Reformation Sunday, 2003
Romans 1:16-17

Protestant Orthodoxy

The construction of Europe's cathedrals during the Middle Ages took decades, sometimes centuries to accomplish. It was a task that called for an army of stonecutters, carpenters, masons and glass workers. The architects attempted to communicate a spirit of the transcendent majesty of God with the most soaring spires, massive columns, and lofty vaults possible. The original designer would rarely live long enough to see his project to completion. As the structure reached a pretty good altitude the risks increased. Perched on precarious scaffolding the laborers' task was hazardous. They hoisted and carefully set into place stone blocks with ropes, fulcrums, and pulleys. A slip, a miscalculation, a gust of wind at the wrong moment, and disaster could strike. A few accidents did come about. On those occasions the upper structure might come crashing down in a jumble of boulders, scaffolding, and panicked humanity.

After the dust had settled and the debris had been cleaned up, the architect would try to figure out what went wrong, make the correct adjustments, and resume construction. It was unwise to raze everything to the ground and start over. This could be a picture of the Protestant Reformation. Just as a damaged cathedral required restructuring, so the Church of the Late Middle Ages needed restoration. The Reformation sought to purge the Church of medieval superstitions and additions to apostolic Christianity, yet the Reformers staunchly defended the Creeds and Councils of the first five centuries. The radical strands of the Reformation brushed aside the wisdom of the past, giving life to a hundred cults outside of the Church and a thousand divisions within the Church. The magisterial Reformers (the English Reformation led by Thomas Cranmer and Edward VI along with Luther and Calvin) preserved the primitive faith and practice of the Apostles, building on the original structure to create a glorious edifice.

Reformation can be a good thing because the Church must be constantly reforming. Her sin and her need for sanctification make this necessary. On the other hand revolution is disastrous. The revolutionaries sever all connection with the previous centuries. Instead of attempting to reform, refurbish, or renovate, they wanted to rip asunder the roots of the ages and start over from scratch. The word "reformation" implies a looking backwards for a model and standard to follow, not the concoction of something brand new. It is our intention on this Reformation Sunday to honor the Protestant Reformation, appreciate the gains made, and see its value for us today.

The Reformation set in motion by Martin Luther should be seen as a correction to the erroneous faith and practice that had developed during the medieval era. Yes, the Middle Ages are to be criticized but let's not take it too far. For all their problems, the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church are legitimate branches of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church just like we are in the Reformed Episcopal Church. So a balance is needed. Some Evangelicals and cult groups arrive at a simplistic explanation of Church history. They savage the period of history from 400 to 1,500 as the great "falling away" or apostasy of the Church. Actually, the great apostasy mentioned in 2 Thessalonians 2:3 occurred in the years leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. The revolutionaries don't want to deal with the historic Church so they give their followers a false account of what they call the "Dark Ages." Their version goes something like this: when the Emperor Constantine recognized Christianity as the favored religion of the empire in A.D. 313 total corruption and superstition immediately took over the Church. Except for an occasional persecuted group of true believers here or there, the light of the Gospel was extinguished until 1517, or 1850, or 1965.

"Now to be sure, the Medieval world was racked with abject poverty, ravaging plagues, and petty wars ­ much like our own day. It was haunted by superstition, prejudice, and corruption ­ as is the modern era. And it was beset by consuming ambition, perverse sin, and damnable folly ­ again, so like today. Still it was free from the crippling shallowness, and widespread cynicism that now shackle us ­ and so it was able to advance astonishingly." [George Grant, The Last Crusader, pp. 104ff.]

The Church made some nice strides forward. St. Anselm fine-tuned our doctrine of the Atonement in 1085. Thomas Aquinas put down on paper many brilliant insights in the 12th century. John Wycliffe championed the translation of Scripture into the vernacular. John Huss valiantly worked to recover the sacraments for the laity around the year 1410. St. Paul writes in Ephesians 3:21: "To [God] be glory in the Church by Christ Jesus to all generations." To all generations! To a certain degree the light of the glory of God has shined in the Church during every single stage of history.

The author George Grant, writing from a Protestant perspective, gives credit where credit is due. He writes, "The titanic innovations medievalism brought forth were legion: it gave birth to all the great universities of the world from Oxford and Cambridge to Leipzig and Mainz; it oversaw the establishment of all the great hospitals of the world; it brought forth the world's most celebrated artists from Michelangelo and Albrecht Durer to Leonardo da Vinci and Jan van Eyck; it gave us the splendor of gothic architecture ­ unmatched and unmatchable to this day ­ from Notre Dame and Chartres to Winchester and Cologne; it thrust out into howling wilderness and storm tossed seas the most accomplished explorers from Amerigo Vespucci and Marco Polo to Vasco da Gama and John Cabot; it produced some of the greatest minds and most fascinating lives mankind has yet known ­ Copernicus, Dante, Giotto, Becket, Columbus, Gutenberg, Chaucer, Charlemagne, Wycliffe, Magellan, Botticelli, Donatello, Petrarch, and Aquinas." [Close quote. Grant, p. 105.]

