Journal: Reformation and Revival
Volume: RAR 13:4 (Fall 2004)
Article: Ecclesia Semper Reformanda: Gerhart Ladner and the Early Christian Commitment to Renewal
Author: James D. Smith III

RAR 13:4 (Fall 2004) p. 45

Ecclesia Semper Reformanda:
Gerhart Ladner and the
Early Christian Commitment to Renewal

James D. Smith III

This article is offered in memory of Dr. Marvin W. Anderson, my former professor at Bethel Theological Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota.

A generation ago, the Mormon scholar Hugh Nibley offered an historical essay titled, “The Passing of the Church.”1 In it he surveyed the early Christian warning against false doctrine, immorality, apostasy and faintheartedness and declared his conclusion: The Church ultimately ceased to exist. “The purpose of this article is to list briefly the principal arguments supporting the thesis that the church founded by Jesus and the apostles did not survive and was not expected to.”2 Immense ground was surrendered, he claimed, in the “radical and abrupt” change from first- to second-generation (and second-century) Christianity. Fourth century developments left a situation in which “no rhetorical cunning could bridge the gap between the views of the fourth century and those of the early church.”3 The cause was lost.

Those familiar with Mormon apologetic (and other varieties) may ask which came first, the footnotes or the conclusion. But many readers will find some idea of the “Fall of the Church” familiar not only as a historical theme but also (more personally) at the roots of their denomination or movement, and as an attitude in the current church scene.4 In this writer’s own evangelical, Free Church background there is a vestigial teaching that the true, pristine church was lost—through various scenarios—to Constantine and Catholics.

RAR 13:4 (Fall 2004) p. 46

Yet the first five centuries of Christian voices reveal believers who considered themselves neither wondrously pristine nor hopelessly fallen. Instead, they experienced the initial stages of a perennial reality: “The disparity between the nobility of the faith which the Christian professes and the mediocrity of the life which he leads is reflected by history over and over again.”5 Out of this honest realization grew repentance and an abiding motto, in Latin, ecclesia semper reformanda: “The church must always be reformed.” Perhaps the most helpful current survey of this impulse throughout history is Christopher Bellitto’s, Renewing Christianity.6 Beyond question, the classic treatment of this theme in early Christian thought (two ye...