Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda

That the church is reforming is obvious when seeing how churches around the globe are revising their stances on the topics of homosexuality, female clergy and sexual health. Some people say that this is a betrayal of orthodox christian teachings, and that these churches are merely following social norms in a sycophantic manner. I don't believe this. I don't believe that genuine christian faith, or even orthodoxy, is static and unchanging. The church both can and should reform.


I will first make a few clarifications. I am not arguing for following social norms only for the sake of following social norms. I am saying that the church should be constantly evaluate its doctrine so that it more and more aligns itself with God's will. I am not saying that parts of Scripture is "false". I am saying that church doctrine can be false, and has proven to be so in the past. I am saying that the church doctrine should try to align itself with the teachings of Jesus as much as possible. This demands constant reformation. 

I have four reasons for why I believe the church should be constantly reforming. They are as follows:

1. The Bible is a complex collection of texts that can only be read in the light of Christ.
2. Our knowledge of history, the natural world and of the Bible changes, therefore our understanding of God and what God wants changes. Also, our personal experiences demand different readings and acceptance of biblical texts. This is a good thing.
3. The Biblical texts are distant to us in some ways, which demand that we reinterpret them from a distant cultural milieu into our own. 
4. The Church has been corrupted in the past and reformed, therefore we must continue reforming in order to combat Satan and his lies.

The first reason has to do with Gods revelation and the Bible. The Bible is a collection of the holy texts of Christianity. There is a popular misconception that the Bible is a long list of commandments from God, but that is not the case. The numerous books of the Bible has different authors with varying agendas and vary wildly between a range of genres. It is pure literary idiocy to read a love poem like the Song of Songs in the same manner as you read a gospel narrative. Therefore one cannot say that the Bible is the “inerrant revelation of the Word of God”, because it simply ain’t the Word of God, but human accounts on the relationship between God and mankind, and how God has acted in history and human lives. Reading the Bible is unerrant revelation is called fundamentalism, and very few Christians read the Bible in such a manner, and for good reason. Now, you might say “Hold your horses! How can you say the Bible isn’t the Word of God?” I can say so confidently because I know that we Christians should only acknowledge one Word of God, and that is Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh. It is through Jesus Christ which God reveals himself and his will fully. Jesus is the inerrant revelation. As Scripture is the only reliable witness, then the Bible should be the sole source of church doctrine and that all that is required of salvation is contained therein. This is called Sola Scriptura.

A healthy comparison to understand this is to compare Jesus to the Koran. Muslims believe that the Koran is Gods perfect revelation and Muhammed the witness to the revelation. I, and many Christians with me, believe that Jesus is the perfect revelation and that the Bible is the witness to that revelation. We need to think hard about the historical and societal context that the biblical texts were written, and grapple with the parts that condone things we see as obviously immoral and inhumane. With Jesus Christ as our guiding light, we are able to navigate Scripture in a faithful manner, and as our spiritual journey intensifies see what relation there is between the different books of the bible and the person and teachings of Jesus. It is my hope that we Christians can read Scripture with literary minds, in their context and with always seeing Jesus Christ as the star and kernel of Scripture. 

