Recovering the First Reformation - Toward a Proto-Protestant Narrative of Church History (IV)
The following is by no means exhaustive but it is my hope
that it provides an alternative (or at least a working alternative) basis for a
metanarrative to Church History. While I've been critical of the aforementioned
narratives the concept of a metanarrative itself is not invalid – even while it
has its dangers. Painting with a fairly broad brush I hope to establish some
principles that will (in the most general of terms) provide a framework for an
alternative view that some will identify as a kind of Third Way – a positive
narrative that avoids the traps and pitfalls of both Roman Catholicism (and by
implication Eastern Orthodoxy) and Magisterial Protestantism.
Third Way is a potentially confusing concept because it's
used in a variety of spheres – from ecclesiology to politics. What I'm positing
is a different approach to the Church
History narrative on the basis of a different
organising principle and both concepts carry over to the present and help
us to interpret the Christian spectrum within our day.
In previous writings I've talked about the problems with the
proto-Protestant nomenclature because in some cases it's used (as with some Confessionalists)
as a way to anachronistically claim and appropriate pre-Reformation groups.
Others read the term as a kind of incomplete, insufficient model, like an
actual prototype and thus once the real thing (Magisterial-Confessional
Protestantism) arrives, the prototype is of little value aside from historical
curiosity – which is how most contemporary Confessionalists reckon these
pre-Reformation movements.
What I am suggesting is that proto-Protestantism is a
standalone concept representing the First Protestantism or what I will call the
First Reformation. This
proto-Protestantism or First Protestant Reformation stands in contrast to the
16th century Magisterial Protestant Reformation.
The two are not wholly separate, neither are they
antagonistic at every point as there is some overlap in both ideas and in
actual people – and yet there were concepts held by the First Reformation that
were all but lost in the second. We will return to these points anon.
First we need to revisit the establishing theological
principle for identifying the Church throughout history – the narrative that
will help us discern the true from the false in rough outline. Just as we find
in the Old Testament, it's never cut and dry and there are false professors
among the more doctrinally solid camps and true believers interwoven among the
factions that are functionally apostate. In other words the application of this
principle is not absolute and yet it provides a rough guide.
The organising principle can be called the Oracular Mark of
the Church. To quote an earlier article I wrote in 2018:
"It is the Word-Mark that
identifies and defines the true Church. The faithful Church does not exist by
the fiction of an organic apostolic succession. An office born of largely
contrived ritual does not delineate and validate the Church. The Gospel
heritage is compromised of a common faith, one rooted in submission to
revelation... the Word/Foundation of the Prophet-Apostles, the bearers of the
Holy Oracle. (See Ephesians 2.12ff)
God was covenantally
present in the Old Testament where the Word was still found. The ideas of Word,
Sanctuary, Oracle and Divine Presence are all interwoven in the Old Testament
narrative. There on the holy mount in the holy city, the king ruled the
covenant people through the covenant Word and the prophets spoke the Word of
God. Through what some have called the covenant lawsuit, they kept the people
accountable. The people were reckoned as accursed when the Word was removed and
no prophet was to be found (Amos 8.11, Hosea 4.5-6, Psalm 74.9). These ideas
are elaborated upon and expanded in the New Testament as they are applied to
the Body of Christ, the Living Word, and the Holy Temple.
In the Northern kingdom of
Israel there were those that retained forms of YHWH or Jehovah worship. And yet
they lost the substance, they had lost their relationship to the Oracular Word.
In some sense they were still on the fringes of the covenant and yet were no
longer reckoned able to share in its fellowship nor could they claim possession
of the Word.
This analogy helps us to
place groups like Roman Catholicism and Theological liberals. They are still in
a broad tenuous sense remotely connected to the Christian Church... and yet
they have lost the Oracular presence and their claims to being viable and true
Christian communions, part of the Visible Church, are invalid. And it's not
just the liberals and Roman Catholics that have found themselves in this
plightful condition. Many Protestants are in danger of substituting the
Oracular Word for another authority, for another Temple-Kingdom. Indeed many
have already done so."*
Some mistakenly believe that Sola Scriptura was a concept
born of the 16th century Reformation. While the Latin phraseology
was certainly connected to the Magisterial Reformation, the concept was not new
in the least. Rome always maintained the authority and divine inspiration of
Scripture but in that system it was but a component – in a mix of tradition,
philosophy and theology as interpreted by the Magisterium.
The Early Church did not elaborate the doctrine but I would
argue that Scriptural Authority elaborated as the apostolic Rule of Faith was
more or less functional within the first centuries – but it didn't take long
for the testimony to become confused.**
As previously stated, Rome would maintain that the Scriptures
were the Word of God but then did much to suppress their import and authority.
Among the groups that appeared in the historical record of the High Middle Ages
many (such as the various Waldensian groups) professed a belief in Scriptural
authority and juxtaposed this with the claims of Rome. Clearly the Scriptures
were their standard even if they were not always completely consistent in their
application – which is itself a separate issue.
