The crisis of identity. . .

If you do not know the name of Richard Rex, you ought to.  He is currently professor of Reformation history at the University of Cambridge and author of The Making of Martin Luther, among other books.  He is a provocative thinker and worth the read even if you may not always agree with what he says.  In this case, I think he is spot on.

 It is beyond question that the Roman Catholic Church is currently in the throes of one of the greatest crises in its two-millennium history. In human terms, its future might be said to be in doubt for the first time since the Reformation. The broad contours of the present crisis are the onward march of secularization in Europe and North America, the purging of Christians from the ancient heartlands of the Middle East, and the erosion of South American Catholicism by the missions of the Protestant and prosperity gospels. More specifically, the horrific and continuing revelations of the sexual and physical abuse of the vulnerable by the clergy, and of the failure of the institutional Church to identify and address the issue, have in some places turned a Catholic retreat into a rout. The dramatic and utterly unforeseen collapse of Catholicism in Ireland in little more than a generation, for example, harks back to the tectonic religious shifts of the early sixteenth century. Only in Africa is there much by way of good news, and it is not always clear how good that news is.

It is a book review that offers much more than a mere review of the work cited.  Rex would have us see what is unfolding for Rome -- but not only for Rome -- the third great crisis of identity.  George Weigel seems to think his analysis is pretty important and we ought to give it a look as confessional Lutherans.

The thesis posited is that the first crisis of Christianity was the pointed and bitter conflict over the question “What is God?”  Eventually that question required an ecumenical council to answer and the solution was the Nicene Creed (First Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325 and the Council of Chalcedon 451). In that creed that has become the staple of every worship service of liturgical churches, we have a definitive statement both of the Trinity and Jesus Christ, true God and true man.  At Nicaea the Church confronted the heretics by affirming that Scripture clearly taught Jesus is truly God and the second person of the Trinity.  At Chalcedon the intricacies of the the incarnation and His divine and human union in the one person of Jesus Christ were explored and set as the standard of orthodox Christology.  Whether we believe it or not, this answer has served as the standard of any orthodox Christian confession ever since.

The second thesis is that the question of the Reformation and of other movements before the sixteenth century movement spearheaded by Martin Luther was the question "What is the Church?"  This was not resolved but ended up resulting in the second great schism of the Church (after 1054 and the break with Orthodoxy which was itself, at least in part, due to a Christological and Trinitarian issue). While Trent was the official response of Rome, it did not stave off the questions and it might be said that the whole Synodality issue in Rome today is the present fruit of the postponed conflict.  It might also be said that neither Wittenberg nor Geneva manifestly answered the question either and ecclesiology has been the Achilles' heel of Protestantism as well. It is at best a smoldering question with paper answers that have been effectively challenged by practice ever since.

Now the third thesis of Rex.  We are in the midst of an ongoing conflict around the question of "What is man?"  The Church seems to have lost its primacy in answering this question and many, especially Protestant but not only so, have deferred to the wisdom of culture and society.  In effect, the Church has lost her voice in a sea of letters and issues from abortion to gender, marriage to family, reproductive technology to euthanasia, contraception to assisted suicide.  Rex maintains that this crisis in secular society has been adopted by the Church and will be, in part, a defining moment of truth.  What was begun as a secular movement of thought has found a home within too many churches and voices even within those who officially repudiate the error of these positions according to Scripture and tradition.

All along the questions have had an underlying issue of truth.  How can the Church have been wrong in the cardinal issues of God, Church, and man?  If the Church has been wrong, how can she be right about anything else?  We are facing the deep abyss of truth and identity that will define not only for our time but for the future if we stand on the side of God, His revelation, and the faithful voices who have contended for the faith over the centuries or we stand on the uncertain ground of changing opinion.  If only we had another Nicea and Chalcedon to effectively give answer for all time according to the unchanging witness of God's Word and legitimate tradition!  Without that mechanism to affirm the truth that does not change, we are left floating on the sea of opinion without a mooring solid enough on which to offer the world anything but opinions.  Before we get there, we can only pray the Lord to come quickly and bring to an end our foolishness.