| Title | : | Reformation: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1845507010 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781845507015 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 127 |
| Publication | : | First published July 11, 2000 |
Reformation: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow Reviews
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This was an EXCELLENT book. It's a call to apply the truths of the Reformation to today, a call to semper reformanda--to always be reforming. Trueman exposes the tendency of today's Church to make man the center of all spiritual things. He issues important challenges and reminders that God, not man, is the driving force behind our salvation, and that God, not man, is at the center of the Bible and the Gospel. Short book. Dense read.
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Dr. Trueman masterfully illustrates the need to go back to what the Reformers taught in our age. This is highlighted in remembering Christ in all of our sermons as our ultimate assurance. He urges the reader to not ground assurance in emotional highs or lows, but on the promises of God and what Christ has done for us.
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A helpful reminder of where we came from, where we are, and where we could possibly head in light of the Reformation and the doctrines that were recovered during that period. Reformed and always reforming.
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"We have a gracious and trustworthy God; the Reformers reminded the world of that fact; let us place him once again at the centre of our lives and worship."
This sums up the book well, Trueman makes a fantastic case for the principles of the reformation applied to our worship. Principles that take the focus off our self and onto the work of God. A thoroughly enjoyable read. -
Great work by Dr. Trueman in calling the church to apply the doctrines of the Reformation to our modern context. I really appreciated his emphasis on the Christ-centered nature of the Reformation.
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The author Carl Trueman is the professor of historical theology at Westminster Theological Seminary although he authored this work originally back in 1999 before he was a professor at Westminister. At that time Trueman was the Senior Lecturer in Church History at University of Aberdeen in which he acknowledged this book was written in haste so that it can be delivered at a conference in Wales for the Evangelical Theological College. In the book’s forward Trueman tells us that he is delighted to find that he agrees with the book even though he originally wrote the book before his 40s and now he is older and mature. This book is not a history book per se about the reformation as it is about the heritage of the Reformation having its impact and importance for today and the future.
The book is divided into four chapters. The first chapter argues for the relevance of the Reformation today. The second focuses on Christ since the Reformation puts Christ at the center of theology. The third chapter is on the Scriptures while the fourth is on the importance of Christian assurance of salvation which Trueman argues is an important motif and theme for Protestants from the time of the Reformation onwards.
I personally found the first two chapters to have been the most delightful:
• Chapter one was incredibly nuanced. For instance Trueman makes it clear that he thinks the Reformation is important but that doesn’t mean he’s trying to make contemporary Christians and the church today go back to the sixteenth century. Nor is Trueman cultish in his esteem of the Reformation in which he argues like some would do in an unbiblical fashion that just because the Reformers did something therefore it means it must be right, true, etc. Here Trueman talks about “unhelpful friends” who have good intention in defending the Reformation but which the Reformation must also be rescued from as well.
• Before I began reading the book I was also curious as to how Trueman would define the Reformation especially since the title suggests it isn’t used to described only the movement in the sixteenth century. I know today there can be some debate as to what constitute Reformed theology. I like Trueman’s working definition given in the first chapter of the book: “the Reformation represents a move to place God as he has revealed himself in Christ at the center of the church’s life and thought” (17). I thought this was a very good definition because it transcends the sixteenth century and it definitely is something that is relevant for today and tomorrow.
• Chapter one profoundly reminded me that the Reformation primarily was a theological movement and not merely a campaign for moral reforms of the Catholic church which no doubt some of the counter-Reformation Catholics would agree needs some kind of moral fixes. Trueman articulates in chapter one how the issue for the Reformers was one of theology. If one gets the theology right, then the moral problem will be fixed as a result of the implication of right theology. The opposite is also true: bad theology produces bad fruits.
