Reference: Christianity
Reference: The World’s Religions by Huston Smith
[NOTE: In color are Vinaire’s comments.]
Divine cannot be equated with anything finite. One cannot absolutize dogmas, the Sacraments, the Church, the Bible, or personal religious experience. But as long as they point beyond themselves to God, they can be invaluable.
The causes that led to the break between Roman Catholicism and what came to be known as Protestant Christianity are complex and still in dispute. Political economy, nationalism, Renaissance individualism, and a rising concern over ecclesiastical abuses all played their part. They do not, however, camouflage the fact that the basic cause was religious, a difference in Christian perspective between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. As we are concerned here with ideas rather than history, we shall say no more about the causes of the Protestant Reformation. Instead, we shall be content to treat the sixteenth century—Luther, Calvin, the Ninety-five Theses, the Diet of Worms, King Henry VIII, the Peace of Augsburg—as a vast tunnel. The Western Church entered that tunnel whole; it emerged from it in two sections. More accurately, it emerged in several sections, for Protestantism is not so much a Church as a movement of Churches.
Protestantism is not so much a Church as a movement of Churches.
The deepest differences in Protestantism today are not denominational; they are emphases that cut across denominations and often combine in the same person: fundamentalist, conservative evangelical, mainline, charismatic, and social activist. In this brief overview we shall not go into these differences, which tend to be of recent origin. Instead, without repeating the bulk of its faith and practice, which it shares with Catholicism and Orthodoxy—Protestantism is more Christian than Protestant—we shall proceed to its two great enduring themes with which we must here be content. They are (1) justification by faith and (2) the Protestant Principle.
Protestantism is more Christian than Protestant—its two great enduring themes are (1) justification by faith and (2) the Protestant Principle.
Faith. Faith, in the Protestant conception, is not simply a matter of belief, an acceptance of knowledge held with certainty yet not on evidence. It is a response of the entire self; in Emil Brunner’s phrase, “a totality-act of the whole personality.” As such it does include a movement of the mind in assent—specifically, a conviction of God’s limitless, omnipresent creative power—but this is not its all. To be truly faith it must include as well a movement of the affections in love and trust, and a movement of the will in desire to be an instrument of God’s redeeming love. When Protestantism says that human beings are justified—that is, restored to right relationship with the ground of their being, and with their associates—by faith, it is saying that such restoration requires a movement of the total self, in mind, will, and affections, all three. It is a mark of the strength of the ecumenical movement in our time that Roman Catholic theologians now increasingly understand faith in the same way.
Faith, in the Protestant conception, is not simply a matter of belief, it is a response of the entire self. It requires a movement of the total self, in mind, will, and affections, all three.
Thus defined, faith is a personal phenomenon. “Right beliefs” or “sound doctrine” can be accepted secondhand and largely by rote, but service and love cannot. Faith is the response by which God, heretofore a postulate of philosophers or theologians, becomes God for me, my God. This is the meaning of Luther’s statement that “Everyone must do his own believing as he will have to do his own dying.”
Faith is a personal phenomenon—“Everyone must do his own believing as he will have to do his own dying.”
To feel the force of the Protestant emphasis on faith as response of the entire self, we need to see it as a passionate repudiation of religious perfunctoriness. Luther’s protest against indulgences, which were thought to help reduce their purchasers’ time in purgatory, is only a symbol of this wider protest, which extended in a number of directions. No number of religious observances, no record of good deeds, no roster of doctrines believed could guarantee that an individual would reach his or her desired state. Such things were not irrelevant to the Christian life; but unless they helped to transform the believer’s heart (his or her attitudes and response to life), they were inadequate. This is the meaning of the Protestant rallying cry, “Justification by faith alone.” It does not mean that the Creeds or the Sacraments are unimportant. It means that unless these are accompanied by the experience of God’s love and a returning love for God, they are insufficient. Similarly with good works. The Protestant position does not imply that good works are unimportant. It means that fully understood, they are correlatives of faith rather than its preludes. If one really does have faith, good works will flow from it naturally, whereas the reverse cannot be assumed; that is, good works do not necessarily lead to faith. To a large extent both Paul and Luther had been driven to their emphasis on faith precisely because a respectable string of good works, doggedly performed, had not succeeded in transforming their hearts.
To feel the force of the Protestant emphasis on faith as response of the entire self, we need to see it as a passionate repudiation of religious perfunctoriness.
