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Reformation Day reflections

On Reformation Sunday this year (October 25) many of us will happily sing Luther’s famous hymn, “A Mighty Fortress.”

On Reformation Sunday this year, many of us will happily sing Luther’s famous hymn, “A Mighty Fortress.”

We also may wonder how relevant those long-ago events remain to us today. Not only are they relevant, our church’s polity has been shaped by Luther’s experience, and current struggles over the shape of that polity involve key Reformation principles.

Martin Luther had fought his way through to a new understanding of Scripture and the Gospel message, with God’s free justification of sinners at its heart. When Luther tried to teach this new understanding, however, he ran into a brick wall. Church authorities were not interested in Luther’s Biblical insights. Where brother Martin had hoped to provoke discussion about Biblical interpretation and Gospel hope, the church authorities instead pulled rank, insisting that he retract his positions without discussion and fall in line behind official teaching.

This clash with the authorities came to a head in April 1521, when Luther was summoned to the City of Worms to appear before the Emperor. Given one last chance to renounce his teachings, Luther delivered his famous response:

Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason — I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other — my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen.1

A sympathetic prince kidnapped Luther into protective custody. Had this not happened, he almost certainly would have been burned at the stake as a heretic. That Luther was willing to effectively sign his own death warrant with this statement speaks to the strength of the convictions underlying it: The church lives solely from the Word of God, and no earthly authority has the right to overrule Scripture as it is interpreted by the Holy Spirit to the consciences of Christian believers.

Luther’s experience made a deep impression upon our Presbyterian ancestors, who were determined never again to allow human authorities like the pope to veto what Christ was saying through his Word and Spirit. The opening paragraphs of our Book of Order bear the stamp of their determination:

God has put all things under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and has made Christ the head of the Church, which is his body … Christ is present with the Church in both Spirit and Word. It belongs to Christ alone to rule, to teach, to call, and to use the Church as he wills …2

The Historic Principles of Church Order echo this determination, emphasizing that no church official has the power to overrule Biblically-formed consciences:

God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are in anything contrary to his Word, or beside it, in matters of faith or worship.3

One can hear Luther’s words echoing in the background: “My conscience is captive to the Word of God!” That is an inspiring message, but also challenging. It complicates the process of resolving church disputes.

In the Roman church, if disagreements become troublesome or intractable, there is a ready solution available: the pope declares who is right. Protestants, however, have followed Luther in renouncing that kind of human authority. Christ alone is our head, and that means when disputes over scriptural interpretation occur, we have no authority beyond Christ’s Word and Spirit to turn to. In practice that means our hope for resolving disagreements lies in humbly returning to the Scriptures, striving to learn from each other with open minds and hearts, and persevering in prayer for God’s Spirit to lead everyone to a common grasp of the truth.

Dealing with disputes in this way means they tend to get resolved according to God’s timetable rather than ours. And the great challenge that has bedeviled Protestantism since Luther’s time has been the temptation to lose patience and split the church rather than wait upon God’s resolution of our disagreements.

Our Presbyterian polity is very carefully constructed to reflect the best of Luther’s legacy and to guard against its weakness. Our “Historic Principles of Church Order” recognizes that there will be situations in the life of the church where sincere Christians come to contrary conclusions about how the Scriptures are to be interpreted:

[W]e … believe that there are truths and forms with respect to which men of good characters and principles may differ. In all these we think it the duty of private Christians and societies to exercise mutual forbearance toward each other.4

In lifting up mutual forbearance as a response to disagreement, Presbyterians commit themselves to be a different kind of church than the one that silenced Luther: Jesus Christ, speaking to godly consciences through his Word and Spirit, is our highest authority. Consequently, if a ministerial candidate comes to us declaring a Biblically-grounded disagreement with church teaching, we do not want our response to be, “Stop listening to the Bible and get with the program!” That would replay the line the pope took responding to Luther’s dissent! Instead, the Presbyterians seek to be a community where conscience is respected and where differences can be discussed and worked through in a fellowship united by a common loyalty to Christ and his Word.

