Readings in the History of Christian Theology, Volume 2, Revised Edition

From the Reformation to the Present

William C. Placher, Derek R. Nelson

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781611647839
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

William Placher and Derek Nelson compile significant passages written by the most important Christian thinkers, from the Reformers of the sixteenth century through the major participants in the contemporary theological conversation. Illustrating the major theologians, controversies, and schools of thought, Readings in the History of Christian Theology is an essential companion to the study of church history and historical theology. Excerpts are preceded by the editors' introductions, allowing the book to stand alone as a coherent history. This revised edition expands the work's scope, drawing throughout on more female voices and expanding to include the most important twenty-first-century theological contributions. This valuable resource brings together the writings of major theologians from the church's history for a new generation of students.

1

Luther and the Radical Reformation

The history of Christian theology forms a connected story; it allows for no clean divisions. Recent scholarship concerning the Reformation, for instance, has often emphasized its roots in the late Middle Ages. Still, if one has to divide Christian theology’s history in half, the Reformation of the sixteenth century does mark a decisive watershed. The same story continues, but here a dramatically new chapter begins.

That chapter opened modestly enough. In 1517 a German friar named Martin Luther wrote ninety-five theses criticizing abuses in the selling of indulgences. According to late-medieval theology, anyone who had sinned, even once forgiven, owed a penance. But those who repented and contributed money to the church could receive an indulgence that let them off the penance. In the hands of unscrupulous popular preachers, all this could sound like buying permission to sin. As Luther thought about indulgences, however, he realized that his real objection was not just to such popular abuses but to a whole theology that seemed to suppose one could earn or deserve God’s grace. Luther read in Paul’s Letter to the Romans that the just shall live by faith, and he concluded that those who have faith are justified by God’s unmerited grace alone, without regard for their good works.

At first, Luther thought he was only clarifying the true teaching of the church. But in 1519 the Catholic theologian Johannes Eck challenged Luther to a public debate and convinced him that he was in disagreement with official statements of popes and councils. Called in 1521 before the assembled nobility of Germany to recant, Luther insisted, “Unless I am convinced by the testimony of Scripture or by clear reason, for I do not trust either in the Pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves … I cannot and will not retract anything.”

The Protestant Reformation began with that challenge to traditional authority. The newly invented printing press spread Luther’s message of “justification by faith” and “the authority of Scripture alone” through Germany and the rest of Europe. Others, such as Ulrich Zwingli in the Swiss city of Zurich, were arriving independently at conclusions like those of Luther and were beginning reformations of their own. The reformers soon began to disagree among themselves. Luther and Zwingli debated a number of issues, especially the nature of the Lord’s Supper, and followers of Zwingli and other Swiss Reformers grew into the family of “Reformed” Protestants, to be distinguished from “Lutherans.”

As the Reformation spread, it inevitably divided the Christian community, but both Luther and Zwingli tried to keep all Christians within a given territory together in one church, even at the cost of making some compromises. Others, however, felt that true reform meant creating a purified church of the truly committed, even if that meant founding small separated communities. They often took willingness to be rebaptized as an adult as the necessary sign of membership in such communities and were therefore called Anabaptists (rebaptizers).

Many Anabaptists suffered persecution. Some, like the leaders of the city of Münster in the 1530s, tried to impose their own beliefs by force. A young preacher named Thomas Müntzer did not advocate rebaptizing but is often classified with the Anabaptists as part of the Radical Reformation. A widespread revolt among German peasants in 1525 appealed to Luther for support, but he refused to challenge secular authority as he had that of the church. Müntzer, however, denounced everything he considered a form of oppressive authority and joined the peasants, only to be killed by their opponents as he fled after the defeat of the peasant army.

Associations with violence were giving the Radical Reformation a bad name. In the later 1500s a Dutchman named Menno Simons and others regrouped the surviving Anabaptists into withdrawn, disciplined, pacifist communities, which survive as the Amish and Mennonites. While Menno Simons was uniting divided Anabaptists, Lutheran theologians were dividing over such issues as the role of human freedom in salvation, divisions settled only with the Formula of Concord in 1577. Reforming Christian theology was proving to be a complicated and controversial task.

MARTIN LUTHER (1483–1546)

From The Freedom of a Christian

In 1520 Pope Leo X required Luther to retract his views and submit to papal authority. Luther wrote this treatise within weeks of having received the papal demand. About the time he finished it, the emperor summoned him to the imperial Diet that would meet at Worms the following year. Luther burned the papal demand and at the Diet refused to recant his position. The Reformation had begun, and this treatise, as much as any other, summarized its basic principles—justification by faith, the authority of Scripture, and the priesthood of all believers.