Once more we need to draw here on the analogy of the child in its home, an analogy that speaks so directly to one aspect of human religiousness that we have cited it several times already. After the child’s physical needs have been met, or rather while they are being met, the child needs above all to feel the enveloping love and acceptance of its parents. Paul, Luther, and Protestants in general say something comparable for human beings throughout their lifespans. Since from first to last they are vulnerable before the powers that confront them, their lifelong need is to know that their basic environment, the ground of being from which they have derived and to which they will return, is for them rather than against them. If they can come to know this to the extent of really feeling it, they are released from the basic anxiety that causes them to try to elbow their way to security. This is why, just as the loved child is the cooperative child, the man or woman in whom God’s love has awakened the answering response of faith is the one who can truly love other people. The key is inward. Given faith in God’s goodness, everything of importance follows. In its absence, nothing can take its place.
Since from first to last human beings are vulnerable before the powers that confront them, their lifelong need is to know that their basic environment, the ground of being from which they have derived and to which they will return, is for them rather than against them.
The Protestant Principle. The other controlling perspective in Protestantism has come to be called the Protestant Principle. Stated philosophically, it warns against absolutizing the relative. Stated theologically, it warns against idolatry.
The Protestant Principle warns against absolutizing the relative.
The point is this. Human allegiance belongs to God—this all religions (with allowance for terminology) will affirm. God, however, is beyond nature and history. God is not removed from these, but the divine cannot be equated with either or any of their parts, for while the world is finite, God is infinite. With these truths all the great religions in principle agree. They are, however, very hard truths to keep in mind; so hard that people continually let them slip and proceed to equate God with something they can see or touch or at least conceptualize more precisely than the infinite. Early on they equated God with statues, until prophets—the first “protestants” or protesters on this score—rose up to denounce their transpositions, dubbing their pitiful substitutes idols, or “little pieces of form.” Later, people stopped deifying wood and stone, but this did not mean that idolatry ended. While the secular world proceeded to absolutize the state, or the self, or human intellect, Christians fell to absolutizing dogmas, the Sacraments, the Church, the Bible, or personal religious experience. To think that Protestantism devalues these or doubts that God is involved in them is to misjudge it seriously. It does, however, insist that none of them is God. All, being involved in history, contain something of the human; and since the human is always imperfect, these instruments are to some degree imperfect as well. As long as they point beyond themselves to God, they can be invaluable. But let any of them claim absolute or unreserved allegiance—which is to say claim to be God—and it becomes diabolical. For this, according to tradition, is what the devil is: the highest angel who, not content to be second, was determined to be first.
Divine cannot be equated with anything finite. One cannot absolutize dogmas, the Sacraments, the Church, the Bible, or personal religious experience. But as long as they point beyond themselves to God, they can be invaluable.
In the name of the sovereign God, who transcends all the limitations and distortions of finite existence, therefore, every human claim to absolute truth or finality must be rejected. Some examples will indicate what this principle means in practice. Protestants cannot accept the dogma of papal infallibility because this would involve removing from criticism forever opinions that, having been channeled through human minds, can never (in the Protestant view) wholly escape the risk of limitation and partial error. Creeds and pronouncement can be believed; they can be believed fully and wholeheartedly. But to place them beyond the cleansing crossfire of challenge and criticism is to absolutize something finite—to elevate “a little piece of form” to the position that should be reserved for God alone.
Every human claim to absolute truth or finality must be rejected, such as, the dogma of papal infallibility.
Instances of what Protestants consider idolatry are not confined to other sects or religions. Protestants admit that the tendency to absolutize the relative is universal; it occurs among them as much as it does anywhere, bringing the need for continual self-criticism and reformation to the door of Protestantism itself. The chief Protestant idolatry has been Bibliolatry. Protestants do believe that God speaks to people through the Bible as in no other way. But to elevate it as a book to a point above criticism, to insist that every word and letter was dictated directly by God and so can contain no historical, scientific, or other inaccuracies, is again to forget that in entering the world, God’s word must speak through human minds. Another common instance of idolatry within Protestantism has been the deification of private religious experience. Its insistence that faith must be a living experience has often led its constituents to assume that any vital experience must be the working of the Holy Spirit. Perhaps so, but again the experience is never pure Spirit. The Spirit must assume the contours of the human vessel, which means again that the whole is never uncompounded.
In entering the world, God’s word must speak through human minds that are not perfect. This applies to words recorded in the Bible as well.
