A HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY

notes prepared by Larry Brown

 

Part 2: Middle Ages and Reformation

 

Important events:

·         476, the “fall” of Rome: northern “barbarians” take over what remains of a crumbling empire. The eastern empire ruled from Constantinople and known as Byzantium exists for another 1000 years.

·         600s: Mohammed and the rise of Islam, converting most of North Africa, Spain, and the Middle East, pushing Christianity north into Europe.

·         Dispute over icons: In the 8th century the Byzantine church fought over the use of religious images in worship. Some called the veneration of icons idolatry. John of Damascus argued that in earlier times the invisible God was not depicted in visual art based on the 2nd commandment. However, now God has appeared in the flesh, and we have seen him. “I do not worship matter, but the creator of matter, who for my sake became material. I will not cease from worshipping the matter [images] through which my salvation has been effected” (On Icons 1.16).

·         1054: division of East and West: Roman pope and patriarch of Constantinople excommunicated each other. Eastern church had always been more speculative (see Origen), had serious reservations about the “two-natures” Christology of Chalcedon, emphasized salvation as deification rather than justification, God as ultimately unknowable, defined by what he is not. Orthodox Church dominated Russia by 1000. (Legend has it that a Russian ruler sent emissaries to the Jews, Christians, and Muslims to find the true religion. They rejected Islam because Mohammed prohibited alcohol: “Drinking is the joy of Russians, we cannot do without it.” (Placher 103)

·         1077: Pope Gregory VII declared the church infallible for all time, and the pope cannot be criticized. Only he can call church councils, and has supreme power to depose emperors. When German emperor Henry IV objected, Gregory excommunicated him, forcing him to stand barefoot in the snow for three days asking forgiveness. A few years later, Gregory himself was exiled, but the precedent of the pope’s power over civil authority had been set for several centuries.

·         Crusades 1096-1291: 1st captured Jerusalem from the Muslims, 2nd lost it again. 4th crusade, more interested in looting, sacked Constantinople in 1204, sealing the schism between East and West. Along the way many Jews were killed as well. In the Children’s crusade, thousands of children were killed or sold into slavery before they reached the Holy Land.

·         For most lay people, Christ was more divine than human. They found it easier to approach saints with their requests. Most saints were unofficially chosen by popular veneration of local cults, until the 12th c when canonization came under the jurisdiction of the pope.

·         Earliest European universities founded: Paris (1150), Bologna (1158), Oxford (1167), Cambridge (1209)

·         1215: transubstantiation becomes official church doctrine, bread and wine are transformed into Christ’s flesh and blood in substance, whereas their outward form or appearance remains the same (Aristotle’s concepts)

·         Gothic cathedrals: Notre Dame (1235), Cologne (1322)

·         1307: Dante’s Divine Comedy, great influence on popular conception of hell

·         1305-1378: French popes rule from Avignon, France, “the Babylonian Captivity.” Shortly afterwards, there were three popes each claiming to be in power.

·         1439: doctrine of Mary’s Immaculate Conception (born without original sin) adopted by the Council of Basel

·         1450: Gutenberg invents the printing press, a tremendous aid in the spread of the Reformation

·         1453: Constantinople conquered by the Ottoman Empire, Turkish Muslims who ruled 1300-1920

 

Anselm (1033-1109)

·         Following Augustine, “I do not seek understanding in order to believe. I believe in order to understand.” The modern day skeptic insists on understanding everything, having all questions answered, before believing.

·         In Why God Man? Anselm moved discussion away from the ransom theory of atonement to Christ’s death as satisfaction for the offense against God’s honor. Sin’s offense is of cosmic proportions, since the offended one is the Creator himself. The offense cannot be removed by man coming back to God, since that is merely his duty, nothing extraordinary. Christ’s innocent sacrifice was unnecessary and thus extraordinary. He did what Man had to do, but only God could do.

·         Why can’t God simply cancel the debt? That would make the consequences of disobedience and obedience the same; it would not restore God’s honor.

