Review of "Is the Reformation Over?"

As all of the official reviewers have noted, this authoritative summary of the issues from Noll and Nystrom is first rate. I have nothing to add on that score. The question for me is a policy one. What do their conclusions mean for institutions like ours who have been steeped in the Protestant tradition and who continue to see themselves as espousing a certain Protestant ethos in our educational efforts?

My thinking on the topic hasn't really changed as a result of reading this book. Have Catholics and Protestants come closer together since Vatican II? Undoubtedly. Are there still significant differences between the two groups in terms of their basic worldviews and theologies? Also yes. Of the two major initial breaking points, sola fides and sola scriptura, the hurdle of "justification by faith" has more or less been overcome, but the issue of church authority persists.

With that question of church authority still a major different in our "languages" speak Christian truth, I cannot yet support hiring a professing to a full-time position in which that individual would be one of the primary purveyors of our historically Protestant understanding of reality. That means, in my book, that I accept a place like JBU hiring staff and adjuncts who are professing Catholics, but not hiring full-time faculty, cabinet members, or a President who shares such views. Those are still steps too far if we are to continue the important work of speaking a particular understanding of Christianity to our students and to the wider culture. That is our mission, and hiring individuals to be the primary communicators of that vision who do not share crucial aspects of that vision seems to me inappropriate, however much I personally have moved toward the Catholic tradition (by joining the Episcopal Church) and however much the godparents of my son and others at JBU (and in the CCCU) strongly disagree with me.