Lutheranism (Part 2)

Luther’s Goal Was Reform, Not a New Denomination

Pray. Father, I thank you for the opportunity to again come together to examine history, examine theology, and to look at it through the lens of your Word. We pray now as we go back and consider the teachings of Martin Luther and particularly what has happened in Lutheranism since its inception.

I pray that we would be fair and honest, understanding the context that Luther was in, and also, Lord, that we would try to critique everything that we learned, everything that we believe according to Scripture, and truly hold to that teaching of Sola Scriptura.

And we pray all this in Christ's name. Amen. Well, everyone, we are back. This is our third section, which is Lutheran Theology, and I'm so sorry about the photocopies. I have part of it here. I don't know if anybody needs something at least to look at.

All right, here you go. But last week we finished looking at Luther's view, or the Lutheran view of Revelation, and I made the point, I said, you know, Lutheranism is based on the teachings of Luther, but it has gone through an evolution, and now there are there are different Lutheran groups.

There are those who we would consider very liberal, and those who we would consider very conservative among the Lutherans, and there are teachings that go back to the very beginning of Lutheranism, and because of what was taught by Luther, that I do think are incorrect, but I think are vestiges of Roman Catholic teaching.

Because keep in mind, Luther's goal in the beginning, at least it seems based upon history, Luther's goal was never to create a new denomination or a new church. It was to bring reform within the church.

Luther wanted to see Rome reformed. He didn't want to see a divided church. At one point he did say, though, that, you know, if this is what it has to be, so be it, but that was not his, that wasn't his goal, and as, you know, Brother Lee and I were talking this week, you know, he had a relationship with Desiderius Erasmus, and Erasmus wanted to see similar reforms in the church, but Erasmus never went as far as Luther, because Erasmus had a different view of the will of man than did Luther, and that's what's ultimately divided the two.

Erasmus believed that man is ultimately free in his will, and Luther believed in what is called the bondage of the will. I had a conversation with a lady about this just last night, that we're never called free in Scripture.

We're either called slaves of sin or slaves of righteousness. There's never a point in Scripture where man is identified as being morally neutral or ultimately free in his will, because we are we are born by nature children of wrath, and it is only when God regenerates the soul, he takes out the heart of stone and puts in a heart of flesh, as the Old Testament prophet prophesied, that's how that works, is there's actually a change of heart, which only God can do.

You know, man, I put this on one of my posts this week, I said, man cannot change his own heart, only God can change the heart, and Luther argued for that very well. He argued, and you can still read today, the book by Luther called The Bondage of the Will, which is his response to the teachings of Erasmus.

Now, you mentioned, we talked this week, Richard, about the special edition which has Erasmus' side of the argument, which is an interesting, because in one of the editions, it's just Luther's response, and you sort of have to extrapolate from that, well, what was Erasmus arguing?

But this issue of the freedom of the will actually predates Luther and Erasmus by a thousand years, if you go back to the time of Augustine and Pelagius. Augustine and Pelagius had the same issue. Pelagius believed that man, by nature, was able to positively respond to God's grace because there was nothing in him that was naturally holding him back, that he was, by nature, good.

And, of course, Augustine said, no, we are bound in sin until God is so gracious as to release us. And it was Augustine's prayer that really caused Pelagius the most problem. Augustine had a prayer that was, God, command what thou wilt and give us the ability to do what thou commanded.

It was, you know, God, tell me what you want me to do, and then give me the ability to do what you would have me do. You first tell me what it is, then give me the ability to do it. And Pelagius' argument was this, if God has commanded it, you must have the ability to do it, because God would never command you to do something you're unable to do.

And, of course, I always go back to Jesus's, be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect. God will never command anything you can't do. Be honest. Can you be perfect? And yet, that's the standard, you know.

That's powerful, isn't it? God has commanded, because God is not bound by our limitations as to what is his standard. God doesn't have to reduce his standard based on our limitations. So, Augustine made the point.

He said, if God commands it, he also has to give the grace to do it. Because we can't just do it just because he commanded it. So, anyway, having said all that, getting back to Luther, that was one of the key teachings of Lutheranism and still is part of traditional Lutheranism today, is understanding the bondage of the will.

Now, Calvin would go a step further and he would talk about man's total depravity, which is what we're going to, when we finally get around in a couple of weeks to looking at Reformed theology, we'll deal with that more and how does that, how does that, how is that understood in regard to what Luther taught.

