Necessary Roughness

Ask most anyone who has paid more than a little attention to church history, and they’ll have heard about the Reformation. They may remember that it was in the early 16^th Century, that a “Martin Luther” was involved, that he was annoyed with teachings and practices with the Roman Catholic church, and that he nailed 95 things that he disagreed with upon a church door. Bonus points if they say “Wittenburg.”

Negative points if they tell you that he sought to split the church. Luther didn’t leave; Pope Leo X published a Papul Bull that kicked him out. As evident in the number of “denominations” that existed before and after the Reformation, it seems to me that people started thinking it became okay to split or fracture from a church depending on whether one thought church teaching were anti-scriptural or worse, one rendered some scripture as irrelevant. Again, when Luther disagreed, he didn’t take his ball and go elsewhere; the Romans published the Council of Trent, still in force today, and codified their deviance from what scripture teaches in Romans 3:19-28 and other places (for humor in this area, consult Here We Stand).

Project Wittenburg has an English translation of Luther’s 95 Theses (the plural of thesis, not the result of a speech impediment ) This was the document that started Luther’s push for Roman Catholicism to return to scriptural teaching in these areas. The Theses were meant to react against the Roman Catholic Church, but some react to other schools of thought in today’s stained-glass Christianity (all stresses mine):

1. Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, when He said Poenitentiam agite, willed that the whole life of believers should be repentance.

30. No one is sure that his own contrition is sincere; much less that he has attained full remission.

36. Every truly repentant Christian has a right to full remission of penalty and guilt, even without letters of pardon.

53. They are enemies of Christ and of the pope, who bid the Word of God be altogether silent in some Churches, in order that pardons may be preached in others.

62. The true treasure of the Church is the Most Holy Gospel of the glory and the grace of God.
63. But this treasure is naturally most odious, for it makes the first to be last.

Pardon language aside, these have value for some of our interdenominational post-Reformation colleagues. For some believe that we need no longer preach Christ to Christians, and those Christians need no longer repent. Others put guesswork and man’s work into a person’s salvation, taking advantage when a person doesn’t “feel” saved. Some believe that even though Christians believe, some of them are “elected” to go to heaven and some are damned. Preachers on TV brag about their self-help books or 25 years worth of sermons, yet the Word of God is silent in those messages. Finally, some (and some of those, the same people who do the previous) look to their numbers or their deeds as the treasure of the church.

Of course, since the Pope is still passing out indulgences, the whole lot still apply to them. Do those Lutherans who signed the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification with the Roman Catholic church even mention the Theses any more? Is Unity in Deviation now one of the treasures of the church?

The Reformation was not a license to start new denominations, but a call to return to the oldest of old, the one set forth in scripture.