Reformation Day Remembered

31st October is the day on which reformed Christians remember the incident that heralded the great reformation of the church in Germany with the nailing of the Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences Commonly Known as The 95 Theses by Dr. Martin Luther on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenburg in 1517.  Luther (1483-1546) was appalled at the trafficking (nothing new in that!) that was going on in his day in indulgences (nothing new in that, either!) which were papal pardon for sins committed by the faithful.  In Luther's day, this was a great fund-raiser for the church.  If a Catholic wanted one of the Pope's indulgences, it was very simple: on the payment of money into the coffers of the Catholic church the indulgence was given.  

The reason for making this a public issue was that Luther's conscience was giving him a great deal of trouble and he was extremely keen to find peace with God.  He came, by the grace of God, to the wonderful discovery that this can only be had in the Gospel.  He wanted this issue discussed publicly, and by nailing his theses on the Castle Church door, he was announcing that this debate was to be held.

Not even Luther was to envisage the ramifications of this action.  He set the entire church alight with talk about indulgences, and forgiveness, and peace with God.  The Gospel became a very hot potato that was to be the means of debate and discussion and argument in the church for many years.  This debate was really around, "How does a sinner get right with God?"  It was about the Gospel and the Gospel way of salvation.

That's why Christians of the reformed persuasion remember this event that rocketed the church into being re-formed.  It is clear that Luther did not want to form a new church, but rather that the church might be formed again, or re-formed, or reformed, according to God's Word.

The following articles explain this in greater detail, and I am grateful to Dr Alan C. Clifford for permission to publish these articles on my blogsite.

LUTHER—Before and After

Introduction Martin Luther is known as ‘the monk who shook the world’! Indeed, after thirteen centuries of spiritual corruption, the German reformer heralded a return to the pure Gospel of Christ and his Apostles.
LUTHER’S LIFE Born at Eisleben, Saxony on 10 November 1483, of pious parents, he was educated at Magdeburg and Eisenach. After acquiring BA and MA degrees at the University of Erfurt (1501-5), a thunderstorm terrified him into becoming a monk in July 1505. Forsaking a law career (much to the annoyance of his parents), Luther entered the Augustinian cloister soon after. Ordained as a priest, he conducted his first mass in May 1507. His feeling of unworthiness created a further sense of terror in the presence of God. In vain did his father confessor John von Staupitz try to bring comfort to Luther’s soul. A pilgrimage to Rome in 1510 failed to bring relief. Indeed, it left him utterly disillusioned by the hypocritical spirituality of ‘the holy city’. Returning to Erfurt, he transferred to the new University of Wittenberg in 1511. The following year Luther became Doctor of Theology.

When Luther began a series of lectures on the Psalms and Paul’s Epistles to the Romans and the Galatians (1513-16), he was a pious though deeply disturbed Catholic. Troubled by Paul’s expression the ‘justice of God’ (Romans 1: 17), he gradually understood that what God demands of us by His law, He grants us in Christ through His grace. This new understanding transformed him. Let us hear Luther recount his evangelical conversion in his own words:


Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement that ‘the just shall live by his faith’. Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning, and whereas before the ‘justice of God’ had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This passage of Paul became to me a gate to heaven… If you have a true faith that Christ is your Saviour, then at once you have a gracious God, for faith leads you in and opens up God’s heart and will, that you should see pure grace and overflowing love.
Thus Luther now saw God in Christ not as an angry Judge but as a loving Father. His revolutionary understanding of ‘Justification by Faith alone in Christ’ and a powerful experience of the Gospel led to a radical reassessment of all he had known. The Pope’s religion was one of fear and uncertainty. It majored on ritual and superstitious ceremonies. The way to heaven demanded the gaining of merit by ‘works righteousness’. Purgatory was the destiny of the pious whose arrival at heaven was only a remote possibility. The glorious Gospel of Grace and pardon through Christ had been shrouded in merit-mongering legalism. All this falsehood was exploded by Luther’s conversion.


What was an intensely personal event soon became public by the Pope’s declaration of Indulgences. Based on the worship of relics, the pious could shorten their time in purgatory by contributions to the Church, by which Pope Leo X wished to rebuild St Peter’s in Rome. They could even reduce purgatorial time for their dead relations! In short, the way to get to heaven was to pay up!

