Don't blame the Reformation. . .

As we pause to remember the Reformation, we cannot do so without also confronting some of the myths about that Reformation.  Chief among them is the whole idea that Lutherans are Protestants.  While there was a brief period in which that term could have applied to Lutherans, no Lutheran should feel comfortable under that banner today.  Part of this discomfort lies in the way the autonomous individual has become the hallmark of Protestant thinking and identity and how this has been absorbed by politics and social and individual thinking outside religion.

One of the sad byproducts of the Reformation was succumbing to the temptation to define humanity by the intellect and the will and to presume that the Gospel was primarily motivation or inspiration needed so that people could understand themselves and the world in which they live and make better choices (especially when it comes to behavior).  Perhaps the die was cast when Erasmus issued forth upon the freedom of the will and Luther responded with the bondage of the same.  In any case, religious information has become the sacrament of conversion and improvement in human behavior.  The world around us has certainly jumped on that band wagon though with sad results. 

The reduction of life to information and choice is a corruption of the Scriptures and of catholic tradition but it is also a destructive foundation that cannot and will not support our lives as individuals or our lives together as a family, community, and nation.  Upon emigrating to America, C. F. W. Walther once complained that American churches had become lecture halls and worship and faith all about information and morality.  He saw Lutheranism as anything but this kind of church or theology.  But the criticism is easier than mending the whole idea that it all boils down to matters of intellect or will.

You have seen how quickly this idea has spread.  The volumes written to systematize and organize Christian theology have resulted in one that is certainly less Biblical but it is also not authentic nor does it bear witness to the Word made flesh.  Most of these volumes are an attempt not to teach what Scripture says but to impart understanding and knowledge that is largely an appeal to the mind and the rationale for this is to improve decision making.  Gone is any real sense of beauty or mystery and present in worship as well as theology is the decision to make things black and white.  Even where this is absent today, the spirituality is without foundation in Scripture except for an occasional proof text that functions like the meme in social media to illustrate rather than encounter the living voice of God.

Those who design churches have taken this to heart, emphasizing the horizontal over the vertical and turning altars into tables whose scale and position are not allowed to detract from the pulpit.  Even the modern churches with their Lucite podiums want people to know that the one speaking is the center of attention.  The sacraments are also rans in the whole idea of how we go to God and absent from it all is the very idea that God has come to us.  Success in churches is measured not by fidelity but by numbers and especially by likes and consumer ratings.  Christianity then quickly morphed into a media of religious morality (information+decision) with the only real debate as to which morality is better than others.  The poverty of Protestantism is that there is no Biblical ethic that cannot and will not be surrendered to the supremacy of the individual and no judgment valued except happiness and self-fulfillment and self-expression. This is now so commonplace that many conservative Christians and Lutherans are surprised that this is not how it has always been.

Christians became consumers and worshipers became an audience and truth became whatever you would summarize or consolidate in a few clear words.  It is no wonder that Biblical illiteracy is greater now than ever.  We do not want to hear God's voice.  We want to hear our own.  It is here that the Lutheran Reformation lives.  Luther was not appealing to an individual conscience but the common conscience of God's revealed truth.  His interest in education was tied to his desire to see people hear in Scripture the voice of God acting and doing what He has said.  The Church in Luther was not some community of like minded thinkers but the place where the Word spoke, a voice absolved, water gave new birth, and bread and wine tasted of the body and blood of Jesus.  The driving force here was not the individual or information or a choice but the Spirit calling, gathering, enlightening, and sanctifying.  This is a profoundly mystical understanding of what for most has become a decidedly banal and ordinary definition of and character to the Church. 

On this Reformation Day it would be good for us to remember that what Protestantism has become is an even greater danger to the Christian faith and life than the errors and abuses of medieval Roman Catholicism.  When he rode into town like a knight to restrain the extremists who thought they knew him, Luther did not but maybe should have foreseen what this would look like down the road.  If he had, he might have had a chance to make it clearer that this was not the Reformation he had envisioned.  In any case, the worst of Lutheranism and the whole of Protestantism have little to do with Luther and the Great Reformation and everything to do with the pursuit of ideas that cannot be supported by Scripture or found in the catholic tradition.  Until we learn this, the celebration of Reformation Day might be best surrendered to the forces of Halloween.  As the Reformation was in search of an anchor stronger than popes or councils, today it is in search of an anchor stronger than the preferences and desires of the individual.  Because of that I literally wince when someone defines Lutherans as Protestants.