Ecclesia Reformata Semper Reformanda

One of the guiding principles of arguably the most comprehensive and enduring reformation in the history of the Christian church, the Protestant Reformation, came to be encapsulated in this dictum: “Ecclesia Reformata Semper Reformanda” (“The Reformed Church Always Reforming”).¹ 

In truth, reformation is one of the major dynamics that God has used repeatedly in his unrelenting effort to bring his chosen people to the place of honor that he has always designed for them. The word and will of God have been clearly set forth in the divine revelation that God himself gave to “holy men of ancient times” whom he “carried along by the Holy Spirit,” speaking through them his eternal truth (2 Peter 1:21). This was the way in which God took the initiative to disclose both himself and his will to human beings for their own blessing. 

The problem that has always plagued God’s people from time immemorial has been the tendency that humans have of losing sight of God’s will and turning to their own devices. Each time that they have done so, God has always summoned from among them a remnant of people who had been committed to doing God’s thing God’s way. This is the dynamic of reformation. Whenever the clay of humanity becomes marred in the hand of the divine Potter, he takes the clay that remains malleable and reforms it into a vessel that pleases him (Jeremiah 18:1-3). 

The Need for Reformation

One of the most unfortunate truths of both Israelite and church history has been the fact that reformation can never be a one-time event. Though every reformed movement thinks that its reformation is the final one, there will always be a continuing need for reformation. There are two reasons for this truth: 1) people tend to crystallize around the thing that God has done among them and to refuse to move forward as divine revelation opens new vistas to them and 2) humans often drift from the Word and will of God into ideas and systems of their own making. Because these two dynamics are inevitably present in God’s dealings with humankind, reformation, renewal, revival, and restoration are continuing needs within the community of faith.

The Crystallization Syndrome

It has often been said that the greatest enemy of a new move of God in the earth is usually those involved in the last move of God! As the spirit of reformation brings both innovation and restoration, people tend to become very comfortable with the ideas, systems, and practices of that movement. As ideas jell and bureaucracies emerge, people, especially leaders, come to enjoy the perquisites of power and privilege. “We like things just as they are,” they tell the reforming God, “so don’t try to change what we have.” As time passes, the crystallization increases as doctrines and practices become entrenched. Sometimes those who think they are being good stewards of the most recent blessing of God become so devoted to what they have created that they cannot open their hearts to the new thing that God wants to do. As Abraham Joshua Heschel said, “When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion—its message becomes meaningless.”²

Abandoning the Word of God

The Protestant Reformation was initiated as an act of God designed to bring reform into the church that had drifted from commitment to the authority of Scripture into the morass of layered accretions of human tradition that had either been added to Scripture or had been established in violation of Scripture. The Roman Church had postulated that the ecclesia clerens (the “teaching church”) had the gift of interpretation of Scripture so that Scripture meant whatever it said it meant, and it had concluded that church tradition was more authoritative than the actual words of Scripture. 

In this apostate milieu, the church devolved into teachings and practices that at best were condemned in Scripture and at worst were downright abominable. Exercising absolute power that was wielded on the threat of excommunication and eternal damnation, the church became little more than a religio-political empire. Then, in order to finance its edifice complex that sought to erect ever-increasing architectural grandeur on the backs of the poor, the church resorted to selling indulgences, permission slips, as it were, that allowed people to be forgiven of sins that they had not yet committed or planned to commit. Additionally, the church had largely replaced the biblical teaching of justification by faith with the idea that salvation was gained sacramentally and maintained by works of penance and charity. This led to the ecclesiastical dictum: “Extra ecclesia nulla salus” (“Outside the church there is no salvation”).  

It was in defense of the cardinal biblical teaching of justification by faith and in challenge of the Roman Church’s sale of indulgences that Martin Luther initiated the action that was to become the Protestant Reformation. Luther’s intentions were to seek reform within the church; however, when he was excommunicated in 1521 by Pope Leo X, the Reformation became a mark of separation from the Roman Church which other Christian reformers followed.

The Authority of Scripture

The continuing need for reformation among God’s people was summed up in the seventeenth-century slogan: “Ecclesia Reformata Semper Reformanda” (“The Reformed Church Is Always Reforming”), which was actually an abbreviated form of “Ecclesia reformata semper reformanda est secundum Verbum Dei” (“The reformed church is always reforming according to the Word of God”).³ This more complete version of the motto bespeaks the supreme devotion that the Reformers gave to the authority and trustworthiness of Holy Scripture, including the Hebrew Scriptures (commonly called the “Old Testament”) and the Apostolic Scriptures (commonly called the “New Testament).