 

Abelard (1079 - 1142)

·         He thought Anselm’s God needed a change of heart. Christ’s death doesn’t reveal God’s need to protect his honor, but his forgiving love that he gives freely, without atonement. Christ sets the supreme example for us in giving himself for others.

·         He compiled a work Sic et Non (“Yes and No”) comparing seeming contradictions among statements by the church fathers, without attempting to reconcile them.

·         Abelard was caught in an affair with his pupil Heloise, and her guardian hired men to emasculate him. She joined a convent but always said it was for love of Abelard, not God. Their love letters are famous.

 

Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153)

·         One of the great mystics, searching for spiritual experience of the soul’s union with God.

·         Wrote 86 sermons on the Song of Songs (Canticles) as an allegory of Christ’s love for the individual soul. He interprets the first verse, “Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth,” as the soul united with Christ, the Bridegroom. But first, one must fall at his feet and kiss them in sorrow and repentance. Then as Christ lifts us up with his forgiveness and grace, we may kiss his offered hand. Only afterward may we hope for the true intimacy of union with him, but Bernard admits this is a rare experience. (Canticle 3, 4)

·         “Perhaps you desire the repose of contemplation and in this you do well … but it would be reversing the proper order to ask for the reward before having earned it, and to grasp at the midday meal before performing the labor. The taste for contemplation is not due except to obedience to God’s commands” (Canticle 46).

·         Unlike other mystics, Bernard never claimed that in contemplation he received visions, words from God, new revelations or anything perceived by the senses. In the times of the patriarchs, “the manifestation of God was made from without, by appearances visible to the senses or words heard by the ears. But [today] … God chooses of his own accord to make himself known to a soul that seeks for him and lavishes on that seeking the entire love and ardor of its affections” (Cant 30).

·         In Bernard’s case mystic experience led to action: “The embrace of divine contemplation must often be interrupted in order to give nourishment to the little ones, and none may live for himself alone but for all” (Canticle 41). Commenting on the verse “Thy breasts are better than wine” [different in our versions] he explains that the wine of contemplation is sweet, but the breasts that feed the young (i.e. teaching) is better. In this life we must devote ourselves to moral action along with contemplation, whereas in the next life we will spend all our time contemplating God (Canticle 9). “In this life the happiness of contemplation is enjoyed only rarely and momentarily” (Grace and Free Will 15).

·         He described four stages of love: love of self for self’s sake, love of God for self’s sake, love of God for God’s sake, and love of self for God’s sake.

·         His sermons stirred up men to go on the second crusade. In the first crusade the church bribed men to fight with promises of indulgences and other privileges. In contrast, Bernard described this crusade as a spiritual undertaking, an opportunity to renounce sin and turn to God.  He also was a sponsor of the Knights Templar who protected pilgrims on their journey to Jerusalem.

·         Songs traditionally attributed to Bernard: “Jesus, Lover of my Soul,” Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee,” “Jesus, Thou Joy of Loving Hearts,” “O Jesus King Most Wonderful” (463)

 

Francis of Assisi (1182-1226)

·         Born into wealth, Francis renounced his inheritance by stripping off his clothing, insisting he would take no possessions from his father, and vowed to live as poor as Christ.

·         He was so often in a spiritual state of ecstasy that he would seem unaware of his surroundings at times.

·         He saw a oneness in all God’s creation, referring to “Brother Sun, Sister Moon” and even preached the gospel to birds.

 

Prayer of Francis of Assisi

 

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

Where there is injury, pardon;

Where there is doubt, faith;

Where there is despair, hope;

Where there is darkness, light;

Where there is sadness, joy.

 

O Divine Master, grant that I may not

So much seek to be consoled as to console;

To be understood as to understand;

To be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

·         Following his example, Franciscans gave up all possessions and begged for their living. Franciscans and Dominican friars, begun about the same time, are known as the mendicant orders (meaning “to beg”). Their lifestyle was in marked contrast to the wealth of the church, which created tension between these orders and the hierarchy. Intent on service, they left the isolation of the monasteries for ministry in the growing cities in the late middle ages. Franciscans led efforts in missions to the non-Christian world, Islamic countries, Asia. After Francis’ death, however, the Order became an official institution, what Francis had wanted to avoid.

