Wrong Historical Order?
Some will think that we should
not consider the butchered text of the New Testament and the abhorrent
translations, which happened centuries after Calvin. However, the English
Scriptures are the way in which doctrinal point are made or lost. The “conservative”
Lutherans have watered down language requirements, so few clergy can examine
the translation issues. Even the older clergy of WELS, who always bragged about
their superior education, have trouble with the simplest to read New Testament
Greek, such as 1 John.
Therefore, trying to explain
the Biblical Means of Grace, infant faith, and the Real Presence are made
doubly difficult with modern editions which pointedly reject those ancient
teachings from Jesus Himself. A reliable English Bible with the traditional
text is the only way. That honor belongs to the King James Version and – more
or less – to the KJV updates available.
What is dynamic equivalence?
As the failing New York Times
declared, on the death of Nida, the older translations were word for word,
while Nida trained people to use dynamic or functional equivalence.[1] That approach is
contrasted with the formal equivalence of the KJV. However, the typical
argument is that the KJV is word-for-word while the modern translations
actually get at the real meaning of the text. How horrible it was to suffer
under the KJV for 400 years! Now we can finally find out what the Bible
reveals, they suggest. At best, the KJV is tolerable, but too wooden and
archaic for people to understand.
Word-for-word translating is
impossible, because of word order and many other issues. The problem is a clash
of philosophies. The KJV is a precise translation while the Nida-inspired
versions are exercises in creative writing, loaded with denominational agendas.
Manufacture Disciples
This is one difference for
which the Church Growth Enthusiasts will die – the Great Commission, pivotal in
their distorted concept of ministry and evangelism.
KJV Matthew 28 19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have
commanded you: and, lo, I am with
you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.
The ESV, NIV, and other
popular versions have “make disciples of all nations,” a complete departure
from the text, because the verb is not make and the object of the verb is not
disciples. This horrible paraphrase, a delight to Fuller Seminary alumni, turns
a Gospel admonition into Law. Everyone is commanded to make disciples. The
result is ministry and evangelism based on compelling people to make disciples
rather than teaching all nations.
The false emphasis of a bad
translation takes away from the combination of go, teach, baptize, and
instruct. The modernists are scandalized by the use of “teach” twice, so they
imagine they have improved the words of Jesus. But the original meaning is far
better. Go (rather than stay) teach all nations (not just the most likely to
convert) and baptize in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
Lacking is the warning against baptizing babies, as they were in the Christian
Church until the Zwinglian Reformation that spawned the Anabaptists.
Missions are best defined in
the original – Teach all nations and baptize in the Name of the Trinity. The
feeble excuse for “make disciples of” is that the verb is the same root in
Greek as disciple. More honest would be – disciple really means one who is
taught, who is under the leadership of a teacher. Jesus was hailed as Rabbi and
Teacher, not as Disciple-Maker. He chose and instructed the Twelve.
The final verse of Matthew is
a reflection of this Gospel –
20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have
commanded you: and, lo, I am with
you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.
Once people are converted and
baptized, with their children, they need careful instruction in the complete
Gospel message. We need that instruction the rest of our lives, for without the
energy of the Gospel Word within us, we grow cold and inert toward the grace of
God.
My experience with this
passage among Lutherans is that the Church Growth leaders rant in favor of “make
disciples” and positively explode at the thought of the actual wording. One
young Lutheran pastor wrote about this to WELS and found himself hated out of
the ministry and synod. The Fuller Seminary alumni network is comprised of
watchful dragons who make sure their territory remains under the control of
Calvinism.
Abandoning the Sacraments
The non-Lutheran Protestants
largely reject the sacraments as God accomplishing His will through the Word
united with earthly elements. Zwingli and Calvin rejected Holy Baptism and Holy
Communion as sacraments, conveying forgiveness, demoting them to ordinances or
laws man should obey. Therefore communion with God is not to be tolerated, even
when the original text teaches that concept.
KJV 1 Corinthians 10:16 The cup of blessing which we bless, is
it not the communion of the blood of
Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?
NIV 1 Corinthians 10:16 Is not
the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we
break a participation in the body of
Christ?
ESV 1 Corinthians 10:16 16 The cup of blessing that we
bless, is it not a participation in
the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?
And yet – The ESV agreeing
with the NIV that koinonia is
fellowship.