Nobody can deny the artistic, technological, and scholarly accomplishments of medieval culture. Spiritual concerns played a crucial role in the lives of men and women. These realities must be kept in mind as we approach the Reformation. Yes, problems plagued the medieval period; serious problems begging to be addressed. Nonetheless, we oppose those who trash the epoch. They have an anti-Church agenda.

The basis for the Protestant Reformation, the reason why the Reformation was both necessary and justified, has to with doctrine and practice. The Roman Church was heading in a wrong direction and getting lost towards the latter part of the Middle Ages. The doctrine of Transubstantiation led to some detrimental consequences. This mechanical view of the sacrament resulted in the people adoring the consecrated host as Christ Himself. Clergy feared to spill so much as a single drop of the transubstantiated blood of Christ. This fear led the authorities to remove the cup of salvation from the laity. And since baptized infants and children might drop a crumb, the Eucharist was withheld from them altogether. The highest form of spirituality was the seeing of the eucharistic host changed from a white wafer into the body of Christ. People ran from altar to altar to see this miracle, yet they only partook of one half of the sacrament once a year.

Besides that, bowing and prayers to statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the saints, angels, and relics took center stage, even though the Second Commandment forbids us to bow to manmade objects. There is the added problem of ascribing omnipresence to the saints. If Mary, bodily ascended and enthroned as the Queen of Heaven, can hear 10,000 prayers offered to her in the same hour by different people scattered over several continents, doesn't that make her omnipresent? How does one achieve omnipresence with a physical body? Only God is omnipresent. Devotion to the saints has the further effect of cluttering up the centrality of the Lord Jesus. 1 Timothy 2:5 states: "For there is one God and one Mediator between God and Men, the Man Christ Jesus." Jesus should therefore remain our one and only Mediator and Advocate to God the Father.

At the root of all these problems were the Roman Church's abandonment of sola scriptura, and their embrace of a novel view of tradition. Does the Church have one source or two sources of revelation? For the first four centuries the Early Church held to sola scriptura. They didn't call it sola scriptura but they assumed it and practiced it; the idea that Scripture is the supreme authority for the Church's faith and practice. Keith Mathison's book called The Shape of Sola Scriptura makes this case. How does tradition fit with the Church and Scripture? Tradition is the historical stream that flows from the Church's application of Scripture. The Creeds express the theological sense of Scripture, and to deny the Creeds is to deny the Bible itself. The Patristic writers play a similar role. Why do we appeal to the Church fathers? They faithfully expounded the real intention of the Bible writers. Consequently, there has been an uninterrupted tradition of truth flowing through the Christian Church from the day of Pentecost to the present time. Although Scripture is the sole infallible authority it must be interpreted within the boundaries of the ancient rule of faith in and by the communion of saints. Under sola scriptura, the Church exercises proper interpretive authority.

This view of tradition was that of the Early Church and was recovered by the magisterial Reformers ­ Luther, Calvin, and the English Reformers. It is distinguished from two faulty views of tradition. The Radicals sweep away entirely the Great Tradition. In their contempt for history they think sola scriptura means "me alone" with my Bible. They are wrong and such a notion is a recipe for anarchy. It is based on the autonomy of the individual. Shamefully, the majority of Evangelicalism has adopted this stance. It is a different animal from the sola Scriptura of the Early Church and Protestant orthodoxy.

Another faulty view of tradition became accepted in the late Middle Ages. It sees Scripture and Tradition as two separate sources of revelation. One source comes from Scripture, the other is a secret oral tradition that the Church guards. In this view, tradition takes on a life of its own; it becomes a second source apart from Holy Scripture and it is the Church that declares what this second source teaches, and she declares it infallibly. In such a scheme, the Church becomes autonomous, a law unto herself. Against what higher standard can an infallible Church be measured? None. What can someone appeal to? Nothing. Again, this two source concept won out totally in the late Middle Ages.

Is it any wonder that the Medieval Church came up with the sale of indulgences, and the fabrication of purgatory? The sale of indulgences suggested that God could be placated by payments, or by "good works." Worse, that works contribute meritoriously to one's acceptance with God. It was based on the theory that many saints of the past had done more than God required. Their extra works were stored in a treasury of merit. The Church could withdraw these works from their treasury in Heaven and pass them out to the people who paid good money or made a pilgrimage. The indulgences thus acquired would reduce the amount of time one's soul spent in the fires of purgatory. Such a system can develop when tradition becomes separated from Scripture.