Obviously forbearance is not appropriate in all cases. The church cannot proclaim the Gospel with integrity if it ordains leaders who reject the foundations of the faith. For that reason, our polity carefully balances its calling to protect the integrity of its witness and it’s determination to remain open to Christ speaking to individual consciences.

This careful balance appears in section G-6.0108 of our Book of Order, which first underscores the need to protect the integrity of church proclamation:

“It is necessary to the integrity and health of the church that the persons who serve in it as officers shall adhere to the essentials of the Reformed faith and polity…” At the same time, it echoes the church’s determination to remain open to Christ’s voice speaking to believers’ consciences: “So far as may be possible without serious departure from these standards … freedom of conscience with respect to the interpretation of Scripture is to be maintained.”5

The 2006 and 2008 General Assemblies approved concrete procedures for putting the balanced commitments of G-6.0108 into practice.6 Candidates for ordination are encouraged to publicly declare any Biblically-based, conscientious disagreements they have with official church teaching. If a candidate declares such a disagreement,7 that action does not result in an automatic rejection like Luther experienced, nor an automatic acceptance of the dissenting view. Instead it sets in motion a conversation between the candidate and the ordaining body.

The goal of this conversation is to determine whether the candidate’s particular dissent represents a departure from essentials of Reformed faith and polity. If the ordaining body judges that the person’s dissent is so serious that it undermines these essentials, the need to protect the integrity of the church’s witness becomes paramount, and the candidate may not be ordained.

If the candidate’s dissent does not involve essentials, however, the church is free to exercise forbearance, in line with Luther’s insistence that forcing someone to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. In such a case, the way is clear to welcome this dissenting voice as a valuable addition to the church’s continuing conversation about what it means to be a faithful disciple of Christ.

This willingness to allow dissent in non-essential matters is one way the Presbyterian Church lives out its determination to remain constantly open to the voice of the Risen Christ speaking through the Scriptures. As such it reflects our commitment to be a “Reformed church that is always being reformed according to the Word of God.”8

This commitment is not easy to maintain, especially in ecclesiastical disputes where passions run high. All of us are tempted see our own positions as self-evidently correct, and to respond to opposing viewpoints as the pope responded to Luther, preventing the offending views from being seriously considered!

Such temptations appear be at work today in pending judicial cases that seek to declare the church’s policy against gay and lesbian ordination permanently off-limits to Biblically-grounded dissent.9 The church’s ordination procedures are designed to ensure both the integrity of its witness and its openness to the voice of the Risen Christ. If the church courts exempt this particular regulation from those carefully-balanced procedures, it will mean that candidates who cannot uphold it in good conscience will be in a position similar to Luther’s: automatically banned from ordained service, their understanding of the Bible dismissed without a hearing.

Wherever we stand in this debate, our Reformation heritage should prompt Presbyterians to think carefully about the dangers of turning our favorite humanly-conceived regulations into “paper popes,” invested with an authority higher than any conceivable Biblically-grounded dissent.

Mark Achtemeier teaches theology and ethics at Dubuque Theological Seminary, Dubuque, Iowa.

1 This translation is taken from Roland Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther, reprint edition (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2009), 185.

2 Book of Order, G-1.0100a, b

3 G-1.0300a

4 G-1.0305

5 G-6.0108a

6 These procedures are contained in Recommendation 5 of the final report of the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church. The text may be found online at http://www.pcusa.org/peaceunitypurity/finalreport/final-report-revised-english.pdf, p. 31ff.

7 Such a disagreement is sometimes called a “scruple”— archaic language that reflects the long-standing presence of these procedures in the life of American presbyterianism.

8 This phrase is a translation of a Latin motto that has been part of the Reformed heritage for centuries: “Ecclesia reformata semper reformanda secundum Verbum Dei.”

9 The policy is found in section G-6.0106b in the Book of Order.

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