You may have noticed that the new blog header includes the Latin phrase Semper Reformanda. I’d like to offer a few words in explanation. Semper Reformanda means Always Reforming. It appears at the top of this page for two reasons: 1) to create the illusion of intelligence and scholarliness, and 2) to indicate my conviction that the Reformation did not end in the 16th Century.
There is some confusion these days as to what Always Reforming means. Postmodern thinkers (forgive the oxymoron) scoff at us who use the phrase. They opine that no one who holds settled opinions can claim to still be reforming. Allowing for reformation means, to them, throwing all conclusions to the wind and leaving everything open to question and doubt. The Always Reforming should be ever adapting, always uncertain.
But Always Reforming does not mean always changing, or being open to change in all things. It means continually moving from where we are towards the place we ought to be. 1 Corinthians 13 tells us, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.” One day we will have perfect understanding of God’s revelation; until then, we progress toward it.
The following illustration shows what that should look like, with each of us beginning at various positions of ignorance and moving, by way of God’s revealed truth — Scripture — towards understanding.
That’s what Always Reforming should look like. In reality, when our humanity is thrown into it, it looks more like the colored lines in the following illustration.
In hindsight, I would have to confess that those colored lines are much too straight to represent my own experience. Be that as it may, Always Reforming absolutely never looks like this:
Always Reforming is not “always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3).
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1 Comments:
#1 || 10·12·15··21:50 || Mike the Mad Theologian
The problem of reforming that does not know where it is going is it can never reform anything. In order to have positive change you have to have a real objective goal you are working toward.