It’s Not About Luther, It’s About the Gospel
Upstaged by Halloween, October 31 is also Reformation Day. As Protestants mark the 490th anniversary of Luther’s posting of the Ninety-Five Theses, how has the landscape changed? No longer issuing papal bulls for the excommunication, arrest, and even death of Martin Luther, the Vatican has been engaged in charitable conversations with the Lutheran World Federation as well as the World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC). According to many, especially mainline Protestants-but also evangelicals, the Joint Declaration on Justification (1999) settled the centuries-old dispute. A decade of “Evangelicals and Catholics Together” widened the era of good feeling. So it’s no wonder that many evangelicals as well as mainline Protestants were wondering with Mark Noll and Carolyn Nystrom, Is the Reformation Over? (2005).
You can listen to our interview with Mark Noll about this book here:
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It will come as no surprise to our readers that we dissent from this widespread opinion. There has been no material change in the Roman Catholic position on the issues that led to the excommunication of the Reformers. Even the Joint Declaration overcame the central doctrine of controversy only by embracing a Roman Catholic definition of justification as forgiveness and actual transformation (i.e., sanctification). See the excellent article by church historian Scott Manetsch, “Is the Reformation Over?” Manetsch nicely summarizes the points of controversy and concludes that these remain crucial divisions.
There has indeed been movement in terms of faith and practice, but it has been Protestants who either no longer agree with the Reformation answers or don’t think that they’re important anymore. (Presumably, the question of how sinners are justified before God is no longer relevant in the context of twenty-first century culture.) The Vatican is much kinder and gentler. The Vatican II rhetoric of “separated brethren” sounds a lot better than “pernicious and heretical sect,” but when it comes to the material issues at stake, nothing’s changed. The worship remains corrupted with human inventions that bury God’s Word; the authority assumed by the magisterium assaults the majesty of the church’s King to rule by his own Word and Spirit, and most significantly, Rome continues to reject in no uncertain terms that we are justified by grace alone in Christ alone through faith alone. As Calvin put the matter in his generous appeal to Cardinal Sadoleto, justification is “the first and keenest subject of controversy between us.” After all, “[w]herever the knowledge of it is taken away, the glory of Christ is extinguished, religion abolished, the Church destroyed, and the hope of salvation utterly overthrown.” Were the Reformers right when they said such divisive things? Is it possible that they were correct then, but not now? What has changed since the sixteenth century with respect to God’s way of saving sinners that would cause us either to give a different answer now or to dismiss the question as irrelevant today?
Aside from the material questions, it’s a combination of tragedy and comedy to watch Protestants fall over themselves to curry papal approval. On his visit last month to Germany, Pope Benedict was greeted with gushing praise for saying a few kind things about Luther (see here). After the pope visited the monastery in Erfurt where Luther resided, the presiding bishop of the Evangelical Church of Germany announced to journalists that “Luther has experienced a de facto rehabilitation today through this appreciation of his work.” “We heard this very clearly from the mouth of the pope,” he said. “What follows now formally is another question … but that’s not so important for me.” However, as the Reuters report cited above observes, “Vatican spokesman Rev Federico Lombardi begged to differ on Saturday. ‘To say that would be exaggerated,’ he told journalists in Freiburg, the last stop on the pope’s four-day tour of his homeland. ‘What this is about is having deep faith and I think it emphasises the commonalities we have in our love of faith.’” Wow. It sounds like the story of a water boy who publicly professes his infatuation with the star cheerleader only to be told, “Let’s just be friends.”
Yet all of this unrequited love swirls amid busy preparations to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Luther’s church-dividing theses in 1517. We see that as well in the recurring announcements of Protestants (the Vatican itself being curiously silent) that the rift is overcome-because Rome no longer thinks Luther is a heretic. The gospel is apparently no longer at issue. Rather, it’s Luther. Do you like our Reformer (i.e., us)? “‘It would be nice if they could declare him a doctor of the Church,’ Erfurt’s Lutheran Bishop Ilse Junkermann told Reuters.” It’s sad to watch, just from a human-interest point of view.
