Christianity’s Dangerous Idea

Not long ago, a well-known British scientist and theologian published a book with the intriguing title Christianity’s Dangerous Idea. Its message was that in breaking with the western Catholic Church, sixteenth-century Protestant Reformers caused millions of people to lose their moorings.

Prior to the Reformation, one central authority, located in Rome, determined and promoted what Christians throughout western Christendom needed to believe. The Reformation had the commendable virtue of encouraging those able to read to study the Bible in their own languages. With this virtue, however, came the disadvantage of many people, either poorly educated or mentally imbalanced, to set themselves up as biblical authorities and spiritual leaders. The long-term results of this are the thousands of Protestant denominations active in the United States. Some are large but many are small comprising few congregations. If you don’t like what’s going on in your church or denomination, you can always launch a new on the opposite corner or in a nearby strip mall.

Splits between church bodies began a long time ago, in fact early in the second century. The mainline church routinely denounced beliefs it regarded as heretical and tended to persecute those who insisted on clinging to such beliefs. A thousand years ago, Eastern Orthodox churches, which for centuries had been growing apart from Latin or Roman Christianity, formally separated itself from the Roman or Latin church almost five hundred years before the Reformation. Religious differences among Christians, therefore, were not new.

What made the Reformation different was that it occurred in regions where local leaders had long been disappointed with the behavior of priests and were tired of financially supporting an ecclesiastical body it which it had lost confidence. There was also the centuries-old, but stunningly corrupted, practice of selling indulgences as a way to offset penalties in the next life for sins committed in this one. The Church had long stood in need of reform, a need Luther vociferously advocated. In response to, and reaction against, the Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church launched the Counter-Reformation.

Many sincere Protestants believe the Reformation was necessary, and many sincere Catholics view it as the most tragically divisive event ever to befall Christendom. During the Middle Ages the Church had occasionally reformed itself, at times successfully and other times less so, but the question remained whether it had gone far enough.

It is probably be clear anyone who has seriously studied church bodies that the idea of the Bible as sole authoritative within Protestantism is superficial if not naive. So, by implication, is the notion that tradition operates authoritatively in the Catholic Church but not in Protestant ones. It is also mistaken that Catholicism ignores, of worse makes light of, biblical scholarship. All Christian traditions appeal to the Bible to justify their interpretations of scripture.

Within every denomination, traditions emerge that embody its distinctive emphases, and these distinctives were in fact what initially impelled it to define itself as a separate body. Differences between and among different branches of Protestantism, Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy, have to do with what distinguishes them from each other.

The central question running through all groups that identify themselves as Christian is the extent to which they define themselves according to those written documents that, through the ages, have summarized core Christian beliefs. These include the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds, both of which together can be read in less under fifteen minutes.