The second reason for why the church should constantly be reforming is that our knowledge of the natural world, of history and of the books of the Bible changes, so must doctrine. God’s will is eternal, and truth is not subject to majority opinion. However, the understanding and knowledge of man is under constant flux. What was considered gospel truth one day, may after an increase in knowledge and understanding to be wrong. After intense study of scripture I might find that my beliefs are not in accord with God’s will as it is revealed in Jesus Christ, so I must revise them. There is no believer who has never changed his mind, for as we grow as people we acquire new knowledge which drives us to revise previously held convictions, or disregard them completely as erroneous. So too must church doctrine change as our societies progress and we as a specie acquire a deeper understanding of our world and of God. This is not adapting to societal norms. This is gaining new and deeper knowledge of things, and revising previous held beliefs that in light of new findings are completely unreasonable. How are we to view the Creation narrative in Genesis, when we know that the world was probably not created in seven days but took billions of years? How are we to view the account of Joshua’s swift conquest of Canaan, when archeological excavations show that no such conquest seems to have taken place? How should we read the book of the Prophet Jesiah, when a deeper literary analysis of the book shows that there probably was no single prophet Jesiah, but in fact three different prophetical texts that have been edited together over a longer time span? Life experiences may also give us deeper insight into how you should live your life. How should the victim of domestic abuse read “turn the other cheek” (Luke 6:29)? How should a human rights activist read “slaves, obey your masters” (Colossians 3:22)? The Christian faith is ultimately about a personal relationship with God and the person and teachings of Jesus, but new knowledge obviously challenges us Christians. What is reasonable faith, and what is unreasonable? How does the Word of God translate into my own life? Obviously, our knowledge will change, and so will our idea of what is reasonable and unreasonable. Therefore doctrines that the church has held in the past and then abandoned were abandoned for good cause. They were simply wrong, as in unreasonable and not in accordance with reality, untruth. This is a good attitude, and only serves to deepen our understanding of God as he acts and speaks into our own lives and in our own time.

Some may also say that this position waters down the Biblical texts. I do not think so, as only the historicity of the gospels is critical for the Christian. What matters about the biblical narratives is that they say something about God, man and their relationship. They are illustrations of human life, of love and hate, of suffering and horror, and forgiveness and friendship, of loyalty, of faith, and of a loving God that is present in all that, who loves his creation and will never abandon it. The Bible is after all mainly a collection of theological books.

The third reason is that the times of the biblical texts if distant to us in some ways. The language and the society that existed in those times and that created the biblical texts is in some parts foreign to us. More so, the entire framework of culture and language has shifted, and the past and the present cannot communicate with each other. Did even the concept of homosexuality as we understand it exist in the graeco-roman milieu of Paul’s time? What did Paul really mean when he said that “effeminates” are evil? Did he mean male temple prostitutes? Did he mean the institutionalized ephebophilia of the Greeks? Did he mean loving monogamous homosexual couples? What was a slave in that time? Was the slavery of the Israelites and the Romans the same thing as the slavery of modern times? How should we handle wage-slavery with regards to these passages? The questions keep coming, and they are hard to answer. I think that with deeper understanding we might see what our ancestors really meant with their words, and then we might find the need to revise the doctrine that we have inherited from them, as the thing that doctrine aims to forbid or promote no longer exists, or has become something completely different altogether. Nonetheless, this presents us with great uncertainty when it comes to reading Scripture, but Jesus will still be shedding his light upon the past and present alike, and maybe in that light we can find the answers we seek and no longer then we might take the words from the withered lips of our ancestors and make them our own, for our God is not God of the dead, but of the living (Mark 12:27).

Finally, we Christians know we have an enemy, and that is Satan. His lies are always aiming to lead Christians astray in not heeding God’s will. Therefore we must be alert and of sober mind as our enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour (1 Peter 5:8). The lies of Satan has corrupted the church before with numerous heresies and other ungodly behavior. Therefore we must put our doctrine and our past under great scrutiny, in constant reference to Scripture in the light of its star, Jesus. Then we might weed out corruption and serve God better. That was the reason for the Reformation, as numerous people saw how the church was filled with corruption and lies, and tried to reform doctrine so it was closer to God’s will. The Reformation was a historical event, but it is ongoing, as we always rid the church of things that stand in the way of Christ, promote the things that make Christ clearer and brighter, and squabble about the things that does neither.

In conclusion, I have presented four reasons for why we christians should be a church reformed and constantly reforming. Doctrine must always be examined as new knowledge, personal experiences and changing cultural framework may render them useless or unintelligible. If we do not do this then the church will be stagnant and stray from God's will. If in revising doctrine in accordance to Scripture, which should always be read in the light of Christ, we might be able to do God's will. Through reason we must see that a church that wish to do God's will is a church that is reformed and constantly reforming.