-The Protestant Reformation and the Church

The Protestant Reformation and the Church THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION AND , THE CHURCH
E. W. McMillan

Ladies and gentlemen: I standat the end of one hundred hours of special labor, conscious that I must answer to God for every word of this address.

History offers information of a wide scope. It offers thrills from the Pilgrim fathers, searching for wealth and freedom. Its pages tell of daring desperadoes. They tell of humble, suffering people, searching for gold. But among history’s most colorful years since New Testament times are those five centuries which culminated in the Protestant Reformation. Brave souls waded through fire and blood, searching for light rays on the sacred page. Each in his search veered at times from the right and erred in judgment upon major matters, but the search went steadily on and the perseverance was nearly divine. The two major questions forming the basis of all thought were these: First, Shall children of God have freedom of thought, speech and worship or be mere parrots of clerical hierarchy ? Secondly, Shall congre­gations of disciples be independent?

Disputants in all controversies yielded themselves at times the instruments of selfishness, prejudice and cur­rent philosophies. We are amazed at their wide vari­ance from definitely stated truths. But we thank God for the doors they opened, for the enemies they wound­ed and for the heritage of faith they left us. We also pray God’s mercy upon their blindness, as we hope our children will do for us. Our study will reach across five centuries, ending with the nineteenth. Crossing these, we shall meet Zwingli, John Calvin, Martin Luther, the Wesleys, John Knox, Roger Williams, the Campbells and others as heroes of the Reformation. Protesting against the abuses in Catholic, bodies—Greek and Roman—those men produced the denominations we know to-day as Lutherans, Presbyterians,, Episcopalians, Baptists, Methodists, Disciples, and other minor bodies.

Like a small stream, oozing from beneath a stone on a mountainside,' gradually enlarging itself and gaining momentum until it becomes an Amazon, single voices of protest began in the early part of the fourteenth century and grew in number until they shook the entire Catholic world and wounded the powers of the papacy. The year of thirteen hundred A. D. knew two para­mount, antagonistic religious organizations—the Greek or Eastern Catholic church, ;and the.Roman, or West­ern Catholic church. Their memberships numbered into the millions. The Roman Catholics claimed the pope, seated on his throne in Rome, was enabled by divine power to utter dictums as infallible as those spoken to the apostles of Christ. They did. not claim him infallibly perfect as a man but said that the laws given by him and his col­lege of cardinals were as binding as the New Testament scriptures. They also believed that infants were born in sin, that a state between death and the resurrection, called the Limbo of Infants, existed as a place of pun­ishment for all infants who die without Catholic bap­tism and the last sacrament in death. They believed that all men must be purged between death and the res­urrection of taints of sin left upon their souls at death, that a placed called “purgatory” was prepared for this purpose and that man’s duration therein could be short­ened by the prayers of the priest. The ministry of the priest included saying mass at stated intervals, baptiz­ing infants and adults (they practiced sprinkling for baptism), administering the last sacrament at death to both infants and adults, the forgiveness of sins to penitent church members and praying for the dead. Sums of money, often large, were paid the priest by sorrowing loved ones that he might pray out of tor­ment departed friends. They believed also that the elements of the Lord’s Supper became the literal flesh and blood of Christ when the priest blessed them. This change of elements was called “Transubstantiation” and it formed a major basis of the controversies in succeeding centuries.

Someone has well said that, “Whatever the Roman Catholic believed, the Greek Catholic denied.” They denied the doctrines of purgatory, transubstantiation, hereditary sin limbo of infants, sprinkling for baptism, instrumental music in worship, indulgences and ex­treme unction. They also denied papel supremacy, though their own patriarchal form of government was little nearer scriptural, if any.

