Luther’s Publications Mortally Wounded the Church of
Rome
Luther
and the printing press arrived so powerfully that the Church of Rome could not
kill, torture, imprison, and enslave Evangelicals fast enough to stop the
Reformation. The Beast of Revelation[1] was
mortally wounded and never recovered its full strength in promoting error in
the name of Mary, Purgatory, the Mass, and the infallibility of the pope. One
part of the Reformation miracle was the built-up hunger of people for God’s
love, grace, and forgiveness through the Savior. The instrument of
communication was the printing press, but the energy came from Luther’s
writing. An expert in early publishing stated:
Gutenberg
had produced an orthodox Latin Bible and he had taken advantage of a large
market of printed indulgences. Luther launched the Reformation by an attack on
indulgences and he dethroned the Latin Bible from the heart of Western
Christendom, but he used the printing press as no one had ever done before.
Over 3,700 separate editions of books and pamphlets by Martin Luther were
published in his lifetime, not including Bible translations. This is an immense
number for any one author, even by today’s standards. It is an average of
almost two publications a week for most of his adult life. In his time, Luther
was by far the most extensively published author who had ever lived.[2]
Luther, Melanchthon, and the Concordists
Luther attracted and worked with brilliant men who wrote
in harmony with him. Melanchthon was his younger associate from the beginning,
an acclaimed scholar and editor/author of the Augsburg Confession and its
defense – The Apology. Fifty years after Augsburg Confession, Martin Chemnitz
and others collected doctrinal confessions in the Book of Concord, which
included the Formula of Concord, 1580. Chemnitz was a student of Luther and
Melanchthon, with the best qualities of most men. This second Reformation
generation of Biblical scholars dealt with issues about false doctrine and defended
clearly the Scriptural truths of the Reformation – Justification by Faith, the
efficacy of the Word and Sacraments, and the inerrancy of the Scriptures. They
began with the Three Ecumenical Creeds, included vital statements by Luther and
Melanchthon, and created harmony (concordia in Latin) with a variety of
issues in the 1580 Formula of Concord. However, the Reformation and the Book of
Concord era have been neglected and supplanted by the insights of Zwingli,
Calvin, and Robert Schuller.
Zwingli and Calvin, Alienation from the Word/Spirit
Connection
Zwingli
first - and Calvin later - appeared to agree with Luther, but they were not
charter members of the Reformation, as many imagine. Chemnitz, in his Apology
of the Book of Concord, compared the Calvinists humorously to tenants who
claimed everything would be fine if only the landlords would agree to their
demands. The Zwinglians and Calvinists eventually conceded their departure from
the efficacy of the Word in the Means of Grace. Although they became bold in
their disagreement with Luther, they became uncertain about forgiveness and
salvation. For Calvin, God being sovereign meant that no one knew if the Spirit
would be active in a given sermon, baptism, or Lord’s Supper. The emphasis
shifted from the certainty of God’s Word in preaching, teaching, and the
Sacraments (the Means of Grace) to hoping for results, shifting the responsibility
to man.
Their
dogma can be summed up as the rejection of the Holy Spirit and Word always at
work together, not a small matter, but a breech. For instance, Zwingli
mockingly stated that the Holy Spirit did not need a vehicle, like an oxcart,
as his response to the Real Presence of Christ in Holy Communion. His rejection
of the Sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, making them merely
symbolic, caused the Anabaptists to leave and become persecuted and drowned by
the Zwinglians. Calvin openly mocked the presence of Christ in both natures in
Holy Communion, and he placed human reason above the Scriptures. That magisterial
use of human reason was employed to judge, explain, and make the Word of God
appealing. The magisterial use of reason made it man’s job to get the work
done, a tragic departure from “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the
growth.”
1
Corinthians 3:5 Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye
believed, even as the Lord gave to every man? 6 I have planted, Apollos
watered; but God gave the increase. 7 So then neither is he that planteth any
thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase. 8 Now he
that planteth and he that watereth are one: and every man shall receive his own
reward according to his own labour. 9 For we are labourers together with God:
ye are God's husbandry, ye are God's building.
As The Other Side of
Calvinism has shown so abundantly, all five categories of the five-points
of Calvinism are disputed by its theologians, either one point or another. Ironically,
when Lutherans abandon Scriptural certainty and clarity, they inevitably move
toward Calvinism or allegiance to Rome.
The effect upon translations is immense and difficult to
correct, once adopted and deployed in millions of Bibles, church textbooks, and
devotional booklets.
Tyndale Perfected in English What Luther Created in German
[1]
Revelation 13: 18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count
the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six
hundred threescore and six.
[2]
Christopher De Hamel, The Book, A History of the Bible, p 236, 2001.
