{"id":1230,"date":"2010-10-24T14:29:06","date_gmt":"2010-10-24T14:29:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/bibleandculture\/2010\/10\/sole-fide-sole-scriptura--what-did-the-reformers-mean.html"},"modified":"2010-10-24T14:29:06","modified_gmt":"2010-10-24T14:29:06","slug":"sole-fide-sole-scriptura-what-did-the-reformers-mean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2010\/10\/sole-fide-sole-scriptura-what-did-the-reformers-mean.html","title":{"rendered":"Sole Fide, Sole Scriptura— What Did the Reformers Mean?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"payton.jpg\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

James R. Payton, Getting the Reformation Wrong.
\nCorrecting  <\/span>some Misunderstandings, <\/u> <\/span>(Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2010), 240
\npages, $23. <\/p>\n

                <\/span>History
\nis unquestionably messy and complex, and this is all the more the case when one
\nis considering some of the most turbulent and momentous epochs in history.  <\/span>One such period is the Reformation, and James
\nR. Payton, professor of history at Redeemer University College in Ancaster
\nOntario, is determined to demonstrate to us how we have gotten various things
\nwrong about the period called the Reformation.  
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

                <\/span>Like
\nany good historian, Payton insists that we study the Reformation in its proper
\ncontext, which is to say in light of the previous era of the Middle Ages and
\nthe Renaissance.  <\/span>This is why he spends
\nthe first two substantial chapters of the book giving us a pr\u00e9cis about those
\ntwo eras insofar as they have a bearing on how we should interpret the Reformation. <\/p>\n

For example, he stresses that there was already a considerable outcry for
\nreformation of the church in both of these eras, and a few efforts at affecting
\nsuch a change.  <\/span>Western Christendom knew
\nthings were not well and kept calling for ‘reformatio in capite et
\nmembris’–‘reformation in head and members’. The problem was, those who heard
\nthe cry and could do something about it, largely ignored it or practiced call
\nforwarding. 
<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>In his chapter about the
\nRenaissance,  <\/span>one of the best in this
\nhelpful study,  <\/span>Payton rightly notes that
\nthe ‘humanism’ that arose in this period was not in fact the forebear of modern
\nsecular humanism.  <\/span>It was rather a
\nreaction to scholasticism and an attempt to recover the wisdom of antiquity,
\nthrough the study of what we today call the Greek and Latin classics, but also
\nthrough the study of the master works of the patristic fathers as well.  <\/span>As Payton rightly points out,  <\/span>humanists like Petrarch or Erasmus were not
\nattempting to shake themselves free from the shackles of Christianity.  <\/span>Rather, in the case of most of these
\nhumanists, they were sincere Christians who wrote treatises about both the
\n‘classics’ and about  <\/span>Christian antiquity
\nas well.  <\/span>What they were reacting to was
\nthe stifling legacy of medieval scholasticism. <\/p>\n

                <\/span>This
\nbook is very well written, and remarkably free of typos (but see p. 116 line
\n10), and beginning with the third chapter 
\n<\/span>(pp. 72ff.) Payton really turns to the meat of his subject–the ways in
\nwhich even we Protestants have gotten the Protestant Reformation wrong.   <\/span>At the epicenter of the early chapters of
\nthis part of the book is of course that former Augustinian monk, Martin
\nLuther.   <\/span>Payton skillfully reminds us
\nthat Luther, despite all his fulminating against scholastic scholarship of
\nvarious sorts was himself a product of a Catholic scholastic education, had an
\nearned PhD,and unlike various of the other Reformers (e.g. Erasmus,
\nMelanchthon, Bucer) was not a part of the humanist movement that wanted to get
\nback behind the medieval ways of arguing and doing theology.  <\/span><\/p>\n

Indeed, Luther used the very same sorts of
\ninvective, polemics, character attacks and the like that were all too common in
\nscholastic debates.  <\/span>In this regard, he
\nwas very different from various of his fellow Reformers.   <\/span>Luther, for example,  <\/span>unlike Melanchthon was not trained in
\nrhetoric, nor did he read the NT in a rhetorical manner, for the most
\npart.  <\/span>It is thus all the more ironic
\nthat Luther saw Rom. 1.16-17 as the crucial thesis statement of Romans,
\nwhich  <\/span>trumpeted the great truth of
\njustification by grace through faith alone.  What is ironic about this is that rhetorical analysis shows that this is indeed the ‘propositio’ of Romans.   <\/span><\/p>\n

Luther however was not a social reformer,
\nand when the Peasant Revolt emerged, he was for its violent suppression.  <\/span>His theology of two kingdoms, with the realm
\nof rulers and knights being part of kingdom No. 2 which could not be expected
\nto run on Christian principles, set him at odds with other Reformers,
\nespecially the more radical ones.  <\/span>He was
\na champion of church reform, not of state reform.  In this regard, he was quite different from many modern Evangelicals.    <\/span><\/p>\n

