutherans and other Protestants is whether the original intentions of the Reformation will shape their future or whether Protestantism will continue to aggravate the division of the Church by unceasing novelties or stubborn reluctance to change.
The essays in this volume present fine examples of the theological work that results when the Reformation's catholicity and commitment to the unity of the Church are properly valued and when the need for genuine renewal and reform is posited by Protestants for Protestantism. Protestants often use the catholicity of the Reformation defensively- we're catholic too!-to stave off genuine reevaluation. The authors anthologized by Carl Braaten and Robert Jenson, however, show what continuing reform and ecumenical seriousness might require.