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| Luther and Erasmus |
One Reformation, One Evangelical and Protestant
Church
The historians are fond of speaking about many
reformations – Swiss, English, Scottish, Radical, Dutch, Romani. In truth, one
Reformation changed the course of Christianity, when Martin Luther and his
associates referred to themselves as the Evangelicals within the Church. Later,
the term Protestant was associated with their positive witness to the truth
(the meaning of Pro and Test) at the Second Speier Conference. Subsequent
movements were not part of, but breaks from the Reformation, chiefly from
Zwingli and Calvin - and from the Swiss radicals - called Anabaptists,
Mennonites, Hutterites. Zwingli and Calvin sought to be associated with Luther
but furtively broke from his leadership and established the sect (eventually
called Calvinist or Reformed) from which the radicals rebelled.
The Reformation revived the Apostolic Church because of
one man – Luther – and one invention, the printing press, proclaiming the Gospel
Word in the midst of darkness, superstition, corruption, and slavery. The Word
of God had more power than the armies of the Pope and his allies.
Luther was the son of a man who owned and managed mines,
with training that promised an honorable and prosperous future. When a violent
storm threatened his life, he prayed to the saint of miners that he would
become a priest and a monk. Once inside the Augustinian order, he was trained
in the Latin philosophies of the Middle Ages – Augustine, Aquinas, and many more.
Like many denominations today, which honor the Scriptures with their lips, the
Medieval theologians honored their own traditions and fortified them with
centuries of tradition and Vatican support.
Luther determined to make himself into the best possible
monk and priest, but circumstances molded him into a Doctor of the Bible. His
supervisors saw in him the ability to become a professor in the Scriptures, and
that meant extra study of the Bible, where his exceptional mind found endless
contradictions. If the Bible was indeed the Word of God, then it was at war with
the visible Church. If Holy Mother Church in Rome was the ultimate authority,
then the Scriptures had to be ignored when enforcing edicts against the Gospel.
He was as perfect a monk as any man could be, obsessively so, but that did not
change the anguish he felt for his sins. Pleasing God with works only increased
the pain. Looking for a way to perfect himself by works, he found forgiveness
through faith in Jesus Christ alone.
Most authorities fill many pages about Luther’s conversion
to Justification by Faith, but they give little attention to his Biblical
approach to the Scriptures. The reason for this lack of foundational work is
the weak backgrounds of the Pietists, Rationalists, and Calvinists. Given this weak
foundation, their conclusions often skirt the boundaries of mockery, caricature,
and unbelief. One can argue, with plenty of support, that Luther’s view of the
Bible was expressed in the Luther Bible, the Tyndale Bible, and the King James
Version. The absence of this perspective has led the greedy printing
establishments, denominations, and Bible societies into a nightmare of bad
pseudo-translations based on a corrupt New Testament Greek text.[1]
Luther, the Holy Spirit and the Word
Luther
had the ability to see the content of the entire Bible as a whole, which is the
only proper way to read God’s Word. That perspective is in harmony with
traditional Judaism, which is inherently Christian. This view can be discerned
in two ways:
1.
The Word is never without the Spirit.
2.
The Spirit is never without the Word.[2]
The denominations have
fallen far away from #1. Nothing proves that more than the multiplication of
programs, gimmicks, and sociological analysis employed by the blind, faithless,
and confused leaders, whatever their label might be. The proof is easy to find,
in the most powerful and Gospel-centered book of the Old Testament – Isaiah.
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.
Verse 8 defeats the
sociological statements of leaders, such as “All organizations are aging, changing,
and losing members.” Verse 9 confirms that this passage is beyond our
comprehension and only understood by the faith created in us by God. This
introduces the Spirit/Word connection found throughout the Scriptures.
No one can dispute that the rain and snow come down and
invariably change the soil on which they land. The effects are undebatable –
rain and snowmelt make the earth come alive, everything budding and growing.
The inevitable results of rain and snow are seed for the sower and food for
those who hunger.
This parable from God Himself, as Creator and Teacher, cannot
be refuted. His Word goes forth from Him, not something to play with, a pointed
phrase lifted simply as a secular lesson from an unbelieving speaker. This
divine Word has three effects or Promises:
A.
The Word will always have a divine
effect.
B.
The Word will never return to God
without a divine effect.
C.
The Word will prosper everything God intended.
Thus, the Holy Spirit always
works with the Word, since the Word always has an effect, and that effect is
always accomplished and prospered by God. These three promises are in complete
harmony with God’s Word always being efficacious. These promises also confirm that
the Spirit works only through the Word.
Although the Pentecostals and charismatics can be
understood for leaving their mainline churches for churches that taught faith
in Jesus Christ and His miracles, the emphasis of the Holy Spirit working apart
from the work has been harmful and abusive. Someone can claim that the Spirit
spoke in a dream and Brother Johnson has to leave to start a mission in
Guatemala. If dreams count as revelations from God, the turmoil will never end
and the damage done can be worse than the corpse-cold rationalism of the
liberal, rationalistic denominations. Are we to believe that a program sold for
profit is “anointed by the Holy Spirit?” Are other programs “very anointed” in a
similar sales pitch?
All false doctrine comes from separating the Spirit from
the Word. For example, the pope simply declares something to be true and that
becomes an infallible revelation of God, because “the Holy Spirit will not let
him err.” Roman Catholic visions are often cited as proof for their dogma, even
when they come from visions of dead saints. Chemnitz observed that meant
expanding the Bible and enrolling vast numbers of the dead into the teaching
office of the Church.
Luther called all false doctrine Enthusiasm, a term not
often used or defined. However, it gathers everything into two categories –
either in harmony with the Scriptures or declared apart from and against the
Bible. World religions may be interesting to study from a historical or
cultural viewpoint, but they do not have the standing and credibility of the
Scriptures. That is the historic view of the Scriptures.
The inerrancy of the Scriptures has been targeted by the
hot-headed apostates who formed the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).
They claimed inerrancy was a new word and not appropriate for the Bible. Luther
used the Latin words for inerrant and infallible in his Large Catechism, Holy
Baptism.[3]
The actual reason for inerrant replacing infallible for God’s Word was the slithering
of the compromisers who said the Bible was infallible, except for its historical
and geographical passages. That is like saying the limousine is perfect, except
for the smoking engine and the clanking transmission.
A professor at Concordia Seminary, Ft. Wayne, asked the
class for a description of Karl Barth’s perspective. I said, “According to
Barth, we should read with the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other.”
He smiled in agreement. I added, “Others would say Barth was more like – a newspaper
in one hand and a Kalashnikov in the other, while standing on the Bible.” He
frowned.[4]
[1]
The Old Testament has suffered from similar translating abuse, but the original
text is protected by the Masoretic tradition instead of the established
monopolies of Hort, Westcost, Nestle, and Aland.
[2] Adolph
Hoenecke expressed this in his Dogmatics, largely ignored by WELS. He included,
after the two statements a third – “That is sound doctrine.”
[3]
Citation
[4]
The future Objective Justification advocate, Jay Webber, was furious with me
for upsetting the apostate seminary professor.
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| Luther and Melanchthon |
