Reform or Progress? What is the difference? Are they mere synonyms? Both ideas involve change. To reform or to progress both mean things will be different. But there is a difference.
Reform seeks to return to some fixed ideal. Change must be made in order to find our way home. A reform minded person must be anchored by something. He must be committed to an understanding. She must know where she is headed. Reforms chases after one goal. It remains always the ideal.
Progress runs after some ever changing goal. Change is essentially enacted for its own sake. The man of progress arrives at one intended end and finds another beginning. The woman of progress makes life changing decisions only to find that more change is required. Progress chases after one goal and then another, the old goal always being spoiled by the new.
Reform is a thoroughly modern idea.
Progress is a thoroughly postmodern idea.
I am a man of reform. I believe there is black and white even though my eyes often behold gray tones. I press toward an ideal. I press toward what God has revealed in his Word. There will always be plenty in need of change within and without. But that change must be directed. I refuse to chase after the wind. I am a man of reform.
You may view me as a dinosaur trapped under layers of philosophy and time. But I will roar from the ground and shake it. I am a man of reform.
Jesus was a man of reform. While there may be some truth in the fact that Jesus’ actions were viewed as revolutionary in his day, it is equally true that he did not force change for the sake of change. He did not try to force a new future in antagonism to the status quo. He sought to bring people back to the ideal. Back to Eden. And his death was the only way to this end. Only if humanity’s sin was done away with could all be reformed, recreated. Only then could all things be new. Jesus was a man of reform.
Article first published as Man of Reform on Blogcritics.
Fine with me you’re a “man of reform.” Happen to disagree with your characterization of Jesus, although you’d be on undebatable turf had you landed on Luther for your example instead.
In any case, I’ll take progress, thanks. Blessings.
How did you feel I characterized Jesus wrongly? And progress to what?
To do justice to both questions, I’ll probably have to write my own blog post and point you to it.
As far as Christ, I wouldn’t characterize his intention being one to return/restore/reform Israel to an earlier understanding of their life as God’s Covenant People, one they might have lost somewhere along the way. Nor was his an agenda to purify (in the manner of Hezekiah) Israel. Jesus is reconstituting a new “Israel” along very different lines. So much so that his followers (with Jeremiah 31 in mind)are conscious of his death and resurrection establishing a New Covenant that _supplants_ and makes _obsolete_ the Old Covenant, Moses, the Temple, circumcision, ethnic identity, etc. (See especially Heb. 8, although Paul also refers to the same unfolding development, for instance, in 2 Cor. 3:6.)
Progress–since I don’t believe in any “Golden Age” of Christianity, progress could be considered advancing the Gospel and the reign of God in creative, new ways, that are richer and truer than what was taken for granted in the past. Luther, for all of his genius (and he would have been a genius no matter what era he’d been born in), and for all the ways the Spirit led him, was still, in the end, thoroughly medieval. That wasn’t a problem for him, but it would be one for _us_ if we build medieval assumptions into our agendas for the world we live in today. Peace.
Gary,
I thought I made clear that the ideal Jesus sought to return people to was Eden, not the first covenant. If not, I apologize. Indeed, Jesus did not come to reform people to the old covenant, but to make all things new. But yet that new is really old, Eden old. Life with God is perfection. Made possible through his cross and resurrection.
I resonate with the fallacy of golden age thinkers. The golden age was Eden, and the age to come.
No need to apologize, brother, this is called dialog, not quarreling. I still don’t entirely agree, but I’m neither offended, nor intending to offend, nor even trying to persuade–we’re good!
You did mention Eden in the post, but Christ’s kingdom is here and now, and yet we’re not living in Eden. (To be fair, some places on this planet are getting close; ever been to Hawaii? Sweet!)
Pushing a hypothetical future Eden into the Parousia, doesn’t really solve anything, since I don’t believe Christ’s Return sets the stage even then for a literal Eden.
Now likely you intended to use Eden as symbolic shorthand for a Creation free from the bondage of death. Perhaps what you meant (quite correctly) was that in Christ, God is setting all things right again. Just as Eden can represent not only the goodness He intended for His Creation, but also the love with which He loves all that He has made, so Christ’s “reform” of this world is about restoring it to what it was meant to be. I’m with you 100%. But I wouldn’t use the Edenic shorthand, and you have to admit that’s not usually what is meant by a “reformer.”
Anyway, thanks for the thought-provoking blog post. I sincerely appreciate it.