Reformed Evangelical Synod of America

Posts Tagged ‘Theology’

One question our Synod has fielded in the past is “Why the Heidelberg Catechism?”.

As our Synodical work progresses, we will be issuing a revision of the Heidelberg Catechism adapted for our own use. But why not begin de novo?

Hopefully our introduction we provide to a work on the Heidelberg helps answer that question.

The Heidelberg Catechism reflects the fruit not only of that generation but represents a crystallization of thought within the Western Christian tradition itself. It stands as witness to the “Catholicity” of the doctrine of Justification by Faith available to all those who find their hope in Jesus Christ alone through faith alone. In our day of increasingly “churchless” Christianity, the Catechism also bears witness to a paradigm for the Christian life that emerges from the Baptismal Covenant.

With Baptism as the starting point, our faith resides in the objective promise of God through the Church (the Body of Christ in its witness). The other alternative is that we are left disastrously to the subjective experience of the autonomous individual who considers himself free to interpret the Bible however he may will and yet claim to be a “Christian”. In other words, the Heidelberg stands as document that connects the primitive catholic tradition with the challenges of our own day.

For these reasons, our Synod builds upon this classic symbol of the faithful and hopes with it to forge a new Reformed and Evangelical consensus. We pray that such a consensus results in a vibrant contemporary mission and ministry for this day and age.

Dr. Martin Luther nailing his Ninety-five Theses to the door of the University Church at Wittenburg.

How can one be both Catholic and Protestant? The two camps seem to be completely opposed to one another, and yet for the better part of five hundred years, there have been those who have walked the journey of faith maintaining both a Catholic and Protestant identity. In order to engage in a fruitful dialogue on this topic, it is important to get behind the evolved meanings of both words to discover their roots.

The word Catholic is an adjective derived from the Greek καθολικός (katholikos), meaning ‘universal’. Any Church holding to the theological and moral concepts expressed in Sacred Scripture and the Nicene Creed are rightly called Catholic Churches, for they have maintained the one truth that has been handed down by Christ through the Church. Such a definition of the word Catholic is defended by Vincent of Lerins in a work known as the Commonitoria.

The word Protestant is an adjective derived from the Latin protestari meaning ‘publicly declare’. The use of the term dates to the Diet of Speyer, held in 1529. Since that time, the term Protestant has been used in many different senses, most often as a general term describing those, rooted in Western Christianity, who believe that the true Christian Church can exist independently of the Roman Catholic Church.

For a long time, many of us outside of the Roman Church have struggled with the term ‘Protestant’, finding it to be an insult or an affront; but the meaning of the word is a noble one. Protestants are those who make a public declaration of their faith against all adversaries, heresies, and wiles of Satan. When one comes to a proper understanding of the term Protestant, it is not a term of shame, but a badge of honor.

At the same time, many Protestants shirk to be called Catholics, fearing that they, somehow, will be associated with the Church of Rome; yet history teaches us that the ancient Church was not initially centered on Rome, and her influence can be seen to have changed over the centuries through a collusion of civil and religious authority in the Roman Empire and, after the Empire’s fall, through mandated expressions of civil religion that spread throughout Europe in the Dark Ages and into Medieval times. To be a Catholic, one need not subscribe to the superstitions and false teachings of these eras; one need hold fast to the Word, inspired by the Holy Spirit.

A true Catholic will have no problem with the ‘five solas’ of the Protestant Reformation, properly understood, for they will require the Catholic to simply affirm what Scripture clearly teaches and what the Church Fathers reliably taught.

At the same time, a true Protestant will rejoice in the nature of the Church itself – a body we are promised will never die or pass away, but one which shall be perfected and brought into the eternal presence of God at the last great day. The idea that the Church and faithful preaching has been absent from the earth for even a day since her birth on the first Pentecost Day must be rejected as flying in the face of the very words of Christ. While we can always seek to reform and refine the Church to be more purely what Christ intended, we must never confess that the Church has disappeared.

Certainly there remain matters that are unresolved between the Catholic and Protestant mindsets. Indeed, even within the Protestant realm there are many varied views on the how’s and why’s of the faith – but following Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord is and must be the central focus of the life of any individual, community, or ecclesial assembly that professes to be Christian.

To be both Catholic and Protestant may be an uneasy coexistence for many, but when faced with a right understanding of what it means to be both, their coexistence becomes a joy – for it is always a joyful thing to stand up for the faith once for all delivered unto the saints.

Father Robert Lyons is a presbyter of the Reformed Evangelical Synod of America. He serves as the Manager of Chaplaincy Services at Wishard Memorial Hospital in Indianapolis, and is leading the effort to plant a new congregation in Central Indiana. He and his family reside in Bargersville, Indiana.