Personal Caveat: The rhetoric in the next to last paragraph was slighted edited because it said more than I intended it to say and more harshly than might be warranted. I was reading in Luther and Calvin before I wrote this. Their brutal frankness influenced me and marshaled my own passions in ways that precipitated a writing style that is almost utterly unguarded. While on a different day, I would express my thoughts with greater circumspect, I could not bring myself to soften it more than I did. I trust those alarmed by it will forgive me.
What does “discernment” mean as a spiritual discipline? Is it not seeking to obey God in a specific matter, rather than generally following God by adhering to a broad set of laws and principles? Does not discernment presuppose ambiguity or uncertainty of resolve?
I think of the great decisions made in Church history. The reformation did not begin with a process of spiritual discernment. Luther fell into it by taking a course that any academic of his day would follow. He called for a disputation over the errors and offenses that he believed corrupted the Church and betrayed the Gospel.
Instead, his list of particulars was so incendiary that rather than debate them the authorities used them as evidence of his sedition. What motivated Luther was not a cool, dispassionate process of discernment; It was rather a conscience that was deeply agitated over the sale of Papal indulgences that was in fact a funds raising scheme only thinly disguised as a call for repentance. Albrecht, the twenty-five year avaricious and ambition archbishop had already borrowed the full apportionment and forwarded it to Pope Leo.
A carnival style pitch man, who hired a cadre of Dominican sub-contractors, set out to raise the 30,000 units of gold borrowed by the young archbishop and added a large profit above the 30,000 pieces of gold. Each participants got a cut of the action. Luther had personally experienced the free grace of God. He was released from the weight of sin and the fear of hell by the simple truth of the Gospel “the just shall live by faith”. That someone who used fear and guilt to sell tickets to heaven and to escape from the anguish of purgatory provoked his protestation in the form of sermons and disputations.
Luther follows what he calls an “irresistible impulse” to publish his ninety five “talking points.” Luther confers with no one before posting this call for a disputation on the door of Wittenberg chapel. There was no Coalition of likeminded evangelicals prepared to negotiate a compromise with Rome or with Albrecht. It was one man with a troubled conscience who followed the dictates of his Christian character. This, for Luther, was the indisputable will of God. No long spiritual discernment. No weighing of four options. It was only “here I stand, I can do no other.” Luther did not put at risk his pension, or some set of properties, he put at risk his very life.
Those of us offended by the long list of betrayals from those in the Revisionist party and the equivocations of those in the Renewal party need to give exercise to the passion of Luther. Why do we not risk our lives for the truth of Gospel?
Those who lead the Presbyterian Church (USA) adhere to doctrines that are gravely erroneous. They preach an implicit universal salvation – by endorsing the plan of salvation of every religion or none at all as a way to please our God. They practice “spirituality” straight from the witches of Endor. They advocate the sacrifice of infants as though to the god of Moloch. Not by placing children in the glowing hot arms of this detestable false god, but my burning these precious little ones with salty water or inserting a knife in the back of their heads as they emerge healthy and fully developed through the birth canal. They deny the Trinity by reciting a hundred metaphors in the place of a personal triune God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
The wholesale indulgence of Sodomy is but the latest in a growing number of offenses to the truth once delivered among the saints. Like Luther, we need no long process of discernment when the offenses are right before our eyes.
8 comments:
I preach, and live, and pastor along the lines of a faith that I was told, at the age of 20, in the early 1970's, was much too narrow for the Presbyterian church and that I would be happier serving in another denomination. I decided to be faithful to this gospel and simply be kicked out by a church that went too far the other way. I have not laid low, but I have not been kicked out yet. Luther left the church when it excommunicated him. I think that is the right course.
I think it is a bit of revisionist history to say that the Reformers did not depart from the Church of Rome but waited passively to be excommunicated. It is certainly true that the general view was (1) reunion is always an option, and (2) schism is a poor way to settle doctrinal differences.
In his published works, 1545, Luther reflects on his frame of mind when he wrote the Ninety Five Theses. He doesn’t revise so that he can remember how “weak” he was back then.
"I allow them to stand, that by them it may appear how weak I was, and in what a fluctuating state of mind, when I began this business. I was then a monk and a mad papist (papista insanissimus), and so submersed in the dogmas of the Pope that I would have readily murdered any person who denied obedience to the Pope.”
Long before appearing at Worms, Luther had appealed the Pope’s decision to the General Council and then declared all the authority of Rome to be wrong, he writes, "The more those Romish grandees rage, and meditate the use of force, the less do I fear them, and shall feel all the more free to fight against the serpents of Rome. I am prepared for all, and await the judgment of God."
Neither did John Calvin wait around to get kicked out: "Now let them go and shout that we who have withdrawn from their church are heretics, since the sole cause of our separation is that they could in no way bear the pure profession of truth. . . . It is enough for me that it behooved us to withdraw from them that we might come to Christ." The Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book IV, chapter 2, section 6.
I want to protest my own framing of the moral and doctrinal issues as I have in posting. While they certainly express my feelings and opinions, they are, I fear, a bit intemperate in their wording. I considered writing the final two paragraphs in a way that rounded their edges. I still might do that. These words represent the deep hurt and disappointment I harbor for the denomination I have devoted nearly forty years serving. What I would add is that this denomination has also provided me with many friendships about even most strident revisionists within it and a place to pastor and practice the ministry God has given to me. The opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference. I would feel as deeply as do were I not hopeful that a deep spiritual renewal would arise from the Spirit of God and deeper anxiety that my ministry is almost retired and still we are in Babylon.
Gary, it is not my revisionism that you notice but Luther's own revision of himself, as you, yourself quote from the year 1545. The years were not kind to him. He hardened and darkened. I would rather follow the younger Luther than the older one. Even Calvin sought to reform the Roman church in France, before he left it in self-imposed exile when his life was in danger. For a long time he opposed founding a separate protestant church in France. He counseled self-exile to some land where the church had been reformed as the proper alternative.
This is a good exchange, Dennis, I thank you for the opportunity to think through this historical question once again. Like all of us, these two men were multifaceted. Each were deeply loved and deeply hated. Luther was a far better pastor than Calvin but each were an irritant even to their closest friends.
Luther had two years to consider the words he speaks at Worms. He had already met before two such tribunals and anticipated his own death or forced exile.
What many histories fail to acknowledge is that the people of God were schismatic. Once they tasted the Reformation approach to preaching and teaching, they gladly traded it for the corrupt Roman Church of that day.
If Luther and Calvin wanted a reunion, they people did not.
Forty years ago(my how time flies) I could envision my Presbyterian Church as a church that had so little Biblical and orthodox foundation that it could accomodate a message without the resurrection or the divinity of Christ, and I received a call from God to serve here unconditionally, because even here his grace could reach me. I had to be here as a form of faithfulness to his grace in a barren place. I only have permission to leave if I am driven out. I colors how I see many things, including the reformation, which I see as a desparate thing.
Gary and Dennis,
As I continue to wrestle with my role in this increasingly hostile environment of the PC(USA) I am encouraged by your words to hold fast, to preach and teach boldly, and to love unceasingly. Thanks.
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