Chapter 24: The Fruit of the Theologies. In his parable of the vine, Jesus explained how Christianity works. "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine dresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, he prunes that it may bear more fruit." John 15:1-2.
Just as the Jewish theologians imagined they could please God without producing godly fruit, so Christian theologians had devised numerous systems that offer eternal life without the need to bear kingdom fruit. Luther believed that the primary problem with the Catholic Church was that Catholics were trying to work their way to heaven. Actually, the real problem with the Catholic Church of Luther's day was that it offered heaven without the necessity of bearing Christ's fruit.
Catholics imagined that they could somehow receive eternal life by going on pilgrimages, viewing relics, attending Mass, and obtaining papal indulgences. Whether a person labels such things as works or counterfeit grace, one thing is for sure: they're not kingdom fruit. And what did Luther offer in place of the Catholic system of entering heaven without bearing fruit? He offered a Protestant system of gaining heaven without bearing fruit.
Instead of pilgrimages and indulgences, Luther offered the theological doctrine: just give mental assent to the doctrine of salvation by faith alone, and you will be saved. No fruit needed. Ungodly fruit. Actually, Luther thought that godly fruit would automatically follow once a person embraced his gospel, but somehow that fruit never came. Even Schaff, who was an ardent admirer of Luther and a firm believer in the reformer, was forced to admit.
The fact is undeniable that the Reformation in Germany was accompanied and followed by antinomian tendencies and a degeneracy of public morals. It rests not only on the hostile testimonies of Romanists and separatists, but Luther often bitterly complained in their latter years of the abuse of the liberty of the gospel and the sad state of morals in Wittenberg and throughout Saxony.
Luther himself wrote, "Since our doctrines have been preached, the world has grown steadily worse, always more godless and shameless, and men more avaricious than under the papacy. Everywhere are only greed and moderate desires, lewdness, shameful disorder, and hideous passions." In a letter to his wife near the end of his life, Luther lamented about the degenerate morals of Wittenberg, the city where Luther lived and where the Reformation had begun.
As things are run in Wittenberg, perhaps the people there will acquire not only the dance of Saint Vitus or John, but the dance of the beggars or the dance of Beelzebub since they have started to bare women and maidens in front and back, and there is no one who punishes or objects. In addition, the word of God is being mocked. "Away from this Sodom! I am tired of this city and do not wish to return." Luther's right-hand man and his successor confessed. The morals of the people become worse.
Luxury, licentiousness, and boldness are steadily increasing. The truth is that Lutheran Germany produced no more kingdom fruit than had Catholic Germany. In fact, it produced even less. Catholic Germany gave the world centuries of wars. Lutheran Germany did the same, culminating with World War II. As Jesus said, "A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit." Both Catholic and Lutheran Germany were rotten trees.
Maybe you're thinking, well, perhaps the problem is that most of the people of Lutheran Germany never embraced Reformation theology. Why don't you point instead to the personal fruit of the reformers themselves? Well, actually, the people of Lutheran Germany did embrace Reformation theology. The problem is that they never embraced Christ. After all, it was Luther himself who advised Melanchthon: "Sin boldly." Nevertheless, let's look at the personal fruit of the reformers themselves.
Luther once said that there is no worse heresy than for a Christian to believe that he is good enough to deserve salvation. To be sure, that is a major theological error. However, I can think of several heresies that are far, far worse. A much worse heresy is murdering others in the name of Christ and imagining that God is pleased with it. Based on the hearty approval of Augustine, the Catholic Church had been torturing and murdering Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the name of Christ for centuries.
If there was any one thing we could expect that a true Reformation would bring about, it would be an end to such a monstrous sin and blasphemy against Christ. But the Reformation accomplished no such thing. In fact, all the major reformers had bloodstains on their hands. The Swiss reformer Zwingli personally ordered the deaths of those innocent Christians who preached and practiced a more radical Reformation than he wanted to follow.
Calvin personally ordered the torture and death of many who opposed his Reformation in Geneva. He had Michael Servetus arrested and put to death for no other reason than that Servetus held an erroneous view of the Trinity. Calvin's right-hand man, William Farel, personally led Servetus to the stake where he was burned alive, and he watched with satisfaction as Servetus writhed in pain.
Philip Melanchthon, Luther's successor in Germany, heartily approved of Servetus' murder and even wrote a congratulatory letter to Calvin. In his letter, Melanchthon said, "Reverend Sir and dearest brother, I have read your work in which you have lucidly refuted the horrible blasphemies of Servetus, and I thank the Son of God, who has been the arbiter of this your contest. The Church both now and in all generations owes, and I owe you a debt of gratitude.
I entirely assent to your judgment, and I say too that your magistrates did right in that after solemn trial they put the blasphemer to death." In the previous chapter, I quoted from Schaff, who referred to Luther and Calvin as pupils of Paul. All I can say is that if these men and their associates were pupils of Paul, they were pupils of the unconverted Paul who heartily approved of the stoning of Stephen. Luther's own fruit.
One only has to read the writings of Luther for himself to see that the spirit driving this reformer was something other than the spirit of Christ. Erasmus correctly assessed Luther when he wrote, "Sound human reason teaches me that a man cannot honestly further the cause of God, who excites so great an uproar in the world and finds delight in abuse and sarcasm and cannot have enough of them. Such an amount of arrogance as we have never seen surpassed cannot possibly be without some folly.
