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Is Our Protestantism Still Protestant?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 November 2011
Extract
There are two classes of people who have an interest in the question which we have proposed for discussion. It may be asked by those who believe that in historic Protestantism we have the true and final form of religion, and who therefore view with alarm any radical departure from the position of the earlier Reformers. In this case the question whether our Protestantism is still Protestant will mean the inquiry whether our modern liberal Christianity has so far departed from the fundamental principles of the Reformation that its title to the name of evangelical Christianity may rightly be called in question. On the other hand, the inquiry may be made by those who believe that historic Protestantism represents a stage of religious development which the world is destined to outgrow. In the latter case the meaning of the question will be whether the process of theological reconstruction has gone so far that the new type of religious thought and life which is expected to supersede the old can at last be clearly differentiated from its predecessor.
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- Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1908
References
1 des Christentums, Das Wesen, Leipzig, 1900 (English translation, What is Christianity? London, 1901, p. 299).Google Scholar
2 Les religions d'autorité et la religion de l'esprit, Paris, 1904 (English translation, New York, 1904).
3 Under Protestantism, in the sense in which the term is used in the present discussion, we include all the different phases of religious life and thought which were the outcome of the general movement we call the Reformation. Professor Troeltsch, in his recent suggestive essay entitled Die Bedeutung des Protestantismus für die Entstehung der modernen Welt (1906), uses the term in a narrower sense, to describe the type of thought represented by the more conservative Reformers, Zwingli, Luther and Calvin, as distinct from that of the more extreme independents, who carried their individualism to greater lengths. Such a restriction of the term, however useful for the purposes of scientific discussion, I believe to be unjustified by historic usage, and to lead to an undue minimizing of the novel elements inherent in the new faith. The genius of a new type is best disclosed by a study of its more advanced representatives, and the nature of Protestantism cannot be justly estimated till we have given full weight to the evidence afforded by the history of the Baptist and other early independent movements, whose break with the older Christian tradition was more radical than that of the Lutheran and Calvinistic bodies.
4 Page 115.
5 ibid. p. 122.
6 Confession of Faith, i, 5: “We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the Church to an high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scripture; and the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only way of man's salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God; yet, notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth, and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.”
7 Chapter iii, quoted by Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, II, 243: “And the Catholic Church teaches that this faith, which is the beginning of man's salvation, is a supernatural virtue, whereby, inspired and assisted by the grace of God, we believe that the things which he has revealed are true; not because of the intrinsic truth of the things, viewed by the natural light of reason, but because of the authority of God himself, who reveals them, and who can neither be deceived nor deceive.”
8 § 24.
9 The word “rational” is not used here in the narrow sense in which it is sometimes employed in philosophical discussion to denote the processes of the logical understanding as distinct from the emotions and the will (e.g. by our modern pragmatists in their attack upon intellectualism), but as a comprehensive term to include all the processes by which man, as a reasonable being, reacts upon his moral and intellectual environment. From the point of view of our present discussion the questions in dispute between the pragmatists and the intellectualists have to do with the interpretations of the word “rational”, and the contrast here made would retain its validity, whichever of the rival interpretations should ultimately prevail.
10 Chapter iii, quoted by Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, III, 243: “Nevertheless, in order that the obedience of our faith might be in harmony with reason, God willed that to the interior help of the Holy Spirit there should be joined exterior proofs of his revelation; to wit, divine facts, and especially miracles and prophecies, which, as they manifestly display the omnipotence and infinite knowledge of God, are most certain proofs of his divine revelation, adapted to the intelligence of all men.”
11 Apologia, chap, v, p. 240 (London, 1890)Google ScholarPubMed.
12 Confession of Faith, i, 6.
13 No doubt it is true that the belief in progress, like every other characteristic idea of modern life, has its antecedents in the past. The notion of development plays an important rôle in the philosophy of Aristotle, and it recurs now and again in later Christian thought. What it is here intended to assert is simply that the systematic employment of the idea of development for the definition of reality and the explanation of life is of comparatively recent date, and constitutes the distinguishing mark of the type of thought which we call modern.
14 L'évangile et l'église, Paris, 1902, p. xxiiiGoogle Scholar. See also Newman's well-known essay on the development of Christian doctrine.
15 In the second edition of his Loci Communes.