The doctrine of justification is what first caught the attention of Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk. The Medieval Church had basically set aside the Augustinian doctrine of God's initiative in man's salvation in favor of a doctrine of salvation by works, that man cooperates with God in working toward his own justification. Luther found this blending of works and grace a bad mix. In his effort to improve things Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses on the Church door at Wittenberg on October 31, 1517. This is why we commemorate the Reformation today. It is observed on the last Sunday in October. How did Martin Luther come to see a need for reformation?

Luther began to teach a class at the monastery on St. Paul, specifically the Epistle to the Romans. He already had a serious personal problem calling urgently for solution when he began the class. He had grown up with a vivid realization of God as the law-giver and the meticulous avenger of every breach of the law. If God merely overlooked man's sin and winked at it in leniency His justice would dissolve into thin air. God would no longer by just. No, God must punish man's sins. The phrase "God is just," became central to Luther's thinking. With this clear picture of the perfect holiness and justice of God, Luther understood that God's wrath toward him and his sin was legitimate. The main anxiety of Luther's life was focused on this one question: How could the just wrath of God toward him be assuaged? Luther was increasingly aware of the sin in his heart. The separation between the perfect holiness of God and his own depravity became acutely painful. He searched for his soul's relief in every ritual the Church could offer ­ daily confession to priests, endless prayers, frequent masses, alms-giving, fasts, vigils, pilgrimages, everything. Yet there was no relief. He felt himself still un-reconciled to God. Despite all his exercises of piety, he never reached a stage where he was free from guilt. He never came to a place where he could rest in the grace of God in Christ. Guilt for his sin obsessed him, until he came to understand the grace of the Gospel. Romans 1:16-17 was the key passage for him. [Reading that.]

"The just shall live by faith." Here was the answer. What Luther discovered in these verses was that God justifies a sinner completely by grace through faith, as opposed to a justification by grace through faith plus meritorious works. Taking this passage and others, it finally struck him that this perfect righteousness is given freely to those who believe in Christ's atonement by faith. Once sinners look to the cross in faith and repentance, the perfect righteousness and obedience of Christ is transferred to their account and they are declared by God to be just. It is a judicial decision. They are declared justified because Christ's righteousness becomes the sinner's righteousness, and Christ's perfect obedience to God's law becomes the sinner's perfect obedience to God's law. It is all by grace. The wrath of God is removed and the guilt is erased by the blood of Jesus Christ. This insight had a decisive impact on Luther. He experienced in the grace of God in Christ a peace and security in his salvation that he had struggled ten years to find.

The distinction between justification and sanctification is one of the great contributions of the Reformation. Of course sanctification is a lifelong process. We struggle to overcome our sin nature, we strive to take on the character of Christ, and obey the law of God. But we know that in this life we will never attain final and complete sanctification. Sanctification is a lifelong progression. Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy fold justification into sanctification. For them, justification is a lifelong endeavor just like sanctification. This is incorrect. Justification is once for all, it is already accomplished. For the baptized Christian, justification is a done deal. Romans 5:1 says, "having been justified by faith we have peace with God." Romans 1:16 states, "The just shall live by faith." It is the Reformation understanding that offers assurance of salvation, freedom from guilt and despair, and the peace of Christ.

The English Reformation validated Luther's view. As Article XI of the Thirty-Nine Articles asserts: "That we are justified by faith only is a most wholesome doctrine, and very full of comfort." The reformation doctrine of justification by faith alone really means the justification of God's chosen people by Christ alone. This is not some cold, abstract doctrine for speculation. It is a vital truth that brings us comfort and joy as we rest in the assurance that we are God's children by grace. It was for that purpose that Christ shed His blood on the cross.

On this Reformation Sunday let us salute the courage of those who spear-headed the Reformation. They struggled valiantly for the truth. Some of them shed their blood and paid with their lives to secure a Church firmly established upon the Gospel of grace and the infallible authority of Scripture. The color red symbolizes the blood of Protestant martyrs shed during and after the Reformation. Luther's struggle with sin was no psychological neurosis. Sin and guilt are real. We are all sinners deserving of Hell and unworthy of Heaven. If salvation depended upon our own efforts even a fraction of a percentage point, we would be eternally lost. In Jesus Christ, God's grace comes to us 100%. If you are in Christ, you are justified. You have peace with God through your Lord Jesus Christ. It is fitting on this day that you thank God for your justification in Christ. Give Him your gratitude as you come forward to partake of the Eucharist. Come now and receive freely the body and blood of Jesus Christ given for sinners.

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