I believe that there are two legitimate ways of looking at the Reformation. These two ways create different paths for honoring the Reformation. Further, these paths produce different memories of the Reformation. These two paths of memory are the root cause of many of the fights we have in Protestantism over the memory of the Reformation. Many understand the reformation primarily as a re-vivification of witness to the authority of scripture. Others understand the Reformation primarily as a socio-political phenomenon.
The Reformation as a re-vivification of witness to the authority of scripture:
God used the reformers to remind his people of the authority of his word, the uniquness of Christ, and the inexpressibility of his grace. When people think of the Reformation in this way, the naturally emphasize God’s work. God displayed his glory in the work of the reformers. Further, the reformation gave people the assurance of salvation again. It gave people Christ. The Church had hidden Christ behind saints and indulgences. The Reformation opened that veil. God, through the reformers, told the people when they heard the scriptures preached they heard Christ speaking. When they ate bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper they communed with Christ.
If that is what the celebration of the reformation is about then we don’t do enough. We should be reminding ourselves again and again about what God re-taught his church in the reformation. He re-taught because he had already taught it to his church in the scriptures. We should be endlessly thankful, that God showed his grace to a church that was suppressing his truth in unrighteousness. God calls us to exuberant celebration over these moments of great salvation in history. You can look in the Bible how God called his people to celebrate their departure from Egypt in the book of Exodus. God called his people to celebration again for their rescue from the machinations of Haman in the book of Esther. If God called the Jews to a celebration, we should celebrate as well.
The reason we don’t do enough is simply in the fact that we have forgotten what God taught us in the reformation. We have forgotten the glory of his word and we have forgotten the grace of his sacraments. The Reformation500 is a welcome reminder.
But their is also another path of memory.
The Reformation as a socio-political phenomenon or we might say a historical phenomenon:
Here the celebration is much more mixed because it is focussed on human actors and their imperfect actions. We still celebrate the good the Reformation produced. As the reformed believed, living faith produces good works and those good works benefit ourselves and our neighbor. The Reformation produced a lot of spiritual good. The reformation produced a lot of social good. We should celebrate this.
But the Reformation also brought certain emphases to the fore that had unintended consequences. Of course, it’s hard as a historian to prove cause and effect. To some extent its guesswork, especially when we are looking at social phenomenon, not only written texts. I believe that it is reasonable to say that the Reformation moved the centre toward some anabaptistic emphases, such as individualistic interpretation and the de-sacralization of the sacraments.
You can see this in the distortion of the solas that is so common today. Sola Scriptura often means that scripture is the only authority, not the only unquestioned authority. Sola Gratia means I don’t have to work out my salvation with fear and trembling, rather than God works even that fear and trembling in me. Sola Fide means only faith is necessary for my salvation and leaves no place for the works that flow from true faith. We could go on. What I offer here does not exhaust the way the solas are corrupted.
This was only acerbated by fights between the reformers themselves. This does not mean that this was in any way the position of reformers such as Calvin or Luther, or their heirs. It does mean that we need to celebrate the Reformation in a way that guards against the excesses of our own day and with the knowledge that our fathers in the faith were fallible men.
This is to view the Reformation as the work of men, not the work of God. If we unconditionally celebrated the Reformation only according to the first pattern of memory, we wouldn’t have so many naysayers who point out some of the bad things the reformation produced.
Conclusion.
Unfortunately, these two paths of memory are conflated and tend to create conflict. There are those who have no desire to seperate the two paths and tend to sanctify everything the Reformation produced intentionally or otherwise as good. Some ignore the first path and refuse to celebrate the Reformation. There are many in the middle who confuse their friends’ use of the word “Reformation” with their preferred path of memory. I hope that my post is helpful for sorting those misunderstandings out.
As for me, I celebrate the reformation according to the first path.God used the Reformation to once again, in a unique and powerful way, remind people of the gift of grace, Christ, that he reveals in his word. The first path is more important, quite simply because, it is God’s perspective. Secondarily, I conditionally celebrate the second path, the Reformation is something that produced unparalleled spiritual and social good; but I do so cautiously.