The Next Reformation...

...is a phrase that normally gives me a sinking feeling, since it normally seems to be followed by proposals aimed at dismantling the last one.

But I was intrigued by comments made by Hermann "yes, him again" Sasse in his sermon, "Jesus Intercedes for His Church", which I'm in the process of blogging about over on my own blog. Sasse writes:

After 15 centuries the hour came when the depths of [Paul's letters to the Romans and the Galatians'] doctrine of justification were laid bare in the Reformation.

Perhaps something similar may happen with the great texts of the Bible which speak of the divine mystery of the church: [Ephesians, John 17].

Quoting the 19th century Lutheran theologian August Vilmar, he says that if a full understanding of the NT teaching on the church could be reached, then:

...such a new understanding of the Third Article might be as great a turning point in the history of the church as was the new understanding of the Second Article in the Reformation

Stirring stuff. But what do you think? Is there a "Third Article" Reformation yet to come, to compare with the "Second Article" Reformation of the 16th Century? And is it in fact true to say that the 16th century Reformation was confined to the Second Article? And if a Third Article Reformation is still to come, does anyone have any suggestion what form it may take - what its "Romans 1:17" might be? (Difficult, I know, to form a view on that last point this side of some as-yet unknown pastor-theologian's "Tower Experience" on the subject...)

The Vatican and "St Zwingli"

Reading Hermann Sasse's essay, "Sanctorum Communio", I was intrigued by the following comment on Vatican II:

Who can deny that ...a necessary reformation [of the doctrine of the Lord's Supper] often degenerated into an unnecessary revolution? That happened not only in the 16th century, but even in our own age when liturgical knowledge and art have blossomed as never before, as the Second Vatican Council carried out a reform of the Roman Mass, in which no less a man than St Zwingli seems to have served as its godfather.

Can anyone suggest what Dr Sasse meant by this? I'm not sure Zwingli would have been too thrilled by the post-Vatican II eucharistic prayers posted by FDN the other day...

Original posting date: June 2004

Or to put it more briefly...

... the distinction is this.

Who is the minister addressing in the Words of Institution? Is he addressing the congregation, on behalf of Christ? Or is he addressing God, on behalf of himself and the congregation?

To put it another way: if we understand the Supper as a re-presentation of Christ's sacrifice on Calvary, to whom is it being "re-presented"? To us? Or to God?

Originally posted in June 2004

Sacrifice, or Sacrificial Meal?

Hermann Sasse's essay, "The Lutheran Understanding of the Consecration", is excellent on the true point of distinction between Lutheranism and Rome.

Sasse argues that the true point of departure is not transubstantiation (firm though the Lutheran rejection of that teaching is, this is merely an argument over the "how" of the Real Presence). Rather, "the antithesis lies at another point ... in the doctrine of the sacrifice of the Mass". He writes:

"Chemnitz answers the question of whether one may call the Lord's Supper a sacrifice in [a] figurative sense in the affirmative. But a limit is placed on this designation. The moment the Lord's Supper becomes an atoning sacrifice, one has left the ground of the New Testament."

However, elsewhere Sasse does acknowledge that the Sacrament is a sacrificial meal:

One could even say with the Council of Trent, that it is memoria, repraesentatio and application if the further formulations of Trent ... did not give [the latter two terms] yet another meaning that is incompatible with the NT. But that the Lord's Supper is the re-presentation of Christ's sacrifice and the real bestowal of what is gained through this sacrifice is the real teaching of the NT. If one wants to understand it as a sacrificial meal only figuratively, then the sacrifice of Christ on the cross would also have to be understood figuratively"

So the Lord's Supper is truly a sacrificial meal, at which the body and blood of Christ - the same body and blood that were sacrificed for us - are truly present. But if you go on to say that the Supper is an atoning sacrifice is stepping over the line. eg the Roman Canon of the Mass, quoted by Sasse:

"We Your servants, but also Your holy people ... offer to Your illustrious majesty ... a holy victim, an immaculate victim.