 

Thomas Aquinas (1225-74)

·         A Dominican friar, called by fellow students the “dumb ox” (big and quiet). Aquinas attended the newly founded university of Paris and later taught theology there. Unlike the Franciscans, Dominicans were well-educated, mostly from aristocracy, devoted to the study of the Bible and science. His family, shocked at his vow of voluntary poverty, kidnapped him and held him in a castle for over a year, even sending a prostitute to tempt him from his life of chastity (he valiantly resisted).

·         Summa Theologiae: first part concerned with theological “proofs,” what we can know about God by human reason: most famous are the cosmological argument (Aristotle’s First Cause/Prime Mover, “someone had to tap the first domino”), and teleological argument (a well-designed world implies a designer).

·         God’s revelation in nature is supplemented by his revelation in scripture. Aquinas saw reason and revelation working in conjunction (a major question of their day and ours). God does nothing contrary to reason, and since human reason derives from God, nothing in God is inconsistent with reason, and will not contradict revelation. A rational study of the world will point to God. This faith in a rational God as designer of a rational universe eventually laid the foundation for modern science. However, Aquinas also led to the church’s suspicion of science: “Theology surpasses other speculative sciences, in point of greater certainty because other sciences derive their certainty from the natural light of reason which can err, whereas theology derives its certainty from the light of divine knowledge, which cannot be misled” (ST 1a.1.5). “Whatever is found in other sciences contrary to scripture must be condemned as false” (ST 1a.1.6).

·         Aquinas’ opponent, John Duns Scotus argued that God is not bound by human reason, and when scripture or the church teaches something against reason, we must simply believe the irrational (similar to Tertullian).

·         On the Trinity, Aquinas recognizes the problem (without solving it) of tritheism, when we think of Father, Son, and Spirit as three divine beings in the same way that Tom, Dick, and Harry are three human beings, individual members of a class sharing the same nature. There is no class or category of “God” in which Father, Son, and Spirit belong. God is unique, only one of a kind (Davies, The Thought of Thomas Aquinas, 1995, 201).

·         Aquinas thought that the Persons were so interchangeable that any or all three could have become the incarnate Jesus [?] (Davies 306).

·         Theodicy: following Aristotle, Aquinas assumed that earthquakes, storms, etc were “natural” (not due to the Fall), and not punishments from God. Unlike Augustine, he thought these harmful forces exist as a consequence of creation, not as a consequence of original sin. Could God not have made a world without them? God cannot create infallible creatures/creation; only the divine can be perfect. Omnipotence doesn’t mean that God can do anything: he cannot lie, sin, die, cannot create a being equal to himself in perfection. Just by being a creature, man was imperfect and fallible, likewise nature is inherently flawed (ST 1a.25).

·         God’s providence governs everything that happens. Does this mean that God causes bad things to happen to good people? Yes, but indirectly. God established and maintains universal laws. If I fall and break my leg, God is responsible only in that he continues to uphold the law of gravity, not making an exception in my case (if He did break his own natural laws each time for our benefit, the world would be unpredictable and chaotic). Likewise, if a person harms another, “because the very act of free will goes back to God as its [primary] cause, we strictly infer that whatever people freely do on their own falls under God’s providence” (ST 1a.22.2). But Aquinas places the blame on the secondary cause (the person doing the harm) rather than God.

·         Aquinas said that a world totally determined by God would not be distinct from God but merely an extension of Him. “It would be contrary to the nature of Providence and to the perfection of the world if nothing happened by chance.” For God to create a world truly separate from himself, he had to allow it some freedom to develop on its own. “Evolution’s randomness seems consistent with a God who loves freedom enough to let the world become itself, something distinct from its creator.” (Haught, Responses to 101 Questions on God and Evolution, 2001; 92, 102)

·         Augustine said that the fall had destroyed free will. Aquinas thought that impossible, since God had created it. Free will was weakened but not eliminated. His analogy for human responsibility: God, like the sun, provides the light, but we must look toward the light to see (Treatise on Grace, question 109)

·         Man is not an immortal soul inhabiting a body, but a composite of body and soul. Both are necessary for human existence. At death God may (Aquinas is not certain) preserve the soul in some fashion, but we cannot say that the person continues to exist merely as soul. “I am not my soul.” The soul without a physical body has no senses, thus cannot feel joy or pain, cannot know anything outside itself, cannot experience anything new. Our continued existence after death depends on the Resurrection with the reuniting of the soul and a new immortal body (Davies 215).

