It would be quite a fallacy to confuse Covenant and “reform,” or more appropriately, schism, as these two events are radically different. Christ was the coming of the Messiah, the Son of Man whom Isaiah had so eloquently prophesied. As such, it is only natural that many Jews would not recognize this due to the hardness of their hearts. Also, it was not the Messianic Jews who broke away, but rather, they were no longer welcome to worship in the Temple and synogogues. It was an unfortunate but necessesary step that had to be taken. On top of this, as revealed in the debates between Peter and Paul, it also became apparent that due to the universal nature of the newly expanded and fullfilled Covenant that the Gentiles, especially distant regional Gentiles, had great difficulty in becoming Jews to then follow Christ. Since Christ had abolished the old Law and became the fullfillment of it, no longer where dieting, cicumcision, and other such related laws binding on Christians. With this, one could be “Christian” without first being “Jewish.” All this being said, through nessesitation by no longer being welcomed in the existing worship spaces, in combination with the phenomenon of non-Jewish followers of Jesus, the emergence of “Christianity,” or as stated by Ignatius of Antioch shortly after the death of the Apostles, the “Catholic Church,” emerged as an independent religious entity.
The “reformation” or “Luther’s schismatic initiation” had altogether different goals. The goals of Luther, for example, where not only for the Church to clean up some of the abuses that were going on (MANY devoted Catholics, including Erasmus and other Humanists, sought the handling of abuses but knew that leaving the Church was certainly not the right way to go about this) but also to change the Deposit of the Faith, or the infallible revelation of Truth that the Church had maintained for over 1,500 years. Fundamentally, he wanted to compromise the Church at her very core. If the Church was wrong in many of its teachings, it had no legitimate claim to authority. Unfortunately for Luther, as proved by his very limited scope of thought, the “truth” that he possessed had only its basis in the Bible. He thought “If I could just give everyone access to the Bible, and my adulterated version of the Bible at that, everyone would realize that MY theology is correct.” Poor Luther didn’t anticipate the inevitable. As soon as the authority of interpretation of Sacred Scripture was handed to individuals, and as soon as Sacred Tradition was thrown out the window, suddenly the Holy Spirit seemed to be “inspiring” everyone and their mother to make contradictory truths claims. Luther, upon realizing this, established HIS interpretation of scripture as being normative while everyone else, and has since, did likewise.
Martin Luther, Huldrich Zwingli, John Calvin, Henry VIII, John Knox, John Weslyen, Pat Roberts (
), the list goes on… and on… and on…
If you want a REAL reformation, look to the Council of Trent where they cleaned up the abuses and REINFORCED and REITERATED, rather than “reformed,” God’s beautiful gift to us known as the Deposit of the Faith. There was already strong movement within the Church to clean up the abuses, it is too bad that when a few make strong attempts to modify God’s revealed Truth that it has to hurt the rest of His children.
. Remember Jesus said I have not come to abolish but to fulfill.
. My point is that the Jews whom followed Christ are not analogous to the Christians who followed the reformers. The Jews who followed Christ followed God Himself, whom had the power and authority to teach the truth. The Christians who followed the reformers followed only men whom possesed no authority over God.