ESV 2 Corinthians 13:14 The grace
of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
Koinonia, before it was used
as a name for Pietist cell groups, meant fellowship or communion. No one
wonders what it means when a church member says he communes with God when
hunting deer. Participation does not clarify but removes a hotly debated verse
from the Biblical doctrine of forgiveness received through the Body and Blood
of Christ. As Reu observed in his excellent lectures on unionism, creating an
agreement when none exists is the surest sign of ignoring false doctrine.
Once everyone is reading the
NIV and ESV, and these horrible paraphrases permeate the synodical textbooks,
the congregations and pastors will ask, in their ignorance, “Where is the
Biblical difference between us and the rest of the Protestants?” That will also
calm the guilty conscience, if one is left, for going to Fuller Seminary,
Willow Creek, and other enclaves of Enthusiasm.
Zwingli Is the Forerunner of Calvin
Many more people will admit to
Calvinism than to following Zwingli, but the perspective is quite similar.
Zwingli began the unfortunate stance of opposing Luther while pretending to be
allied with the Reformation. The basic error is proclaimed with boldness in
Zwingli and continued in Calvin. They did not grasp the Biblical teaching of
God’s effective Word associated with earthly elements. When Zwingli ended the
Biblical concept of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion as sacraments conveying
grace, Calvin continued this disaster and canonized for many Protestants the
role of human reason judging the Scriptures.
Zwingli is not well known
because he formed a military alliance to promote his reform, and the Catholic
cantons opposed him. This conflict ended in a battle where Zwingli and other
clergy died in their armor, 1531.
He began his reforms in 1522, which
were certainly the groundwork for Calvin’s. Herman Sasse in Here I Stand wrote about Zwingli turning
the Holy Communion service into a memorial meal. People poured into church for
the last presentation of the Body and Blood of Christ, and Zwingli was haunted
by a dream about abandoning “the Lord’s Passover.”
One result of rationalizing
Christianity was the emergence of Anabaptists in Zurich, where Zwingli
preached. Although baptism was just an ordinance, the city council passed a
death sentence on those who refused it for their children. Some Anabaptists
were killed and the rest fled around 1527. This became part of the Radical
Reformation - Mennonites, Amish, Hutterites – defined by their understanding of
believer’s baptism.
Luther’s connection with
Zwingli came at the Marburg Colloquy, where Zwingli refused to accept the Real
Presence. Luther wrote in chalk, “This is My Body” in Latin on the table. The
doctrinally indifferent see this argument as a matter of opinion. One Mequon
senior answered the question in church history by saying, “Luther was wrong!”
But the issue is the efficacy of the Word, which is not a franchise issue, but
a foundational, Biblical teaching.
Calvin’s Reform in Geneva
In 1509, John Calvin was born
in France and had a dual education. He was known for his intellect, perhaps
aiming for the priesthood but directed toward law by his father. He had a
conversion experience around 1530 and earned his law degree In 1532. He was
allied with reform movements in the Church, which led to an initial stay in
Geneva, Switzerland - expulsion – and an
invitation to come back in 1541. He agreed with Zwingli’s view of Holy
Communion and became the figure for opposition to Luther until his death in
1564.
The following pages will deal
with the effects of Zwingli and Calvin on Protestantism:
1.
Magisterial reason and rationalism
2.
Enthusiasm
3.
Rejection of the Means of Grace
Magisterial Reason and Rationalism
Siegbert Becker wrote a brilliant book on Luther – The Foolishness of God. It is his best
book, well written, and good for laity and clergy to read. He made the
distinction between
·
Magisterial reason - judging God’s Word with
our reason,
·
Ministerial reason - using one’s intellect to
understand God’s Word.
Zwingli and Calvin clearly worked
and taught from the perspective of magisterial reason. They were the ultimate
judges on all passages of the Bible, which also leads to selecting a few verses or even part of a verse, to
establish dogma without the context of the Scriptures as a whole.
That not only explains why
Protestantism has split into hundreds of factions, but also accounts for the
origin of quasi-Christians sects -
·
Mormons,
·
Adventists,
·
Jehovah’s Witnesses,
·
Church Growthers, Church and Change, and their
new name, the Emergents.