·         The seven sacraments are means by which Christ through the church distributes grace. They are not the only means of grace, nor are they necessary for salvation. However, Aquinas compares their use to marriage. The couple seals their commitment to one another in marriage, but they continue to express their love through affection, gifts, anniversaries, etc. The sacraments allow the Christian to participate continually in receiving the grace of Christ, visible expressions of an ongoing relationship  (Davies 357).

·         Christ’s baptism did not wash away any stain of sin in him, rather it cleansed the water and thereby made it holy and suitable for the baptism of others (ST 3a.39.1, Davies 311).

·         "[Woman/Eve] was not fitted to help man except in reproduction, because another man would have proved a more effective help in anything else."  (ST 1.98.2)

·         Aquinas developed Augustine’s concept of the just war. Only legitimate governments, not individuals or powerful groups, may wage just war. War should be the last resort after all peaceful attempts have been exhausted. The enemy has rights which should be respected. Revenge should never be a motive, nor the gaining of wealth or land. The evil which war seeks to eradicate must be weighed against the evil caused by war itself. (ST 2.40)

·         At the end of his life, Aquinas had a vision, and said that all his work was little more than straw in comparison to the truth.

 

 

 

 

Reformation

 

“The Reformation was the triumph of Augustine’s doctrine of grace over his doctrine of the church.” (B. B. Warfield, Dictionary of Religion and Ethics II)

 

Early “reformers” (mostly in France 13th c):

·         Waldensians, much like the mendicant orders, lived in voluntary poverty, but they also rejected the authority of Rome and the pope, following only scripture. They allowed lay men and women to preach and administer communion, rejected Latin prayers and Mass. The Dominicans were formed in part as an orthodox response to their reform efforts.

·         In 1229 the Inquisition was officially organized to stamp out heresy and schism. Strangely enough, the peaceful Dominicans were chosen by the pope to head the Inquisition, which at first was an attempt to truly investigate charges of heresy rather than leaving so-called heretics in the hands of mob violence. Unfortunately, this effort towards a system of justice became an even greater evil (Pieper, Guide to Thomas Aquinas, 1962).

·         The Cathari or Albigensians were dualists, resembling Gnostic beliefs. This world was created by Satanael (Satan the god). The “Perfects” among them would not drink wine or milk, eat meat, fish, eggs, butter, cheese, as all animal products were the result of sex, the devil’s way of restocking his creation. The church considered them the Great Heresy and tried to wipe them out. At one time 7000 men, women, and children took refuge in the Church of the Madeleine. When asked how to sort out the heretics from the rest, the soldiers were told: “Kill them all, God will recognize his own.”

 

John Wyclif  (1328-84)

·         Wyclif, a priest and respected teacher at Oxford, has been called the Morning Star of the Reformation.

·         The Council of Toulouse in 1229, had forbidden the laity to read the Bible, even in Latin.  All that people were allowed was a “book of hours” (a book of prayers and devotions), and even these had to be in Latin.

·         Wyclif: “Those Heretics who pretend that the laity do not need to know God’s law, and that the things which priests have told them is enough, do not deserve to be listened to. For the Bible is the faith of the Church, and the more widely it becomes known the better it will be. Therefore since the laity should know the faith, it should be taught in whatever language is most easily understood.”

·         In 1382, he (and others) translated the Bible from Latin into English.  He trained and sent out “Bible-men” (Lollards) to preach from the scriptures in English wherever they could find an audience, without licenses from the bishops.