                <\/span>Chapter
\n4 succinctly chronicles how, while the Reformers all generally agreed on
\njustification by grace through faith, and on the notion of Scripture as the
\nultimate norm, there were in fact many crucial 
\n<\/span>subjects, on which they had heated disagreements, for example about the
\nLord’s Supper. 
<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>The most crucial chapters
\nin this book however are Chapters 5-6 which deal with the two banner notions of
\nsole fide and the notion of sole scriptura 
\n<\/span>(pp. 115-59).  <\/span>These chapters
\nrepay close scrutiny.  <\/span>One of the things
\nPayton is exercised to demonstrate in Chapter 5 is that the Reformers did not
\nthink that ‘faith’ was ever alone.  <\/span>It
\nwas always accompanied by the work of the Spirit, and the enabling to do good
\nworks (though they were not viewed as salvific).   <\/span>The Reformers did not think that merely
\nnotional assent to the proposition that Jesus is Lord was all there was to
\nbeing saved.  
<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>Perhaps the oddest part of
\nthe book is pp. 127-30 where Payton is critical of camp meetings and revivals
\nin North America, where, he suggests, the notion  was promulgated that a crisis experience and a
\nmoment of ‘decision for Christ’, even if followed by a dissolute life, had
\nnonetheless saved the person for all eternity. 
\n<\/span>It is hard to know what sort of revivals he is thinking of—- certainly
\nnot the Methodist and holiness revivals which stressed not only conversion but
\nholiness of heart and life.   <\/span>It may be
\nthat we have been getting some things wrong about the Reformation, but Payton
\nis just as guilty of getting some things wrong about the Camp meetings and
\nrevivals of the 19th<\/sup>-20th<\/sup> centuries. <\/p>\n

                <\/span>In
\nChapter 5,  <\/span>Payton rather easily
\ndemonstrates that the Reformers did not mean by sola Scriptura that Scripture
\nwas the only norm for the church. To the contrary they also saw the ancient
\ncreeds, the ecumenical councils and the wisdom of the ancient church fathers as
\nnorms of a lesser sort as well.  <\/span>In this
\nrespect the Protestant Reformers stand quite apart from some modern
\nEvangelicals who seem to think that their forebears insisted that the Bible
\nalone is the authority and norm for the church.  
<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>While the Reformers agreed that the canon
\nshould be the measuring rod for all else and the super norm of all other norms,
\nthey did not think that the Bible was the sole authority in and for the church.
\n <\/span>It is somewhat surprising that in an
\notherwise excellent chapter Payton takes a potshot at the NIV as if its
\ntranslators had fallen prey to the ‘Scripture good, tradition bad’
\ncaricature.   <\/span>Having personally known
\nmany of the NIV translators and their views, I can say without fear of contradiction,
\nthis was not the view of the translators like Doug Stuart and Gordon Fee who
\ntaught me. <\/p>\n

                <\/span>Chapters
\n7-9 explain how the Anabaptists fit into this larger picture (they were not a
\nunified group and are the forebears of the Mennonites and the Amish, but not so
\nmuch the Baptists in America, who were more indebted to the English
\nBaptists).   <\/span>What is striking is that in
\nthe big ‘baptism’ controversy, every single one of the major Reformers—
\nLuther, Calvin, Melanchthon, Bucer, Beza, Knox, Cranmer, Wesley all were
\nconvinced that infant baptism was a good Biblical practice.  <\/span>Adult baptism was not a doctrine of the major
\nProtestant Reformers.   <\/span>Indeed, one could
\nargue that while the Baptists owed something to the Radical Reformation, they
\nwere part of a different renewal movement than what has come to be called the
\nProtestant Reformation.  
<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>To his credit (in
\nchapter 8)  <\/span>Payton covers the
\nCounter-Reformation launched in large part by the Jesuits,, against the
\nProtestant Reformation, with the result that many of the successes of the
\nProtestant movement in eastern and central and western Europe were reversed by
\nthe Jesuits.  <\/span>How did they do it? By
\nfounding great Christian schools that even the Protestants wanted to send their
\nchildren to,  <\/span>children who mostly were
\nconverted back to Catholicism in these schools.   <\/span><\/p>\n

Payton also covers  <\/span>in chapter 9 the rise of Protestant
\nscholasticism after the time of the great Reformers, and here again he is on
\ntarget in his critique of  <\/span>the successors
\nof Luther and Calvin and the other Reformers who resorted to a scholastic
\nmethod of systematizing and atomizing the Biblical text in ways  <\/span>that departed from the modus operandi of the
\nReformers and indeed from some of their theological conclusions as well. Those responsible for the Reformed take over of the Southern Baptist convention, or at least various of its seminaries,  would do well to pay close attention to this chapter.      <\/span>  <\/span>    <\/span> <\/span>
<\/span><\/p>\n

In chapter 10, entitled ‘Did the
\nReformation Succeed?’  <\/span>Payton
\ndemonstrates, reformer by reformer that each of the major reformers would not
\nhave been able to answer yes to that question. Indeed, many of them died
\nprematurely or died disillusioned with the outcome, and that includes
\nLuther.   <\/span><\/p>\n