No changes to the current Catholic Catechism? No papal pronouncement at least opening conversation to the possibility that the positions promulgated since the Council of Trent might contradict Scripture? Again, unrequited love even on this score, as the same post reports: “Vatican officials have suggested in the past that no official rehabilitation was needed because the ban expired at Luther’s death. ‘One cannot do anything for Martin Luther now because Martin Luther, wherever he is, is not worried about these condemnations,’ Cardinal Edward Cassidy, then the Vatican’s top ecumenical official, said in 1999.”
I like Luther a lot. I look up to Calvin as a mentor through his writings. But do I really care what Rome thinks of “my guys”? No, not really. It’s not about them. It’s about the gospel and the wider issues connected to it concerning authority, superstition, and idolatrous worship.
The Reformation isn’t over. Not by a long shot. What we need most right now is not the rehabilitation of Luther, but the rehabilitation of true proclamation. We need it now, even in Protestantism-perhaps especially in Protestantism, more than ever.
October 20th, 2011 at 10:05 am
Best get these thoughts out early, after all Harold Camping says the world is going to end – really, this time – tomorrow 10/21.
October 20th, 2011 at 11:30 am
Amen!
October 20th, 2011 at 5:09 pm
Well I respect your views and cede to you great understanding of the reformation and Luther. With respect to the Roman Catholic Church,however, I think your knowledge and understanding is lacking. Your characterization of Roman Catholicism as “superstition, and idolatrous worship” demonstrates this. The reformation and Luther did not spring up from mushrooms to create Christianity…it has been here all along…recommend you take a look at Chesterton’s wonderful biography of Acquinas and his treatment of Luther in that brilliant book. Just for the record- I am not Roman Catholic, but if I were merely to judge Luther by reading only what Catholics have to say about him, I would have a distorted view indeed, and I would know Luther only by what others said of Luther without of course ever knowing Luther. My brother, I suspect your knowledge of Luther’s mother church is similarly skewed and a bit too informed by the critics of the Catholic view.
October 20th, 2011 at 5:35 pm
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October 20th, 2011 at 7:06 pm
Definitely in Protestantism from my view!
Basic logical reasoning from the Scriptures seems to have taken a vacation in much of “our” camp, including my own church.
October 21st, 2011 at 10:27 pm
Because the vast majority of Protestants are now Pelagians, and after the suicide of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland and its progeny, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the remaining, but shrinking, offspring who still subscribe to Reformation theology (PCA & OPC) no longer seem very far from Trent.
October 24th, 2011 at 8:06 am
495th Anniversary, no?
October 24th, 2011 at 8:13 am
Well, never mind me. I suspect the above reference to the 490th anniversary is quoted from somewhere else. At any rate, allow me to pedantically correct myself by noting that 2011 marks the 494th anniversary of the posting of the 95 Theses.
October 25th, 2011 at 2:59 pm
I highly doubt that Dr. Horton’s reference to superstition and idolatrous worship comes simply from critics of Roman Catholicism. I imagine it comes from things like the Council of Trent, Vatican I & II and the Catholic Catechism. You are correct, Hank, that the Christianity, i.e. the gospel and the Church, have been there all along. But just as Luther and the Reformation didn’t spring up from mushrooms, neither did the false doctrines that the Catholic Church teaches and defends. They were seeds planted over the decades that, sadly, took hold of the leaders of the church and eventually made the gospel nearly impossible to find.
October 25th, 2011 at 3:20 pm
“They were seeds planted over the decades that, sadly, took hold of the leaders of the church and eventually made the gospel nearly impossible to find” … Why would the Gospel be hard to find in the Roman Catholic Church when the Nicene Creed (the Gospel in a nutshell) has been recited in every Mass for 1,600 years. Since the average Catholic has the Creed memorized, he actually knows the Gospel better than some of the most erudite Protestant leaders.