The Dominican John Tetzel was appointed to direct this papal racket in Germany. Luther became horrified by such corruption. As Tetzel and his retinue made their way around Germany, the cash flowed in to a shameful jingle:

As soon as the money clinks in the chest,

A soul flies up to heavenly rest!

Luther’s revulsion was driven by his evangelical grasp of the Gospel. While churchmen (cardinals, bishops, parish clergy and monks, etc) were enslaving the faithful in expensive piety, they completely failed to see that ‘God had opened the gate of heaven through Christ, and the way to enter was by faith in the sacrifice of Jesus’ (Dr R. Tudur Jones). Indeed, the way to receive salvation was not by penance and ritual observance but by repentance and faith in the finished work of Christ. So Luther preached the true Gospel, urging the faithful: “My beloved, you cannot buy God’s mercy!”

Frederick the Wise, the Elector of Saxony, had arranged to offer his indulgences and display a large quantity of relics at the Castle Church, Wittenberg on All saints Day, 1 November 1517. As Dr Tudur Jones states, Luther saw that this was the time ‘to strike’ a blow against the infamous racketeering. So, on 31 October, he nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church. This document was little more than a list of statements intended for debate. However, the explosive nature of their ideas was to shatter Rome’s religious monopoly ‘right down to the foundation’ (Dr Tudur Jones). This was the beginning of the Protestant Reformation!

Luther’s protest spread like wildfire throughout Germany and beyond. With their financial burden suddenly lifted, he became a national hero for the Gospel-liberated faithful. The Pope became furious with rage on hearing the news. When Luther was summoned to Rome, he appealed to Frederick for support who refused to banish him. In 1519, academic pressure was applied to Luther by Dr John Eck in a debate at Leipzig. However, with his knowledge of Scripture and the early church fathers, Christ’s new spokesman ran rings round the papal champion.

Eventually, Leo X issued a bull condemning Luther and his books. Refusing to be intimidated, Luther burned it in public on 10 December 1520. In the spring of the following year, a special Diet [assembly] was held at Worms, in the presence of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. After two hearings, despite every device to silence Luther and make him recant, he refused to yield.


“If I have spoken error, bear witness against me.. Recant? I cannot deny the work of many years. My conscience is captive to the Word of God. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen.”
To briefly summarise Luther’s impact, he was threatened with death but was provided sanctuary in the Wartburg castle from May 1521 to March 1522. During this time, he translated the New Testament into German. It was published in September. Thus the light of Christ’s true Gospel brought increasing liberty from Rome’s errors and tyranny in every area of life. The obligatory celibacy of the Lutheran clergy was ended, Luther himself being married to former nun Katharine von Bora on 13 June 1525.


Later that year, Luther published his critique of Erasmus’ treatise on free will in De servo arbitrio [On the Enslaved Will]. Concerned to recover the Augustinian view of Paul’s Gospel of God’s sovereign grace, Luther defended the doctrine of predestination against Erasmus’ Pelagian doctrine of self-saving human power. Yet, as John Calvin was to argue later, Luther equally affirmed the ‘free offer’ of the Gospel:


It is certain that you are a part of the world. Do not let your heart deceive you by saying: "The Lord died for Peter and Paul; He rendered satisfaction for them, not for me." Therefore let every one who has sin be summoned here, for He has made the expiation for the sins of the whole world and bore the sins of the whole world (Comment on 1 John 2: 2).
Luther also revolutionised worship by composing chorales or hymns. The most famous is ‘Ein’ feste burg ist unser Gott’ [A safe stronghold our God is still], composed in 1527. Often afflicted by depression, Luther’s list of remedies are interesting, both spiritual and human:

Faith in Christ
The love of a good woman
Music
Manual labour
Getting downright angry.
After sad disagreement with the Swiss reformer Ulrich Zwingli at Marburg in 1529, the German Reformation was established in the issuing of the Augsburg Confession in 1530. The complete German Bible was published in 1534. Not before he produced an unhappy tract Against the Jews in 1543 (sadly later appealed to by the Nazis), Luther died at his birthplace, Eisleben on 18 February 1546.