·         Before the printing press, every copy had to be hand-written; thousands were made, 170 survive today. It is estimated that it cost a man six month's wages for a copy of the NT. One man gave a wagon-load of hay for a few pages. People who could not afford the whole Bible paid to read it for an hour. Some people memorized texts to share with others who couldn’t read.

 

Oure fadir that art in heuenes, halewid be thi name; 

thi kyngdoom come to; be thi wille don in erthe as in heuene; 

yyue to vs this dai oure breed ouer othir substaunce; 

and foryyue to vs oure dettis, as we foryyuen to oure dettouris; 

and lede vs not in to temptacioun, but delyuere vs fro yuel.

 

·         Wyclif denounced the wealth and corruption of the papacy, calling the pope the Antichrist and Satan, father of lies. Like the earlier Donatists, he came to reject the validity of sacraments administered by corrupt clergy. After his death in 1384, he was condemned for his rejection of transubstantiation. “[Wyclif] was a pestilential wretch of damnable memory ... the very herald and child of Antichrist who, as the complement of wickedness, invented a new translation of Scripture into his mother tongue” ( Bishop of Arundel in 1405).

·         John Hus of Prague, an admirer of Wyclif, was burned at the stake in 1415 for challenging the infallibility of the papacy. He argued that the church built upon Peter was not the Roman church, but the gathering of the elect, whom God alone knew. He condemned corruption and immorality in the priesthood, and argued that all Christians should partake of both bread and wine, the latter which only priests drank, to avoid spilling Christ’s blood.

·         For similar charges, Savonarola of Florence died in 1498.

 

Martin Luther (1484-1545)

·        Luther changed his name from Luder when he went to the university; for a while he signed letters with the Greek Eleutherius, meaning “free.”

·        Luther vowed to become a monk after a frighteningly close bolt of lightning. After attending his first communion, his father publicly disowned him for abandoning law.

·        Luther was especially dutiful in his acts of penance, sometimes confessing for six hours. His superiors chided him for mentioning things that were hardly sins; Luther could see no difference in big or little offenses against the almighty God. Had he truly repented or did he secretly enjoy his sins, the reason why he continued to commit them? Was his love for God pure, or tainted by selfish reasons, serving God for what he received?

·        At his first communion as a priest, Luther faltered saying the words. He later wrote of his experience: “Who am I, that I should lift up my eyes or raise up my hands to the divine Majesty? For I am dust and ashes, and full of sin, and I am speaking to the living, eternal and true God.”

·        While teaching the Psalms at Wittenberg (1513-15), he found himself in the writer’s place, feeling despair and calling out for mercy. “At such a time God seems terribly angry …. There is no flight, no comfort, within or without, but all things accuse. The Psalmist mourns, ‘I am cut off from thy sight’ (31:22). … In this moment the soul cannot believe it can ever be redeemed” (LW 31, 129; Lohse 89). Eventually Luther saw in these cries for help the work of God, humbling sinners and bringing them to the point of knowing they have nothing to offer. In a hidden, paradoxical way, God was using their (and his) despair to lead them to faith. We discover God in moments of hopelessness, faith in the midst of doubt. God must destroy all illusions of righteousness in us before He can make us righteous.

 

Justification by faith alone

·        Early on, Luther thought of God’s righteousness only as a negative quality standing against him: “I hated the words ‘righteousness of God’ which … I had been taught to [mean] the formal or active righteousness with which God is righteous and punishes the unrighteous sinner. … I did not love, yes, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners … as if it is not enough that miserable sinners [are] eternally lost through original sin … without having God add pain to pain by the gospel … threatening us with his righteousness and wrath” (LW 34, 336; Lohse 90). Only when he came to realize the true meaning of “the righteous shall live by faith” did he find hope in the gospel. The righteousness of which Paul wrote was no longer God’s angry justice but His gracious gift to sinners.

·        Striving for one’s own righteousness (through penance, prayers, etc) defeats the purpose of God. “God only saves sinners, only teaches the foolish, only enriches the poor, only raises the dead.”

