Reformation 500: Triumph and Tragedy
As we commemorate the 500th anniversary of the beginnings of the Protestant Reformation, I must admit, I am deeply grieved. I resonate with the story Archbishop Justin Welby shared in the Evening Standard as he recounted the tears that streamed from both his and his Catholic counterpart's faces at a recent celebration of the Eucharist wherein they could not share table fellowship. The disunity and shattered state of modern Protestantism is a grave sin, and one that should not be lightly overlooked. Appeals to the original intent or goals of the Reformers do little to mitigate the disaster which is the fractured and broken church today.
I think there is an important criticism here, though I do not think it is the criticism that is actually being made by critics of Rome's alleged pseudo-catholicity. The false universalism of empire is an ever-present temptation to a religion that is motivated by the universalist impulses found within the theology of St. Paul. Imperial universalism is false insofar as it operates as a false claim to unlimited power that transgresses the actual limits of imperial reach. This has been a temptation of all great powers, and that it was also a temptation for the Bishops of Rome is no surprise. (Ironically, it was a Bishop of Rome who had, earlier in ecclesial history, warned the Patriarch of Constantinople against exactly this kind of false universalism.)
While I firmly believe there is a false universalism latent in the institutional logic of Roman Catholicism, the charge that Rome is too particular to be truly catholic seems to me to be wrong. The christological refocusing of the catholicity of the church by the Reformers is precisely the move that must allow for the logic of institutional particularity to help determine our accounts of catholicity. The logic of the incarnation, simply put, is that the universal comes to us through the particular. It is precisely because the infinite Logos condescended to be born in time, in place, in the limits of finite particularity, that the emancipatory universal hope of the gospel is made actual for us particular creatures. The incarnation IS the scandal of particularity, because it is only in the person of Jesus of Nazareth that we can come face to face with God.
Now, I do not want you, good reader, to misread this as a not so subtly veiled apologia for Roman supremacy - that is not what this is. Rather, I want to draw attention to the historical reality, that though the Reformers had discovered this Christological locus of catholicity, they both ignored and affirmed its relevance for ecclesiology. Yes, the Christological locus of catholicity exposes the false universalism of Rome, but it also demands a concrete expression borne by an institution to be realized. Thus, Protestantism eventually settled down into a range of various institutional denominations, many of them actually succumbing the false universalism that they had rightly exposed in Rome. The Neo-Constantinian settlement of the Reformation ultimately ignored the Reformation's greatest discovery and set the stage for the continued fragmentation that has led to the proliferation of almost 40 000 denominations globally today.
There are leading Protestant scholars today who do not regard institutional unity as a valid hope for true catholicity - worried, perhaps rightly, that it would foster a false universalism that would silence or destroy the multi-valent particularity of the global church. I regard this fear as a canard. True, institutions have this temptation, especially when they confuse the internal goods of true Christian praxis with the external goods of power and wealth. But it is also the case that the practice of Christianity requires an institutional setting for its very survival. Institutionalism can be oppressive, and this is what the Reformation stands as a reminder of, but they can also bear a tradition that is surprisingly broad and characterized by ongoing argument and discernment as the Roman Catholic church, at its best, also stands as a reminder of.
Institutional unity is perhaps an eschatological reality - there is very little evidence to think that the Church has enjoyed the unity of brethren dwelling in harmony since the end of Acts chapter 4. Nevertheless, I think the way forward for the catholic church is to continue to work to build a thick institutional catholicity, guided by the Reformation reminder that the true locus of Christian catholicity is in the person of Jesus Christ. May we one day all be able to share his table, receiving his body and blood in harmony, where our many tears of disunity are no more.
Yet it is not all bad news. The spirit of the Reformation has positively affected the world in many ways, through music, art, literature, science, good government, ecological protections, etc. Most significantly, the Reformation spirit even managed to bring about many of the reforms within the Roman Catholic Church that were called for in the 16th century - in spite of what Trent might have had to say. It may have taken some time, but the events around Vatican II should not be underestimated. Beginning with the resourcement undertaken by many leading Catholic theologians in the decades prior to Vatican II, and in the strong ecumenical push that has characterized the Vatican's activity since, today's RCC is a long way away from the Diet of Worms.
I want to unpack one further point on the Reformation that I hope ties together some of what I have been trying to say. The normal way of telling the story of the Reformation is that, throughout the mediaeval period, the Roman church while politically ascendant, became bogged down with corruption and allowed for the accumulation of many unhelpful traditions and doctrines to be elevated to the level of dogma. The church in its corruption was desperately in need of reform, and it was Luther, along with many others like Brucer, Zwingli, Melanchthon, Calvin, etc., who, through the application of the 5 Solas, were able to return the church to its Patristic consensus and recapture the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.It's a nice story, and in its broad outlines, it is correct, however, as John Milbank has pointed out and which I will not rehash here, it tends to gloss over some important elements of mediaeval theology that helps relocate the narrative.
On the above account, the charge that is made against the Roman Catholic Church is that it is not sufficiently catholic. On this account, the so-called catholicity of Rome was a claim to a false universal, bogged down as it was in the trappings and ideology of old Roman Imperial power and cultural forms. Simply put, this catholicity was too particular, and what the Reformers had discovered in their formulation of the 5 Solas was a renewed universalism that is the very universalism of the gospel itself, not bound down by human particularities and institutions. The Reformers, having drunk deeply from the universalism of St. Paul, had relocated true catholicity in the person of Christ (Solus Christus) and were thus able to follow the emancipatory proclamation of the apostle to which they gave expression in the doctrine of Sola Gratia.
On the above account, the charge that is made against the Roman Catholic Church is that it is not sufficiently catholic. On this account, the so-called catholicity of Rome was a claim to a false universal, bogged down as it was in the trappings and ideology of old Roman Imperial power and cultural forms. Simply put, this catholicity was too particular, and what the Reformers had discovered in their formulation of the 5 Solas was a renewed universalism that is the very universalism of the gospel itself, not bound down by human particularities and institutions. The Reformers, having drunk deeply from the universalism of St. Paul, had relocated true catholicity in the person of Christ (Solus Christus) and were thus able to follow the emancipatory proclamation of the apostle to which they gave expression in the doctrine of Sola Gratia.
I think there is an important criticism here, though I do not think it is the criticism that is actually being made by critics of Rome's alleged pseudo-catholicity. The false universalism of empire is an ever-present temptation to a religion that is motivated by the universalist impulses found within the theology of St. Paul. Imperial universalism is false insofar as it operates as a false claim to unlimited power that transgresses the actual limits of imperial reach. This has been a temptation of all great powers, and that it was also a temptation for the Bishops of Rome is no surprise. (Ironically, it was a Bishop of Rome who had, earlier in ecclesial history, warned the Patriarch of Constantinople against exactly this kind of false universalism.)
While I firmly believe there is a false universalism latent in the institutional logic of Roman Catholicism, the charge that Rome is too particular to be truly catholic seems to me to be wrong. The christological refocusing of the catholicity of the church by the Reformers is precisely the move that must allow for the logic of institutional particularity to help determine our accounts of catholicity. The logic of the incarnation, simply put, is that the universal comes to us through the particular. It is precisely because the infinite Logos condescended to be born in time, in place, in the limits of finite particularity, that the emancipatory universal hope of the gospel is made actual for us particular creatures. The incarnation IS the scandal of particularity, because it is only in the person of Jesus of Nazareth that we can come face to face with God.
Now, I do not want you, good reader, to misread this as a not so subtly veiled apologia for Roman supremacy - that is not what this is. Rather, I want to draw attention to the historical reality, that though the Reformers had discovered this Christological locus of catholicity, they both ignored and affirmed its relevance for ecclesiology. Yes, the Christological locus of catholicity exposes the false universalism of Rome, but it also demands a concrete expression borne by an institution to be realized. Thus, Protestantism eventually settled down into a range of various institutional denominations, many of them actually succumbing the false universalism that they had rightly exposed in Rome. The Neo-Constantinian settlement of the Reformation ultimately ignored the Reformation's greatest discovery and set the stage for the continued fragmentation that has led to the proliferation of almost 40 000 denominations globally today.
There are leading Protestant scholars today who do not regard institutional unity as a valid hope for true catholicity - worried, perhaps rightly, that it would foster a false universalism that would silence or destroy the multi-valent particularity of the global church. I regard this fear as a canard. True, institutions have this temptation, especially when they confuse the internal goods of true Christian praxis with the external goods of power and wealth. But it is also the case that the practice of Christianity requires an institutional setting for its very survival. Institutionalism can be oppressive, and this is what the Reformation stands as a reminder of, but they can also bear a tradition that is surprisingly broad and characterized by ongoing argument and discernment as the Roman Catholic church, at its best, also stands as a reminder of.
Institutional unity is perhaps an eschatological reality - there is very little evidence to think that the Church has enjoyed the unity of brethren dwelling in harmony since the end of Acts chapter 4. Nevertheless, I think the way forward for the catholic church is to continue to work to build a thick institutional catholicity, guided by the Reformation reminder that the true locus of Christian catholicity is in the person of Jesus Christ. May we one day all be able to share his table, receiving his body and blood in harmony, where our many tears of disunity are no more.
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