Rev. Dr Alan C. Clifford

THE CHURCH BEFORE LUTHER

As is evident from the letters of the New Testament (apart from those written to the seven churches in Rev. 2-3), churches of Christian believers were settled in several cities in the Roman Empire—Colosse, Corinth, Ephesus, Jerusalem, Philippi, Rome and Thessalonica (in alphabetical order). If anything, Jerusalem may be regarded historically as the ‘mother church’ of Christianity (see Acts 15), although, strictly speaking, this title is reserved by Paul for the ‘heavenly Jerusalem’ (see Gal. 4: 26). However, there is no biblical evidence that any one church claimed priority over the others. With the passage of time, the Church of Rome gradually assumed a sense of priority since the Apostles Peter and Paul were martyred there. However, neither claimed to be ‘bishop’ of Rome. On the contrary, the early church historian Eusebius of Caesarea (d. 339) states that after Peter and Paul, ‘Linus was first bishop of Rome’ (Ecclesiastical History, III. 4. 8-9). This ‘Linus’ is mentioned by Paul (see 2 Tim. 4: 21).

The situation significantly changed after the Emperor Constantine (274-337)—following his conversion—bestowed honours and privileges on hitherto persecuted Christians. Rome actually declined in political importance after Constantine made Constantinople his ‘new Rome’. In the decades following the Emperor’s death, the Empire went into decline. Barbarian tribes made incursions into Italy and Alaric the Goth sacked Rome in 410. Out of the ruins of imperial Rome, the Church of Rome began to emerge as ecclesiastical ‘top dog’. This was a fulfilment of Paul’s prophecy regarding the ‘man of sin’ or antichrist (see 2 Thess. 2: 1-12). The developments of this period are aptly summed up by the 17th century English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) who described ecclesiastical Rome as ‘the ghost of the old Roman Empire sitting crowned upon the grave thereof’ (Leviathan). The Papacy was slow in developing. Even ‘Pope’ Gregory the Great (590-604) disclaimed the title of ‘universal bishop’, an honour his successor Boniface III (in 607) adopted. Significantly, the title ‘pontifex maximus’ (or ‘supreme bridge builder’) once given to emperors became attributed to popes. Gregory had bestowed the ‘pallium’—an honour given to victorious generals by emperors—on the Roman missionaries to England and Germany respectively, Augustine (who came to England in 597) and Boniface.

The religion of Rome had departed significantly from the purity of the teaching it received from the Apostle Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Prayers for the dead, the worship of relics and lighting of candles started around 300-375. The church father Jerome (c. 340-420)—translator of the Latin Vulgate Bible—approved of these novelties. He was opposed by Vigilantius of Leon, the first of many champions of the true Gospel to inhabit the Valleys of Piedmont (NW Italy) in the centuries before the Reformation. In addition to the growth of superstitious ritual, the heresy known as Pelagianism (salvation by ‘free will’ rather than ‘free grace’)—spread by the British monk Pelagius—began to infect the theology of salvation taught by Paul. Martin Luther rightly remarked on Paul’s warnings in Romans 16: 17-20: ‘It is as though he had foreseen that out of Rome and through the Romans would come the seductive and offensive canons and decretals and the whole squirming mass of human laws and commandments, which have now drowned the whole world and wiped out this Epistle and all the Holy Scriptures, along with the Spirit and with faith, so that nothing has remained there except the idol, Belly, whose servants St Paul here rebukes. God release us from them. Amen’ (Introduction to Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans).

Deviant Roman dogmas developed progressively. Marian devotion grew as the term ‘Mother of God’ was applied to Mary after the Council of Ephesus (431). Purgatory was established by Pope Gregory I in 593. The College of Cardinals was established in 927. The obligatory celibacy of the priesthood was decreed by Pope Gregory VII in 1079. Transubstantiation became a central feature of the Mass through the decree of Pope Innocent III in 1215. The seven sacraments were affirmed in 1439. Tradition was declared of equal authority to the Bible by the Council of Trent in 1545. After the Reformation era, Mary’s immaculate conception (though objected to by Bernard of Clairvaux and Thomas Aquinas in the middle ages) was made official in 1854. Papal infallibility was declared in 1870, and the bodily assumption (into heaven) of the Virgin Mary was proclaimed by Pope Pius XII in 1950.