By rejecting all such absolutes, Protestantism tries to keep faith with the first Commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3). The injunction contains a negative, and for many the word Protestant too carries a predominantly negative ring. Is not a Protestant a person who protests against something? We have seen that this is certainly true; Protestants who are truly such protest without ceasing the usurpation of God’s place by anything less than God. But the Protestant Principle can just as well be put positively, which is how it should be put if its full import is to be appropriated. It protests against idolatry because it testifies for (protestant = one who testifies for) God’s sovereignty in human life.
By rejecting all such absolutes, Protestantism tries to keep faith with the first Commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me.”
But how is God to enter human life? To insist that God cannot be equated with anything in this tangible, visible world leaves people at sea in God’s ocean. God doubtless surrounds us; but to gain access to human awareness, divinity needs to be condensed and focused.
But, to gain access to human awareness, divinity needs to be condensed and focused.
This is where, for Protestants, the Bible figures. In its account of God working through Israel, through Christ, and through the early Church, we find the clearest picture of God’s great goodness, and how human beings may find new life in fellowship with the divine. In this sense the Bible is, for Protestants, ultimate. But note with care the sense in which this is so. It is ultimate in the sense that when human beings read this record of God’s grace with true openness and longing for God, God stands at the supreme intersection between the divine and the human. There, more than anywhere else in the world of time and space, people have the prospect of catching, not with their minds alone but with their whole beings, the truth about God and the relation in which God stands to their lives. No derivative interpretation by councils, peoples, or theologians can replace or equal this. The Word of God must speak to each individual soul directly. It is this that accounts for the Protestant emphasis on the Bible as the living word of God.
The Word of God must speak to each individual soul directly. It is this that accounts for the Protestant emphasis on the Bible as the living word of God.
Is not this concept of Christianity freighted with danger? The Protestant readily admits that it is. First, there is the danger of misconstruing God’s word. If, as the Protestant Principle insists, all things human are imperfect, does it not follow that each individual’s vision of God must at least be limited and possibly quite erroneous? It does. Protestantism not only admits this; it insists on it. But as the fact happens to be true, how much better to recognize it and open the door to the corrections of the Holy Spirit working through other minds than to saddle Christendom with what is in fact limited truth masquerading as finality. As Jesus himself says: “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:12). One very important reason for restricting final loyalty to the transcendent God is to keep the future open.
All things human are imperfect; therefore, it does follow that each individual’s vision of God must at least be limited and possibly quite erroneous.
The other danger is that Christians will derive different truths from the Bible. The nine hundred-odd denominations of Protestantism in the United States alone prove not only that this danger exists, but that it could conceivably slope toward complete individualism. Protestantism admits this, but adds three points.
First, Protestant diversity is not as great as its hundreds of denominations, most of them more adequately termed sects, suggest. Most of these are of negligible size. Actually, 85 percent of all Protestants belong to twelve denominations. Considering the freedom of belief Protestantism affirms in principle, the wonder lies not in its diversity but in the extent to which Protestants have managed to stay together.
Second, Protestant divisions reflect differing national origins in Europe or differing social groupings in the United States more than they do differing theologies.
The third point, however, is the most important. Who is to say that diversity is bad? People differ, and historical circumstances, too, can occasion life-affecting differences that must be taken seriously: “New occasions teach new duties.” Protestants believe that life and history are too fluid to allow God’s redeeming Word to be enclosed in a single form, whether it be doctrinal or institutional. They are concerned about the brokenness of Christ’s “body” and take steps to mend differences that are no longer meaningful; this is the so-called ecumenical movement, which is vigorous. But they do not believe that people should cuddle up to one another just to keep warm. Comforts of togetherness should not lead to structures that will restrict the dynamic character of God’s continuing revelation. “The Spirit bloweth where it listeth” (John 3:8).
Diversity is not bad. Comforts of togetherness should not lead to structures that will restrict the dynamic character of God’s continuing revelation.
Protestants acknowledge, then, that their perspective is fraught with dangers—the danger of uncertainty as individuals wrestle inwardly (and at times in what seems like a frightening aloneness) to try to determine whether they have heard God’s will correctly; the danger of schism as Christians find themselves apprehending God’s will diversely. But they accept these dangers because, risk for risk, they prefer their precarious freedom to the security of doctrines or institutions that, even while looking toward God, remain fallible. It is their faith that, in the end, prevents these burdens from discouraging them. Asked where he would stand if the Church excommunicated him, Luther is said to have replied, “Under the sky.”
Protestants prefer their precarious freedom to the security of doctrines or institutions that, even while looking toward God, remain fallible. Asked where he would stand if the Church excommunicated him, Luther is said to have replied, “Under the sky.”
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