• I enjoyed Trueman’s discussion in chapter two about Martin Luther’s “theology of the Cross” as opposed to theology of glory. Here Trueman gives the historical understanding of what Trueman has meant. While I have read and heard in the past about Luther’s theology of the Cross it wasn’t until I read this book did I truly understood what Martin Luther was trying to say and saw how earth shaking it is as theological paradigm. The implication of Luther’s theology of the Cross is very relevant for today though it is counter-cultural in that it tells us of how to be comforted with hardship and trials.
The following is my constructive criticism:
• Trueman is doctrinally sound when it comes to the Gospel. However it wished Trueman would have quoted and interacted more from the Bible. For instance I believe we do not see any Bible verses quoted or cited until on page 100. This is quite amazing considering that the book is only 127 pages and that it is a book that also acknowledges Sola Scriptura. If the book is adapted from Trueman’s message for a conference I wonder how the people fared in the conference to sit through that long without Scriptural reference.
• I wished Trueman could have talked more about the theme of Christian assurance. Specifically I thought that the book could have benefited from more practical questions to diagnose one’s spiritual identity and whether one is truly saved, etc. He is right though that Reformed or Protestants can have assurance of their salvation because of what God has done and has promised. This is contrary to Catholic theology.
I do recommend this book and believe this would be edifying for the readers. -
I didn’t enjoy this quite as much as some of Carl Trueman’s other books, but like everything he writes it is provocative, thoughtful and stimulating. In this collection of four conference papers he seeks to “offer a definition of the Reformation in terms of its broad theological contribution to the thought of the church.” In doing this, he encourages us to think about how the principles of the Reformation could be “applied today in a manner which neither misses their timeless theological import, nor simply indulges in a mindless doctrinal reductionis.”
Trueman sees the Reformation as representing “a move to place God as he has revealed himself in Christ at the centre of the church’s life and thought”. He expands on three aspects of this: the church’s emphasis upon Jesus Christ and him crucified; the emphasis upon Scripture as the basis and norm for the proclamation of Christ; and the church’s accent on assurance of salvation as the normative experience for all Christian believers. He highlights that he is “interested in the theological principles underlying the Reformers’ work and in understanding how those principles might be applied in practice today, given that God has not changed, our theology has not changed, but certain aspects of our culture and society have changed…It is only to the extent that they brought God and Christ to bear upon the church of their day that the Reformers have any ongoing relevance for us today.”
Touching on a theme that is more developed in some of his later writing, Trueman also points out that one of the reasons the Protestant Reformation was so important is that “it sought to address the theological foundations of the church and to reform the whole, root and branch…one of the elements which most marks contemporary evangelical piety is the obsession not so much with God as with self…at stake here is an issue of substantial emphasis, of what actually lies at the centre. If it is Christ, well and good; if it is anything else, we need reformation.”
He also points out, helpfully, that we need to appreciate that this reforming activity “is essentially a dynamic process rather than a static state of affairs…The whole point of the Reformation from a theological perspective is that it was more than just a dispute over forms…as far as they were concerned, the battle was not one between forms or emphases or traditions; it was between those who had the gospel and those who were committed to hiding it or opposing it or abolishing it altogether.” Identifying this idolatry, and repenting of it, is something that Christians in all ages need to be self-aware enough to do.
In considering Christ crucified, Trueman begins by examining Luther’s idea of a theology of the cross: “The theologian of the cross…is the one who sees things as they really are, the one who knows what God is really like because his or her thinking about God starts with God’s revelation of himself and not with human expectations. Where does this revelation take place for Luther? Primarily in the person of Christ on the cross at Calvary. That is where theology must begin and end; that is the source and the principle by which all theological statements must be judged and understood. This is perhaps Luther’s most dramatic and profound insight into the nature of theology, with implications that are little short of shattering…True Christian expectations centre on the cross and involve an acceptance, if not the willing embrace, of the suffering, weakness and marginalisation which inevitably come to those who follow in the footsteps of the Master.”