To make the way smoother for the unlearned—for only them do I serve—I shall set down the following two propositions concerning the freedom and the bondage of the spirit:

A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none.

A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.

These two theses seem to contradict each other. If, however, they should be found to fit together they would serve our purpose beautifully. Both are Paul’s own statements, who says in 1 Cor. 9 [:19], “For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all,” and in Rom. 13 [:8], “Owe no one anything, except to love one another.” Love by its very nature is ready to serve and be subject to him who is loved. So Christ, although he was Lord of all, was “born of woman, born under the law” [Gal. 4:4] and therefore was at the same time a free man and a servant, “in the form of God” and “of a servant” [Phil. 2:6–7].

Let us start, however, with something more remote from our subject, but more obvious. Man has a twofold nature, a spiritual and a bodily one. According to the spiritual nature, which men refer to as the soul, he is called a spiritual, inner, or new man. According to the bodily nature, which men refer to as flesh, he is called a carnal, outward, or old man, of whom the Apostle writes in 2 Cor. 4 [:16], “Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day.” Because of this diversity of nature the Scriptures assert contradictory things concerning the same man, since these two men in the same man contradict each other, “for the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh,” according to Gal. 5 [:17].

First, let us consider the inner man to see how a righteous, free, and pious Christian, that is, a spiritual, new, and inner man, becomes what he is. It is evident that no external thing has any influence in producing Christian righteousness or freedom, or in producing unrighteousness or servitude. …

One thing, and only one thing, is necessary for Christian life, righteousness, and freedom. That one thing is the most holy Word of God, the gospel of Christ, as Christ says, John 11 [:25], “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live”; and John 8 [:36], “So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed”; and Matt. 4 [:4], “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” Let us then consider it certain and firmly established that the soul can do without anything except the Word of God and that where the Word of God is missing there is no help at all for the soul. If it has the Word of God it is rich and lacks nothing, since it is the Word of life, truth, light, peace, righteousness, salvation, joy, liberty, wisdom, power, grace, glory, and of every incalculable blessing. This is why the prophet in the entire Psalm [119] and in many other places yearns and sighs for the Word of God and uses so many names to describe it. …

You may ask, “What then is the Word of God, and how shall it be used, since there are so many words of God?” I answer: The Apostle explains this in Romans 1. The Word is the gospel of God concerning his Son, who was made flesh, suffered, rose from the dead, and was glorified through the Spirit who sanctifies. To preach Christ means to feed the soul, make it righteous, set it free, and save it, provided it believes the preaching. Faith alone is the saving and efficacious use of the Word of God, according to Rom. 10 [:9]: “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Furthermore, “Christ is the end of the law, that everyone who has faith may be justified” [Rom. 10:4]. Again, in Rom. 1 [:17], “He who through faith is righteous shall live.” The Word of God cannot be received and cherished by any works whatever but only by faith. Therefore it is clear that, as the soul needs only the Word of God for its life and righteousness, so it is justified by faith alone and not any works; for if it could be justified by anything else, it would not need the Word, and consequently it would not need faith.

This faith cannot exist in connection with works—that is to say, if you at the same time claim to be justified by works, whatever their character—for that would be the same as “limping with two different opinions” [1 Kings 18:21], as worshiping Baal and kissing one’s own hand [Job 31:27–28], which, as Job says, is a very great iniquity. Therefore the moment you begin to have faith you learn that all things in you are altogether blameworthy, sinful, and damnable, as the Apostle says in Rom. 3 [:23], “Since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” and, “None is righteous, no, not one; … all have turned aside, together they have gone wrong” (Rom. 3:10–12). When you have learned this you will know that you need Christ, who suffered and rose again for you so that, if you believe in him, you may through this faith become a new man in so far as your sins are forgiven and you are justified by the merits of another, namely, of Christ alone.

