2017 Faculty Conference Question and Answer Panel.

One of the key outcomes of the Protestant Reformation was the recovery of a biblical ecclesiology, or the doctrine of the church. Luther and other Reformers emphasized the priesthood of all believers over and against the hierarchical systems found in the Roman Catholic Church. 

There is no shortage of “gospel” things, from gospel music to gospel vacations. But what is the gospel itself and has it become captive to agendas that bear a loose relationship to the redemption in Christ that we find in the Scriptures?  

The Roman Catholic Church maintains there is an ecclesiastical hierarchy that has the pope as its pinnacle, but Protestant Reformers challenged this notion. They rejected the claims of papal authority and returned Christ to his sole place of preeminence.

That the Reformation principle of sola scriptura is often challenged in the halls of academia and often ridiculed in popular media should not surprise us. What is surprising, however, is the lack of focus and dependence upon the Bible among churches and believers.

The Reformation recovered the biblical Gospel, not provisionally, but definitively. We need it today as every generation has needed it.

The church has already read the Scriptures but she has not always read them well. For much of its history the church read Scripture under the influence of powerful assumptions, which blinded her to vitally important truths.