{"id":926,"date":"2017-03-21T13:52:47","date_gmt":"2017-03-21T13:52:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/demo.tagdiv.com\/newspaper_church\/2017\/03\/21\/td-post-realizing-your-deepest-desires\/"},"modified":"2017-03-28T08:37:23","modified_gmt":"2017-03-28T08:37:23","slug":"td-post-realizing-your-deepest-desires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/demo.tagdiv.com\/newspaper_church\/td-post-realizing-your-deepest-desires\/","title":{"rendered":"Realizing Your Deepest Desires"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Any observant tourist to Germany this year would notice that the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation means a great deal to the country. Scores of academic conferences, public lectures, publications, and museum exhibitions are devoted to rediscovering the fascinating world and figures of the Reformation era, as well as its cultural, religious, and political legacies in Europe and beyond.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/demo.tagdiv.com\/newspaper_church\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/p1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-181\" src=\"https:\/\/demo.tagdiv.com\/newspaper_church\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/p1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"351\" height=\"232\" \/><\/a>Despite all this, however,\u00a0few in Europe see the relevance of the Protestant Reformers\u2019 theological and spiritual vision for today. Many dismiss their doctrinal and ecclesial agenda as a mask for furthering the political and economic interests of power-hungry royalty (or, unintentionally, of zealous peasants).<\/p>\n<p>Others blame the Reformation for leading Europe into divisive wars and struggles with\u00a0disastrous and abiding social consequences. Most Europeans\u00a0view the Reformers\u2019 beliefs as intolerant, pass\u00e9, and petty.<\/p>\n<p>With few exceptions, Europe\u2019s churches more or less agree. To advance ecumenical relationships with Catholics, the EKD will officially commemorate the anniversary as a Christusfest (festival of Christ) rather than celebrate it with the label \u201cReformation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/demo.tagdiv.com\/newspaper_church\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/p2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-185\" src=\"https:\/\/demo.tagdiv.com\/newspaper_church\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/p2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"283\" height=\"395\" \/><\/a>There\u2019s little cause for celebration anyway, as most churches have long abandoned\u2014or, at least, significantly revised\u2014the Reformation\u2019s core doctrines: sola Scriptura, sola gratia, sola fide, solus Christus, and soli Deo gloria. While the Roman Catholic church still officially rejects <em>Scripture alone<\/em>,\u00a0European Protestant church leaders and university theology faculty now place the authority of human reason, the claims of higher criticism, and individual conscience over Scripture. <em>Grace alone<\/em> is of little consequence in an age when ministers minimize sin and maximize humanity\u2019s inherent goodness and free will.<\/p>\n<p>It appears Erasmus won the debate with Luther over\u00a0the bondage of the will\u00a0after all. <em>Faith alone<\/em> and <em>Christ alone<\/em> have been replaced by the supposedly humbler positions of \u201cWe don\u2019t know\u201d and \u201cMany paths lead to God.\u201d And <em>soli Deo gloria<\/em> is the forgotten <em>sola<\/em>, known in Germany today only through the <em>SDG<\/em> inscribed under Johann Sebastian Bach\u2019s compositions.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Even the bulk of Europe\u2019s evangelicals and free churches (i.e., those without ties to the state) see little use for the theology of the Reformation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/demo.tagdiv.com\/newspaper_church\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/p3.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-187 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/demo.tagdiv.com\/newspaper_church\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/p3.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"340\" height=\"199\" \/><\/a>The Reformers\u2019 quest for biblical and spiritual depth has been substituted for deep anti-intellectualism and shallow experientialism.<\/p>\n<p>Ministers have largely traded the Reformers\u2019 emphasis on the Christ-centered preaching of the Word for theater performances and moralistic guidelines, and the Protestant doctrine of the priesthood of all believers has warped into therapeutic individualism. Our prayer is that the same great God who sparked the Reformation 500 years ago would renew post-Christian German-speaking Europe, as well as many other regions around the globe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Any observant tourist to Germany this year would notice that the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation means a great deal to the country. Scores of academic conferences, public lectures, publications, and museum exhibitions are devoted to rediscovering the fascinating world and figures of the Reformation era, as well as its cultural, religious, and political [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1622,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-926","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-podcast"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Realizing Your Deepest Desires - Newspaper Church Demo<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/demo.tagdiv.com\/newspaper_church\/td-post-realizing-your-deepest-desires\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Realizing Your Deepest Desires - Newspaper Church Demo\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Any observant tourist to Germany this year would notice that the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation means a great deal to the country. 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