(FDN, is that still what is said in the post-Vatican II mass?)

Sasse introduces that quote by saying that "None of the finely worked out theories about the identity of the sacrifice of the Mass with the sacrifice of the Cross ... eliminates the fact that in the Mass man is also making a sacrifice."

The point of distinction is, I suppose, between the Lord's Supper as Christ's action, as He makes Himself present miraculously by His Word through His ministers, and something that is presented as a human work of re-offering Christ to propritiate the Father. It's a sacrificial meal, where we feed upon the Victim of a sacrifice that has happened once for all on a date in history, not a sacrifice, where we offer Him again and again.

The Calvinism to Lutheranism thing

OK, here's my take on why so many Lutherans are "recovering Calvinists".

1. When God in His mercy reveals to you that salvation is His gift from first to last, and does not depend in the slightest on your decision, then (in most of the English-speaking world) Calvinism appears to be the only product on the market. One is prepared to swallow stuff like limited atonement and double predestination because the only alternative appears to be Arminianism.

2. Becoming a Calvinist introduces you to new depths of Christian teaching and tradition. For example, one learns to take the Sacraments far more seriously than is the norm in evangelicalism (eg by reading the Reformed confessions, or writers like Mike Horton and Doug Wilson).

One also learns (on the one hand) that Christianity was not invented in 1960 and (conversely) that if you wish to find a Christian tradition with roots that go back more than 35 years, the RCs and EOs are not the only available options.

But, crucially, having been taught by Calvinism to love the Sacraments and Church history, one then finds that in practice Calvinism can't deliver - because in practice there are very few Reformed churches (at least in the UK) that preserve these aspects of Calvinism.

3. Finally, one discovers that there is a church which still takes the Sacraments seriously and which (moreover) has an "explanation" of them which actually still makes sense half an hour after you read about it. And which has preserved the historic liturgy and a sense of connection with the church in all times and all places, while remaining truly evangelical. And which holds firmly to salvation by grace alone, without feeling the need to draw "logical" conclusions which the Bible not only declines to draw, but actually denies.

And so you end up becoming a Lutheran.

The Forgotten Council?

Interesting background to the Council of Orange from Alister McGrath's book on the Theology of the Cross:

The doctrine of justification had been the subject of considerable debate within the early western church during the course of the Pelagian controversy. In 418 the Council of Carthage undertook a preliminary clarification of the church's teaching on justification in response to this controversy. Its pronouncements were, however, vague at several points which were to prove of significance, and these were revised at what is generally regarded as being the most important council of the early church to deal with the doctrine of justification -- the Second Council of Orange, convened in 529. No other council was convened to discuss the doctrine of justification between that date and 1545, when the Council of Trent assembled to debate that doctrine, among many others. There was thus a period of over a millennium during which the teaching office of the church remained silent on the issue of justification.

This silence serves to further enhance the importance of the pronouncements of Orange II on the matter, as these [Carthage's canons] thus come to represent the definitive teaching of the Christian church on the doctrine of justification during the medieval period, before the Council of Trent was convened.

Recent scholarship has established that no theologian of the Middle Ages ever cites the decisions of Orange II, or shows the slightest awareness of the existence of such decisions. For reasons which we simply do not understand, from the tenth century until the assembly of the council of Trent in 1545, the theologians of the western church appear to be unaware of the existence of such a council, let alone of its importance. The theologians of the Middle Ages were thus obliged to base their teaching on justification on the canons of the Council of Carthage, which were simply incapable of bearing the strain which came to be placed on them.

The increasing precision of the technical terms employed within the theological schools inevitably led to the somewhat loose terms used by the Council of Carthage being interpreted in a manner quite alien to that intended by those who originally employed them.

For reasons such as these, there was considerable confusion within the later medieval church concerning the doctrine of justification. This confusion undoubtedly did much to prepare the way for the Reformation, in that the church was simply not prepared for a major debate on justification, and was unable to respond to Luther's challenge when it finally came. (pp. 11-12)

Originally posted in June 2004

Monotheletism

What I'm a bit confused about is that I thought Monotheletism was a christological heresy, not an anthropological one.