He goes on to emphasise how this understanding of Christ and Christianity is opposed to the gospel of self-fulfilment: “what obsesses the public: health, wealth and happiness. These three things have become the three golden calves of the contemporary western world because they speak predominantly of personal fulfilment, reinforcing the notion of a human purpose which lies within the self rather than that which lies beyond the self…the world’s approach to suffering which is all too often little more than an attempt to eliminate it by burying it under trivia.”
Next, Trueman considers the importance and centrality of scripture, “Scripture does not just contain God’s word, it is God’s Word. This does not mean that it replaces Christ any more than a love letter replaces my wife. It serves rather in the interim as our means of knowing him and of knowing his will. In heaven, we will not need the Bible, for we shall see him face to face—and that is an important point to make over against those who accuse evangelicals of replacing a relationship with a person with a relationship with a book. We emphatically do not; we have a personal relationship with Christ here and now but only through the book.”
He then reflects on the importance of robust ministerial training, which ensures that the pastors serve the church with a ministry which “handles the Word of God with respect and which impresses on the congregation not just the fact that God’s Word is true and powerful, but why it is so and what the significance of this is.” Systematic expository preaching is central to this, as it “impresses upon congregations the fact that the Bible ultimately tells one story, that of humanity’s fall and redemption, and contains one history, that of God’s dealings with men and women, culminating in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ…The Word written and the Word preached are both central to Christianity and are not simply cultural forms which can be shed when culture moves on.”
Again, “no elaborate string of words, no compelling argument, no passionate speech will ever bring a single individual to Christ. It is only as those words bring with them the Holy Spirit of God bearing witness to Christ that the sermon becomes adequate to its task…Preaching is not just a communication technique, and must never be considered as such; it is bringing the very words of God to bear upon the life and needs of sinners and of the congregations of God’s people. For this reason, if for no other, the sermon must remain central in our worship.”
Lastly, Trueman looks at the importance of assurance: “Luther’s real insight was to realise that the gospel was not about looking inward to self in order to find a basis for God’s acceptance, but about looking outwards to the great saving act of God in Christ as the only way in which the sinner might come to the Father.”
This guards us against the twin errors of introspective legalism (which devalues assurance) and joyful triumphalism (which virtually denies that a believer can or should feel less than an emotional high), both of which look to the believer’s experience as the basis for assurance: “Both the introspective legalist and the joyful triumphalist look to their feelings for signs that they are elect or saved; and both effectively identify assurance with the subjective work of God in their own lives.”
For the Reformers, on the other hand, “assurance arose from the perception that God was both trustworthy and that his promise to save was, in an important sense, unconditional…This point, that God is trustworthy, and that we know that he is trustworthy because of the way he has acted throughout biblical history, especially as it culminates in Christ, is the foundation for assurance, and not yours or my personal experience or emotional highs…At no point is the focus on individuals or individual experience as the basis for talking about God or making sense of God. Quite the reverse: God’s actions provide the framework by which the believer’s life is to be understood and regulated.”
In summary, “assurance is being certain that God is who he says he is—and that is derived from our knowledge of his great saving acts throughout history as they culminate in Christ—and therefore being sure that he will bring us to glory, that he will complete that good work within us which he has started. We live in the present, at a time when we know that one day we will see God in glory but only see him now by faith. In the meantime, the world is a dark and hostile place; and our souls are in many ways still darkened and frequently tending to hostility towards God. Therefore, there will be times when, either because of external or because of internal factors, we do not see or feel God smiling upon us. At such times we can indeed lament our sorry condition…as we do so, we should also remind ourselves that it is not what we feel now that determines our status, but who God was, is and always shall be. Thus, the lamentation should be set, as it almost invariably is in the psalms, within the context of God’s larger redemptive acts and purposes.”
Trueman has pinpointed three areas in which the contemporary Western evangelical church is often inconsistent, and which often falls short of full faithfulness to the truth God has revealed in scripture and, supremely, in the person of Christ. We would do well to look to the wisdom of the past for counsel and correction in these matters. -
This is an excellent little book. Beautifully crafted with profound cultural exegesis, Trueman brings the wisdom of the past to bear upon the circumstances faced by the church today. I thoroughly enjoyed it and heartily recommend it. It will take little time to read but much time to digest. It is provocative.