"Zwingli said, 'I
believe, yea I know, that all the Sacraments are so far from conferring grace
that they do not even convey or distribute it. In this, most powerful Emperor,
I may perhaps appear too bold to thee. But I am firmly convinced that I am
right. For as grace is produced or given by the divine Spirit (I am using the
term grace in its Latin meaning of pardon, indulgence, gracious favor), so this
gift reaches only the spirit. The Spirit, however, needs no guide or vehicle,
for He Himself is the Power and Energy by which all things are borne and has no
need of being borne. Nor have we ever read in the Holy Scriptures that
perceptible things like the Sacraments certainly bring with them the Spirit.' Fidei Ratio, ed. Niemeyer p. 24; Jacobs,
Book of Concord, II, 68. Francis
Pieper, Christian Dogmatics, 3 vols.,
trans., Walter W. F. Albrecht, St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1953,
III, p. 132f.
Zwingli’s position was also
Calvin’s, since both denied the Sacraments and the Means of Grace. These errors
end ultimately in the rationalism and marketing of the current crop of
Evangelical gurus. Zwingli and Calvin latched onto the Reformation like
chameleons and pretended to agree until the opportune time. Joachim Westphal
challenged Calvin, and the wolf threw off his fleecey disguise.
From Zwingli’s Enthusiasm to Calvin’s Errors
Milner’s Harvard dissertation provided
abundant proof that Calvin followed Zwingli in separating the Holy Spirit from
the Word. The published dissertation is so popular that the used book price has
been as high as $600.[2]
Luther called this divorce of
the Holy Spirit and the Word the foundation of all false doctrine, and named it
Enthusiasm. That statement can take some time to digest, but Luther’s Biblical wisdom
becomes clear over time. When people develop ideas on their own, with no
support in Scripture, they are well on their way to manufacturing a whole new
system with some relationship to the Bible, but no actual connection. Enthusiasm
is that diabolical scheme to name and claim a system - and later to defend it
in the name of human authority and over time, its age and general approval by
many.
Zwingli began this trend by
claiming God had no need for Sacraments, the Word in visible form, yet God
established the rainbow as a perpetual reminder of His Promise never to flood
the earth again. That did not come from God’s need, but from man’s, since there
remains a universal dread and justified terror of flooding. Nowhere does the
Bible say, “God needs the Sacraments,” but the lack of divine need continues to
be used for abolishing what is clearly established for our spiritual welfare.
John
Calvin, Against Joachim Westphal: "The nature of baptism or the Supper
must not be tied down to an instant of time. God, whenever He sees fit,
fulfills and exhibits in immediate effect that which he figures in the
Sacrament. But no necessity must be imagined so as to prevent His grace from
sometimes preceding, sometimes following, the use of the sign."
Benjamin
Charles Milner, Jr., Calvin's Doctrine of
the Church, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1970, p. 121.
What does this do to Christian
parents who lose an infant, when they are not only denied infant baptism but denied
the very nature of a newborn to have trust? When a teenage girl was being stressed
by one parent’s opposition to infant baptism, I asked her if she saw me baptize
a baby. “What happens when I take the baby into my arms?” She said, “It usually
cries.” So I asked, “And when I give the baby back to its mom?” She replied, “It
stops crying.” I said, “So it cries because he does not trust me, and stops because
he trusts his mother. But he cannot trust God?” She said, “I see.”
By separating the Word from
the Spirit, Enthusiasts empty God’s Promises from what He has established for
us. Marriage is the only human institution established by God, though some
Lutheran synods might add their organization to the list. Decades ago, almost
everyone wanted a wedding blessed by God and guided by the Gospel, even if their
own attendance was sparse. Now that is diminished by this same denigration of
the Means of Grace. When a man was living with the mother of his three
children, I asked him why he despised the Word of God. He denied that. I
answered him, “God established marriage through His Word, and yet you are
teaching your children against the Bible by not marrying her.” He phoned me a
few days later to arrange their marriage at the church.
We use the term Means or sometimes Instruments to describe how God unites His Promises with earthly
elements. Although many of our accomplishments could be noted and remembered
without physical objects, we nevertheless have living rooms with trophies, framed
diplomas, and proofs of children, grandchildren, even vacations. By hollowing
out the Means God has given us, Calvin makes them unnecessary and lacking in
value.