October 25th, 2011 at 5:44 pm
Chesterton on Luther is here, and though I am in the minority on this page, even those in the anti-catholic camp must acknowledge the sheer brilliance of this writing (words do dance!)…but beyond that, do consider that what we are talking about are points of emphasis of a gospel which has always been there…
“It is often remarked as showing the ironical indifference of rulers to revolutions, and especially the frivolity of those who are called the Pagan Popes of the Renaissance, in their attitude to the Reformation, that when the Pope first heard of the first movements of Protestantism, which had started in Germany, he only said in an offhand manner that it was “some quarrel of monks.” Every Pope of course was accustomed to quarrels among the monastic orders; but it has always been noted as a strange and almost uncanny negligence that he could see no more than this in the beginnings of the great sixteenth century schism. And yet, in a somewhat more recondite sense, there is something to be said for what he has been blamed for saying. In one sense, the schismatics had a sort of spiritual ancestry even in mediaeval times.
It will be found earlier in this book; and it was a quarrel of monks. We have seen how the great name of Augustine, a name never mentioned by Aquinas without respect but often mentioned without agreement covered an Augustinian school of thought naturally lingering longest in the Augustinian Order. The difference, like every difference between Catholics, was only a difference of emphasis. The Augustinians stressed the idea of the impotence of man before God, the omniscience of God about the destiny of man, the need for holy fear and the humiliation of intellectual pride, more than the opposite and corresponding truths of free will or human dignity or good works. In this they did in a sense continue the distinctive note of Saint Augustine, who is even now regarded as relatively the determinist doctor of the Church. But there is emphasis and emphasis; and a time was coming when emphasising the one side was to mean flatly contradicting the other. Perhaps, after all, it did begin with a quarrel of monks; but the Pope was yet to learn how quarrelsome a monk could be. For there was one particular monk in that Augustinian monastery in the German forests, who may be said to have had a single and special talent for emphasis; for emphasis and nothing except emphasis; for emphasis with the quality of earthquake. He was the son of a slatecutter; a man with a great voice and a certain volume of personality; brooding, sincere, decidedly morbid; and his name was Martin Luther. Neither Augustine nor the Augustinians would have desired to see the day of that vindication of the Augustinian tradition; but in one sense, perhaps, the Augustinian tradition was avenged after all.
It came out of its cell again, in the day of storm and ruin, and cried out with a new and mighty voice for an elemental and emotional religion, and for the destruction of all philosophies. It had a peculiar horror and loathing of the great Greek philosophies, and of the scholasticism that had been founded on those philosophies. It had one theory that was the destruction of all theories; in fact it had its own theology which was itself the death of theology. Man could say nothing to God, nothing from God, nothing about God, except an almost inarticulate cry for mercy and for the supernatural help of Christ, in a world where all natural things were useless. Reason was useless. Will was useless. Man could not move himself an inch any more than a stone. Man could not trust what was in his head any more than a turnip. Nothing remained in earth or heaven, but the name of Christ lifted in that lonely imprecation; awful as the cry of a beast in pain.
We must be just to those huge human figures, who are in fact the hinges of history. However strong, and rightly strong, be our own controversial conviction, it must never mislead us into thinking that something trivial has transformed the world. So it is with that great Augustinian monk, who avenged all the ascetic Augustinians of the Middle Ages; and whose broad and burly figure has been big enough to block out for four centuries the distant human mountain of Aquinas. It is not, as the moderns delight to say, a question of theology. The Protestant theology of Martin Luther was a thing that no modern Protestant would be seen dead in a field with; or if the phrase be too flippant, would be specially anxious to touch with a barge-pole. That Protestantism was pessimism; it was nothing but bare insistence on the hopelessness of all human virtue, as an attempt to escape hell. That Lutheranism is now quite unreal; more modern phases of Lutheranism are rather more unreal; but Luther was not unreal. He was one of those great elemental barbarians, to whom it is indeed given to change the world. To compare those two figures hulking so big in history, in any philosophical sense, would of course be futile and even unfair. On a great map like the mind of Aquinas, the mind of Luther would be almost invisible. But it is not altogether untrue to say, as so many journalists have said without caring whether it was true or untrue, that Luther opened an epoch; and began the modern world.