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Good solid case made here that Reformation is still relevant and necessary for today's church. Trueman highlights the centrality of Christ and the message of the cross, the importance of the written and preached word, and the misunderstood concept of assurance of salvation. Great wee book. Get it, read it and recommend it.
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This book is based on some conference messages that Trueman gave. As such, it is a distilled look at some of the major themes of the Reformation. It has no footnotes and few citations, but Trueman clearly knows the material and does an admirable job of not only presenting the Reformers' thinking but also guarding against the tendency to only look at the Reformers in terms of the questions and issues of our day. Trueman tries to get the reader to see how the Reformers were actually answering the questions and issues of their day. He does however spend a fair amount of time applying reformation insights to our present day, and succeeds in coming across as an old fashioned curmudgeon. I happen to be one also so I liked that part. He had some very useful things to say about preaching and how a grounding in reformation thought (and biblical teaching) guards against some of the confusion of progressive and postmodern evangelical types, especially with regards to preaching and approaches to church.
I enjoyed the writing but not as much as I expected to. My expectations were high due to his excellent pieces for First Things and my reading of The Creedal Imperative. Perhaps that is due to the fact that the content for this book dates to the early 2000's and that he has refined his style since then. Nevertheless, it was informative and helped clarify and structure my own thinking about some of the major themes of the reformation. I recommend it to anyone wanting to learn more about the reformation from an able guide, with minimal investment (the thing is only 127 pages!).
Oh and I don't remember who I borrowed this book from. If it was you, let me know. -
Carl Trueman’s short work seeks to highlight some of the core truths recovered in the Reformation and show how they are “vital to a healthy church today.”
Summary:
Ch. 1 – Relevance of the Reformation for today.
Ch. 2 – A theology of the cross, as it relates to suffering and service/ministry.
Ch. 3 – Centrality of Scripture in Christian life and ministry, as a primary battle ground within the church.
Ch. 4 – The necessity of Christian assurance, based on the deeds of God, especially in Christ.
Tons of great food for thought and reflection. Plenty of practical application for life and ministry. -
This is a fantastic little book. It presses home important aspects of the Reformation to the church today. We don't want to get into a place where we are just celebrating against the RCC. We need to look at what in the church needs reforming today. I loved Truman's definition of the Reformation as well. I am paraphrasing but he says the Reformation was a move to put God as he has revealed himself in Christ at the center of church thought and life. A short book you could read over the weekend and you will be glad you did.
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Overall, I liked the book. Trueman did a tremendous job job of bringing the purpose of the reformation into modern terms while keeping its core principles and driving factors as foundational. The only reason for 4 stars is because it was a tough read. Granted, it is written for a more theologically adept audience than your typical average church goer. Still great book!
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A short yet quite insightful book from Dr. Carl R. Trueman: "We have a gracious and trustworthy God; the Reformers reminded the world of that fact; let us place him once again at the centre of our lives and worship."
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I picked up this little book to finish it after a brief hiatus over the winter. Great little book that serves as both a brief introduction to staples of Reformation thought and a clarion call for the church to return to its Gospel roots.
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Another solid offering from Trueman, focusing on a handful of the major themes of the Reformation and its application today with a specific eye toward helping pastors.
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A very practical, smart and accessible little rundown of the value of the Reformation for today's evangelical church.
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This is an excellent little book. It applies the principles of the Reformation to today’s church life.
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Helpful, easy-to-read, short corrective on self-centered evangelical attitudes.
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A solid, quick read. Trueman does not disappoint.
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His overview of how the Theology of the cross, centrality of Christ, high view of scripture, and Reformed concept of assurance need to be recovered wasn't bad. If that were the purpose of the book, easy 4 stars. But it's a history book with hardly any source material. Quite poor.