·        Luther thought the problem was not individual sins, but radical sinfulness, to the core of our being (similar to Augustine). The Fall was devastating, enslaving the will completely to Satan. “The foreknowledge and omnipotence of God are diametrically opposed to our ‘free will’” (Luther vs Erasmus on the Freedom of the Will 243). Man is “free” to do what he wants, but because of a sinful will, all he wants is evil. He cannot choose good by his own power.

·        Only God’s prevenient grace, which He gives without regard to merit, can free the will in order for a person to turn to God with the faith that saves. “The will of mankind works nothing at all in his conversion and justification” (Table Talk 268, Hazlitt trans. 2004). God gives the elect the faith that they need to accept his gracious gift in Christ.

·        Luther admits it’s a mystery why God doesn’t give his grace to everyone: “Admittedly it gives the greatest possible offense to common sense or natural reason that God by his own sheer will should abandon, harden, and damn men as if he enjoyed the sins and the vast, eternal torments of his wretched creatures, when he is preached as a God of such great mercy and goodness. … I myself was offended more than once and brought to the very depth and abyss of despair, so that I wished I had never been created a man, before I realized how salutary that despair was, and how near to grace. That is why there has been such sweating and toiling to excuse the goodness of God and accuse the will of man. … Nevertheless [we must confess] the painful awareness that we are under necessity if the foreknowledge and omnipotence of God are accepted” (L vs E 244).

·        The seeming contradiction between God’s hidden will (his election of a few) and his revealed will (scripture says that God wants all to be saved) is something we must accept on faith alone, not reason (L vs E 22). God is free to act in any way he chooses, and is not bound even to what scripture says of him: “God wills many things which he does not disclose himself as willing in his word. Thus he does not will the death of a sinner according to his word, but he wills it according to that inscrutable will of his … [which] we have no right whatever to inquire into … but only to fear and adore” (L vs E 201). To raise questions about the hidden will of God is dangerous and leads to cynicism or despair (Althaus 281). God is not pleased when we question his justice (Table Talk 66).

·        Luther was not always consistent in his theology. In answer to why some are saved and others not: “This difference is to be ascribed to man, not to the will of God, for the promises of God are universal. He will have all men to be saved. It is not the fault of God who promises salvation, but it is our fault if we are unwilling to believe it.” (L vs E 26)

·        “If [men] were able to initiate anything of themselves, there would be no need of grace” (L vs E 300). “I wish the defenders of free choice would take warning at this point and realize that when they assert free choice, they are denying Christ. For if it is by my own effort that I obtain the grace of God, what need have I of the grace of Christ in order to receive it?” (321) Luther’s extreme view suffers from the “either-or” fallacy. He assumes that if we merely have the ability to reach out and accept God’s free gift, that means it is no longer free, but based entirely on our merit (310).

·        Luther fears that if salvation were left to his free choice, he could never be certain of it, as he would always be free to fall away, whereas since it is left entirely up to God, it is absolutely certain (L vs E 328). Yet inconsistently, he warns against persisting in sin, lest death come suddenly without time to repent. But if one is elect, why worry about repentance? If not among the elect, what good would repentance do?

·        Luther’s confidence in God’s grace led him to make some shocking statements: "Be a sinner and sin boldly, but have stronger faith and rejoice in Christ, who is the victor of sin, death, and the world. Do not for a moment imagine that this life is the abiding place of justice: sin must be committed. To you it ought to be sufficient that you acknowledge the Lamb that takes away the sins of the world, the sin cannot tear you away from him, even though you commit adultery a hundred times a day and commit as many murders" (letter to Melanchton, Aug. 1, 1521). Luther’s point: striving for complete sinlessness leads to the worst sin of all, pride. However, in reality the only “sins” he suggested were overeating, overdrinking, and oversleeping, controlled excesses as an antidote to spiritual arrogance.

