GroshLink

Why should Christians today care about what the church fathers … had to say? asked Christian History of evangelical theologian Christopher Hall. His reply: The Holy Spirit has a history. The church does not thrive in the first century, fail in the second, then revive in the sixteenth. The Spirit never deserts the church. This sense of continuity in the church and of the work of God across the centuries has encouraged many evangelicals to seek out the historic roots of Christian faith (from Is the Reformation Over?, first mentioned here).

Getting back to thoughts on the Reformation, I agree with Rodney Stark's assertion in One True God The Reformation does not mark the rebirth of Christian missions. Sectarian rivalries, no matter how bitter are about reaffiliation, not conversion. Like the Waldensians and other heretical groups before them, Protestants were trying to convince people not to accept a new God but to worship their traditional God according to somewhat different assumptions through new organizational arrangements (p.86).

Christ and His Spirit guides, lives in, and breathes through the People of God. We have never been forsaken . . . but just as the early Church was filled with broken people, capable of great good by the grace of God, they were never purged of the evil within. Not to mention the importance of maintaining and reshaping structures in order for them to point in the proper direction through continual renewal and reformation. Much insight can be gained by exploring the ever present tension between the Church of Power and the Church of Piety . . . more tomorrow.