Two of the earliest and most prominent of the sixteenth-century reformers echoed the importance of Scripture in their efforts to bring renewal and restoration to the church. Martin Luther, who initiated the Protestant Reformation in 1517 when he nailed to the door of the castle church in Wittenburg, Germany, 95 Latin Theses “protesting” the Roman Church’s sale of indulgences, made this declaration: “The Word of God—and no one else, not even an angel—should establish articles of faith.”⁴ John Calvin, the French theologian who, in the seventeenth century, built on the foundation that Swiss reformer Huldrych Zwingli had begun in 1518, declared, “Let this, therefore, be a firm axiom: nothing should be permitted in the church as the Word of God except what is, first, in the Law and Prophets, and, secondly, in the writings of the apostles: and that there is no correct mode of teaching except within the prescribed limits and under the rule of this Word.”⁵

These statements of Reformation conviction and commitment point out the truth of what Jon Levenson noted: “Protestant communions have historically tended to think of their Bible as a source of renewal, as the agent that enables the ecclesia semper reformanda (the church forever in need of reform) to slough off its accumulated distortions and to recover its pristine gospel, which is its exclusive authority.”⁶ It was for this reason that Sola Scriptura (“Scripture alone” stood alongside Sola Fide (“faith alone”) as the twin mottos of the Reformation. These mottos meant that “no human authority or structure is finally authoritative.”⁷ The Reformers understood the one cardinal truth that had always guided the church: any tradition, whether rabbinic or ecclesiastical, can never be accepted on a par with the Scriptures themselves.

Christian Hebraists

The foundation for the Protestant Reformation was actually laid at the very beginning of the sixteenth century by diverse scholars from across Europe who styled themselves as “Christian Hebraists.” They had come upon this startling revelation: if the Scriptures are to be understood correctly, they must be studied in the Hebrew texts of the “Old Testament” and with the Hebrew thought underlying the Greek texts of “New Testament.” In order to provide a framework for this Hebraic exegesis of Scripture, they resorted to the ancient grammatico-historical hermeneutic that was employed in third and fourth-century Antioch (which constituted merely a refinement of principles from ancient Jewish hermeneutics).

When this method of interpretation was employed, it produced what the scholars termed Veritas Hebraica (Hebrew Truth). Eventually, the interpretive method of the Christian Hebraists was adopted by virtually all of the reformed movements of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In fact, this method came to be known as the Reformation Hermeneutic.

Many of the leading scholars of the Reformation were from the background of Christian Hebraism, so the Reformation had a strong appreciation for the Hebrew language and the Hebrew idioms of Scripture. It is safe to say that the very foundations of Protestantism were anchored in Hebraic truth.

Continuing Reformation

Martin Luther believed that reformation was a one-time act of God and not a continuing effort of men. For Luther, reformation was “concerned with the proclamation of the pure gospel and the true faith and with the abandoning of human teachings.”⁸ For the reformers from the tradition of Zwingli, Calvin, Martin Bucer, and John Knox, however, reformation was a continuing act initiated by God through the agency of the Holy Spirit that was to be carried out and perpetuated by men. As a matter of fact, the term Reformed came to be applied to the movements that these reformers established. For these reformers, reformation was a dynamic, living activity, not a static, historical event.

Al Peverall has encapsulated the spirit of reformation very well in these words: “The need for renewal is just as great now as it was forty years ago. Yet it seems that we may have arbitrarily put the idea in a drawer to save as a memory for present and future conversation. The need for renewal must not remain the history books. It must abide in the life, vitality, and experience of God’s people.”⁹

This is why David Willis-Watkins has said so eloquently that reformation “is not a onetime act to which a confessionalist could appeal and upon whose events a traditionalist could rest. In essence, ‘reformation according to God’s Word’ is ‘permanent reformation . . . an event that keeps church and theology breathless with suspense, an event that infuses church and theology with the breath of life, a story that is constantly making history, an event that cannot be concluded in this world, a process that will come to fulfillment and to rest only in the Parousia of Christ.”¹⁰

The Greatest Reformation Model

The real prototype of reformation was established by Jesus himself, who was a reformer in the truest sense of the word. While many people think of Jesus as an innovator who created a completely new religion that no one had ever even imagined before, the truth is that Jesus did not come to destroy the faith of the Israelites. He came only to reform, restore, and renew, fulfilling the faith of Abraham by filling it full of his own grace and truth. Indeed, the ministry of Jesus was Judaism’s “time of reformation” (Hebrews 9:10). 

In typical prophetic fashion, Jesus called his fellow Jews back to the foundations of their faith, pointing out to them the vitality of heart issues that were far more important than punctilious performance of ritual. At the same time, he established for the church the infallible principle when he insisted that only the Scriptures could be trusted to validate anything that either he was doing. 

This is why the hearts of all true reformers have been turned away from a focus on the institution of church and toward God alone in faithfulness to the Word of God. It is this commitment to the Hebraic truth which Jesus taught that will enable the church to be the ecclesia semper reformanda while avoiding the pitfalls of “constantly [turning] its flag toward the wind of the most recent fad.”¹¹ This is how the church can accomplish the mission of being established in the “present truth” (2 Peter 1:12), the word that God has for today.

Restoring the Hebraic truth on which Jesus established the church will keep the body of the Messiah marching toward to the final chapter of the continuing reformation which is the full restoration of everything that God has spoken by the prophets since the world began (Acts 3:20-21).  This restoration will complete the Reformation. Then, and only then, will the ecclesia reformanda be holy and without blemish, prepared as a bride for the Messiah.

About the Author

John D. Garr, Ph.D.

President & CEO