Professor Amy Pauw, from Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, wrote a piece recently on Ephesians 2:11-22 in which she made this observation: “An honest look at church history leaves ample room for ecclesial humility, but the church is still tempted to see itself, rather than Christ, as the ‘cornerstone’ of God’s ‘plan to gather up all things in heaven and earth’” (Ephesians 1:10). I love the term “ecclesial humility” even though I see so little of it: in my church, in my ecclesiastical opponents and certainly in myself. Nonetheless, I love the term. It reminds me of how, so often, we see ourselves as the cornerstones of God’s eternal plans.
At Austin Seminary, we’re musing about an event to be held next October that will mark the 500th anniversary of the posting of Luther’s 95 theses on the church door in Wittenberg. Early on, I imagined we would focus on themes along the lines of “the sun never sets on Reformed Christianity” — self-congratulatory presentations on Luther and Calvin and their corrective romps across Western culture and back and forth through time. But this summer, in what was to me a breathtaking act of ecclesial humility, the pastor of the Catholic parish nearest our campus made an overture. “Can we work together to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Reformation?” he said. “In so many ways, we were wrong,” he said.
His overture humbled me. And now I’m hoping that we might use that anniversary not to marinate in the triumphalism of how the Reformers made the world safe again for true Christianity, but rather to take part in a larger conversation in which former opponents consider new angles of vision, all to the glory of God. Pope Francis has startled so many of us by his own visions of reformation: the year of mercy, the critique of walls that divide, his remarks that suggest new space in his church for the leadership of women. And now, thanks to one of his priests, I’m looking at celebrating the Reformation in a new and expansive way.
To be sure, we still need a vital Reformed witness in our time. I applaud Marilynne Robinson’s recent critique of mainline Protestantism, especially the Calvinist versions of it, in which she notes that, in this country, “through hundreds of years of getting used to each other, making accommodations,” we have “virtually erased all sense of the history that gave rise to our many denominations.” Robinson concludes, along with others, that “as one consequence denominations themselves are fading away,” reducing themselves to a “religious monoculture” that she describes as a theological world in which “the cosmos has contracted severely.” I think she’s on to something.
If the theological cosmos has contracted, a certain very sour national mood of ugliness has expanded; and there’s pitifully little room for humility in our current political discourse. And, back to ecclesial humility, or the lack of it, I believe our current Presbyterian schism is a microcosm of that cultural macrocosm. The blooming of political, economic and generational fissures in the culture have their churchly echoes. Just as it’s hard to understand how brutal the crowds can be at this or that political rally, it strikes me as similarly hard to understand what is really at stake in our Presbyterian arguments. Maybe we fight each other because we’ve been doing that for so long that it just feels natural. “My favorite theologian can beat up your favorite theologian.”
But it’s disheartening. So as we prepare for a major anniversary next year, I pray for a good, Reformed, countercultural, dosage of ecclesial humility. Will you join me?
Theodore J. Wardlaw is president of Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Austin.