·        As God is the ultimate source of everything that happens, he uses even Satan as an instrument to accomplish his will (without being responsible for the evil itself). God did not create Satan evil, but Satan became evil when God’s Spirit deserted him [why did God do this? how is he not responsible?] (L vs E 234). Through Satan’s devices of temptation, illness, catastrophe, and death, God demonstrates his wrath on those he loves in order to bring them back to himself. For those who displease him, however, he is silent, leaving them to become hardened in their sins and confident that God will not punish them if they continue. Thus his silence is the worst form of his wrath (Althaus 167, 173).

·        Against the Anabaptists, he argued that infant baptism had been practiced by the whole church since the time of the apostles and God would not allow error to continue for so long if it were wrong [what about the papacy?]. He admitted that scripture did not mention infant baptism, but on the other hand did not condemn it. Faith is necessary for baptism but it is God who gives faith; He will give faith to the infant (just as John believed in his mother’s womb, Luke 1:41). Those who insist that it is the believer’s faith which makes baptism valid have made it a work of man and not of God (Althaus 359ff).

 

Luther’s challenge to the Church

·        The church in Luther’s day had become notoriously corrupt. Popes acted more like politicians controlling the state than spiritual leaders. The church owned one-third of the real estate in Europe. Many clergy had mistresses, often nuns. Prestigious church positions were bought with bribes. Some clergy demanded payment for administering the sacraments. Furthermore, Luther argued, the church claimed priority over the state and would not submit its clergy to punishment by civil authorities.

·        Luther was influenced by Bernard of Clairvaux’s idea that the church must endure three periods of persecution by tyrants (early Rome), heretics (Gnostics, etc), and false Christians, which Luther saw occurring in his day (Lohse 66).

·        Luther posted his 95 theses in Latin on the door of the Wittenberg church, a common bulletin board (1517), objecting to the system of indulgences, which allowed the church to sell penance from its “treasury of merits” accumulated from the excessive righteousness of Jesus, Mary, and the saints. The living could shorten the time they or the departed had to spend in Purgatory: “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, a soul from Purgatory springs.” The church even sold indulgences for future sins. Luther said, “Had one ravished the Virgin Mary or crucified Christ anew, the pope would, for money, have pardoned him” (Table Talk 448). Funds were being raised for the building of the new St. Peter’s Basilica. His protest spread quickly since the printing press had been recently invented (1450), a major factor in the success of the Reformation.

·        In 1518 Luther published “Explanations of the 95 Theses”: “The church needs a reformation which is not the work of one man, namely the pope, or of many men, namely the cardinals, … but it is the work of the whole world, indeed the work of God alone. … The power of the keys [of the kingdom] is abused and enslaved to greed and ambition. The raging abyss has received added impetus. We cannot stop it. ‘Our iniquities testify against us’ (Jer 14:7)” (LW 31, 250; Lohse 105).

·        Luther’s criticism of indulgences was taken as a more serious challenge to papal authority. The pope does not have authority to bind and loose penalties and sins. Pushed to defend himself, he soon was calling the pope both tyrant and antichrist (On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, 1520). Hearing he was threatened with excommunication, he said that this would only separate him from the organized church, not from God.

·        Contemporary drawings contrast Jesus’ washing the disciples’ feet, and monarchs kissing the pope’s feet. Luther insisted that the pope not sit and receive communion but stand like any other “stinking sinner” (Bainton 154).

·        In Babylonian Captivity he challenged the church’s enslavement of the people by means of their control over the seven sacraments. The church claimed the sacraments were the exclusive channels of grace, to be administered only by the clergy. Luther found no scriptural basis for five of the seven: confirmation, marriage, ordination, penance, and extreme unction. As for penance, Luther agreed that repentance was necessary but only God could offer absolution, not a priest. Repudiating ordination challenged the division between clergy and laity, as Luther taught that all Christians were priests of God. The church could still have priests, but their appointment did not make them more spiritual in their work, nor should it exempt them from facing justice in civil courts. Anyone could perform the remaining two sacraments, baptism and communion.