In the Late Middle Ages the expressions of Scriptural
Authority became more explicit among the 14th and 15th
century Lollards and Hussites and so the notion was not really new and while
the Scriptures were at the heart of the battle for the gospel in the 16th
century, the Magisterial Reformation would soon begin a process of undermining
the doctrine with its re-embrace of Scholastic theology and the resort to
Confessionalism. In many respects the pre-Reformation (or First Reformation)
Biblicism was undermined and subverted by the Magisterial Reformation even
though the latter professed to believe in Sola Scriptura. Contemporary
Confessionalists would chafe such a notion of undermining and epistemological
competition but the history bears this out.
The Oracular Mark is closely wed to the idea of the Spirit's
presence and that the Church in possession of the Word has access to the Divine
Council, hears the proclamations from the Throne, and obeys the Divine voice.
The Church is the Temple and thus this Divine Spirit-Presence, the Shekinah of
the Old order is present within but as the epistolary opening chapters of
Revelation make clear (by means of the candlestick symbolism) – that presence
can be removed in the face of disobedience. Again there is an analogy to the
Northern Kingdom which though it retained outward forms of Jehovah-ism (as it
were) it had no Spirit-presence and was functionally apostate.
And yet a remnant remained functioning within it and so there
is hope even in such contexts. There was an oracle in the forms of Elijah,
Elisha et al. but they were solely adversarial and remnant-oriented. They did
not operate within the institutional religious structures and opposed the
covenantal claims of the Northern dynastic lines (see 2 Kings 3.13 for an
example of this).
If we take the lessons of 1 Corinthians 10 to heart (a
critical passage for historiography) we should understand that these examples
are meant to apply to the Church age in the form of exhortation and warning –
in other words these processes can be repeated even in the different context of
the New Covenant.
And when speaking of the Oracular Mark in reference to
Biblicism (the way in which the First Reformation would comprehend Scripture Alone over and against the
Scholastic-Confessional understanding) we are specifically referring to the New
Covenant writings of the apostles – something you see more of in the
Waldensians and in the writings of someone like Petr Chelčický in the 15th century. And this view is
contrasted with the Scripture Alone
claims of a Judaizing group such as the Taborites that sought to emulate and to
some degree reconstitute Old Testament Israel.
In
other words in the New Testament era the apostles are the oracles as they are
the appointment messengers of The Oracle – the Resurrected Christ.
Apostolicity
is connected not to rite or institutional continuity but to right
acknowledgment and obedience – it is connected not to those who claim to be
living apostles but to those who submit to them and their writings. And with
these comes the presence of the Holy Spirit. In other words the heirs of the
apostles are those that follow their teachings and rightly acknowledge their
authority. As such, their Scriptural rites have real meaning and import. This
may sound like Donatism but it's not as New Testament polity eschews all
factionalism and thus validity is not reckoned by means of political blocs –
all baptisms performed by this or that denomination are valid or invalid but
rather every situation has to be evaluated with prayer, wisdom and Scriptural
discernment. There's no checklist and it's rarely easy.
Again,
the record is hardly crystal clear and one must also factor in the hearts of
men which makes a kind of neat and tight narrative – so loved by propagandists
and denominational apologists – all but impossible.
We've
already touched on the familiar concept of the Constantinian Shift – the fact
that after Constantine the Church would change its attitude with regard to the
sword, the coin and the state. And the state-sanction and eventual preference
and mandate for Christianity would flood the Church with worldlings seeking
socio-political standing. Nascent corruptions would quickly intensify and take
on a life of their own. From the rise of the papacy, to monasticism, to a host
of worship practices and profound changes in ethics and epistemology, the
Church of the 4th century would quickly turn its back on its New
Testament roots.
There
were voices of protest but the record suggests that many of these have
disappeared from historical memory and in other cases were probably
deliberately eliminated. There are undoubtedly thousands of martyrs whose names
and tales have been forgotten and are lost to this age. We will hear their
tales when we are received into glory. This is not to argue from silence – by
means of mere inference. Rather the inference is suggested in the available
data but we will freely admit that the vast overwhelming majority of Christians
embraced the new paradigm in the Fourth Century. It was not just the
Constantinian Shift, it was the Great Apostasy foretold by Scripture, the
falling away that opened up the door for the man of sin to appear – the
blaspheming cleric sitting on the throne of Caesar – the Bishop of Rome.
It
can also be argued that while there may indeed be a pending ultimate man of sin
that is not a Bishop of Rome per se, the ghost of Rome hangs over and
characterises this age of the last Danielic Beast. And so if there is a man of
sin/Antichrist par excellence we will grant he may be a Caesar-Nebuchadnezzar
or a pope or something of both and yet given the recurring nature of the
visions in Daniel, Zechariah and Revelation and in light of the New Testament
doctrine of imminency there's also reason to believe that no ultimate
expression may appear that necessarily stands out from previous manifestations.
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* https://proto-protestantism.blogspot.com/2018/04/four-types-of-christian-four-gospels_0.html
** I
have likewise attempted to explain New Testament Biblicism as a concept rooted
in Soli Apostoli – the authority of
the apostles as the New Covenant prophets. On that basis, the fact that they
were directly appointed by Christ, in addition to internal evidence, the New
Testament's claims about itself and the testimony of the Spirit and the Church
– we accept their words as Divine.