On 8 and 9 September the annual theological conference Giornate Teologiche was hosted at IFED (Istituto di Formazione Evangelica e Documentazione – the Evangelical Training and Documentation Institute) in Padua, Italy.
On the fifth centenary of the 95 Theses posted on Wittenberg Cathedral’s door, it was more than natural that the focus of the conference would be on Reformation. For the 300 attendees, the conference was an in-depth, richly stimulating meeting that urged everyone to reflect and live the evangelical faith in an equally integral and integrated way.
Mike and Leonardo
Michael Reeves delivered the main addresses, supported by contributions of Italian theologians, pastors, academics and public figures both in talks and panels. Professor Pietro Bolognesi, Director of IFED, delivered a speech on the risk of replacing Reformation with mere moralism. Jonathan Benatti and father Giulio Osto debated on what Luther had to say to the church.
A later session saw Reformed theologian Leonardo De Chirico and Lutheran pastor Bernd Prigge reflecting on how the Reformation offers useful contributions to the evangelical witness of tomorrow. Economist Giuseppe Rizza and Senator Lucio Malan discussed how Reformation could affect Italian society. The panels were a true occasion of dialogue of views differing from the evangelical one, without hiding the truth behind ecumenical courtesy.
The primacy of God
Whenever different sides debate, one inevitably faces a double challenge: can a realistic reading of the Reformation that needs no ecumenical filters to make it more palatable be produced? Can we read a unifying theme into Reformation despite its complex, varied and dynamic manifestations?
According to Reeves, we can. The unifying theme of Reformation was and is the primacy of God in human affairs. This came through as particularly different from Christianity’s understanding of that time. This was mostly tangible when, unlike Catholic theology, the Reformers recovered a Trinitarian vision of the Godhead and sought to apply this notion to each and every aspect of life. The main theme of Reformation was justification by faith alone, but the true issue here was how a triune God saves sinners.
An honest fear-awe
In his closing address, Reeves helped define what the church and the believers need to do to be constantly reforming. The logic underlying sola Scriptura and sola fide is built around a true grasping of God’s glory as well as an honest fear-awe felt towards him. These two are key elements to set believers in motion, inspiring them and granting them perseverance.
In his contribution, Bolognesi explained moralism. Moralism is a set of behaviours that retain the vestiges of morality but have severed all ties to foundational truths and have placed all the focus on experience. You welcome, relate and behave to people according to your feelings and to protocols. This contemporary perception distorts Reformation by diminishing it to the status of a moralising movement and smoothing out its rough edges. In doing so it attempts to neutralise its original thrust by including it in an ecumenical narrative that blurs all distinctions.
Distorting the Reformation
De Chirico identified the same ecumenical narrative as particularly distorting the true meaning of Reformation. Nevertheless, he also pointed to another distortion particularly present in the evangelical movements that are rapidly growing in the southern hemisphere today. He defined it as global liquefaction. In this spiritual milieu there is much resorting to the notion of renewal. However, it is a kind of negligent resort because it has no ties to the previous doctrinal legacy that would actually function as an important gatekeeper to the many excesses this environment produces. Therefore, according to De Chirico, what needs to be done is to assimilate and revamp Reformation through a constant ‘literacy programme’, a centreing on the true core of renewal (the word of God) and an ongoing supply of new projects for confessing churches, progressing believers and intermediate bodies.
Reformation and society
How the Reformation impacted, socially and politically, was Rizza’s main focus. The societies transformed by the Protestant worldview were hit by a series of multiple cultural shocks that radically reshaped them. The Reformation, therefore, is neither merely spiritual in its outcome nor tightly confined to a single sector of life, but, in Comenius’ terms, it is a Reforma mundi, a transformation of the whole reality because it conceives it under the complete lordship and vision of God.
What the audience listened to was anything but lofty and impalpable. There was immediacy and concreteness to it. This was even more appreciated when time was given to concentrate on human affairs, both of Reformers (such as Luther) and of present-day fellow believers, who gave short testimonies of how the Reformation values affected their lives and ministries in a process of personal reform.
When one honours God by placing him above everything else, then everything changes and a truly and fully human flourishing begins. The Reformation is not over.
