Leading up to Reformation Day this year, I’ve decided to put up again some of my most important posts on the topic.
This one seems a good one to start with:
Good point (an appropriate follow-up to this):
“…Tomorrow will be celebrated by many Protestants as “Reformation Sunday.” To be sure, part of what Protestants celebrate on Reformation Day are what they believe to be the truths upheld and preserved within Protestantism. But without careful qualification, celebrating “Reformation Day” while remaining separated from the Catholic Church is a kind of performative contradiction, because it implies that separation, not reform, is the ultimate goal of the protest. Celebrating Reformation Day can be for that reason like celebrating a divorce, or more accurately, celebrating estrangement from our mother and from all our brothers and sisters who remain in her bosom, when in truth Christ calls us all to full communion and prays that we would be one. Moreover celebrating what is a division can blind the celebrants to the evil of that continuing division, just as celebrating divorce could blind children to its evil, or celebrating abortion could blind the celebrants to its evil.”
(there is a lot in this post that I don’t agree with to, by the way)
That said, we do celebrate the pure preaching and teaching of the pure Gospel of God and the administration of His Sacraments!
FIN
Note: Around the same time when I posted this about three years ago, the Lutheran blogger Paul McCain put a post up titled: Was the Lutheran Reformation a Tragedy. He said “no”, and I left some comments there, which you can now read under the comments section from the original posting.
photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnbullas/4080600067
theology like a child 