John
Calvin, Commentaries, Amos 8:11-12: "...we are touched with some desire
for strong doctrine, it evidently appears that there is some piety in us; we
are not destitute of the Spirit of God, although destitute of the outward
means."
Benjamin
Milner, Calvin's Doctrine of the Church,
Heicko A.Oberman, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1970, p. 109. CO, XLIII, 153.
John
Calvin, True Method of Reforming the Church: "The offspring of believers
are born holy, because their children, while yet in the womb, before they
breathe the vital air, have been adopted into the covenant of eternal
life."
Benjamin
Charles Milner, Jr., Calvin's Doctrine of
the Church, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1970, p. 123.
Affirmation Followed by Spirit-Word Separation
If all the work of the
Christian Church must be accompanied by the Holy Spirit, and that divinely
promised cooperation is denied, then everyone is left in doubt. This denial of
the Spirit at always work in the Word plants doubt in the hearts of believers,
who seek proof of the Spirit in the strangest ways – tongues, dancing, holy
laughter, increased membership, palatial churches with federal-sized deficits.
“Wherefore,
with regard to the increase and confirmation of faith, I would remind the
reader (though I think I have already expressed it in unambiguous terms), that
in assigning this office to the Sacraments, it is not as if I thought that
there is a kind of secret efficacy perpetually inherent in them, by which they
can of themselves promote or strengthen faith, but because our Lord has
instituted them for the express purpose of helping to establish and increase
our faith. The Sacraments duly perform their office only when accompanied by
the Spirit, the internal Master, whose energy alone penetrates the heart, stirs
up the affections, and procures access for the Sacraments into our souls. If He
is wanting, the Sacraments can avail us no more than the sun shining on the
eyeballs of the blind, or sounds uttered in the ears of the deaf. Wherefore, in
distributing between the Spirit and the Sacraments, I ascribe the whole energy
to Him, and leave only a ministry to them; this ministry, without the agency of
the Spirit, is empty and frivolous, but when He acts within, and exerts His
power, it is replete with energy. ...then, it follows, both that the Sacraments
do not avail one iota without the energy of the Holy Spirit; and that yet in
hearts previously taught by that preceptor, there is nothing to prevent the
Sacraments from strengthening and increasing faith.”
John
Calvin, Institutes of the Christian
Religion, 2 volumes, Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company,
1970, I, p. 497. Also cited in Benjamin Charles Milner, Jr., Calvin's Doctrine of the Church, Leiden:
E. J. Brill, 1970, p. 119. Institutes.
IV.xiv.9.
“We
must not suppose that there is some latent virtue inherent in the Sacraments by
which they, in themselves, confer the gifts of the Holy Spirit upon us, in the
same way in which wine is drunk out of a cup, since the only office divinely
assigned them is to attest and ratify the benevolence of the Lord towards us;
and they avail no farther than accompanied by the Holy Spirit to open our minds
and hearts, and make us capable of receiving this testimony, in which various
distinguished graces are clearly manifested… They [the Sacraments] do not of
themselves bestow any grace, but they announce and manifest it, and, like
earnests and badges, give a ratification of the gifts which the divine
liberality has bestowed upon us.”
John
Calvin, Institutes of the Christian
Religion, 2 volumes, Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company,
1970, I, p. 503. Institutes, IV, XIV, 17.
Mockery
One unfortunate aspect of
Calvinism is the mockery fueled by Enthusiasm. When an individual’s own opinion
supplants Biblical revelation, the Scriptures are ignored. The Real Presence is
just as much a miracle as the Feeding of the Five Thousand. When the Real
Presence is trivialized, the multiplication of loaves, bread, and fish must be
rationalized as the crowd sharing their food because the boy shamed them in
sharing his food.
“But
assuming that the body and blood of Christ are attached to the bread and wine,
then the one must necessarily be dissevered from the other. For the bread is
given separately from the cup, so the body, united to the bread, must be
separated from the blood, included in the cup.”
John
Calvin, Institutes of the Christian
Religion, 2 volumes, Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company,
1970, I, p. 570. Institutes, IV, XVII, 18.
John
Calvin, Institutes IV.xvii.19: "We must establish such a presence of
Christ in the supper as may neither fasten Him to the element of bread, not
enclose Him in bread, not circumscribe Him in any way (all of which clearly
derogate from His heavenly glory)...."
