The Formula of Concord on Justification Sola Fide

 For me, one of the most debilitating aspects of moralistic theology is the way works sneak in the back door of justification.  One can see this open “back door” in the New Perspectives on Paul, the Federal Vision, and some Arminian evangelicalism.

In sharp contrast to this moralistic theology, I love this reformation statement on justification sola fide from the Formula of Concord (Solid Declaration) III (called “The Righteousness of Faith before God).

“Neither renewal, sanctification, virtues, nor good works are at all a form, part, or cause of justification, that is, our righteousness before God.  They are not to stand or be set up as a part or cause of our righteousness.  They are not to be mixed into the article of justification under any pretext, title, or name whatever, as though they are necessary and belong to justification.  The righteousness of faith stands alone in the forgiveness of sins out of pure grace, for the sake of Christ’s merit alone.  These blessings are brought to us in the gospel promise and are received, accepted, applied, and appropriated through faith alone.”

I think I’m going to memorize that.  One thing I love about the Lutheran Confessions is that they are clear - not ambiguous.  May God help us all be clear like that when it comes to the heart of the Christian faith – the work of Christ to save sinners.

shane lems

sunnyside wa

Great Reformation Book, Great Price!

  Reformation Heritage Books has Carl Trueman’s Reformation: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow on sale for $5.00 (for a limited time).  I just ordered copies for my elders and deacons – it’ll be on our winter reading/discussion list.  If you don’t have it, I highly recommend getting it!  It’s not long (120 pages) but it is good, straightforward, and applicable.

shane lems

My Conscience is Captive to the Word of God (Luther)

(This is a repost from September, 2011.)

Heiko Oberman’s Luther: Man Between God and the Devil is one of those books that I’ll never forget reading.  I first read it around 10 years ago; I could not set this book down.  In fact, it led me to enjoy and appreciate church history in general, and Reformation history more specifically.  In my opinion, it is even better than Roland Bainton’s Here I Stand (although that may be an apples/oranges comparison, and I do really like Here I Stand).

Here’s a little snippet from Oberman’s book.  It has to do with Luther’s famous answer while he was on trial for his writings: “…My conscience is captive to the Word of God.  Thus I cannot and will not recant, for going against my conscience is neither safe nor salutary….”

“Luther’s appeal to conscience as the highest authority made an extraordinary impression on later generations.  Out of the understandable desire to declare Luther as the forerunner of the Enlightenment, the statement ‘Here I stand, I can do no other’ was reinterpreted as the principle of freedom of conscience.”

“But that is missing the whole point.  Appealing to conscience was common medieval practice; appealing to a ‘free’ conscience that had liberated itself from all bonds would never have occurred to Luther.  Nor did he regard ‘conscience’ as identical with the inescapable voice of God in man.  Conscience is neither neutral nor autonomous: hotly contested by God and the Devil, it is not the autonomous center of man’s personality, it is always guided and is free only once God has freed and ‘captured’ it.  What is new in Luther is the notion of absolute obedience to the Scriptures against any authorities; be they popes or councils….”

“Luther liberated the Christian conscience, liberated it from papal decree and canon law.  But he also took it captive through the Word of God and imposed on it the responsibility to render service to the world.”

Well said.  In Reformation terms, we say that “God alone is Lord of the conscience” (WCF 20.2).  The Lutheran Confessions (I’m thinking primarily of the Augsburg Confession and the Apology of the Augsburg Confession) also explain clearly and frequently that humans or human traditions cannot bind the conscience – only God can by his Word.  Commenting on Acts 15:10 and Galatians 5:1, the Apology says,

“Just as Alexander solved the Gordian knot once for all by cutting it with his sword when he could not disentangle it, so the apostles free consciences from traditions once for all, especially if they are taught to merit justification” (Apology XV).

The above Oberman quote is found on pages 203-204 of Luther: Man Between God and the Devil.

rev shane lems

sunnyside wa

The Gurgling Gullet of Modern Religious Self-Confession (Barth on Hymnody)

 Tucked away in I.2 of Barth’s Church Dogmatics is a little section on hymnody.  It is one of Barth’s running footnotes (in smaller print) in his discussion on the subjective aspect of the Holy Spirit in revelation and man (I.2, Part III.16.2).  The section is quite long, so I’ll have to paraphrase it.

First, Barth talks about Luther’s hymns and how they were simply meant to teach the Word of God and Christian doctrine to the common people (quo verbum Dei vel cantu inter populos maneat).  He explains that Luther’s hymns are “completely lacking in…all emphasis upon the emotion of the subject.  What these hymns contain is adoration and solid communication, confession of faith, confession of sins, proclamation.”  Luther’s hymns don’t “demand to lay this or that” upon people’s hearts in a subjective, man-centered way.  ”In these hymns we never find either God’s child or God’s Church preoccupied with themselves, but always turning to the recognition and praise of God and his acts.”