And such a boisterous individual is not at all in harmony with the apostolic spirit." In chapter 15, we saw some examples of the abuse, sarcasm, and arrogance of which Erasmus spoke. Over and over again, Luther launched into violent tirades against his opponents, heaping scorn and ridicule upon them, and assailing them with the harshest invectives. He called Erasmus the enemy to true religion, the open adversary of Christ, an accursed wretch, and the vilest miscreant that ever disgraced the earth.
Luther once said, "Whenever I pray, I pray a curse upon Erasmus." Upon Erasmus' death, Luther heartily pronounced him eternally lost. However, it wasn't only Erasmus, the Pope, and the Anabaptists that Luther viciously assailed. He even savagely attacked many of his fellow reformers, such as Zwingli. He did this because they viewed the bread and wine in communion as symbols, whereas Luther believed that Christ was truly present in some supernatural sense in the bread and wine.
Luther called these men blasphemers, hypocrites, cowards, liars, heretics, soul murderers, and sinners unto death. He gloated over Zwingli's death, calling it an act of judgment from God. He said, "I would much rather be torn to pieces and burn a hundred times than be of one mind and will with Schwenckfeld and Zwingli." However, Luther's venom wasn't reserved just for his theological rivals.
When the peasants rose up against the cruel and ungodly treatment they received at the hands of the Lutheran nobility, Luther urged the nobles to slaughter the peasants without mercy. The nobles wasted no time in following Luther's directives, killing up to a hundred thousand peasants. Years later, Luther shamelessly boasted, "I, Martin Luther, slew all the peasants in the rebellion, for I said that they should be slain.
All their blood is upon my head, but I cast it on the Lord God who commanded me to speak in this way." At the beginning of the Reformation, Luther was so certain that he had restored original Christianity, he believed the Jews would now finally come to Christ. When his imaginings failed to materialize, Luther turned against the Jews with fury. In 1543, Luther penned a work entitled, "The Jews and Their Lies." He addressed the work to the German princes, urging them to take violent measures against the Jews.
He wrote, "What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews? We dare not tolerate their conduct now that we are aware of their lying and blaspheming. If we do, we become sharers in their lies, cursing and blasphemy. I shall give you my sincere advice. First, set fire to their synagogues or schools, and bury and cover with dirt whatsoever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them.
This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians. Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. This will bring home to them the fact that they are not masters in our country as they boast. Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings be taken from them. Fourth, I advise that the rabbis be forbidden to teach on pain of loss of life and limb.
Fifth, I advise that safe conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews, for they have no business in the countryside since they are not lords, officials, tradesmen, or the like. Let them stay at home, for you must not and cannot protect them unless you wish to become participants in their abominations in the sight of God.
Sixth, I advise that charging interest be prohibited to them, that all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken from them and put aside for safe keeping to interest they have stolen and robbed from us all their possessions. Seventh, I recommend putting a flail, an axe, a hoe, a spade, a distaff, or a spindle into the hands of young, strong Jews and Jewesses and letting them earn their bread in the sweat of their brow.
For it is not fitting that they should let us accursed Gentiles toil in the sweat of our faces while they, the holy people, idle away their time behind the stove, feasting and passing gas. And on top of all, boasting blasphemously of their lordship over the Christians by means of our sweat. No, we should toss out these lazy rogues by the seat of their pants. Finally, let us emulate the common sense of other nations such as France, Spain, and Bohemia and eject them forever from the country. I see.
The way we Christians should conduct ourselves is to burn down all the synagogues and persecute the Jews. We should do this, quote, so that God might see that we are Christians. And Luther called himself a Christian teacher, why he didn't understand the most elementary things about the kingdom of God. Luther's murderous and hate-filled spirit was the fruit of his own teaching. He vainly imagined, "No sin can separate us from him, even if we were to kill or commit adultery thousands of times each day.
Do you think such an exalted lamb paid merely a small price with a meager sacrifice for our sins?" In Luther's mind, the only thing that can separate us from God is to hold to a wrong theology. God is more interested in our theology than in our fruit. This is not the thinking of Jesus, but the thinking of a man who was a total stranger to the kingdom of God. This is the thinking of doctrinity, not Christianity.
As I write this chapter, a drama has just unfolded in the news concerning a man named George Sodini, age 48. He calmly walked into a Pittsburgh gym and began randomly shooting women in an aerobics exercise class. He killed three women and seriously wounded nine more before taking his own life. But George Sodini was no ordinary mass murderer. He was a product of Luther's easy believism. The epitome of someone who took seriously Luther's advice to sin boldly.
Before committing his heinous crime, George Sodini wrote an explanation of why he was doing it, a memorandum to be read after he died. And he said, "Soon I will see God and Jesus. At least that is what I was told. Eternal life does not depend on works. If it did, we will all be in hell. Christ paid for every sin, so how can I or you be judged by God for a sin when the penalty was already paid? People judge, but that does not matter.
I was reading the Bible and the integrity of God beginning yesterday, because soon I will see them." Like many others, George Sodini belonged to a religion, but his religion was not Christianity. It was doctrinity. He knew he was going straight to heaven after committing this horrible crime, for he held to the right doctrine.