Had Payton extended his study,
\nas he should have done, to the English Reformation,  <\/span>he would have come to the person of John
\nWesley—- who witnessed, affirmed, and was indeed excited about, to his dying
\nday, the incredible success of the Wesleyan rev ival, a revival that went on
\nfor over two generations and did not degenerate into some sort of theological
\nscholasticism.  <\/span>Wesley was well satisfied
\nwith the Methodist revival’s  <\/span>ability to
\ntransform various aspects of both English and then American culture, and indeed
\nwould have seen Wilberforce’s remarkable success in ending the slave trade in
\nEngland not long after his death as a further example of how the Gospel could affect
\nboth spiritual and social transformation.  
\n<\/span>The difference between Wesley and the earlier Reformers is that Wesley
\ndid not set himself up in opposition to the Catholic Church,  <\/span>did not spend his time in continual
\ntheological bickering,  <\/span>did not see
\nhimself in apocalyptic terms, nor did he see himself as a prophet predicting on
\nthe near horizon the return of Christ.   <\/span>
<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>This is not to say Wesley was unconcerned
\nabout orthodoxy, but the orthodoxy he was concerned about was what the Bible
\nclearly taught, or its clear implications. 
\n<\/span>In fact, he would reject major tenants of the theological platforms of
\nthe previous Reformers  <\/span>(e.g. Luther’s
\n‘bondage of the human will’ idea and his two kingdoms notion,  <\/span>Calvin’s predestination and eternal security,
\nZwingli’s under emphasis on the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the
\nAnabaptists repudiation of infant baptism etc.).   <\/span>Payton’s study is excellent in what it
\ncovers in various ways,  <\/span>but it ignores
\nthe last full flowering of the Reformation in England and then America.  <\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

In Chapters 11-12 which conclude
\nthis study Payton is able to demonstrate that the Reformation period should not
\nin itself be seen as a norm, or as some golden age of church history that we
\nshould seek to imitate in detail.  <\/span>He
\nalso shows that a balanced appreciation of the Reformation allows that it produced
\nboth triumphs (getting back to the heart of the Gospel of justification by
\nfaith) and tragedies, the latter being a movement that has now splintered into
\nsome  <\/span>26,000 or more different
\ndenominations.  <\/span> <\/span>It is a mark of a good study that it produces
\nthis sort of extended response.  <\/span>In view of
\nthe fact that this book is well under 300 pages,  <\/span>Payton would have done well to have finished
\nthe job— by dealing with the English Reformation that followed the
\nContinental one. Had he done so,  <\/span>he
\nmight well have been able to modify some of his more negative conclusions. <\/p>\n

Dr. Ben Witherington, III<\/p>\n

Amos Professor of NT for Doctoral Studies, ATS  <\/span>(and one time professor of Biblical and
\nWesleyan Studies in several other seminaries). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

James R. Payton, Getting the Reformation Wrong. Correcting  some Misunderstandings,  (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2010), 240 pages, $23.                 History is unquestionably messy and complex, and this is all the more the case when one is considering some of the most turbulent and momentous epochs in history.  One such period is the Reformation, and James…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":199,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nSole Fide, Sole Scriptura- What Did the Reformers Mean? - The Bible and Culture<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2010\/10\/sole-fide-sole-scriptura-what-did-the-reformers-mean.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Sole Fide, Sole Scriptura- What Did the Reformers Mean? - The Bible and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"James R. Payton, Getting the Reformation Wrong. Correcting  some Misunderstandings,  (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2010), 240 pages, $23.                 History is unquestionably messy and complex, and this is all the more the case when one is considering some of the most turbulent and momentous epochs in history.  One such period is the Reformation, and James…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2010\/10\/sole-fide-sole-scriptura-what-did-the-reformers-mean.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Bible and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-10-24T14:29:06+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/bibleandculture\/files\/import\/assets_c\/2010\/10\/payton-thumb-400x400-18782.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Ben Witherington\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Sole Fide, Sole Scriptura- What Did the Reformers Mean? - The Bible and Culture","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2010\/10\/sole-fide-sole-scriptura-what-did-the-reformers-mean.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Sole Fide, Sole Scriptura- What Did the Reformers Mean? - The Bible and Culture","og_description":"James R. Payton, Getting the Reformation Wrong. 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A graduate of UNC, Chapel Hill, he went on to receive the M.Div. degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from the University of Durham in England. He is now considered one of the top evangelical scholars in the world, and is an elected member of the prestigious SNTS, a society dedicated to New Testament studies. Witherington has also taught at Ashland Theological Seminary, Vanderbilt University, Duke Divinity School and Gordon-Conwell. A popular lecturer, Witherington has presented seminars for churches, colleges and biblical meetings not only in the United States but also in England, Estonia, Russia, Europe, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Australia. He has also led tours to Italy, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. Witherington has written over thirty books, including The Jesus Quest and The Paul Quest, both of which were selected as top biblical studies works by Christianity Today. He also writes for many church and scholarly publications, and is a frequent contributor to the Beliefnet website. Along with many interviews on radio networks across the country, Witherington has been seen on the History Channel, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, The Discovery Channel, A&E, and the PAX Network.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/author\/bwitherington"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/199"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1230\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}