Miftor religious bodies of this century were the Albi- genses and the Waldenses. Originating in the twelfth century, without a formulated theology, unostentatious and simple in manners but tinged with a mystic philos­ophy, the Albigenses existed mainly as a protest against the extreme moral corruption of the Catholic clergy. Peter Waldo, a rich merchant of Lyons, estab­lished the Waldensean movement. Adopting the Albi- gensean protest against moral corruption in the clergy, the Waldenses added remonstration against Catholic ecclesiasticism and pleaded for the Bible as the only guide in religion. Both movements suffered an amaz­ing amount during the bloody Inquisitions The most effective voice yet to be heard was that of John Wickliff, 1330-1384. Educated in the Roman reli­gion and trained for their clergy, he was often favored by the Pope. At the age of forty-five he was shocked at the moral corruption in the clergy, and within five years more had come to question the entire Catholic faith. His one great achievement was the translation of the Bible from the Latin Vulgate into English, giv­ing the Bible to the common people.

John Prague and John Huss, 1370-1415, joined these protesting movements against papal supremacy, doc­trines and moral corruptions. In return, Catholics burned them at the stake and scattered their ashes to the wind.

Far from a strictly New Testament order were the teachings and practices of these men. Their Chris­tianity was mixed with personalities and selfishness. But the God who captured a heathen poem for Paul’s use on Mars Hill could use the truths urged by these men, the zeal of the Mystics and such other men as Erasmus to kindle the fires which later lighted the road back through the dark centuries of Catholicism to the days of the apostles. Heroes looming before us now are Zwingli, Luther and Calvin.

Ulric Zwingli was a Swiss, born January 1, 1484. Reared and educated in Catholic theology, he was a priest for twenty years. But his honest heart more and more inclined toward reformatory ideas. Even a protest from the bishop of Constance could not stop his eloquent voice. In Zurich, he removed all statutes and pictures and substituted for ritualisted mass the simple observance of the Lord’s supper. But a Cath­olic army compassed this town in 1531, killed Zwingli, cut his body to pieces, burnt it with the bodies of swine and scattered the ashes in the wind. No madness is so mad as the madness of a theologian who cannot prove his doctrine. No blindness is so blind as that blindness which does not want to see the truth. The German, Martin Luther, was the next exponent of the Reformation. Trained for a priest, he became a devout Augustinian monk. As such, he studied care­fully the Holy Scriptures. Luther’s three points of attack upon Catholicism were transubstantiation, papal supremacy and the sale of indulgences. With amazing courage, Luther fought. And his inconsistencies were fully as amazing. He said, “Faith without any ante­cedent love justifies.” He further said, “The life is far less important than the doctrine” He raised an army and shouted, “To Rome; hang the pope.” He indorsed all the divorces and further marriages neces­sary to produce personal happiness. He recommended bigamy. His personal enmity was such that he and Calvin were not allowed to meet when mutual friend sought a reconciliation of their religious ideas in the same town. Intermediaries went to and fro between them, delivering messages, but with no good results.

Luther developed three main constructive doctrines. They were: Justification by faith, the Holy Scriptures as sole religious authority, and the right of private opinion. Unalterably, he clung to the first. He inter­preted the second to the point of drawing up articles of faith as binding as was Catholic theology. He insisted upon the third in freeing himself from the Catholics but was wholly unwilling to apply its prin­ciples to those who dissented from his views.

Luther’s most spectacular contemporary—colleague in revolt from Catholicism but opponent in theology— was John Calvin. Calvin is known supremely for his “five points” of theology. He said (1) that humanity inherits Adam’s guilt; (2) that man is totally depraved at birth; (3) that God decreed before time that certain persons, irrespective of their will or merit, shall be saved and that others shall be lost; (4) that God, in his own good time, will save the elect; and (5) that no child of God can possibly be lost. John Knox drew up articles of faith, strongly Calvinistic, which served until the Westminister Assembly, 1647. Calvin’s pun­ishment of dissenters equaled that of Rome. His once good friend, Servetus, was burned at his behest. From the work of Martin Luther sprang what we now know as the Lutheran church, who hold substan­tially the view he advanced with an added Modernism, rank and rotten. Calvin’s efforts crystallized what we know as the Presbyterian church, whose views are strictly Calvinistic. The Church of England, known in America as the Episcopal church, sprang out a disagreement between the pope and England’s king, Henry VIII. The king wanted to divorce his wife without a cause and marry another. The pope said “No.” Exasperated from papal abuses financially, morally and spiritually, the king added these to his displeasure of the pope’s reply, called Parliament together and secured their vote to free England from Catholicism. The king and Par­liament were declared the head of the English church. Under them, an episcopal form of church government was instituted, modeled after the Roman church. The “Book of Common Prayer” was ratified as their creed in 1789 on October 16. It requires that each member individually receive it as the liturgy. It affirms that all men are born in sin and calls upon its members to pray his special mercy upon the sinful nature of the infant in baptism. Persons becoming members sub­scribe these doctrines, true or false.