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What does the modern-day, sophisticated church has to do with the reformation of the (not so) ancient past? Well… Plenty! In this book, Carl Trueman contends that the churches today (and tomorrow) about the need to recover the spirit of the reformers.
In the first chapter, Trueman first gives an analyses of the current status of evangelicals. First, he described how the evangelicals have lost the spirit of the reformers, specially he explained why the reformers saw the desperate need for the church in their time to be reformed to the centrality of the Gospel and the Word, their motivation and their goal. Then, Trueman commented on how the contention within the evangelical with regards to worship often only differ merely with the outward form, which in his view, is only embracing the reformers outwardly, but missing the precise point of why the reformers saw — a need for the congregation to have a vernacular worship.
In the next chapter, Trueman looks at the theology of glory — looking at God from man’s point of view vs theology of the cross — looking at God from Christ’s point of view. This branches out of how Luther himself saw the dichotomy of these two teaching and found the teachings to the Church then to be akin to those of the theology of glory, which thinks that God values what man values. In contrast to that, Luther responded by proclaiming that the church needs to embrace the theology of the Cross.
Trueman that raises two examples that he finds the current evangelical circle need to consider, first regarding suffer, How do we understand and view suffering? Are we unknowingly embracing the theology of glory by our preoccupation to shun away from suffering or to deem suffering as bad or ‘not according to God’s plan’? In the next example, Trueman talks about the definition of a truly successful church. Is the successful church one that entertains and attracts and gauges it’s success by numbers? Or by how faithful the word is being preached? He calls the church to recover what they have lost, to re-embrace the true marks of the ‘successful’ church.
In the next chapter, Trueman then focuses on the centrality word of God and preaching what it does, what it is for, and what the training preachers be. And in the last chapter, He elaborates on the doctrine of assurance, and how we can you find it? Do we base it on our feelings? Emotions? Experience? Or rather on what God has done for us, definitively and absolutely, through Christ Jesus death and resurrection?
Essentially, this is a call for the reform-ed (i.e. Protestant) to re-examine the importance of the Reformation and recover the spirit of Reformers. Although this may be a thin book, it does pack a punch and Trueman gives many points for the evangelical to consider how far we are away from the reformers, and to recover from it before it’s too late for us. Recommended for all church leaders and preachers who wishes to be faithful to what God’s Word say.
Rating: 4 / 5 -
This book is a series of four lectures (edited for print) on the impact of the reformation yesterday, today, and tomorrow. In these lectures, Trueman makes a very sound, biblical argument for restoring the Evangelical church's focus to that of the reformers. He argues the reformers correctly focused on Christ, God's Word, and assurance of salvation. He points out some of the root problems in the modern-day Evangelical church.
His arguments are strongest when dealing with Christ and the necessity of a church life and service that is focused on Him and His works. Trueman also makes a strong case for ministers that are trained to the utmost possible and are thereby intellectually capable of delivering inspiring, challenging, and engaging sermons.
Quotes of note:The Reformation represents a move to place God as he has revealed himself in Christ at the centre of the church's life and thought. (p. 17)
It is only to the extent that [the Reformers] brought God and Christ to bear upon the church of their day that the Reformers have any ongoing relevance for us today. (p. 21)
Too often today churches with a high view of Scripture and of the preaching ministry actually tolerate sermons which, while being very faithful in a sense to the text, never mention Christ. Yet if the Reformers' claim that Christ is the centre of the Bible and that the whole Bible tells one story, that of God's grace in Christ, then no sermon worthy of the name Christian con possibly omit speaking of Christ, wherever the chosen text may be taken from, Old or New Testament. (p. 27)
One does not become a theologian by knowing a lot about God; one becomes a theologian by suffering the torments and feeling the weakness which union with Christ must inevitably bring in its wake. (p. 49)
I confess that such 'gospel as entertainment' approaches sicken me to my very core and are little short of blasphemous trivialisations of the cross of Calvary. (p. 61)
The Bible is not, [sic] important, after all, because it warms my heart or inspires more than, say, a love letter from my wife. Indeed, such a letter would no doubt often have much greater emotional impact on me than many passages of the Bible. No, it is fact that the Bible centres on Christ, witnessed to by the Holy Spirit both in the act of inspiring its composition and applying it to my heart, which makes it unique in a way that my wife's love letter, while special to me, can never be. (p. 82)
Christ is the culmination of biblical history; and if in the proverb, all roads lead to Rome, then in the Bible, all roads lead to Christ. (p. 120)
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Thought the book was an interesting read as someone who’s church culture has been very influenced by a lot of the key tenants of the reformation. The author seemed very authoritative in a way that I thought lacked humility around certain points that seemed more personal opinion than biblical truth.