Their views of predestination are a little different. Their view of, their view of the will of man, there's just some small things that make them distinct from one another, but they're very, very, very similar.

And, again, the view of Luther was that the will is in bondage and is in bondage until God sees fit to release it. Now, having said all that, last week we noted that Luther was, Lutheranism was established in 1525, just 20 years after Luther became a monk.

And the Augsburg Confession, which is what we're going to look at today, was established in 1530. So, five years really after Luther began to organize his church, they produced a confession, a confession of faith, which is still used today.

I believe the Missouri Synod, which is one of the largest Lutheran bodies in the United States, does still use the Augsburg Confession as it's, what? I'm sorry, I don't know if I said something wrong.

The Augsburg Confession established in 1530, and in your book, I want to read what's in the book, but then I want to juxtapose it with something that's in the confession, because I do think that there is some inconsistency in Lutheranism.

Lutheranism is not as well-defined doctrinally as Calvinism. Calvin spent so much time writing and fleshing out the theology that he was teaching. Luther was the pastor, he was the reformer, he was not the ivory tower theologian, as sometimes Calvin can be pictured as the man who's all thought.

Luther was very much very active. He was an action-oriented person, and sometimes there's inconsistencies in Luther that we don't see as much in Calvin. There is a different mind there, there's a different man there, and there's a different time and place there.

You know, Calvin comes a bit after Luther, even though they're contemporaries, there's a little bit of Calvin's coming on the coattails of Luther, having seen Luther and all the reforms that he did. Plus, Luther is bringing reform to Germany, Calvin is bringing reform to Switzerland, and there's just there's differences in context, a difference in language, a difference in a lot.

And again, I think the two minds need to be understood as two different men and two different situations. But what your book says about salvation in regards to Lutheranism, it says salvation comes only by grace through faith, and all God's people say amen.

The source of salvation is God's grace shown through Christ's work, the grounds of salvation. The means for receiving salvation is faith only. Amen. No problem. Not at all. People contribute nothing toward their salvation.

They are totally without a free will in respect to salvation, and thus God is the efficient cause of salvation. I don't know if you'll say amen, but I sure will. I agree with everything that that said.

The Spirit works through the word of the gospel, and here's where we start coming off the rails a bit, including baptism in the Eucharist to bring salvation. The Eucharist involves the actual presence of Christ with the bread and the wine through these elements, though these elements remain bread and wine.

So here's the teaching of Luther. Yes, it's really the body and bread of Christ. It's present in, over, around, and through. You ever heard that? That the presence of Christ is in, over, around, and through the bread.

It's in, over, around, and through the cup. It's there. The presence of Christ is there. But it doesn't stop being bread. It doesn't stop being wine. It's still bread and wine, but the presence of Christ is in, over, around, and through this element, and thus there is the real presence of Christ.

So make this point in your mind. When you're talking to a Roman Catholic, if God gives you the opportunity, know that their view that we would find particularly objectionable is not that they see the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, even though I disagree.

I don't think that's the objectionable part. The objectionable part of Rome is that they see the Eucharist as a propitiatory sacrifice. They see this as something that's bringing about the forgiveness of sin again, because Christ is being sacrificed again, and that's where the real problem was.

Now, is there some weirdness to the real presence view? I think so. I think, what's that? A little bit of hocus pocus, yeah, and the hocus corpus mea, and the hocus pocus. There's magic kind of thoughts in there, and there's also, to me, always the question of, you know, we know the omnipresence of Christ because he is God, but we also know the presence of Christ seated at the right hand of the Father, and God is spoken of that way.

God is spoken of as omnipresent, but he's also spoken as being in places at certain times to do certain things, and we know that the the place where Christ is currently is at the right hand of the Father, you know, and is he also universal in the sense that he's omnipresent?

Yes. So how do we make that distinction? Well, we simply just make the distinction of Christ's purpose right now is not to be on the table, but to be on the throne. That's kind of where, mentally, I draw the line and say, do I think Christ is present with us during Communion?

Absolutely, but do I think that there's a special way in which he's on the throne? Yes, and I think that that way sort of supersedes the issue of him being on the table. We're going to talk about Zwingli.