Baptist bodies have a varied history. In the third century a group known as Anabaptists existed, but these have no connection with modern Baptists. Among other departures from apostolic doctrines, sprinkling for baptism had appeared and was practiced with lim­itations. Wide protests appeared, some making it a test of fellowship. Anabaptists required that all who would affiliate with them must be baptized if their former baptism had been sprinkling. Moreover, Aug­ustine, a teacher in the western church, taught that even children playing baptism for shere amusement, provided the candidate went through the form used by the priest, might observe scriptural baptism; that a child so sprinkled would receive the same grace ob­tained when the minister officiated. Turtullian of the eastern church negated this doctrine. Here is the first recorded germ of division between East and West —Roman and Greek Catholics—on the subject of bap­tism. “Anabaptist” simply means that these people were against the practice of sprinkling for baptism. Though not affiliated with either Catholic group, they agreed with the eastern branch on this point.

Baptists known by us today arose in England in the sixteenth century. Though divided into about fif­teen sects, we group them into “General” and “Parti­cular” Baptists. The latter are Calvinistic in theology, believing in foreordination, inherited sin, the miracu­lous operation of God’s Holy Spirit in conversion. In America, we know them as Primitive Baptists. The “General Baptists” are American in theology, believ­ing in the freedom of the will, conversion by teaching and affirming the possibility of apostasy. Our Mis­sionary Baptists are a mixture of the two. Having modified their views after embarrassing quarters through their debates of the last half century, they seek a modified view of “Effectual calling,” deny total depravity, but stoutly affirm the final perserverance of the saints. Nothing for baptism is valid with them except immersion at the hands of an ordained Baptist pastor, though heaven may be obtained without even that.

Baptists constitute the only denomination we have yet studied who have even a semblance of right to claim religious freedom. Theoretically, they are inde­pendent individually and congregationally. But they are entitled only to their claim. The power of their conventions carries a public sentiment under the cloak of loyalty equal to a written creed. In America, where Baptist doctrines were introduced by Roger Williams and Ezekiel Holliman in the seven­teenth century, this denomination maintains sixteen seminaries, fifty-five senior colleges and universities, thirty-eight junior colleges and sixteen academies. They have a zeal for God but not altogether according to knowledge. In the early seventeenth century, the Wesleys, mem­bers of the church of England, tired of formalism, urged a more genuinely spiritual atmosphere in wor-' ship. As students, they adopted systematic method for study and worship. Their fellows dubbed them “Methodists.” Rut their numbers grew. Though never so intended by them, their efforts resulted in the Methodist church, separated today into about sixteen factions. Their church government is episcopal, pat­terned after the Roman Catholics and the English church. “Neither congregational nor individual inde­pendence is known among them. Their discipline de- lares that God has neither body nor parts, declares that Christ died and arose from the dead to reconcile God to us, whereas the Bible declares the opposite, and it affirms that man is justified by faith only though James says he is not. And applicants for Methodist membership subscribe and agree to support these church doctrines, true or false. In the early nineteenth century, a movement, under the leadership of Thomas and Alexander Campbell, Barton W. Stone, and others, took form in America, known in history as “The Disciple Movement/’ The Campbells dissociated themselves from the Presbyter­ians and joined for a while with certain in the Bap­tist communion, who also were grieved over the reli­gious conditions of their time. Thomas Campbell’s Declaration and Address clearly recognizes all denom­inations as churches of God, regardless of tenets and practices. That view was too broad. Furthermore, Mr. Campbell led in the formation of a society for the spread of simple New Testament evangelism. We can not indorse that society. Alexander Campbell makes conversion wholly intellectual and almost mystically philosophic, failing to recognize the emotional. I do not believe that doctrine without modifications. But their basis of unity was sound, because Scriptural.