My recollection of the original discussion in the comments to this post on my blog is that Chris J wasn't saying that monotheletism is itself an anthropological heresy, but that the error of monotheletism easily lends itself to the error of saying that a regenerate person has no will of their own (and I dare say this could work in reverse, too).

On reflection, it may be unfair to accuse Calvinism of "hyper-monergism" (though that's not to say that there aren't plenty of Calvinists who might veer in that direction) or of monotheletist tendencies.

Calvinism does not teach that the renewed human will is not a true will. Quite the opposite, as I recall: the Holy Spirit regenerates us, giving us a renewed will. The regenerate person then exercises that will in believing in Christ and is thus justified. The conceptual order (there is no temporal separation between the three) is then regeneration-faith-justification. Faith is only indirectly a gift of God (Eph.2) - the true gift is a regenerate heart, and then a regenerate heart "naturally" exercises faith in Christ.

This contrasts with the Lutheran position, which is - please correct me if I'm wrong, this is the product of profound theological reflection in the shower this morning - more a case of "faith-justification-regeneration" (with, again, this being only a conceptual order, not a temporal one). In other words, God creates faith in us by the Word and Sacraments, and we are then united to Christ, and in Him we are justified and renewed.

Originally posted in June 2004

[Hello to Dave H]

Dave,

Great to have you with us. Some of us are not only ex-Calvinists - if anyone here has never been a Calvinist, please would you make yourself known to the appropriate authorities (i.e. Josh)? - but (if you're counting from admission to the Lord's Table, as I'm guessing you are) have been Lutherans for minus 25 days. Top that :-)

(My wife and I are due for admission into membership on 4 July - I'm trying to think of a witty way to tie that into US Independence Day, but failing. Weirdly, that actually means that our younger son will have been a Lutheran for two weeks longer than us - he's due to be baptized on 20 June!)

Originally posted in June 2004

Meta-blog name

Someone in a comment on one of Josh's posts earlier was suggesting a re-think on the blog name. Now I'm not too fussed either way, but this might be a good time to discuss it, before we get too settled.

So here's one suggestion that sprang to mind just now (ready-made excuse: it's late, I should be in bed already): Wittenberg Tales. A motley group on a common pilgrimage, talking rubbish :o)

Double predestination

My self-denying ordinance not to post on this blog has lasted ... about five hours. Ah well.

My understanding of the basic reason for Lutherans rejecting DP is that the Bible teaches that God does not desire the death of the wicked, that God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, etc. As with limited atonement, it's a refusal to improve God's Word by dotting i's and crossing t's that He has left undotted and uncrossed.

So we believe in effectual atonement and eternal election to life no less strongly than our Calvinistic brothers and sisters in Christ - rejecting with them Arminian errors that leave salvation finally in the hands of the individual - but are happy to keep these teachings in tension with the biblical texts that teach universal atonement and personal responsibility for one's own damnation.

The key text for the Calvinistic DP position - and the one area where they may have us a bit more on the back foot - is probably Romans 9:21-23:

Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honored use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory.

I gather the explanation for this from a Lutheran perspective is that St Paul is careful to use the passive to describe the "vessels of wrath prepared for destruction" rather than the active "which he has prepared". Also, that this is a "what if?" argument in response to a specific objection, and cannot be used to overthrow other clear biblical teachings. (I'm not convinced that these are the most persuasive arguments I've ever heard, though I accept the basic conclusion.)

There is thus a parallel with Paul's similar (and similarly controversial) argument in 1 Cor 15, "why are people baptized for the dead if the dead rise not?". So if I was really wanting to "stir it", I might invite people to consider the parallels between Calvinist and Mormon interpretations of the Bible. But perhaps it's best if I leave the Calvinist-bashing to Josh ;-)

Originally posted in June 2004