Zwingli's view was more in keeping with what I would teach, and that is the memorial view. The Calvinistic view is what's called spiritual presence. You have Roman Catholicism is transubstantiation. The real presence brings a real propitiation.

There's the Lutheran view. There's a real presence, but it's not propitiatory. It's just Christ's presence there with the bread and the cup. The spiritual presence is Calvin's view, and I think it really is sort of just trying to find a happy middle ground.

Yes, Christ is spiritually present in this event because it's a means of grace, but there's no physicality to the presence at all, and then, of course, the Zwinglian view is that the table was never intended to speak of presence, but to speak of remembrance.

So the issue being, what does the bread do? It reminds us of Christ's gospel. What does the cup do reminds us of his blood and his body. So those are the sort of the four distinctions that are made. Most Baptists hold to a memorial view because, and when I say most, most the Baptists I've talked to, I don't, I can't, I've never done a survey, so I have to go back and say, the ones I have talked to typically hold a memorial view simply because that's, they find the real presence view icky or weird.

I remember in seminary, even one guy, he said, well, if I eat Christ, what does that mean when I go to the bathroom? It really got kind of weird. I mean, you know, not lying, that was said in class. So there can be a sort of too simplified look at it.

I think even if we take the memorial view, we have to understand that this is something that people have done incorrectly and died. Paul didn't say some of you might die. He said some of you have died as a result of doing this incorrectly.

It's serious business, and it's not something to be taken lightly. So that's, I think we undervalue it much more often than we.

The Real Presence, Memorial View, and the Lord’s Supper

Overvalue it. Yes, sir? The thing that bothers me the most is that a totally depraved mere man can actually pull Christ down and re-sacrifice him over everything else. I get everything you're saying, but that just, it's just so vile to even think that.

The teaching of Rome is by far very, it's not only unbiblical, it's just purely blasphemous. It is, absolutely. So like I said, I think with Luther, Luther is trying to hold this tie to something that he truly believes is important, and that's the presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

At the Marlboro Colloquy, I always have a hard time, I call it Marlboro like a cigarette, Marlboro Colloquy, which was the meeting of Luther and Zwingli, their big debate was, there were 15 points of doctrine, they agreed on 14 points of doctrine.

The only place they disagreed was the presence of Christ in the table, and that's where Luther was pounding the table, and he says, hoc es corpus meum, this is my body, and that was his only thing, that was Luther's argument, and he shut it down.

That was the end of the argument. This is my body, that's what it means, no discussion, can't talk about what is, is, because we're not in the Clinton era yet. Ah, that was a fallback to a 30-year-old political joke.

But the idea of, this is my body, what does that mean? He wasn't willing to discuss it, he had his own view, and he held pretty firmly to it. Luther's one of my heroes, but he certainly is not a perfect man.

Luther had his issues. Let me finish out what the book says. It says, the theology of the cross is to be marked, is to be the mark of true theology. Instead of centering on the things about God's invisible nature and works as discussed in natural theology, which Luther calls the theology of glory, Christians are to focus on the humility of God revealed in the death of Christ on the cross.

In a theology of the cross, the believers come to have a knowledge of God and also a true knowledge of themselves and their relationship to God. I would say that's correct, to say that Christianity is a theology of the cross, in that what he's saying there is to truly understand the nature of God, is to understand why the cross is necessary to save sinful men.

How can a unrighteous man be made right with a righteous God? It's only through the act of substitutionary atonement. It's understanding rightly the cross, and that's one thing I do know that Luther understood.

He understood the purpose of the cross. He understood the purpose of the substitution. He understood the purpose of the atonement and our being given the righteousness of Christ. That he understood, and I think in that he understood the gospel.

So where do the wheels fall off the cart? Well, Luther's view of baptism, I think, is the thing that I find most disturbing about Lutheran theology, because it still continues to be the theology of today.

The Lutheran view of baptism is that it does have a regenerative effect, that there is a regeneration which occurs when a person is baptized. Now, in Lutheran theology, when is a person baptized? Baptized as an infant.

So they do believe there's a regenerative effect that happens at baptism, so infants are regenerate, but they're not saved, because they're not saved until when? Faith. Because it's justification not by regeneration, it's justification by faith.

So all the regenerative work does is make them then savable. It's not saving them. So here's where I want to read from the Confession. The Augsburg Confession. Article 9 about baptism. This is not in your book, but I'll be happy to print a copy for you, or you can just go online and look up Augsburg Confession.

