The Word Is Near You: Seeds of the Reformation

By Wipf and Stock

Beginning with the desires of our hearts and ending with the priesthood of all believers, this series of meditations traces a path through some central concerns of the Reformation. Along this path, the authors, all faculty at Wycliffe College, engage with biblical passages which were important at that time and remain just as vital today in working out what it means to be a Christian, what it means to be the people of God. It seems appropriate, given the central place Scripture had for the reformers, that we should follow their lead in looking to the Bible in the context of the life of the church. While some church communities enthusiastically proclaim their Reformation roots, others look askance at particular reformers and seek to distance themselves from the whole of the Reformation. Yet the Reformation is not an era we in the West can simply ignore; it is bred in our bones, runs through our veins, and shapes our life together in myriad ways. These meditations are not simply historical explorations or an exercise in documenting past events. Rather, the authors grapple with questions which we continue to struggle with today--questions of faith and grace, sin and salvation, work and worship. These meditations will provoke discussion and broaden our theological understanding while guiding us into a deeper understanding of the faith.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Sep 19, 2018
• ISBN: 9781532650598

Book preview

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The Word Is Near You

Seeds of the Reformation

edited by 
Peter M. B. Robinson

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The Word Is Near You

Seeds of the Reformation

Wycliffe Studies in Gospel, Church, and Culture

Copyright © 2018 Wipf and Stock Publishers. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Introduction

Chapter 1: The Heart Wants What It Wants

Chapter 2: By Faith Alone

Chapter 3: The Devil and the Details

Chapter 4: The Law Too Is Gracious

Chapter 5: I Am Not Ashamed

Chapter 6: He Even Milks the Cows through You

Chapter 7: On the Mountain with Jesus

Chapter 8: Come Back to Me with All Your Heart

Chapter 9: The Reformation Principle We Might Want to Forget

Chapter 10: Real Worship

Chapter 11: Power to the Priesthood (of All Believers)

Bibliography

Contributors

Wycliffe Studies in Gospel, Church, and Culture

The series entitled Wycliffe College Studies in Gospel, Church, and Culture is intended to present topical subject matter in an accessible form and seeks to appeal to a broad audience. Typically titles in the series derive from sermons given by the faculty of Wycliffe College, Toronto, in its Founders’ Chapel. The current volume is the fifth in the series.

Many thanks to the contributors to this current volume. I also want to thank Rachel Lott of Wycliffe College for her work on formatting the manuscript.

Peter M. B. Robinson

Introduction

Peter M. B. Robinson

What exactly are we celebrating? That is a question which came up again and again during the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. At times it seems as though the legacy of the Reformation is primarily one of division. In many cases division has been the rule rather than the exception: new denominations form only to quickly divide again. Having divided over one issue, it is much easier to then divide over another. Not exactly the kind of legacy the reformers envisioned.

There are signs that we are moving in a somewhat different direction today—towards a different kind of denominational fluidity with denominational distinctions appearing to matter less and less. New students arriving every September at Wycliffe College come from a wide variety of denominations, with the majority having changed denominations at least once if not several times. This denominational dance is both positive and negative: positive in that it suggests people are more open to engaging with other Christians in spite of denominational differences, and negative because, at least in part, it seems to reflect a consumer approach to church in which we are free to pick and choose the denomination which works best for me.

Living in the midst of a divided church, it can be important to recognize that the reformers, at least initially, had no intention of leaving the church or encouraging division. Rather, their hope and intention was to challenge the church to turn back in faithfulness to God. That call to faithfulness is a reminder that we need to hear again today. The difficulty is that not many would look to the reformers or seek to learn from them, because they can seem distant or even alien to us today, far more distant than some current leaders in the Catholic Church, particularly when the pope is a man like Francis. Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Thomas Cranmer, for example, are not only foreign to our modern sensibilities, but there are elements of their writing or their actions which seem abhorrent to us today. As a result many in the church, even in the Protestant Church, find it all too easy to dismiss or ignore their witness.

We live in an era where it has been far too easy to dismiss the past, especially when there are elements that we do not understand or that we disagree with. At the same time, beginning in the early 20th century, there has been a significant shift in the appreciation of both Eastern Orthodoxy and Catholicism and a recognition that those of us in the Protestant Church have much to learn from them. In an article to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, Stanley Hauerwas posed the question, Why am I not Catholic? He goes on to note that Catholicism is an intellectually rich theological tradition better able to negotiate the acids of our culture.¹ Indeed, some of the issues which concerned the reformers are just as much a problem in Protestant churches today as they were in the Catholic Church then. We have questions concerning faith, the way we are to think about and engage with the Bible, basic questions about the church, its identity and authority, as well as questions concerning the person and work of Christ.

In the midst of the decline of the church in the Western world, it is often asked what will this next era bring? Not only do we have a lot to learn from other denominations, we have a lot to learn from our respective and our shared traditions—from Irenaeus to Thomas Aquinas to Gregory of Palamas to Martin Luther. Several recent commentators describe a theology of retrieval or ressourcement: an ecumenical endeavor broadly shared across the church from Roman Catholic to Eastern Orthodox, as well as many Protestant denominations, as we seek to recover something of the wisdom of the saints. Disillusioned by the empty promise of steady progress towards an enlightened future and uncomfortably aware of the naïve optimism of our own era, there has been a growing recognition of how much we have to learn from a careful reading of and engagement with the tradition. Consistently, this retrieval has been driven not by historical curiosity or by a desire to better understand the past but by a commitment to see renewal in the church today—a call to faithfulness. A key element