He was the first man who ever consciously used his consciousness or what was later called his Personality. He had as a fact a rather strong personality. Aquinas had an even stronger personality; he had a massive and magnetic presence; he had an intellect that could act like a huge system of artillery spread over the whole world; he had that instantaneous presence of mind in debate, which alone really deserves the name of wit. But it never occurred to him to use anything except his wits, in defence of a truth distinct from himself. It never occurred to Aquinas to use Aquinas as a weapon. There is not a trace of his ever using his personal advantages, of birth or body or brain or breeding, in debate with anybody. In short, he belonged to an age of intellectual unconsciousness, to an age of intellectual innocence, which was very intellectual. Now Luther did begin the modern mood of depending on things not merely intellectual. It is not a question of praise or blame; it matters little whether we say that he was a strong personality, or that he was a bit of a big bully. When he quoted a Scripture text, inserting a word that is not in Scripture, he was content to shout back at all hecklers: “Tell them that Dr. Martin Luther will have it so!” That is what we now call Personality. A little later it was called Psychology. After that it was called Advertisement or Salesmanship. But we are not arguing about advantages or disadvantages. It is due to this great Augustinian pessimist to say, not only that he did triumph at last over the Angel of the Schools, but that he did in a very real sense make the modern world. He destroyed Reason; and substituted Suggestion.
It is said that the great Reformer publicly burned the Summa Theologica and the works of Aquinas; and with the bonfire of such books this book may well come to an end. They say it is very difficult to burn a book; and it must have been exceedingly difficult to burn such a mountain of books as the Dominican had contributed to the controversies of Christendom. Anyhow, there is something lurid and apocalyptic about the idea of such destruction, when we consider the compact complexity of all that encyclopaedic survey of social and moral and theoretical things. All the close-packed definitions that excluded so many errors and extremes; all the broad and balanced judgments upon the clash of loyalties or the choice of evils; all the liberal speculations upon the limits of government or the proper conditions of justice; all the distinctions between the use and abuse of private property; all the rules and exceptions about the great evil of war; all the allowances for human weakness and all the provisions for human health; all this mass of medieval humanism shrivelled and curled up in smoke before the eyes of its enemy; and that great passionate peasant rejoiced darkly, because the day of the Intellect was over. Sentence by sentence it burned, and syllogism by syllogism; and the golden maxims turned to golden flames in that last and dying glory of all that had once been the great wisdom of the Greeks. The great central Synthesis of history, that was to have linked the ancient with the modern world, went up in smoke and, for half the world, was forgotten like a vapour.
For a time it seemed that the destruction was final. It is still expressed in the amazing fact that (in the North) modern men can still write histories of philosophy, in which philosophy stops with the last little sophists of Greece and Rome; and is never heard of again until the appearance of such a third-rate philosopher as Francis Bacon. And yet this small book, which will probably do nothing else, or have very little other value, will be at least a testimony to the fact that the tide has turned once more. It is four hundred years after; and this book, I hope (and I am happy to say I believe) will probably be lost and forgotten in the flood of better books about Saint Thomas Aquinas, which are at this moment pouring from every printing-press in Europe, and even in England and America. Compared with such books it is obviously a very slight and amateurish production; but it is not likely to be burned, and if it were, it would not leave even a noticeable gap in the pouring mass of new and magnificent work, which is now daily dedicated to the philosophia perennis; to the Everlasting Philosophy.”
