Chapter 16: Was the Reformation a return to early Christianity? History frequently repeats itself. This is as true in the spiritual realm as it is in the secular. For example, the Pelagian-Augustinian controversy was virtually staged all over again in 16th-century Europe. The names of the players were different, and the specific doctrines were slightly changed, but the result was virtually identical. Once again, the issue was salvation.
Through the centuries, the Roman Catholic Church had slowly moved away from strict Augustinian predestination. Instead, like the early church, the medieval Catholic Church taught that good works play a role in salvation. However, to the early Christians, the term "good works" simply meant obedience to God's commands. Medieval Catholics expanded the term to include such ritualistic practices as going on pilgrimages, viewing relics, and buying indulgences.
Nevertheless, contrary to popular misconceptions, medieval Roman Catholic theology did not teach that salvation could be obtained apart from God's grace. The Reformation was touched off by the abuse of the Roman Catholic practice of granting indulgences. In Catholic theology, an indulgence is the remission of the temporal penalty of sin.
It was believed that the Pope had authority to grant such indulgences to living persons and to those in purgatory, so long as either the recipient or the intercessor was repentant and donated alms to the church or to some charitable cause. The Pope needed funds to rebuild St. Peter's Church in Rome, so he authorized a preacher named Tetzel to raise contributions for this building by "selling indulgences" throughout Germany.
Tetzel was an enthusiastic orator, and he apparently made all sorts of fantastic claims about what the purchase of an indulgence could accomplish. He played upon people's concerns for departed loved ones by preaching, "No sooner do the coins clink in the money chest than the soul of a loved one flies out of purgatory." One day, a young man asked Tetzel if the purchase of an indulgence could obtain pardon for any sin. "Oh, absolutely," responded Tetzel.
"But what if the sin hasn't yet been committed but is being contemplated by a person?" the man asked. "It makes no difference," Tetzel assured him. "No sin is too great." With that, the young man eagerly purchased the indulgence. After Tetzel had completed his rather lucrative session in the village, he packed up his wares and journeyed toward the next town. On the way, he was confronted by a band of thieves who robbed him of all he had, including the money from the sale of that day's indulgences.
Well, the grinning leader of the thieves was none other than the young man who had purchased an indulgence that afternoon in contemplation of a future sin: robbery. Well, Tetzel's fantastic claims didn't go unchecked. An energetic monk named Martin Luther, hot with righteous indignation, boldly confronted Tetzel and denounced his ludicrous claims. When the church did nothing to muzzle Tetzel, Luther nailed 95 theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg, proposing a public debate over the question of indulgences.
Now, many Christians have misconceptions about these 95 theses. They weren't a list of Reformation doctrines, just a list of assertions concerning indulgences. For example, thesis number 75 states, "To think that papal pardons so great that they could absolve a man even if he had committed an impossible sin and violated the Mother of God, this is madness." Apparently, either Tetzel or his aides had claimed just that very thing.
The flames of what may have otherwise been a rather small local dispute were fanned all across Europe by a recent invention, the printing press. Luther's 95 theses were copied by local printers and circulated throughout most of Europe. Soon, a confrontation of major proportions began to grow. To solidify his doctrinal position against the extremes of Tetzel, Luther succumbed to knee-jerk theology and went to the opposite extreme. In doing so, he didn't need to develop any new theology.
As an Augustinian monk, he simply resurrected some of the forgotten theology of Augustine. Following Augustine, Luther argued that salvation is entirely a matter of predestination. He taught that humans are totally unable to do anything good or even to have faith in God. Instead, God gives faith and good works to those whom He had arbitrarily chosen before the creation of the world. Others He arbitrarily chose to be eternally damned.
Moreover, Luther asserted that a person could not be saved if he did not believe in this doctrine of absolute predestination. This is what he said, "For if this is not known, there can be neither faith nor worship of God." Actually, to not know this is to be ignorant of God. And with this ignorance, salvation, it is well known, cannot consist.
For if you doubt or disdain to know that God foreknows and wills all things, not contingently but necessarily and unchangeably, how can you confidently believe, trust in, and depend upon His promises? You will regard Him as neither true nor faithful, which is unbelief, the greatest of wickedness, and a denial of the Most High God. Luther borrowed a number of other teachings from Augustine, including the Augustinian doctrine of holy war.