At’ this point, I invite you to journey with me through six centuries of Bible history for a parallel. Israel’s first king began humble but died haughty and presumptuous. David lived a noble life, with one ex­ception. Solomon’s humility at inauguration soon shift­ed and was lost in idolatry. The nation had started downward. Through four hundred years, we trace the divided kingdom. Israel had nineteen kings. Not one was good. Judah had twenty. About seven could be praised. We carefully follow God’s efforts at reform. Elijah predicted three years of drouth and it came. The widow of Zarephath was blessed for her care for him. We walk with him up Mt. Carmel to see God’s fire attest that Elijah was divinely commissioned. We watch the cloud out over the Mediterranean become a deluge and end the drouth. Still God’s people go down­ward. The chariots of God bear away Elijah in our presence and we behold Elisha succeed him. Under his simple direction, Naaman dips seven times in the Jordan and heals his leprosy. Still the nation goes downward. Jonah moves a hundred and twenty thou­sand heathen in Ninevah with one sermon, but a doz­en prophets preaching every day cannot change God’s own people. Still they plunge downward. Isaiah pleads, “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be made like wool; though they be red as crimson, they shall be as snow.” Jeremiah laments, “0 that mine eyes were fountains of tears, that I might weep day and night for my people.” Still they downward hasten. At last, God moves a heathen king, Nebuchadnezzar, to capture his people, rob their temple and burn their city, then hold them captives seventy years. With their city in ashes and his name a hiss, God remains silent, just that his people might be refined. It was Danieln Who finally confessed Israel’s sins and prayed to go back home. And it was a glorious day when God moved Cyrus to say, “All Israel may go home.” We are moved as we watch them pack and prepare . Old men and women are happy and the children gleeful; waiting for the departing day to come. Ezra and Nehemiah lead the movements. But more than seventy years are re­quired to finish the wTork. Compromises must be re­jected, debris cleared away, foundations laid, mixed marriages broken up and super-structures built. It required a Nehemiah to revive and push to culmina­tion the work of restoration.

If God would move a heathen king to start a move­ment back home and be patient through seventy years until reconstruction was complete, it might not be in­consistent to believe that, in our Restoration move­ment, he would use men largely blinded with religious error to reveal “Here a little and there a little” until the walls of Zion have been rebuilt and his glorious worship restored. The Nehemiah of the Reformation is the Campbell movement. “Back to the Bible” was its plea. Every point in Calvin’s theology denied the freedom of both the individual and the local church. Creeds written by men imposed uninspired interpreta­tions as matters of faith. Every existing form of church government bound similar imperfection and thereby rendered impossible the freedom intended in the “Whosoever will” of the Holy Scriptures. There­fore, these Nehemiahs said: “Do away with all human names for churches of God, burn all creeds and take the Bible as the only rule of faith and practice, return to the simple New Testament form of church govern­ment, insist only upon essentials as matters of faith and exercise charity in matters of opinion. The movement was never intended to start another church, nor is that its purpose today. Its purpose was the removal of all causes of division, the reformation of all religious bodies doctrinally and morally and the unity of all God’s people upon the Bible. That is the purpose of the movement today. The greatest heroes since blew Testament times have been those who stood bravely against public sentiment for plain unostentatious faith and practice. The only two bonds of union known are: External authority, demanding conformity, and ::nner urge, born of fra ternal love and patriotic, reverence. The one is cold, unnatural, unreal. The other is warm, natural and genuine. God’s heroes are the men and women whose warm hearts keep the fires of Bible faith burning. Our task is more than a reformation of reforma­tions. It is more than the restatement of doctrine so well outlined a century ago. We owe our children and our God the doctrine they taught purged of its imper­fections. And more, we owe a doctrine flavored of mercy and love. Who deviates as to truth or descends as to sublimity of spirit or nobility of purpose is an unworthy servant.

