I'm (not) certain; I'm reformed!

     This past week at the University of Denver, the Department of Religious Studies and the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life, along with many student group partners, mounted its first Religious Awareness Week. The theme, provided by the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther posting his 95 theses for reform of the Roman Catholic Church, was "Reformations".  There were opportunities for worship, informal inter-faith conversations and learning, as well as more formal, academic, offerings.
      One of the first events was a lecture by Prof. Susan Schreiner from the University of Chicago:  "The Reformation and the Problem of Certainty". I'll admit that I had no idea what to expect. But what I remember most was, to me, an interesting difference of opinion between the Reformers and the Catholic Church on the role of "certainty."  I may not be representing Prof. Schreiner's point entirely correctly, but the Reformers stressed that the believers be certain that their salvation was entirely the product of grace, that they could do nothing to earn it. This was the point of "salvation by faith", i.e, certain trust in the workings of grace." For the Catholics, certainty rested in the teaching authority of the Church. What the Church taught was to be obeyed; through that obedience, one was certain of salvation.       For either group — the Reformers or the Catholics — the emphasis on certainty left no real room for questioning or doubt; an individual could only place trust in one of the two options. This idea of "no-doubt" seems strange to many of us, and Prof. Schreiner pointed out that most of us often look at the Reformation through "Enlightenment eyes", eyes that are conditioned to look for nuances, rather than settle into strict dichotomies. Given that difference in perspective (Late Medieval/Reformation vs. Enlightenment), she encouraged us to see the disputes between the Roman Catholic Church and Reformers with a little more understanding and patience.        That said, most of us are (perhaps uncomfortable) children of the Enlightenment -- perhaps even the Post-Enlightenment. Popular songs and books/movies speak of "shades of gray" as representative of reality.  Of course, there is push-back. Be it in the form of competing truth-claims about religion, or whether or not something is "fake" news, there are still many folks who take the position "My way or the highway!" This latter, pre-Englightment but purely Reformation-era, kind of thinking is not, in my opinion, going to get us very far in the complex world we inhabit.        I, for one, will follow Luther in "doubting" almost any entrenched "certainty". On the other hand, I refuse to set up another "entrenched certainty" in its place. I have to trust a bit in the power of doubt. That, to me, is a powerful offspring of "reformation."
Namasté

Gary