There are today thousands of websites devoted to exploring and defending the key emphases of the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. You don’t have to spend much time on Google to find numerous sites that will tell you all about the Reformation’s famed “Five Solas” – sola Scriptura, sola fide, sola gratia, solus Christus, and soli Deo Gloria. It’s easy to find innumerable materials online that outline the core tenets of the Lutheran or the Calvinist or even the Anabaptist understanding of the Reformation. It’s even easier to find websites which promote apologetic defenses of Reformational viewpoints and engage in polemical attacks on non-Reformational viewpoints.
With so many Reformation-oriented websites out there already, it’s only fair to ask what makes this one, The Discarded Image, any different? Why should you care about this website?
Today, many argue that we Protestants must recover the central doctrinal emphases of the Reformation and apply them to our contemporary culture and our personal spiritual lives. They argue that over the last century and a half or so, we Protestants have lost touch with the theological program of our Reformation fathers. They urge that the solutions to many of the problems we face today is to “turn back the clock” theologically. The way we are to go forward as Modern Protestants is by first going backward to the fount and source of Protestantism, the Reformation itself. They argue, in short, that what we Modern Protestants need is a “Modern Reformation.”
Insofar as the domain of theology proper goes, this is a laudable idea, and we on this website do not take issue with its basic emphasis. However, the Reformation was about much more than a set of doctrines about the salvation of the soul. The Reformers were born into a culture that, for all its terrible flaws, was a Christian culture. Their reforms were aimed not only at the spiritual realities but at the temporal ones as well. When he was asked what he would do if he knew that Christ would return to the earth tomorrow, Martin Luther replied, “I would plant a tree.” He is also reported to have said that “Now that we are free from the papacy, we are free to pursue science.” For Luther, an exclusive emphasis upon the spiritual side of life was no better than what he called the “monkish tyranny” of the papal system against which he fought.
Similarly, John Calvin urged us to honor and to be familiar with the best works of classical pagan antiquity precisely because over the millennia God had given much light to unbelievers and Christians could expect to significantly profit from that light. Calvin’s own Institutes of the Christian Religion exhibit an extremely thorough familiarity with the best works of classical antiquity, and many passages could be brought forward to show ways in which Calvin adapted good ideas from even pagan writers to how he thought and wrote about Christian theology.
Later on, William Tyndale, the great translator of the Scriptures into English, rebuked an exclusive concern for spiritual things with the candid remark, “If we look externally, there is a difference between washing dishes and preaching the Word of God, but as touching pleasing God, none at all.” In terms of pleasing God, there is no difference, said Tyndale, between preaching the Gospel and washing the dishes. A rather amazing remark, that, but it tells you something profound about how Tyndale thought of the Reformation.
Again, the early English Protestant martyr Hugh Latimer said, “This is a wonderful thing, that the Savior of the world and the king above all kings, was not ashamed to labor, and to use so simple an occupation. Here He did sanctify all manner of occupations.” Yet again, the Puritan William Perkins wrote, “The action of a shepherd keeping sheep is as good a work before God as a minister in preaching.”
Centuries later, this world-affirming nature of Protestantism was restated by the Dutch Reformed theologian Abraham Kuyper when he said, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: Mine!”
These and many more examples could be brought forward to demonstrate that the Protestant Reformation was concerned with far more than just the salvation of souls. The Reformation doctrine of vocations – lawful callings to various forms of work pursued under the Lordship of Christ – freed the ordinary man from the tyrannical idea that the only things that mattered were the “spiritual” things. The Reformational Christian is free under God’s sovereignty to pursue – and to pursue with unashamed, unapologetic gusto! – the domains of art, literature, science, philosophy, history, politics, and any other lawful matter of inquiry you can think of.
Accordingly, the assumption of this website, The Discarded Image, is that for a “Modern Reformation” to succeed, we Protestants need to be far more interested than we are in a far wider range of issues than the ones we typically call “spiritual” and “theological.” We need to know our p’s and q’s about predestination and justification and the nature of Christ’s atonement, to be sure, but such issues as these are not the full scope of the Christian’s duty to understand and engage the world in which we live. It is true that Paul said bodily exercise profits little, but he also said that it was better for others that he remain in the body than go to be with the Lord. It is only in the body, after all, that we can affect the world full of other bodies in order to build and spread the kingdom of Christ our Lord. We may justly extend this reasoning and say that the cultures that we live in are important in their own right, because God has put us in them to do the work of building His Kingdom, and He uses not just us with our bodies, but the physical institutions and cultural apparatus to carry out His plans in real, space and time history.
The “image” that we as Modern Protestants have “discarded,” then, is the full-orbed view of the Christian life as being aimed at salvation, but as encompassing the whole of the world as well. One excellent way to do this is to become acquainted with the cultural context of the Reformers, to learn about the things that made them the kinds of men they were, the things that helped them to do the world-changing deeds that they did.
While it is possible to gain a generalized familiarity with the outlines of the thought of the Reformers as it appears “in black and white” on the pages that they wrote, I do not believe it is possible to appreciate their work in a full-orbed sense without also understanding the roots of their thought. This necessitates gaining familiarity with the Renaissance, and behind the Renaissance, with Medieval Christendom, and behind Medieval Christendom, with the classical heritage upon which the Christian society which the Reformers ultimately sought to reform had been built.
What does Cicero have to do with Calvinism? Why should Reformed people be interested in Plutarch’s Lives and Herodotus’ Histories? Who were Wessel Gansfort and Nicholas of Cusa? What was Nominalism, and how did it affect Luther’s and Calvin’s approach to the Bible? What do Medieval canon law, Petrarch, conciliarism, and the Devotio Moderna have to do with the Protestant Reformation? Why shouldn’t we just stick with our traditional heroes, Gottschalk, Wycliffe, Huss, Luther, Calvin, the Puritans, and the like? Why should we bother learning about Peter Martyr Vermigli or about complicated issues like Natural Law theory and the rather Medieval dualist political theory that was enshrined in the Reformed Confessions? Why can’t the “the five solas,” “the doctrines of grace,” and traditional polemics against Romanists and Arminians be enough for us? Why can’t we just “preach the Gospel” and let everything else fall into desuetude?
The answer is because this is not what the Reformers themselves did. Since Protestants today frequently debate the question of how far we should follow the Reformers’ own examples, this website aims to help the debate along by means of closely interacting with the sources and context of the Reformation. Whatever your own position on how far we ought to follow the Reformers’ own examples, this website aims to increase your appreciation for what is too often simply discarded in Protestant talk about the Reformation.
Enjoy!