Justification by faith a doctrine full of comfort. It makes impossible Galvin’s doctrines of total deprav­ity, foreord1 nation and effectual calling. But saving faith is exercised not in the joy that it disproves such errors but rather that it unlocks the stores of divine mercy.

Repentance, being both cessation of evil doings and remorse for sins past, both exalts the penitent with men and elevates his standing with God. But true re­pentance is comparatively oblivious of such exaltations and even almost wishes them unreal. It comes as a fruit of faith, yet it argues less of its place as to order than it prays for its genuineness.

Doctrinally, baptism is a burial >n water, without which no responsible ahen has promise of pardon. But baptism is more than submersion. It is more than compliance with church expectations. It is more than compliance with (tod’s commandment, understanding such to be a condition of pardon. Love for God does not begin on the other side of baptism. “Faith with no antecedent love” does not justify. Sorrow* for sin does not precede a love for him who forgives. “I am nothing without love” applies to the sinner as well as the Christian. The Savior said ail the law nangs upon love for God and man.

Transubstantiation we believe to have originated in Catholic Mysticism, but, true or false, that part is in God’s hands, and he does his part well. A worshipping mind, at the time of communion, argues neither Cath­olic transubstantiation nor Lutheran Consubstantia- tion. It makes sure of its own pure self, “In memory of him.” Our part is God’s doctrine given to the world in humility and with love. The church today if confronted with two equally precarious extremes. The ultra liberal extreme, deter­mined to avoid sectarian bigotry, extends its arms be­yond the limits of truth and sacrifices eternal princi­ples. The ultra-conservative, resentful of and deter­mined to avoid these sacrifices, withdrawn from even legitimate methods and becomes incased with wilful lethargy, stifling the spiritual atmosphere. We xnust avo1 d both extremes.

Let us know that not all sectarian dogmas are bound within the lids of books. Let us know that not all hu­man creeds, were formed in public councils. Let us know that the men who published human creeds were not by nature, of necessity, more given to dogmatism or religious dictatorship than we. Let us know, that we are susceptible to all the errors religious thinkers have made from the death of John the apostle to the close of the Reformation period. In fact, shall we say and should we say that the reformation, inside and out, is closed? Let us know that true loyalty unto God consists, in supporting every righteous cause. Its test is not the support of one religious publication, one orphan’s home, one missionary, and one religious, edu­cational institution, opposing another merely because it is not our favorite. It consists in supporting all of these financially, morally and, more devoutly, if pos­sible, in prayers. Let the individual know that he may secure every helpful suggestion possible from religious periodicals, from public sermons or private conversa­tion and from Bible classes designed for that purpose. But let him also know that his chief seat of learning is to be from a personal search of the sacred page at the alter of prayer.

Sermons must be preached, therefore sermon out­lines are essential. Sectarian arguments must be an­swered and error must be exposed. Interesting things about the Bible are both scholarly and helpful. But the primary purpose of a religious school or all Bible classes is not teaching amateurs sermon outlines, or how to meet sectarian arguments. The primary pur­poses of Bible study are: To learn, not what men have said God said or meant, but what God really has said; to cultivate a deep reverence for what God has said because he said it; to develop a growing desire for more of his holy, high ideals; to learn what it means really and truly to trust God under all circumstances; to develop a deep appreciation of all his promises: to learn the meaning of repentance and self-sacrifice; and finally, to develop a genuine love for God and our fel- lowmen. He who learns these will know the truth and, with it, be able to meet the error. He will have ser­mons which the mere theologian or argumentarian can never have. And what he says will not be dry fodder, grown on the stalks of speculation, prejudice, or sec­tarian disputation. But the truth he knows, flavored with his burning love for God and man, will be the bread of life, broken to the hungry thousands. Our part as God’s people is the teaching of God’s doctrine, as his word, spoken in humility and with love.