Benjamin Charles Milner, Jr., Calvin's
Doctrine of the Church, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1970, p. 128.
Likewise, Jesus could not appear
in the heavily locked room on the Day of Resurrection. He must have entered a
secret way. Calvinists strangely limit the divine nature of Christ by His human
nature, a denial of the Two Natures in Christ.
Reformed
theologians, in order to support their denial of the illocalis modus subsistendi of Christ's human nature, have sought,
in their exposition of John 20, an opening in the closed doors, or a window, or
an aperture in the roof or in the walls, in order to explain the possibility of
Christ's appearance in the room where the disciples were assembled. Francis
Pieper, Christian Dogmatics, 3 vols.,
trans., Walter W. F. Albrecht, St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1950, II,
p. 127. See also I, 25ff., III, 324..John 20:19.
Enthusiasm Refuted – Spirit and Word
Many passages in the Bible
teach that the Word of God, both written and spoken, have divine power, the
Spirit always at work in the Word. Thus three Promises are always kept:
God accomplishes everything through
His Word. Isaiah 55:8-11.
1.
The Word always has an effect.
2.
The Word never returns without an effect.
3.
The Word always prospers God’s will.
These Promises are connected
to something so basic in Creation – snow and rain - that we cannot help but to
reflect on it and to feel encouraged when we see how true this is in our fields
and gardens. When the spoken Word is watered down by man’s opinions, fantasies,
and false promises, it loses its divine power, just as soup becomes less nutritious
when watered down in the name of frugality.
Isaiah
55: 8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,
saith the Lord. 9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways
higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. 10 For as the rain
cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth
the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the
sower, and bread to the eater: 11 So shall my word be that goeth forth out of
my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which
I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.
People take the Sacraments
lightly when taught that baptism and communion lack divine power. The effect of
separating the Spirit from the Word itself creates the same lack of trust.
A.
In the first generation, rationalism is used to
connect the sacraments to the Roman Catholic Church, so the means are evil,
guilt by association, a logical fallacy.
B.
In the second generation, rationalism seeks to
prove through human wisdom and research – apart from the Bible – that the
Scriptures are correct. Thus one person said at an Evangelical gathering that
he had solved all the problems of the Flood. I wondered to myself, “It is not
miraculous from start to finish, God’s own work?”[3]
C.
Looking for a way to show that God blesses
their work, the church leaders look for programs, supported by statistics, that
will guarantee results. As one Church Growth speaker repeatedly said – at St.
Paul, German Village, Ohio – “Do this and you will have a lot of happy campers.”
D.
In the fourth generation, rationalism is
battered by the same kind of proofs initiated by their own people and turned
against them, so they begin emphasizing good works to prove they do not just preach
about heaven and sing Amazing Grace every Sunday.
Are the Sacraments without Effect in the Bible?
Because Zwingli and Calvin
chose to reject the Spirit always at work in the Word, they reduced Holy
Communion to an ordinance, a law to be obeyed, simply a memorial meal that
offered no grace, no forgiveness. Once this Sacrament is only a law, only
symbolic, and only a memorial, it has little influence over the lives of
non-Lutheran Protestants. Those Lutherans who ape the anti-Sacramental
Christians are likely to conclude that they can do without much emphasis on
those supposed barriers to Church Growth, which has doomed Lutheran synods to
the status of Zwinglian wannabees.
Matthew
26:26 And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it,
and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. 27 And he
took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it;
28 For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the
remission of sins.
For the last time, Greek does have the verb for is, and there is no Aramaic original
behind our Last Supper narratives. Jesus did not say, “This symbolizes My body
and blood,” or “This seems to be My body and blood.” That skewering of the New
Testament would have Jesus saying, “I symbolize the Good Shepherd,” and Pete4r
exclaiming “It seems to be the Lord!” in John 21.
The Bible speaks of baptism
even more vigorously
Acts 22:16 And now why
tarriest thou? arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the
name of the Lord.
Washing rebirth renewal
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/us/04nida.html
[2]
Most theology books, used, sell for $5 or less, including recent ones. When I
originally found Milner’s work and used it for a doctoral class at Notre Dame,
my supervisor said, “Oh, Benjie. I knew him at Harvard.” I have owned and
passed along this book at least twice so far.
[3] I
know what some are thinking. No, he never gave me a chance to respond.