GK Chesterton from the biography of Aquinas
October 26th, 2011 at 12:21 pm
“Why would the Gospel be hard to find in the Roman Catholic Church when the Nicene Creed (the Gospel in a nutshell) has been recited in every Mass for 1,600 years.” Because you can have the words there, and certainly the Holy Spirit is at work where the Word of truth is and thus there are believers wherever that Word of truth is, but when you bind consciences with the false teaching of purgatory and by demanding good works and obedience to all sorts of other laws as part of the payment to enter heaven, and you hold out indulgences as a way to earn God’s favor – not the abuse it was in Luther’s day but still in existence today – you hide Christ even when the words are right there. This is true in many churches today, not just the Roman Catholic Church. We rejoice when God’s Word is present because of the promised work of the Holy Spirit, but that work can be blocked or undone when false doctrine is mixed with it. Read your Bible. Study church history. This has always been a problem because Satan is always at work.
As for Chesterton, unless I’m reading it wrong, it seems to me that he’s making Luther’s stand more about personality and intellect than about Scripture. I disagree with that view. I certainly don’t view Luther as perfect. No, he was a sinner, like Aquinas, like all, but he pointed to Christ alone for forgiveness and salvation because that’s what the Scriptures do. Did he add the word “alone,” a word that isn’t in the Greek? Yes. Does the context support such an addition? Certainly!
October 26th, 2011 at 1:39 pm
Peter:
Because of “the virtual Pelagianism of American religion” (Horton) “monergism” might as well be a Mandarin Chinese word for 95% of Christian leaders. It’s virtually unknown. Whatever the challenges there are in the Roman Catholic Church, at least the Christian faithful there recite these boundary markers warding off Trinitarian and Christological heresies.
“As for Chesterton, unless I’m reading it wrong, it seems to me that he’s making Luther’s stand more about personality and intellect than about Scripture. I disagree with that view. I certainly don’t view Luther as perfect.”
Notice the number of times either “I” or “me” are used in the above quote. That is, Protestantism is the ultimate religion of “I”.
Luther was all about “I”:
“I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God. Amen.”
Read more: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/martinluth403720.html#ixzz1bvCw6XJz
3 “I”s and a “me”? Did he even try to apologize or recant anything? No. For some, Luther remains the Übermensch — the ultimate Personality.
October 27th, 2011 at 11:29 am
TII:
I agree that there are plenty of people in visible churches, Protestant and others, that have an overemphasized view of self. This is an affliction that affects us all, to one degree or another, for the sinful nature loves self above all. However, it is not only uncharitable to lump all Protestants together, it is also ignorant. Most confessional Lutherans can also recite the Apostles and Nicene Creeds, and I’m sure there are others outside of our denominations as well, maybe some Reformed. God be praised for those who can, but it still comes down to what a person believes, not so? The creeds are a blessing, but if I can recite the creed, yet I am also told by my church that my works are in one way or another needed to please God and get to heaven and I believe it, then the creeds aren’t helping as they should.
My words about Catholicism have to do with the church’s teachings. I understand, as I believe I indicated, that there are Christians in the Catholic Church, but that doesn’t mean we can ignore false teaching as if it doesn’t matter. Forgive me if you are taking this to be a Protestant/Lutheran vs. Catholic thing. It’s not. It’s all about God’s Word. There are plenty of Lutheran churches and others that are also espousing false doctrine. Lord, have mercy!
As for my use of “I” and “me,” that was allowing for the possibility that I misunderstood Chesterton’s words because I am fallible, a sinner. If you want to attack me for being self-centered, at least do so based on something of substance. The reason Luther said, “I” and “me” is because he was being
accused of heresy based on things he wrote. What was he supposed to say? “Here someone stands”? In the first chapter of Philippians, St. Paul used “I” or “me” 32 times. So what shall we say about him? And no, I’m not trying to compare myself or Luther to Paul, although all of us are sinners who have received the forgiveness of sins by the grace of God in Christ. I pray this is true for you as well. And Luther didn’t try to apologize or recant anything because no one could show him from Scripture that his writings were heretical. If you think Luther was all about “I”, you clearly know very little about him, which means that this discussion is unable to continue in a meaningful way.
