Over the Hedges and Byways

Reformed Christians are heirs to some powerful rallying cries, not all of which start with "sola".  One weighty such slogan from the seventeenth century is semper reformanda, a key tenet in the Reformed understanding.   It is often translated as "reformed and always reforming" or simply "always reforming".   That's close, but it misses the mark.  A proper rendering of the phrase takes a passive verb--the church is always to "be reformed" according to the Word of God under the guidance of the Spirit.   Too often, though, semper reformanda gets invoked as an excuse to bend biblical truth to accommodate the spirit of the age.  We need only witness the crumbling of mainline denominations to know the dangers of this approach.  But the potential for the slogan's misuse may now be threatening those denominations' more conservative progeny.  Almost without a thought it seems, many in the pew (and pulpit) are embracing theological innovation rather than instruction and, as a result, they end up adapting, rather than absorbing and proclaiming, biblical truth to a watching world. 

But what's new, right?  Well, one thing new is the inroads evolution continues to make into evangelical, even confessionally Reformed, circles.  Studies in genetics and the origin of life bubble up new and complex questions, each with its own implications for, and assumptions about, the nature of God and reality.  What is striking is how quickly "cutting-edge" pastors and scholars are willing to bargain away the historicity of Adam and Eve in a futile attempt to reconcile Scripture with many secular scientific theories.  Some see Adam merely as one of a multitude of chest-thumping survivors from the carnage of evolution to become the first "homo divinus."  Others have understood Adam as a literary construct to explain an alleged primitive animal nature that has frustrated humans from the beginning.  Can these views do justice to the biblical truths that are tethered to Adam's original and singular existence in Scripture?  The reality of the fall by one man (Rom 5:12)?  The creation of Eve "from [one] man" (1 Cor 11:8)?  Ecclesiastical leadership (2 Tim 2:13-14)?  The sinfulness of racism (cf. Acts 17:26)?  The dignity of marriage (Matt 19:3-6)?  The final resurrection (1 Cor 15:21-22)? 

These texts, together with the covenant structure of redemption they reflect, press home how the historicity of an individual Adam and Eve as the first parents of all mankind is indispensible to an orthodox view of man's origins, depravity, and redemption.  If the Bible is a coherent system of truth, how we understand who Adam was, whether historically original and singular or some more vague construct, must inevitably affect our reading of Scripture beyond the first few chapters of Genesis. 

Semper reformanda?  Absolutely.  But, in its right application, to use John Owen's language, all ongoing reforming must be "in the road" of Scripture and "the beaten path of truth".  Too many who "are not able to conquer the itch of being accounted τινες μεγάλοι ("ones who are great"), turn aside into by-ways, and turn the eyes of men to them by scrambling over hedge and ditch, when the sober traveler is not at all regarded" (Works VIII, lxxv).  Let us travel soberly as we handle semper reformanda, even if it means disregard by the world.