It's available. Article 9 about baptism. Our churches teach that it is necessary for salvation, and that through baptism God offers us his grace. Let me just stop right there. So right away, it is not debated in Lutheran theology.

Baptism is not, let me back that up, baptism is required. It's not an option for salvation. Okay, next line. Also, children ought to be baptized. Now here's where an interesting divide begins to develop.

In Calvin's theology, children also had to be baptized, but for a different reason. Because in Luther's theology, children are baptized because it's required for salvation. In Calvin's theology, children are baptized because it is the mark of being part of covenant family, much like circumcision was under the Old Covenant.

So there is a divide between Luther and Calvin. Though they are practicing essentially the same action, they're both pouring water onto a baby, both are doing it for different reasons, and Luther's is much more tied to Rome's reason than is Calvin's.

That's why I say Calvin's theology is more mature than Luther's. Okay, here's the last line of part one. Those, or part two rather, those brought to God through baptism are received into God's grace. Okay, that's Luther's point one and two.

Number three is the part that I find most disturbing, and I'll let you hear it and then I'll make comments. Part three, we condemn the Anabaptists who reject the baptizing of children and say that children are saved without baptism.

We condemn the Anabaptists who reject the baptism of children and say that children are saved without baptism, period. So what is the Lutheran position? If a child dies without baptism, he is not. I'm just saying, that's what I find quite difficult about this, because that is a strong hearkening to Rome.

Roman theology was never the family covenant idea. Roman theology was where we baptize babies because they have to be saved, and this is part of what brings about their salvation. If a baby dies without this baptism, the baby dies outside of grace, and if a baby dies outside of grace, he goes to hell.

That was the view. So, all these babies who are dying in the mother's wounds haven't been baptized. I'm just saying, there's a, there is a progression of logic that has to be followed, and when you follow it to its logical extreme, it becomes very serious.

You have to step back and say, wow, that's pretty radical, and I'm not, this is the same Augsburg Confession that they're holding to today. This isn't like this is 1530s, and it's been updated. This is the Confession, and this is what it's held to.

So, as I said, I think Lutheranism has some issues. Am I saying that Lutherans aren't Christians? No. I think Christians, at times, can have bad theology and still understand the gospel, and I want to make that clear.

I don't have perfect theology, and if you think that you do, you don't. Nobody in here has perfect theology, but I do think there are serious errors, and very serious things that can contort the gospel, and I think that's what we see here, is a contorting of the mixing of baptism and regeneration is a very serious and dangerous thing.

Yes, sir?

This is in there. If baptism is only symbolic of our salvation, it's something we do as a confession of our faith in God, then baptism is nothing really more than a powerless tradition. What was, is that part, that's...

Well, okay, I downloaded it, and it said this, okay. Augsburg Confession.

But is that the one with the footnotes? Because the Augsburg Confession now has additional footnotes. Well, I don't see any. There's no distinction made? No. That's not the one I looked at, and again, I would be happy to be corrected on this if that's an addition, but there are ones that have commentator's notes in the Confession.

I mean, a lot of them do that. You can find a 1689 Baptist Confession that has commentator's notes in, and sometimes it's hard to tell what's part of the confession and what's not. I believe that what I have brought is actually what was written in the 1530 Confession, has not been changed, but may have been added to.

So I want to, if anybody finds anything different, I'm always, personally, always willing for correction, or to be shown something different. But isn't that wild, though, that they say if baptism is simply a testimony of faith, it doesn't mean anything?

But you're commanded to do it, so what are you saying? I mean, it's almost blasphemy.

You know, I had this conversation last night with Ashley Collins. He and I were talking about baptism, and I said, I do think that in a lot of churches, particularly Baptist churches, and I can kick Baptists a little bit, because if you are one, you can talk about them.

And I went to a Baptist school, graduated from a Baptist seminary, I now just had an opportunity to teach at a Baptist seminary, and maybe have more opportunities. So I consider myself very much a Reformed Baptist.

Don't have any problem with that. But, there are things about Baptist theology which really bother me, and one of the things is how flippant baptism is seen. I mean, there are churches that make, they make their big annual report to the convention, based on all these baptisms they've had, and the big ugly secret that they're not telling anyone is a very large number of those baptisms are simply re-baptisms of people that were baptized the year before, or two years before, or three years before.