·        The church taught that the Mass was a repetition of Christ’s incarnation and crucifixion. When the priest speaks the blessing, the bread and wine are transubstantiated into Christ’s flesh and blood, sacrificed again on the altar. Only ordained priests could oversee this process, giving the church control over the means of grace. Luther argued that there was nothing magical about communion but rather mystical. The priest’s words “This is my body” had no magical power to transform matter. Christ’s body is with the bread because as risen Lord he is omnipresent. “The sacrament for him was not a chunk of God fallen like a meteorite from heaven. God does not need to fall from heaven because he is everywhere present … The sacrament does not conjure up God … but reveals him where he [already] is” (Bainton 140). The church taught that the eucharist worked ex opera operato, by virtue of a power within itself; Luther insisted that the receiver must have faith for the sacrament to have any spiritual value. He also said that all believers should be able to drink of the cup, not just the priest.

·        Luther’s insistence on the individual’s faith during communion runs counter to his affirmation of infant baptism. Unlike the Anabaptists who regarded baptism as the outward sign of inward regeneration in an adult believer, Luther allowed the faith of the parents or sponsor to make the child’s baptism effective. This tension remained unresolved in Luther’s theology. On one side he said that the church consists of only the faithful, which would necessarily be small, a remnant. His view of baptism made almost every child a Christian (Bainton 142). [How can this be resolved with predestination?]

·        At one of his trials, Eck asked him, “Are you the only one who knows the truth? Except for you is all the church in error?” Luther responded, “God once spoke through the mouth of an ass.”

·        Luther’s form of recantation: “I was wrong, I admit, when I said that indulgences were ‘the pious defrauding of the faithful.’ I recant and say, ‘Indulgences are the most impious frauds and imposters of the most rascally pontiffs by which they deceive the souls and destroy the goods of the faithful’” (Bainton 165).

·        In 1521, called before Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms, Luther said: “Unless I am convinced by the testimony of Scripture or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not retract anything … I cannot do otherwise. Here I stand, may God help me. Amen.”

·        The church’s response: if every man’s conscience becomes his only guide, how will we ever find agreement and unity? (good question)

·        After his excommunication, Frederick the Wise prepared a plan to hide him. He was kidnapped in the woods, supposedly by bandits, and taken to Wartburg castle. Luther grew a beard, dressed as a knight. He wrote: “I did not want to come here. I want to be in the fray.” (Bainton 195) During this time he translated the NT into German.

·        Two actions by Luther probably had the most impact: translating the Bible into German (not the first but in style the most influential on the German language), and a monk marrying a nun (1525), rejecting the superiority of celibacy and affirming Christian marriage. Also greatly influential was his argument for the priesthood of all believers, and the sacredness of everyday work in one’s vocation (calling). The church consists of “saints” not in the sense of those canonized by the Pope, but as all Christians are set apart by God.

·        Luther’s concern was for spiritual reform, not restoring the ancient order of the church. He argued that those who sought a pattern for the church in the NT were creating a new legalism, dependent on man’s works and not God’s grace.

·        Scripture: John, Romans, and 1 Peter were the kernel of the NT. James was an epistle of straw, focusing on works, mentions Christ only once, probably written by a “Jew.” He had little respect for the authority of the church fathers in doctrinal matters  (with the exception of the doctrine of the Trinity).

·        Luther wrote many hymns besides A Mighty Fortress and was the first person to emphasize congregational singing in worship (Thompson 76). Worship was not a sacrifice, placating God (who does not need persuading to forgive) but thanksgiving to God and communion with believers.

·        In eschatology, Luther challenged the ideas of purgatory and of the immortal soul going straight to heaven at death, focusing rather on the resurrection as does the NT: “For just as a man who falls asleep and sleeps soundly until morning does not know what has happened to him when he wakes up, so we shall suddenly rise on the Last Day, and we shall know neither what death has been like or how we have come through it.” For us as well as the patriarchs who died long ago, it will seem as if no time has past; we will all wake up on Resurrection Day. Lutheran church doctrine did not follow him on this point, but continued to teach a waiting place for the conscious soul, to which Luther would have responded, “It would take a foolish soul to desire its body when it was already in heaven” (Althaus 414 -17).

 

The Hidden God: