Why the Reformation Still Matters by Michael Reeves and Tim Chester, Inter-Varsity Press, £9.99
Who is this book for? Not Catholics, it seems. Michael Reeves and Tim Chester are out to fortify fellow Protestants in their historical convictions: the Reformation “is our story. If you are Anglican, Baptist, Brethren, Congregational, Independent, Lutheran, Mennonite, Methodist, Presbyterian, Pentecostal or Reformed, then these are your roots.”
But actually Catholics could profit from reading this book. Two intelligent, sincere, articulate men make their case for the Reformation and its continuing, all-consuming importance. They are not in the mood to pussyfoot around. The differences between Protestants and Catholics “cannot be ignored”. At stake in the Reformation was “our eternal future, a choice between heaven and hell. And it still is.”
Chapter by chapter, Reeves and Chester work through the dividing lines. First up is the doctrine of justification. Nothing, the authors argue, matters more than justification by Christ through faith alone. If this doctrine does not stand, then every person on earth faces a problem that “dwarfs all the other problems we face”: the problem of God’s judgment.
Luther constructed his way out from this dilemma through studying St Paul’s Letter to the Romans: “The just person lives by faith.” Justification, write the authors, “is a deeply personal doctrine. Every time I sin I create a reason to doubt my acceptance by God and I question my future with God. But day after day the doctrine of justification speaks peace to my soul.”
Catholics might say that day after day the sacrament of Confession, and hope in God’s infinite mercy, speak peace unto our souls (while never remotely letting us off the hook for our actions). Luther, however, despite being, in his own words, a “blameless monk”, was wracked with fear and tormented by the hatred he was beginning to feel for the God of punishment.
Readers will also ask, of course, about all those good and honest people who do not achieve faith. On this point, the book is silent.
Reeves and Chester deal with 11 themes in all, including, of course, sola scriptura. The Reformation endures because it is a “continual movement back to God’s word”. Some questions endure too, however. Zwingli could assert that God’s words “have always a true and natural sense”, and Calvin could call those who rely on their own readings of Scripture “mad”; Reeves and Chester themselves bemoan that people nowadays “react aggressively” to any challenge to their thinking. Yet Luther was very clear: “Christ is my bishop, abbot, prior, lord, father and teacher. I accept no other.”
So, really, what was there to prevent one utterly sincere group after another striking out on its own, nourished and inspired by a particular interpretation of Scripture or by a clever, charismatic preacher? It was not long, after all, before the Anabaptists were being subjected to vicious persecution by fellow Reformers.
The authors’ answers to this question are partial and rather hazy, but, in fairness to them, Why the Reformation Still Matters is primarily a restatement of key principles. It does not sell itself as a book in which every theological duel will be re-fought in fine detail.
The book is also full of compelling extracts from Luther and St Paul, and some from Calvin too. Strikingly, though, there are very few sayings of Christ. What, for example, do the authors make of Matthew 5:22, where Jesus says that “whosoever saith, ‘Thou fool’, shall be liable to the hell of fire”. And what do they make of “Forgive us our trespasses”? Why would Jesus instruct us to ask for God’s forgiveness for our actions if we were justified by faith alone?
No doubt theologians have addressed these matters elsewhere. But it would have been helpful if Reeves and Chester had grappled with them too.
Occasionally, the authors let themselves down in more aggravating ways. There is, for example, a crass and patronising comparison of Our Lady to a “drinks dispenser”, her grace being like an “energy drink” that spiritually “pumps up” those who consume it.
Meanwhile, God’s mercy, so central to Catholic theology, is scarcely mentioned. So, while Catholics might read with interest the passage on, for example, the Reformers’ theology of the spirit, and indeed appreciate its value as a corrective to empty formalism, this becomes harder when the gratuitous, scornful digs keep coming.
The 500th anniversary of Luther’s theses-nailing is nearly upon us. The flow of books hasn’t quite become a torrent yet, but it is certainly gathering force. Who knows where Michael Reeves and Tim Chester’s will sit in the pecking order when it’s all over and done. My feeling is that their book (despite the lapses into knee-jerk anti-Catholicism – which, in truth, could have been worse and more frequent) will have long-lasting value as a concise, trenchant, bracing defence of traditional Protestantism.
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