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"I never cease to be shocked by how little I have in common with many others in the United Kingdom who now claim the name evangelical. One can deny that God knows the future, one can deny that the Bible is inspired, one can deny that justification is by grace through faith, one can deny that Christ is the only way to salvation - one can do all of these things and still remain a member in good standing of certain high-profile evangelical bodies."
-Page 15
"First, I am in no way providing a text which will bypass the need for reading the Reformers first hand. Their thought is so vast, rich, and complex that it cannot even begin to be summarised, let alone expounded in any depth, in four brief chapters. You must read them for yourselves if you wish to mine from them the nuggets of theological gold which their vast writings contain."
-Page 17
"The heritage of the Reformation is more than just the doctrine of justification by faith; it is also the theology of the cross; and we do well to listen to Luther on this, as on many other topics."
-Page 45
"Our God is not the distant God of the Deists but one who knows precisely how damaged the world as a whole, and we as individuals, have been by sin. This is not to reduce Christ to one who simply meets the human needs which are exacerbated by the urbanised, consumer culture in which we live. Such a 'gospel as therapy' approach would itself be little more than a religious spin on the underlying concerns of our secular culture, a kind of 'theology as psychology'. It is rather to indicate at the outset that suffering and weakness, in whatever form they may come, are an inevitable part of life in a sinful, broken world and are therefore something with which the church must genuinely grapple if it is to take seriously the God of the cross. There are plenty of people in the church who argue that it should be more 'user friendly' and more open to those outside; and so it must. But if by that is meant, as is so often the case, that the church must compete with secular entertainment in order to 'pull in the punters' by constantly thrilling its congregations and alleviating their boredom, then that is wrong. That is simply a replication of the world's approach to suffering which is all too often little more than an attempt to eliminate it by burying it under trivia. It is, as Luther might have put it, an application of the theology of glory to a situation which demands a theology of the cross. I confess that such a 'gospel as entertainment' approaches sicken me to my very core and are little short of a blasphemous trivialisation of the cross of Calvary."
-Page 61 -
A useful concise book on the importance of the theology of the Reformers for understanding a Biblical Ecclesiology and a Biblical view of Sanctification. I greatly appreciated the emphasis on Christ as the Scopus Scripturae, the Scope of Scripture, in contrast to so many moralistic sermons telling us to Dare to be a Daniel or to be like David and slay the Goliaths in our lives rather than showing the biblical typology and pointing us to Christ as our Redeemer whom we need, not a higher self-esteem since we are already too prideful as a result of sin.
The section on Martin Luther's explication of the theology of Glory and the theology of the Cross was a useful explanation for understanding our proper focus in Christ in sanctification and how believers should understand suffering in the Christian Life. I like how Luther responded to the problem of Theodicy,
"The natural question to ask when one is suffering in some way is, 'Why me? Why is this terrible thing happening to me? I've done nothing wrong.' For Luther, the question must be answered by looking to the cross: if suffering, persecution, injustice, hatred and scorn are the lot of Christ, and if it is through these very means that God, in a manner incomprehensible and unexpected, achieves his goal of saving sinners, then are we to expect our lot to be any better? In other words, the question is not so much, 'Why do bad things happen to good people?' as, 'Why do more bad things not happen to good people?' (pg. 50-51).
