Category Image The 500 Year Itch?


Terry Mattingly has written a column about the current state of Protestantism, based on the assertion that Christianity goes through some seismic change once every 500 years. I'm not sure if that is his assertion, or the author he quotes in the column. I think it is clear that Protestantism is undergoing a significant change now, but the 500 year "rule" is mostly contrived, and some of the conclusions strained.

In order to make the 500 year rule work, TMatt counts back 500 years from the reformation and arrives at the great Schism. Truly a huge event, so he is doing fine to this point. Go back 500 years further and you arrive at the... "fall of the Roman Empire???" Umm, no. True, you arrive at the fall of Rome, and that certainly was historically significant. However, just as significant was the move of the capitol of the Roman Empire to Byzantium/Constantinople about 200 years earlier. You know, the Roman Empire that continued to exist until the 15th century (yes, you can argue that the Western Empire fell, but it wasn't the whole thing). Of course, in the early 9th century, we have the founding of the Holy Roman Empire - which, coupled with increasing theological divergence on the part of Rome, is really the significant upheaval of the millennium. Perhaps, the legalization of Christianity a couple of hundred years before the fall of Rome was even more significant. Frankly, the fall of Rome wasn't, in my mind, that huge of an impact on Christianity.

So, why is the 500 year thing so important? Besides providing a nice hook for his column, it also allows the author he interviews to arrive at some interesting implications regarding the Emerging Church movement. She makes an interesting, and unfounded claim that these changes result in the prevailing form of Christianity having to give "pride of place" to something new. This is as if Rome became some minority Church after the Reformation, and Orthodoxy had apparently vanished entirely by then. From an American perspective, Catholicism and Orthodoxy are minority religions. The majority of all Christians in the U.S. are, in fact, Protestant. However, around the world, Protestantism comes in at a third place position. Rome remains the biggest, with Orthodoxy number two. Nobody has given away pride of place, unless you want to discuss supplanting Orthodoxy with the theological novelties that developed in Rome.

I think the author that TMatt interviews is attempting to suggest that the Emerging Church movement, with its elimination of doctrine, is the new exciting thing that will unit Protestantism. I think that this is a fantasy. The one constant in Protestantism is its incredible ability to fragment. There are a variety of reasons for this, but the foundation is that Protestantism is essentially about the individual and their view of Scripture. As Fr. Freeman notes in a recent blog entry (drawing on Christianity Today), this divorce from the Church and the Fathers leads to erroneous conclusions. It also leads to as many denominations as there are strong egos.

As Annie notes over at Innocent Doves , this willingness to "shed dogma and rethink doctrine," "sounds a lot like what has been going on in ECUSA." Indeed, it does. As the ECUSA has well demonstrated, that path does not lead to unity.

So, I don't think there is any magic 500 year itch. I don't think the Emerging Church movement represents some great new thing - except for the number of such Churches who are realizing that Orthodoxy or Rome is where they should be. Otherwise it will simply represent the continued fragmentation of what Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli began.

h/t to 9.West

Posted: Tuesday - December 18, 2007 at 11:25 AM          

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