Many biographies of Martin Luther contain the story of when he froze at the altar offering a prayer at his first mass. He later recounted,
With what tongue shall I address such majesty, seeing that all men ought to tremble in the presence of even an earthly prince? Who am I, that I should lift up mine eyes or raise my hands to the divine Majesty? The angels surround Him. At His nod the earth trembles. And shall I, a miserable little pygmy, say 'I want this, I ask for that'? For I am dust and ashes and full of sin and I am speaking to the living, eternal, and true God.
This recollection allows us to observe in the young Luther a limited grasp of the character of God and our relation to him. He certainly had a strong sense of God's majesty and approached him with a deep sense of reverence and fear. But it is clear that he did not yet understand the work of Christ, which enables believers to "draw near to God with a sincere heart and full assurance of faith" (Heb. 10:22). God is great to be feared, but he is also a loving Father who invites us to draw near to him.
Tracing the development of his thinking on prayer is quite interesting. Later in life, he would come to treasure prayer so much that he is reported to have spent three hours each day praying. One of his students, during the famous Table Talk sessions, recorded Luther saying,
O how great and upright and godly Christian’s prayer is! how powerful with God; that a poor human creature should speak with God’s high majesty in heaven, and not be affrighted, but, on the contrary, knoweth that God smileth upon him for Christ’s sake, his dearly beloved Son. The heart and conscience, in this act of praying, must not fly and recoil backwards by reason of our sins and unworthiness, and must not stand in doubt, nor be scared away.
Notice Luther's shift in perspective here. Where at first the majesty of God caused him to feel unworthy, now he marvels that we should not be scared away by this. He himself wrote,
We pray after all because we are unworthy to pray. The very fact that we are unworthy and that we dare to pray confidently, trusting only in the faithfulness of God, makes us worthy to pray and to have our prayer answered... Your worthiness does not help you; and your unworthiness does not hinder you. Mistrust condemns you; but confidence makes you worthy and upholds you.
Of course, there is much for us to learn from Luther's understanding of prayer. His transparency is good for us to see because many of us find our understanding of prayer developing on the same trajectory as Luther's. We might begin by trembling before our awesome God, but as we come to understand who he is and what Christ has done in reconciling us to him, we come to recognise the intimate relationship we can have with God. And in time we come to realise what a treasure it is to be able to come before a holy and righteous God with such confidence in his love for us, knowing that he hears and answers our prayers.
As children innocently prepare their costumes and empty bags or pillowcases for an enjoyable evening of collecting candy, evangelicals will be battling the forces of Satan on two fronts tonight: boycotting Halloween, and gathering together for a few rousing rounds of Rome-bashing.
Now, I don't enjoy Halloween (specifically what American culture has made of it), and have no problem with those who wish to abstain from participating in it; there are many good reasons not to. However, I am sure there are many doing so tonight who have no idea what they are actually boycotting. They prefer to ignore all that history and instead seize on to the opportunity to celebrate another day which nicely coincides with this awful pagan holiday—Reformation Day.
Lest I sound too cynical, let me note that I am, indeed, very thankful the Reformation happened—I am glad that the doctrines of grace were recovered, I am glad that the abuse of power by corrupt church leaders was curtailed, and I am glad that I did not have to pay for St. Peter’s to be built pay for my relatives to be sprung from purgatory. The Reformation is most certainly something to be thankful for. But one question continues to linger in my mind—would we even celebrate Reformation Day if it didn't conveniently fall on the same night as Halloween?
We might ask why we need a special night to celebrate the Reformation. On the one hand, it seems to be the equivalent of using Valentine's Day to tell your wife that you love her. As your love for her should be manifest each day, shouldn't our rejoicing in God's saving grace be something we do each day? This grace should pour forth from the preaching of the Word and we should taste it in partaking of the Lord's Table each Sunday. Do we really need a specific day to commemorate this?
Moreover, Martin Luther's act of nailing the 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg was not the monumental act of defiance that many make it out to be. He only intended to raise a discussion about various issues concerning the Catholic Church with his academic peers. Luther's innocent action exploded into the major events that followed only because some random guy grabbed the piece of paper off the door, translated it into German, and sent copies of it all throughout the country. Do we need to a special day to remember that autumn day in 1517 when Luther walked up the stairs to the door of the Wittenberg church and made known his desire to have an academic discussion with his colleagues?
Hardly. So what is it, then, that evangelicals end up celebrating on Reformation Day? To be sure, there are those who will understand and acknowledge the theological implications of the Reformation. But for others, Reformation Day is, for all intents and purposes, a day to celebrate the disunity of the church. That, to me, is certainly not worth celebrating.
For some reason, people seem to forget that while Luther ultimately made the move to break from the Roman Catholic Church, he did not do so immediately. He spent years in agony deciding whether or not to leave the church he knew as mother and to go against Christ's call for unity in the body of believers (John 17:20-26, 1 Corinthians 1:10). People also forget that Luther was not the first Reformer, and that there were many who went before him who also tried earnestly to reform the church from within. Separating from the church was never the intention of these men, yet their valiant efforts to remain united seem to go unheralded. Instead, we prefer to celebrate the Protestant break from Rome, the second-most definitive and drastic split in the history of the church (the first being the Great Schism of 1054).Am I advocating a return to Rome? No. Do I think the church will ever be one this side of our Lord's return? Of course not. Am I thankful for the work of the Reformers? Absolutely—I count it a great privilege to be rooted in the theological heritage they left us. But we can't forget that the Reformation also produced a lot of collateral damage. When you have to start constructing graphs that look like the one below (and this is just the American Presbyterians!) something is terribly wrong. And it is nothing to celebrate.O Lord, make us one as You are one.