Rev. Dr Alan C. Clifford

LUTHER’S AGENDA: NOT A NEW CHURCH

Clearly, the Christianity of Rome developed into something very different from the teaching of Christ and His Apostles. In returning to Holy Scripture, the reformers—Luther, Calvin and others—recovered the pure and original Gospel. Yet they never claimed to be starting a ‘new church’. Indeed, there were Evangelicals before the Reformation! Besides those who had preserved the Gospel among the Waldenses (or Vaudois) of Piedmont, others had enjoyed a measure of Gospel light even in the days of Roman darkness, e. g. Bernard of Clairvaux. The reformers were but weeding the garden of the Lord from all the poisonous plants that had grown up over the preceding centuries. In answer to woolly-minded evangelicals who say they prefer Roman Catholicism to liberal Protestantism because Rome affirms the Trinity, the virgin birth and other basic biblical truths, the reformers never charged Rome with questioning these foundation truths. No, Rome’s error is the obscuring of the biblical character of these and other truths by their unbiblical dogmas and superstitious rituals. In which case, while we may applaud Rome’s affirmation of many truths—albeit teaching correct things for incorrect reasons (on the joint authority of Scripture and Tradition), sadly, more divides than unites us.

Rev. Dr Alan C. Clifford

WHY LUTHER IS JUSTIFIED

Luther was right in the thrust of his teaching, that 1. The Pope’s religion is not the Christianity of Jesus Christ, and 2. The Pope’s church is not the true Church of Jesus Christ. Thus the Roman option cannot provide a safe or satisfying spiritual home.

As affirmed in the doctrinal declaration Dominus Iesus (2000), Rome claimed to be the only ‘correct’ church. In a more recent decree (2007), we are told that ‘Christian Communities born out of the Reformation of the sixteenth century’ cannot be ‘called Churches in the proper sense’. However, Rome’s claim could not be more invalid. The proof is as follows:


(1)
The doctrines of the Roman Church are utterly inconsistent with the plain teaching of the New Testament. The finality of Christ’s unique sacrifice and His priestly intercession (see Hebrews 9: 28; 10: 11-12) rule out the sacrifice of the mass and a human priesthood. Not ignoring Luther’s own view of consubstantiation, the Roman theory of transubstantiation is an absurd philosophical fiction and utterly detrimental to the simple symbolism of the Lord’s Supper—a memorial of our Saviour’s once-for-all sacrifice. Thus His blood shedding is remembered not repeated, on a table not an altar (hence ministers are pastors not priests); His real presence is spiritual, not physical, in the hearts of His people and not in the bread and wine.


(2)
Justification by faith in Christ’s merit alone (see Romans 5: 1-9) and direct access to Him as sole Mediator (see Matthew 11: 28; 1 Timothy 2: 5) rule out the false and pretentious teaching that Mary is mediatrix, auxiliatrix, advocatrix, etc. The idea that the merits of the faithful are a necessary contribution to their salvation undermines the all-sufficiency of Christ’s merit. Rome’s traditional mistake in making sanctification a part of justification arises from her reliance on the Latin justificare instead of the Greek dikaioo. While the former verb means ‘to make righteous’, the latter means ‘to declare righteous’ by the remission of sins through faith in the blood of Christ (see Romans 4: 5-8; 5: 1, 9). While good works are a necessary and certain fruit of saving faith (see Galatians 5: 6; Ephesians 2: 8-10), their imperfection rules them out from justifying us. Our persons and our performances alike always require pardon. That said, Christian sainthood is the present status of true though imperfect believers (see Ephesians 1: 1-2) not that of dead believers canonised by the Church of Rome.

(3)
Thus purgatory and prayers for the dead (including requiem masses) have no apostolic warrant. Those who die in Christ have no need of our prayers. Those who die otherwise cannot be helped by them. Besides corrupting baptism and the holy communion, Rome arrogantly added five more supposed sacraments to those commanded by Christ. Her realignment of the Ten Commandments—combining the first two and dividing the tenth—obscure in summary form God’s prohibition of the idolatry of such popular graven images as crucifixes and statues of Mary. Other distortions of divine truth are no less serious. The Pope's title ‘Holy Father’ is a blasphemous insult to God the Father (see John 17: 11). His claim to be the ‘vicar of Christ’ is a further insult to the Holy Spirit, Christ’s true representative on earth (see John 14: 16-17).

