The Reformers and the Fathers
Several months ago I had a lively online exchange with a Protestant from the Reformed tradition. The conversation got really interesting and I had intended to write a series of posts based on our discussion. Alas, before I could do this, his blog was suddenly taken down, meaning that I was unable to use the record of our exchange to save me some work in constructing my posts (yes, I’m rather lazy).
To make sure the same thing doesn’t happen again, today I wanted to do a short post which is effectively a slightly expanded reproduction of my comments on an article over at Reformed Reader, in response to the blog author’s claims concerning Christian history and the Early Church Fathers.
Historical Claims
During the discussion in the article‘s comments, a user who identified himself as a Protestant made the following observation:
If we are going to argue that the church has always existed, our Orthodox and Catholic friends will nod in agreement. But they will point to themselves as being the church that always existed. That is a concrete, historically verifiable claim.
To this comment, the blog’s author was extremely dismissive of this, responding “That their claim is verifiable is laughable”. If I were him, I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss it. After all, there is an impressive list of former Protestant ministers and scholars down through the years who converted to Catholicism after assessing these historical claims (Newman, Hahn, Kreeft, Beckwith, …). The Coming Home Network is a Catholic apostolate committed to telling the stories of these converts. Frankly, “Discovering The Early Church Fathers” is so much a standard part of every Catholic conversion story, it’s practically cliché…
Cal & Gus, Best Friends Forever?
When talking about the Reformers, here’s what Reformed Reader had this to say:
The Reformers clearly understood the fact that there was a church before the Reformation (check out the citations in Calvin from the early church fathers and medieval theologians
On this point, he is correct. I think Calvin quotes Augustine over four hundred times in his Institutes. Calvin even boldly claimed:
“Augustine is so wholly with me, that if I wished to write a confession of my faith, I could do so with all fullness and satisfaction to myself out of his writings”
– John Calvin, A Treatise on the Eternal Predestination of God
The problem is…Clavin cherry-picked. There is a long, long, looooong list of issues were Calvin was certainly not in agreement with Augustine: Sacraments, Papacy, Purgatory, Relics, Saints, … If you’d like to see a full collection issues, Dave Armstrong has compiled a pretty compelling list.
However, Calvin had other problems. Not only did he cherry-pick within an individual Father’s works, he also cherry-picked between Fathers. For example, Calvin completely rejected Ignatius of Antioch because of “the absurdities” he found in his letters.
In fact, it gets even worse in that! Not only did the Reformers find many things within the Fathers which they could not affirm, the Reformers also believed things which found no support among the Fathers. For example, Alister McGrath, a Calvinist scholar and biographer, concedes that Calvin’s views on forensic justification and imputed righteousness were “theological novum”, not found in antiquity.
So, back to the original point, yes, some of the Reformers did go to great lengths to demonstrate that their version of the Faith was in accordance with that of the Early Church. However, I’d assert that they could only do that with some very careful quotation selection.
It’s also worth noting that, although some of the Reformers saw continuity with the Early Church as important, not all did. In fact, it’s probably worth pointing out that many Protestant leaders urge people not to read the Fathers because they’re so Catholic/Eastern Orthodox!
This probably goes a long way to explain why most Protestants today know nothing of the Early Church and why the “Church History” sections in most Christian bookstores typically only begin at 16th Century… 🙁