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| There's a suspect title. Why no warning label? Mordor did that for Mequon students - labeling Justification by Faith as "Misleading!" |
An erroneous spiritualism, on the contrary, has relaxed and easy notions about the faith. One of its ready maxims declares, “It matters not what a man’s opinions are, so only his heart is converted, and his practice
is right.” It forgets that practice is governed by principles, and that as is the faith, such also are the devotions that spring from it. It is the faith of the Hindu that produces the superstitious devotions of the Hindu; it is Mohammedan faith that constitutes
the peculiar religious spirit of the Moslem worshiper; and it is from the true faith of Christ that the intelligent, pure, and Christ-like spirit of the Christian’s devotions springs. The spiritualism that undervalues sound doctrine, that confounds the true
and the false, that exalts feeling above knowledge, that places practice in antagonism to principle, that sacrifices the faith in the interest of spirituality, and that considers it necessary to overthrow the pure faith of the Church in order to advance the
cause of vital godliness in the Church, is a spiritualism that is erroneous, unsafe, and that needs to be carefully guarded against. However specious may be its pretensions, it is not the true spirituality of Christ and His apostles, or which will promote,
in the end, the best and most enduring interests of Christianity, and the Christian Church. Let a man be alike sound in doctrine, devout in spirit, and holy in life, and we have in him the highest and best style of a Christian, after the pattern of Christ,
of the Holy Apostles, and of the best and holiest men in all ages of the Christian Church.
From The First Lutheran Diet. “Paper: E. Greenwald: True And False Spirituality In The Lutheran Church.”