October 27th, 2011 at 4:57 pm
Peter-
I appreciate the distinction between the condemnation of false teachings vs.people, and I quite agree. My point was simply that the seeds of the reformation were there all along and that Luther thought of nothing that a good christian Catholic did not already know, but had perhaps forgotten, and that the church (at some point) had also taught-though perhaps had since forgotten, and at that point our discussion really becomes a discussion about history anyway. We most certainly can agree on the importance of the content of the teaching regardless of which church taught it first. It is very much a point of emphasis as Chesterton states— I just find characterizations like “idol worship” a bit over the top…I myself have worshiped the false idol of money in my past and know false idols quite well…but I have yet to meet a single Roman Catholic who teaches about such things, and I know many…and they seem to know and understand grace quite well…but I have only lived half a century- so i’ll keep looking and if I find one before senility sets it, I’ll let you know.
October 28th, 2011 at 4:06 am
[...] as Michael Horton has recently argued (and R. C. Sproul before him), the Reformation is far from over. “There has [...]
October 28th, 2011 at 7:34 am
Hank, thanks for your comments. I appreciate them, and it is correct that the truth was there and was taught before the false teachings and abuses came to be. Even Luther himself was told by his superior, Staupitz, when troubled by the burden of his sin, to look to Christ. Soli Deo Gloria!
October 28th, 2011 at 5:35 pm
[...] as Michael Horton has recently argued (and R. C. Sproul before him), the Reformation is far from over. “There has [...]
October 29th, 2011 at 8:10 am
[...] as Michael Horton has recently argued (and R. C. Sproul before him), the Reformation is far from over. “There [...]
October 30th, 2011 at 5:11 pm
[...] as Michael Horton has recently argued (and R. C. Sproul before him), the Reformation is far from over. [...]
October 30th, 2011 at 5:43 pm
[...] as Michael Horton has recently argued (and R. C. Sproul before him), the Reformation is far from over. "There has [...]
October 30th, 2011 at 7:37 pm
[...] as Michael Horton has recently argued (and R. C. Sproul before him), the Reformation is far from over. “There [...]
October 30th, 2011 at 7:45 pm
I do appreciate the hard work of everybody at the White Horse Inn. And I do agree that there is a desperate need for a return to the Reformation beliefs, the gospel and the 5 solas.
With that said I do not agree with your assessment on the joint declaration on justification. You write:
“Even the Joint Declaration overcame the central doctrine of controversy only by embracing a Roman Catholic definition of justification as forgiveness and actual transformation (i.e., sanctification).”
The reason I disagree is because in all fairness the joint declaration was an attempt to reconcile both lutheran and roman catholic language in the topic of justification, and it did a pretty good job at it. The joint declaration highlights the roman catholic definition of salvation including both forgiveness of sins and actual transformation (i.e. sanctification). It also upholds the lutheran view that sanctification is the fruit of justification (and the joint delcaration states this). Both lutherans and catholics in the joint declaration highlight that there is no salvation without good works, at the same time the work of salvation is 100% of faith and it’s credited 100% to God and not man (without human cooperation the joint declaration mentions). Sounds pretty biblical to me. And actually it was John Calvin in his Institutes who stated that Christians receive two distinct benefits when they embrace Christ by faith, justification and sanctification. Also in the joint declaration catholics accept that assurance of salvation is not only possible, but it is a key element of saving faith.
Although I agree wholeheartedly with the White Horse Inn that the Church needs to go back to the Reformation, and I also agree that both Roman Catholicism and protestantism today are far apart from the Reformers, I can not condemn the joint declaration on justification for doctrinal error. Rather this joint declaration (which emphasizes salvation by grace alone, through faith alone) is not being embraced in practice by the catholic church or most protestants for that matter.
October 31st, 2011 at 12:06 pm
[...] as Michael Horton has recently argued (and R. C. Sproul before him), the Reformation is far from over. “There [...]