Comfortable with Our Creator

Luther once wrote, "When I heard the name of Christ I used to turn pale, but then I clung to his humanity and I was not afraid of his being God." It is Christ who makes us comfortable with out creator.

Luther the Monk

The content of Luther's theology is heavily influenced by Augustine's doctrine of grace, which his father-confessor Johan von Staupitz introduced to him in the Augustinian monastery. Luther's theological method came from Ockham and Gabriel Biel who were monks and part of the via moderna tradition in the Catholic church.

Luther's whole quest for a gracious God is a monk's quest. Monks were experts on expiating sin and guilt through works of satisfaction. Luther said, "If there was ever a monk who got to heaven by his monkery it was I." It was the failure of the monastic solution at the time, which led Luther the monk to find the solution in Scripture with help from Augustine.

Another influence on Luther of comes from Renaissance humanism, which taught Luther to approach texts grammatically and historically.

A Reformation Day Sermon

I preached this sermon on Reformation Sunday at New Life Presbyterian Church in Muncie, IN.

http://www.newlife-pc.org/media/20111030-WorshipService-1.mp3

Not Caring What Anybody Thinks

I preached on Reformation Sunday in Muncie, IN and in chapel at Heritage Classical on Reformation Day. I came to the conclusion, based on Romans 1:16-17, that once you know you have God's righteousness you don't care what anybody thinks. That's what gave Luther courage to defy the two super powers of his day:

[Since you desire a plain answer I will give it] Unless I can be instructed and convinced with evidence from the Holy Scriptures or by evident reason, I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. Here I stand, I can do no other God  help me. Amen.

Then I ran across this on Blog and Mablog:

Courage . . . is the indispensable requisite of any true ministry . . . If you are afraid of men and a slave to their opinions, go and do something else. Go and make shoes to fit them" (Phillips Brooks, as quoted in Stott, Between Two Worlds, p. 300).

God's Permissive Will and Divine Necessity

God's will, according to Luther and Calvin, extends beyond salvation to all things, and it imposes necessity on both. When applied to salvation we are talking about predestination, when talking about everything else we are talking about providence.

Augustine says that "the will of God is the necessity of all things" (On Genesis in the Literal Sense 6, 15, 26, PL 34, 350). Calvin quotes this in support of his and Luther's doctrine that everything, even the fall, happens by divine necessity or by divine decree. This means that from God's perspective nothing could be otherwise than it is, though from our perspective most things are contingent or could go in more than one way.

With regard to permissio, or God's permissive will, Augustine wrote, “Nothing, therefore, happens but by the will of the Omnipotent, He either permitting it to be done, or himself doing it” (Enchiridion 95). So there is a difference between God doing something and permitting something to be done, but both are willed by God and thus necessary. Augustine adds: "His permission is not unwilling, but willing" (Enchiridion 100).

For Augustine, God permitted the fall but it was nonetheless his will and thus happened of necessity. This because God didn't add the gift of perseverance to Adam and Eve. When Calvin and Luther speak of the divine "decree" it is simply another way for them to express that all things, even what God permits, happens by divine necessity.

Being downstream from the via moderna, Luther and Calvin use the terminology of "decree" and "ordination," but they gave it the Augustinian sense of necessity. Luther and to some extent Augustine and Calvin, spoke of God's will as preached and hidden. God's hidden will works all in all and thus imposes necessity. His revealed will expressed in the gospel works our salvation.

Luther on Schools

"When schools flourish, things go well and the church is secure . . . God has preserved the church through the schools. They are the preservers of the church. Schools don't have a beautiful appearance, and yet they are very useful" -- Martin Luther

Two Blokes and a Birdie

Since the last post we've been to the tomb of Beren and Luthien (Tolkien and his wife Edith) and Stratford upon Avon. The Cotswalds were gorgeous on the way and the mortarless stone walls were quite a curiosity. 

I bought a briar at Stratford and had my first pasty. Yum! Then for an adventure at the King Edward School. After being turned away at the locked 16th century door, I proceeded with a partner in crime to ask students to let us in. They were more than happy to oblige but the fascists in school office were not about to let in a Reformation scholar writing an article on the Reformation and Education. In their defense, I guess I forgot to mention that. Oh well!

We then went to Cambridge where we saw the pulpit where Robert Barnes preached the opening sermon of the English Reformation. We also stood outside St. Mary's where Luther's books were burned and Martin Bucer, John Calvin's mentor, later preached under King Edward VI. He was buried in the church, but when the Catholic Queen Mary Tudor came to power, she exhumed poor Bucer's bones and had them burned. Not to be outdone, the Protestant Queen Elizabeth, Mary's successor and cousin, gathered his ashes and had then re-interred. Let's hear it for the Elizabethan Settlement!  

Let's also hear it for Cambridge, who recognized C.S. Lewis' contribution to Medieval and Renaissance literature and brought him over from Oxford at the end of his career. It seems the Magdalen snobs at Oxford resented the fact that Lewis wrote for the common man as well as the literary and was an unapologetic apologist for the Christian faith. They decided to punish him by withholding the chair that was his due, so Tolkien helped convince his friend that a prophet could find honor at the bridge on the river Cam. 

From there we went to our hostel which was emitting horrible fumes and black smoke. So we proceeded to a nearby bed and breakfast and bangers and mash with a best bitter at Prince Albert's pub. Who said the English can't cook? We all agree they can brew! We woke up to ham and eggs and I made it to two services. King's College Cambridge had an astonishing ceiling of laced stone and twelve beautiful stained glass windows and a full grown male choir that filled our ears with glorious song. The sermon at St. Mary's expounded the Trinity. Did you know that God is what happens when the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit exist in a loving personal relationship from all eternity? It's not just two bloke's and a birdie. Now that's theological nourishment for the soul!  

Now we are in London where we have toured the Abbey at Westminster, the British Museum and its incredible holdings which include the Parthenon Frieze. By the time we were done we felt like we had not only been to Greece but Rome and the Viking Burial at Sutton Hoo. Hoplites, Emperors, and Viking Warriors? I think my spinning head broke the sound barrier! Just to cool our brains we went back to that Abbey I mentioned earlier for an Evensong service. More Later. Now it's off to bed and on to Glasgow airport for more research tomorrow.

Good Reason

The Reformers, Luther and Calvin, recognized three kinds of reason:

1. Natural reason – logic, critical thinking, and common sense.
2. Renegade reason – autonomous reason; refuses to be subject to Christ and exalts itself over God.
3. Regenerate reason – reason within the bounds of revelation, as opposed to Kant’s Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone. Reason is not ultimate and that is reasonable. Reason should know and accept it limits.

Calvin: Reason is the receptacle of revelation.

Aquinas: Reason can prove what faith accepts.

Reason may argue beyond a reasonable doubt or beyond a shadow of a doubt depending upon the nature of the thing it's reasoning about. Scientific reasoning and aesthetic reasoning achieve different kinds of certainty.

Faith is not the denial of reason, but may be a response to reason. Faith is believing what we have been told. Sometimes we can see the rationality of something, but sometimes we cannot. If we cannot see how or why something is true, we may still believe it based on previous experience with that authority.

Luther Gets a Good Rap