Since, therefore, this faith can rule only in the inner man, as Rom. 10 [:10] says, “For man believes with his heart and so is justified,” and since faith alone justifies, it is clear that the inner man cannot be justified, freed, or saved by any outer work or action at all, and that these works, whatever their character, have nothing to do with this inner man. …

When, however, God sees that we consider him truthful and by the faith of our heart pay him the great honor which is due him, he does us that great honor of considering us truthful and righteous for the sake of our faith. Faith works truth and righteousness by giving God what belongs to him. Therefore God in turn glorifies our righteousness. It is true and just that God is truthful and just, and to consider and confess him to be so is the same as being truthful and just. Accordingly he says in 1 Sam. 2 [:30], “Those who honor me I will honor, and those who despise me shall be lightly esteemed.” So Paul says in Rom. 4 [:3] that Abraham’s faith “was reckoned to him as righteousness” because by it he gave glory most perfectly to God, and that for the same reason our faith shall be reckoned to us as righteousness if we believe.

The third incomparable benefit of faith^* is that it unites the soul with Christ as a bride is united with her bridegroom. By this mystery, as the Apostle teaches, Christ and the soul become one flesh [Eph. 5:31–32]. And if they are one flesh and there is between them a true marriage—indeed the most perfect of all marriages, since human marriages are but poor examples of this one true marriage—it follows that everything they have they hold in common, the good as well as the evil. Accordingly the believing soul can boast of and glory in whatever Christ has as though it were its own, and whatever the soul has Christ claims as his own. Let us compare these and we shall see inestimable benefits. Christ is full of grace, life, and salvation. The soul is full of sins, death, and damnation. Now let faith come between them, and sins, death, and damnation will be Christ’s, while grace, life, and salvation will be the soul’s; for if Christ is a bridegroom, he must take upon himself the things which are his bride’s and bestow upon her the things that are his. If he gives her his body and very self, how shall he not give her all that is his? And if he takes the body of the bride, how shall he not take all that is hers?

Here we have a most pleasing vision not only of communion but of a blessed struggle and victory and salvation and redemption. Christ is God and man in one person. He has neither sinned nor died, and is not condemned, and he cannot sin, die, or be condemned; his righteousness, life, and salvation are unconquerable, eternal, omnipotent. By the wedding ring of faith he shares in the sins, death, and pains of hell which are his bride’s. As a matter of fact, he makes them his own acts as if they were his own and as if he himself had sinned; he suffered, died, and descended into hell that he might overcome them all. …

From this you once more see that much is ascribed to faith, namely, that it alone can fulfill the law and justify without works. You see that the First Commandment, which says, “You shall worship one God,” is fulfilled by faith alone. Though you were nothing but good works from the soles of your feet to the crown of your head, you would still not be righteous or worship God or fulfill the First Commandment, since God cannot be worshiped unless you ascribe to him the glory of truthfulness and all goodness which is due him. This cannot be done by works but only by the faith of the heart. Not by the doing of works but by believing do we glorify God and acknowledge that he is truthful. Therefore faith alone is the righteousness of a Christian and the fulfilling of all commandments, for he who fulfills the First Commandment has no difficulty in fulfilling all the rest.

But works, being inanimate things, cannot glorify God, although they can, if faith is present, be done to the glory of God. …

That we may examine more profoundly that grace which our inner man has in Christ, we must realize that in the Old Testament God consecrated to himself all first-born males. The birthright was highly prized for it involved a twofold honor, that of priesthood and that of kingship. The first-born brother was priest and lord over all the others and a type of Christ. …

Injustice is done those words “priest,” “cleric,” “spiritual,” “ecclesiastic,” when they are transferred from all Christians to those few who are now by a mischievous usage called “ecclesiastics.” Holy Scripture makes no distinction between them, although it gives the name “ministers,” “servants,” “stewards” to those who are now proudly called popes, bishops, and lords and who should according to the ministry of the Word serve others and teach them the faith of Christ and the freedom of believers. Although we are all equally priests, we cannot all publicly minister and teach. We ought not do so even if we could. Paul writes accordingly in 1 Cor. 4 [:1]: “This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.”

That stewardship, however, has now been developed into so great a display of power and so terrible a tyranny that no heathen empire or other earthly power can be compared with it, just as if laymen were not also Christians. Through this perversion the knowledge of Christian grace, faith, liberty, and of Christ himself has altogether perished, and its place has been taken by an unbearable bondage of human works and laws until we have become, as the Lamentations of Jeremiah [1] say, servants of the vilest men on earth who abuse our misfortune to serve only their base and shameless will. …

Rather ought Christ to be preached to the end that faith in him may be established that he may not only be Christ, but be Christ for you and me, and that what is said of him and is denoted in his name may be effectual in us. Such faith is produced and preserved in us by preaching why Ch...