Because they got re-convicted and, well, I've got to do it again. There are churches that build Baptist streets in the shape of a fire truck, and put the kids in there, so that when the kids are baptized, they come out and the fire truck makes noise and gets excited.

What little kid's not going to want to do that? You could pull that out at the end of Vacation Bible School and get 150 kids baptized immediately. And we keep doing it earlier and earlier and earlier.

It used to, you know, you didn't see kids baptized until they were teenagers, and then it became earlier and then it became earlier than that. Now it's like, you know, two, three-year-old kids are baptized.

I say, if we keep going in this direction, we're going to have to apologize for everything we ever said about the Presbyterians. Because we're baptizing babies ourselves. So, all that. I do think that there has been a lack of reverence given to the ordinance and understanding to its purpose in being a covenantal sign, a sign of our participation in the new covenant, a sign of our submission to Christ, a sign of God's promise to us.

I think that has been lost, and it's been replaced with simply, this is a testimony of your faith. It's not a testimony of your faith in the sense that that's all that it is. It is a sign of the promise of the new covenant that God has given to His people.

It's more than just a testimony. In a matter of practice, it's usually also maybe a rushed process where I made this decision to stay and walk down the aisle. Yeah, it's got to be done immediately. There's no time.

Instead of taking a few weeks to walk the person through to verify that it's true salvation and then, you know, it's a five-minute conversation. Yeah. And I think we can go two ways on that because I've had to deal with both.

I've had to deal with some where it's like I wasn't real comfortable baptizing them so I asked them to spend some time counseling and I've had some people who say well, I'm just not ready, I'm just not ready, I'm just not ready and they'll wait for a long time and I'm saying, well, are we not ready or are we being disobedient?

Are we just not comfortable? So it becomes an issue of both. I think we have to kind of find you know, if somebody comes to me and says I believe the Lord saved me, I believe he opened my heart to believe the gospel and I'm seeing fruit in this person's life, a desire to serve Christ, a desire to follow after him, I'm not going to hold them back from the waters of baptism, I'm not going to hold them back from this sign of the covenant but at the same time, I'm not going to rush them to it either.

There's a balance there and it's important. Like I said, I had one lady bring me her grandchild and she said, my grandchild's ready to be baptized. I said, well, can I talk to her about it? We need to counsel through this.

Well, I've already talked to her, she's ready. I don't care. She didn't talk to me. I'm the one that's participating. I'm the person that God's using to administer this ordinance. I'm going to be involved in the counseling with this child.

Yes, it happens. You'd be surprised I love the face you're making, like, did somebody really say that? Yes, it was right in our narthex. I just think that the core point is with the counseling on the front end too because I've seen so many times in the last few years that adults come, they're baptized and literally, that's the last time you ever see them.

Oh yeah, yeah. If you ever want to get rid of all the cockroaches in the church, just baptize them and you won't have them leave. That's a terrible joke. But the reality is I think we are also not as committed to counseling adults through it as we are children.

Because again, a child comes to me and we focus on oh, we'll make sure you really understand this. Do we do that same thing with adults? No, we think they're an adult and they automatically understand.

No, adults can be more ignorant than kids because they've got baggage that kids don't have. But hey where are we at on time? Boy, my brain just. There we go. Well guys, there's so much more we can say about Lutheranism.

This is not a course in Lutheranism. It's just an overview of theology. There were good things about Luther's theology. There were bad things. The five solas are not in your book. Three of them are. But I would say that Luther still wouldn't have a problem with the other two.

I think Luther would have still championed the other two. But the key to Luther's theology. The key to Luther's theology. Even though he would say sola fide is the hinge upon which it turns. The key to the theology, though, is sola scriptura.

I do think I think Luther was teachable when it came to scripture. There were things that he fought with that I would have disagreed with. But I do think that ultimately what led him in the path he went was that he trusted in the scripture that he did believe that the scripture was the sole and fallible rule of faith and practice.

And if we get nothing else from Luther that is a gem in and of itself. So let's pray Father, thank you for the study of your word and also how your word has affected men like Martin Luther. We do pray that we would have a right understanding of the ordinances that you've given to your church and a right understanding of the imperfections in our own theology and constantly be willing to be reformed ourselves to be seeking reformation in our hearts and lives.

In Christ's name we pray. Amen.