…between these two pieces: 1) “The defining moment of the
Protestant Reformation was its protest against the absolutizing
tendencies of the medieval church as exhibited in its
ecclesiastical structure and its doctrine of the sacraments. As
an intramundane historical institution, the church along with
all other intramundane entities and organizations testifies to
its finitude and frailties, and any claim for ultimacy on its
part in matters of faith and morals is but another species of
idolatry. This defining moment of Protestantism, its
iconoclastic principle of protest, was however attenuated, if
not straightway abandoned, in the course of the development of
the various forms of Protestant orthodoxy. In this development,
Protestantism found itself unable to use the Protestant
principle against itself as it gravitated toward multiple forms
of its own idolatry — absolutizing church doctrines, creeds,
scriptures, founders of sects, or ritual practices.” Calvin
Schrag, God as Otherwise than Being: Toward a Semant