I wrote this review of Mark Noll's book, The Old Religion in the New World, back in January for the research study I'm doing on the history of Christianity in America. Don't feel any obligation to read it—in fact, not doing so will save you from using up ten minutes of your life unnecessarily. The only reason I'm posting it here is to test out how Posterous embeds PDF files. The book, however, unlike my review, comes highly recommended if you are looking for a good introduction to the factors that shaped American Christianity. Go and read the book.
The pastor of our church is retiring in April, and after going through his collection and taking home the books he wanted to keep, he graciously allowed three of us who are seminary students to pillage the rest of his library. We went to the office a few nights ago and began to mark out our territory. About half of Martyn Lloyd-Jones' series on Romans was there as well as Philip Schaff's 8-volume History of the Christian Church, which were the two sets I wanted most from all the books on the shelf. The other two guys did not mind, so I happily put them in my box. While I know Schaff's work is available online, I wanted it on my shelf, especially since my area of interest is church history and historical theology and Schaff's history is still an important one in the field. I was able to grab a few more worthwhile items as well, which you see in the photo to the left.
Collecting new books never gets old, but it does fill up our bookshelves very quickly—once I get these put into their proper places, we will almost be out of shelf space again.
As part of my research study on the history of Christianity in America, I am reading Reformed Theology in America: A History of its Modern Developments, a collection of essays edited by David Wells on the various streams of Reformed theology in the United States. One of the chapters, written by Wells himself, is on Charles Hodge, one of the most significant Calvinist theologians in American history and one of the longest-serving professors at Princeton.
Part of the chapter deals with Hodge's understanding of the atonement, set against that of the New School thinkers (such as Moses Stuart, Albert Barnes, and especially Nathaniel Taylor), whose understanding, among other things, denied the doctrine of imputation. Hodge saw a connection between how one understood the atonement and how they understood God's governance of the world. For Hodge the satisfying of God's justice was central to the work of Christ, and "the atonement made possible the preservation of the moral structure of the universe" (55). In accord with His character, God would treat His creatures as they deserved, showing favor to what is good and disfavor to what is wrong. For Hodge, then, the issue of theodicy was connected to one's understanding of the atonement.
In the view of men like Taylor, God's justice against an immoral society served as a sort of detterent, and for the individual sinner it would be a form of rehabilitation. Hodge, however, understood that God's dealing with His creatures was in accord with what they deserved, and thus "only Christ's interposition could preserve us from the calamity which the vindication of God's character would produce" (55).
Here lay the crux, so to speak, of Hodge's differences with the New School thinkers. For they believed, in most cases, that in God's government of the world punishment was used but the purpose was to prevent sin and to correct the sinner. This attitude naturally led to the assumption that the chief goal of existence is happiness, and holiness is simply the best way to get there. But, countered Hodge, 'we know that holiness is something more than a means; that to be happy is not the end and reason for being holy; that enjoyment is not the highest end of being.' This results in our viewing ethical choices in commercial terms. A choice is made, not because it is the inherently right thing to do, but because it produces profit of some kind and avoids loss. Virtue becomes expediency. The end justifies the means. And human beings are degraded because their moral capacities are reduced to being merely the instruments of happiness (55-56).
Evangelicalism today, in many respects, is largely a witness to the continuing influence of the thought of men like Taylor. There is a pervasive moralism that lurks beneath the surface, one that, while perhaps affirming salvation by grace alone, leaves the individual responsible for doing things that will make them happier or better people—reading their Bible more, praying more, going to church and attending all of its programs throughout the week, listening to Christian radio, giving a little more than the required tithe, and so on. People become quick to attribute their various "sufferings" to their neglect of the performance of any or all of these duties (also prevalent right now is the linking of the economic state of the United States with its collective lack of holiness).
All of this fails, for one, to make the distinction between happiness and joy, the latter of which is something volitional. Paul's letter to the Philippians contains a number of imperatives demonstrating that rejoicing in the Lord is not a feeling that results from doing certain things. Instead, Paul encourages us to be joyful by considering "everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus" (Phil. 3:8), and by glorying in the blessing of being united with him. Additionally, it fails to recognize the holistic work of Christ in our lives. Our salvation, being brought from death to life, includes the ongoing work of sanctification by the Spirit in our hearts, enabling us to grow and mature and increasingly live in a manner worthy of our calling as children of God.
While we should certainly devote ourselves to things like the study of Scripture and prayer, Hodge is right to say that we should not view holiness as a means to an end. Holiness, instead, is a response to the grace of God. The Heidelberg Catechism affirms that "it is impossible for those grafted into Christ by true faith not to produce fruits of gratitude" (Q&A 64). Our happiness is never contingent on the performance of certain holy duties. Hodge would argue that to hold to this understanding would be do a great disservice to the atoning work of Christ.
Many biographies of Martin Luther contain the story of when he froze at the altar offering a prayer at his first mass. He later recounted,
