One of the intense spots of up to date society is a well-liked podcast – The Rest is History – wherein two historians, Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, discuss a wide range of historical events. Attending a packed-out theatre in Sydney with the 2 of them a few months ago was testimony to the demand for history that they’ve engendered, or uncovered.
From a Christian perspective additionally it is great that they don’t ignore the spiritual – or what they have a tendency to call ‘the sacral’. So, it was with an incredible sense of anticipation that this week I looked forward to their five-part series on Luther. As a member of ‘The Rest is History Club’ I used to be capable of binge it prematurely of general broadcast and it was well price it – entertaining, stimulating, informative and thought frightening as ever. However, it was also enlightening in that it demonstrated how little even probably the most sympathetic of commentators grasp what biblical Christianity is about.
Let’s leave aside their inability to understand the difference between the Catholic (transubstantiation), Lutheran (consubstantiation), Calvinist (spiritual presence) and Zwinglian (symbolic) views of communion – I doubt that many Christians would find a way to articulate the differences. What astonished me was how they misunderstood a number of the basic teachings of the Reformation.
Sandbrook stated that Christianity is what the Church says it’s. He went on to say that if you happen to are going by Scripture, then Scripture can mean whatever you wish it to mean. He went further to say that the meaning of Scripture is obvious is ‘obvious tosh’. Except it is just not obvious tosh. In fact, what the Westminster Confession of Faith calls the ‘perspicuity’ of the Scriptures, the clearness of the Scriptures, is a basic and rational doctrine of the Christian faith.
The Bible is definitely clear on many things – that Christ died for our sins, that he was raised on the third day, that all of us need forgiveness etc. The incontrovertible fact that there are difficulties, or that some people will misuse or misinterpret what’s written no more invalidates the Bible than it could invalidate Tom and Dominic’s history books. And their books weren’t inspired by the Holy Spirit!
Luther never taught that what the Church or Scriptures say does not likely matter, but slightly that there’s individual conscience. He wrote a complete work, The Bondage Of The Will, on how human capability was limited and why we’d like the Scriptures and the Spirit.
Reading Luther through such a radical individualistic lens led Sandbrook and Holland to the claim that the statement ‘I do not know whether I feel in God, but I even have a private spirituality’ was essentially Lutheran. It’s all about ‘living your truth’. That could be the current Western cultural fad, however the attempt responsible Luther for it, with a view to have a historical theory for every little thing, is just improper. Luther was not such a subjectivist. He believed that there was objective truth – and it was to be present in Christ and Scripture. It is just not the case that Luther taught that you’ve gotten to have this sense that you just are certainly one of God’s elect. Luther, together with most of Christianity, taught that while feelings weren’t unimportant, they were a result of getting faith within the incontrovertible fact that Jesus Christ died on the cross and rose from the dead. The feeling may follow the religion, but having the sensation in and of yourself is just not what makes you a Christian.
Another bizarre concept that stems from a historical/sociological theory, slightly than theology or indeed historical fact, is that Protestantism results in atheism. It’s the old atheist meme – ‘you don’t think in 1000’s of gods; you could be like us and go only one god more’. It is seen as an inevitable progression: if we reject absolutely the authority of the Catholic Church, then it’s inevitable that we are going to reject the Bible, and due to this fact turn out to be atheists. It’s an interesting theory, but demonstrably false, not least within the incontrovertible fact that a whole bunch of tens of millions of persons are Protestants today and still consider in God.
The argument that Protestantism results in secularism has more truth to it, even though it does rely upon what you mean by secularism. If it simply means the separation of church and state, then that stems back to Jesus’s radical words, ‘give to Caesar what’s Caesar’s and to God what’s God’s’ (Matthew 21:22). Larry Siedentop’s Inventing The Individual, in addition to Tom Holland’s Dominion give us the background as to how Christianity as a complete invented modern secularism.
What astonished most in a five-programme series examining Luther and what he taught, was that Sandbrook and Holland unnoticed his most vital and radical doctrine – ‘justification by faith alone’. Luther got here to know that we are usually not saved by our own works, righteousness, feelings or experience but by faith in Christ – and Christ alone. Once you grasp this it liberates you. Know the reality and the reality will make you free.
Sandbrook claimed that Luther was a narcissist and that it was all about him. He clearly had not read Luther himself, who claimed “while I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends … the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did every little thing.”
As we have a good time this Easter weekend, I ponder how many individuals who comment on it, will understand what it really means. The Cross and Resurrection of Christ can’t be reduced to historical/sociological theories that fit our preconceived narrative. Once you grasp that ‘he is just not here, he’s risen, just as he said’ (Matthew 28:6), the world is turned the other way up and every little thing begins to make sense. The rest is theology!