He then traces Lutheran hymnody and mentions how it later shifted its “epicenter” to the “heart, the soul, the I, the We;” to the subjective aspect of the Christian faith and away from the objective truths.  As a side, Barth also mentions how the epicenter of worship didn’t shift as much in the Reformed churches because they held fast to psalms.  Fast forward to pietism and mysticism, to what Barth calls the “more self-conscious age” of “emotional” “self-confession.”  What happened when the subjective and emotional I/me/we began to dominate hymns?  “Confession and proclamation have now really given way to religious poetry…on the whole, participation in the singing of these hymns implies a congregation which is highly self-impelled, highly self-activating, and highly self-exalted, and no longer - we cannot fail to remark it – the congregation of Luther which is moved simply by hearing the Word in faith.”

In these self-centered, emotional, and subjective hymns, “the traditional Christology has turned unnoticed into an exoteric garment.  In Tersteegen [an evangelical hymnist of the 18th century] it is a garment for the exposition of a mystical experience of the presence.  In Gellert [another evangelical hymnist of the 18th century] it is a garment for the exposition of a solid moral attitude.”

Barth goes on to quote Tersteegen’s view of hymns: “Come, O souls ourselves, and let ourselves be rid of all visible things, of the senses, of reason, and of all idiosyncrasies, in order that, properly separated, simplified, pure creatures, we may enter into our spirit and soul-ground, and there find, behold, and love God who is also a Spirit, and enjoy his peace which passeth all understanding.” 

More:

“In the generation which followed Tersteegen and Gellert, the Evangelical Church acquired a purely subjective hymnody.  …The [modern] congregation’s confession has now really become a confession of itself. …Even Reformation praise of God disappears in the gurgling gullet of modern religious self-confession.”

Here’s how he summarizes this section.

“Protestantism has followed the way of apostasy from the Reformation.  The history of the hymn reveals to us the inner secularisation which has taken place. …The Holy Spirit has ceased to be the Spirit of Jesus Christ.  To all appearances He is still a spirit of God, even a Christian spirit.  In fact, however, He is the spirit of human inwardness and seriousness, the spirit of mysticism and morals.  In that spirit we do not yet enjoy, or enjoy no longer, the communion with God which is realised in the revelation of God.  On the contrary, for all our seriousness and with all our piety, we are simply alone with ourselves and by ourselves.”

Wow.  Can you imagine what Barth might have written if he would listen to the songs that pass for worship music today?  Karl Barth meet Michael W. Smith.  Yikes!

The Pope’s Second Hand Junk

 The following are words from the last few minutes of an address R. C. Sproul gave to the 2008 graduating class of Westminster Seminary California. 

“[In a sermon late in his life, Luther] wondered, why is it that [despite gospel preaching] people are still spending their money on indulgences and on what Luther called the Pope’s second-hand junk [i.e. relics].  He said, the Pope is like a decoy duck, sitting on a pond with a great bag of tricks, seducing people with this nonsense.  He wondered why it is that people ignore the Word of God and exchange it for Joseph’s pants.”

“…What relevance does that have for us today?  We don’t see the evangelical church of our day rushing to depositories of sacred relics.  Nobody’s looking for Joseph’s pants.  Rather we have invested our time, our energy, and our money in more contemporary ways to improve the gospel.  We look to programs, to Madison Avenue methodologies, to entertainment, to pop psychology, even to the establishment of Starbucks in the church to improve the gospel.”

“Why do we do this?  I think people in the church today are looking for exactly what they were looking for in sixteenth-century Germany.  They went to Trier, they went to Aachen, they went to these relics because they believed the relics had power.  Every pastor wants to have a powerful ministry.  And so we look to the latest program, to the latest method to give us a powerful ministry, forgetting where the Lord God omnipotent has put the power the in the first place.”

“In the first chapter of Romans, Paul introduces himself as a slave of God, one who’s called to be an apostle, and for what mission is he set apart?  For the gospel of God.  IF we look at that text carefully, we will see that what Paul says is that he has not been consecrated to preach a gospel about God, but rather the text means that it is the gospel that belongs to God.  It’s God’s gospel.”

“We will inevitably be tempted by decoy ducks on the pond to seduce us into thinking that we can improve upon the power that is in the gospel.  It is, however, our task to diligently and faithfully preach the Word of God, which Word he has empowered and has promised will never return unto him void.  We don’t need anything more.  We can’t improve on that in any manner.”

This excellent address can be found on pages 188-191 of Always Reformed.

shane lems