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310 ˜ A Work of Hospitality, 1982–2002
The End of the Reformation, by Ed Loring
J a n u a r y 2 0 0 0
The difference between a historian of ideas or intellectual historian—for example,
one who studies Christian thought—and a social historian, who would
study the history of the lives of Christians, was unknown to me until I became
pastor of Clifton Presbyterian Church in 1975. Subsequently, the distinction became
significant. A historian of ideas tells what a thinker thought. The social
historian tells about the consequences of those ideas as they hit the street and
marketplace. Often ideas and their consequences contradict each other; thus,
the point of view of the historian is important. As my friend on death row,
Robert Conklin, wrote to me recently, “What you see depends on where you are
standing.” That is why Jesus concludes his Sermon on the Mount with a test for
the truthfulness of ideas: “Be on your guard against false prophets. ... You will
know them by what they do” (Matt. 7:15a, 16a). Both the historians of thought
and false prophets can tell about the truth of the mind. The issue is how the idea
is put into practice.
Catholics and the Lutherans have just signed a document ending the conflict
of the Protestant Reformation. This war within the household of faith and
the lands of Christendom began in 1517 when the monk Martin Luther nailed
his Ninety-five Theses on the church door in Wittenberg, Germany. (If our
homeless friends, sent to jail for sleeping in churchyards or for sitting on the
steps at 910 during rush hour, think they have it bad, they should read Luther’s
story. Luther was, for a time, under the ban of the Holy Roman Empire, meaning
a death warrant had been issued.) Both groups of the Body of Christ now
agree that the individual believer is saved by grace, not by works. The papers
have been signed, the Eucharist celebrated, and, hopefully, Martin Luther and
Thomas Aquinas are resting better in heaven.
Omitted from the reports I have read is the disaster that the idea of
justification by faith alone has meant for the Christian church and Western civilization
since the sixteenth century. Paul’s idea and Luther’s interpretation of
Paul’s idea, and Luther’s interpretation of Paul’s idea as interpreted by a million
theologians, and preachers’ proclamations of Paul’s idea as interpreted by Luther—these
efforts have been a major factor in the decline of the West and in
making the practice of Christian life indistinguishable from consumer capitalism.
“Beware of false prophets. You will recognize them by what they do.” Often
the time lapse between the idea and recognition of the idea’s consequences in the
shootout at the local school is long. The proof is in the pudding.
The social significance of justification by faith alone is that it does not matter
what you do. The Presbyterian Church’s liturgical expression of this evan-