When German peasants rose up in revolt against the inhumane treatment they endured at the hands of the nobility, Luther recognized that their rebellion would be blamed on his teachings. So he encouraged the nobility to forcibly suppress the rebellion, goading them on with these words, "Here then there is no time for sleeping, no place for patience or mercy. It is the time of the sword, not the day of grace. Any peasant who is killed is lost in body and soul and is eternally the devil's.
But the rulers have a good conscience and a just cause. They can therefore say to God with all assurance of heart, 'Behold, my God, you have appointed me prince or lord. Of this I can have no doubt. And you have committed to me the sword over the evildoers. Therefore I will punish and smite as long as my heart beats. You will judge and make things right.'" Luther continues, "Thus it may be that one who is killed while fighting on the ruler's side may be a true martyr in the eyes of God.
Strange times these, when a prince can win heaven with bloodshed better than other men with prayer. Stab, smite, slay whomever you can. If you die in doing it, well for you. A more blessed death can never be yours." Well, the nobility followed Luther's preaching without hesitation, savagely crushing the bands of peasants in a brief conflict marked by horrible atrocities. Those peasants who weren't slain in combat were gruesomely tortured and then executed.
In the 1100 years between Augustine and Luther, Western Christianity had moved from side to side and all around, but it ended up almost right back where Augustine had left it. The Reformation was no return to the spirit and teachings of early Christianity.
To be sure, Luther did eliminate many post-Constantine practices in the German church, such as the use of images and relics, prayers to saints, masses for the dead, supposedly in purgatory, forced celibacy for the clergy, sale of indulgences, and religious pilgrimages as a form of good works. By eliminating these practices, Luther did move German Christianity several steps closer to primitive Christianity.
On the other hand, by returning to Augustinian theology, Luther also moved German Christianity a few steps back from early Christianity. Our next heading, "Our Sole Authority: The Bible or Luther's Interpretation of the Bible?" Perhaps Luther's most positive contribution to Western Christianity was his emphasis on the Bible as the only source of authority. Sola Scriptura became one of the banner slogans of the Reformation. However, Sola Scriptura was too often a matter of slogan, not of practice.
Luther translated the Bible into German so that the people could read it for themselves, which was a tremendous accomplishment. But at the same time, he made certain that the German people would read the Bible only through his interpretations. Chapter 12 presented some samples from Luther's preface to the New Testament, in which he tried to direct his reader's attention away from the parts of the Bible that contradicted his theology.
Luther's introduction to Romans is more than half as long as the letter to the Romans itself. In this introduction, Luther asserted, "This epistle is really the chief part of the New Testament and the very purest gospel." Setting Romans above the other New Testament books, he also stated, "To begin with, we must have knowledge of its language and know what St. Paul means by the words law, sin, grace, faith, righteousness, flesh, spirit, etc.
Otherwise, no reading of it has any value." Well, then Luther proceeded to define each of those terms, often in ways that were completely different from the early Christian use of those terms. In his preface to the epistle to the Hebrews, Luther attacked the epistle, writing, "Again, there is a hard knot in the fact that in chapters 6 and 10, it flatly denies and forbids sinners repentance after baptism. And in chapter 12, it says that Esau sought repentance and did not find it.
This seems, as it stands, to be against all the gospels and St. Paul's epistles. And although one might make a gloss on it, the words are so clear that I do not know whether that would be sufficient. My opinion is that it is an epistle of many pieces put together, and it does not deal with any one subject in an orderly way." So Luther's motto of Sola Scriptura was only a myth, since he himself took great pains to make certain that Christians didn't hear the scriptures alone.
In the final analysis, it wasn't scripture that was the sole source of Reformation authority, but rather Luther's interpretation of scripture. Now, before leaving Luther, I need to make it clear that I feel that Luther's positive contributions to Christianity far outweigh his shortcomings. I've mentioned more of his faults than his strong points, mainly because the evangelical church has historically put Luther on such a pedestal.
His many good qualities and positive accomplishments are already known to most evangelical Christians. Luther was a courageous man of God who risked his own life to bring life back into a spiritually dead church. We can admire his good qualities without having to follow his mistakes. Luther wanted to move the church back to the original beliefs of Christianity, but to a large degree, he didn't even know what those beliefs were.
Most of the early Christian writings weren't even available in the West when the Reformation began. As a result, Luther erroneously equated Augustinian teachings with early Christian teachings. By the time the bulk of early Christian writings became available, the doctrines of the Reformation were already set in stone, and no one was willing to change them.