Indeed, for all its profession of the Holy Trinity, Rome’s doctrine of salvation tramples on Trinitarian truth. The political claims of a highly fallible Papacy conflict with Christ's words that His kingdom ‘is not of
this world’ (John 18: 36). Rome’s growing ambition to dominate Europe as in the days of the Holy Roman Empire is a re-emerging tyranny to be resisted by individual Christians and national governments alike. Her arrogance is at odds with Christ’s liberating truth (see John 8: 32, 36; Galatians 5: 1).


These things being so, we must ever stand inline with Luther in rejecting the repeated claim of the present Pope Benedict XVI that his church is the true Church. On the contrary, as the late Dr D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones asserted: ‘The Roman Catholic Church is the devil’s greatest masterpiece’ (Roman Catholicism).

Dr Alan C. Clifford

Theological Education and Training

A well qualified and experienced minister to undertake work for the training of ministers of the Gospel is a great advantage to the church.

In fact, it gives such a man the greatest opportunity of re-dressing the awful spiritual and theological situation that the church finds herself in.  If the professor of theology holds to honest and accurate theological and spiritual convictions, he is possibly the best placed man to do this work! 

What I am trying to say is this: a theological teacher who keeps that focus always before him will do untold good to the life of the church.  His is work, primarily, of ministerial training, and only secondarily of theological education.  Theological education is the means, or possibly even a means, of preparing men for the ministry.  

 But there is much more to it that barren and lifeless academic theology.  This work is not about helping theologs to 'count the number of angels that can stand on the head of a pin!'  The good teacher/trainer knows that anyway.  He will be teaching that theology that will help men to preach the Gospel, and thereby reform the church according to the Word of God.  All else is superfluous, and may be a diversion from the real work of the Kingdom. 

DMLJ argues that prospective Gospel ministers (what other kind are there?) ought to have, inter alia, a good mind, though not necessarily an academic one.  To him, a minister was not a Bible scholar skilled in expert knowledge of New Testament Greek, though he did believe that ministers ought to have learned it; they ought rather to be men who are primarily preachers and pastors with a divine commission.  

We have often reflected on the lack of power and authority in much preaching today, the emphasis being on confessional correctness rather that on the ability to give worshippers a sense of the presence of God.  This is where confessional correctness, which is but another name for ' dead orthodoxy,' gets hopelessly in the way of evangelism.  Theological understanding is important, but it is the skeleton rather than the actual structure of a sermon.  The Doctor often defined preaching as "theology coming through a man who is on fire."  On this he is right again.  He adds that such a man must be filled with the power of the Holy Spirit and called by God to proclaim it. 

So a theological education ought to provide the minister/preacher with the framework within which his preaching and evangelism is to be done.  It must always be biblical!  And it must drive his evangelism not restrict or hinder it. 

There is no greater servant of the church than an academically gifted teacher who can impart to trainee ministers a sense of the wonder of the Gospel, and of God's way of salvation, and equip them to proclaim it; men who can present the Gospel accurately and defend it against all comers! 

A good theological professor can write papers for the ordinary people as well as for academia. But, remember, there are more ordinary people than there are academics.

These are my musings about theological education which I trust you share, at least broadly.  

Academic Theology

I was thinking again about the issue of academic theology - I think we must be careful about this approach because its study has to have a very definite biblical purpose. Academic theology, I think, is a terrible waste of time, as is anything that is purely academic.  Academic stuff is purely about attaining knowledge, and while that in itself is very good, if that knowledge cannot be condensed for the ordinary congregation, then what's the point!  You told me about theologians whose teaching you heard - I am not impressed in the least.  Do people like that just want to impress their students with their great learning?  Is it really about self-promotion?  Is it about making a name for themselves in the academic world?  Where does the "He must increase and I must decrease" idea of John the Baptist's come in? 

The study of theology must be directed towards preparing men for Christian, that is, Gospel, ministry, and others for Christian service and usefulness.  Academic theology is dry and drains from the Christian any motivation they might otherwise have had. 

I heard Derek Thomas say that his aim in teaching theology at RTS was to bring his students to 'love Jesus.'  I thought there was something lovely and simply and profound about that.