REFORMED WITNESS
Volume I, October 1993, Number 10
The Church Today And The Reformation Church: A Comparison (Part I)
By Prof. David J. Engelsma
From a Pamphlet of The Same Title
Comparing the Protestant Church of the Reformation and the Protestant Church at the end of the 20th century may not remain a merely academic exercise. The subject confronts every professing Protestant with the calling to determine whether his church is faithful to her origins. If she is not, he must exert himself on behalf of her reformation. Failing in this, because of his church's obduracy, he must join himself to a church that is faithful to the principles of Protestantism, and thus to the Lord Christ.
As one of the creeds of the Reformation puts it, "it is the duty of all believers, according to the Word of God...to join themselves to this congregation, wheresoever God hath established it." All those who do not, "act contrary to the ordinance of God." This involves separating themselves from a church that "ascribes more power and authority to herself and her ordinances than to the Word of God, and will not submit herself to the yoke of Christ" (Belgic Confession, Articles 28,29). For some, a comparison of the Church of the Reformation and the Church today may be a painful experience, leading to radical action. As we make the comparison, it will help to keep several things in mind. First, we are comparing what we might call "the Protestant church-world" at the end of the 20th century with the Church produced by the Reformation of the 16th century. Even though this Church soon divided into two Churches, the Lutheran and the Reformed, there was a fundamental unity of early Protestantism, so that we may speak of a "Reformation Church." Second, it is assumed that the Church of the Reformation was the Church of Jesus Christ, the one, holy, catholic Church, as established in the world by God. She proved this by adhering to the Word of God. She was not faultless. She had not yet fully matured in Christ. But she was the true Church of Christ, "fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners" (Song of Solomon 6:10). She can, and should, be the standard by which Protestantism today is measured. Third, a comparison such as this runs the risk of an unfair generalizing. What an enormous entity is "Protestantism today"! What a bewildering array of denominations! What a baffling diversity! One danger in particular must be guarded against -- the "Elijah-error." In an idolatrous age, amidst an apostate Israel, the prophet despaired of God's Church, supposing himself to be the sole survivor of the people who worshipped God in spirit and in truth; "I, even I only, am left" (I Kings 19:14). Jehovah disabused Elijah of this notion: "I have left Me seven thousand in Israel..." (v. 18). The condemnation of modern Protestantism, vehement though it may be, must recognize that God preserves His (Protestant) Church today and that, even within denominations that are falling away from the Word of God, there yet are faithful individuals, faithful pastors and elders, and even faithful congregations. Fourth, our criticism of Protestantism as it appears in the churches today is not an exercise in mere party-strife; nor is it attributable to a narrow, partisan spirit. We love Christ's Church. We love her in her Old Testament immaturity; in her New Testament maturity; in her loveliness in the age immediately following the apostles -- the loveliness of doctrinal fidelity, of martyrdom, and of charity; in her agony in the Middle Ages, when the Devil and wicked men seduced her to become a whore; in her Reformation purity and beauty; and in her every manifestation today. It is love for the Church, chosen and precious, that compels us to the comparison so damning to Protestant churches today. By What Standard? The spiritual condition of Protestantism today is wretched. One cannot see in her that she is the daughter of the Church of the Reformation. Protestantism now very much resembles the pre-Reformation Church. Its misery is compounded by the fact that, like the Laodicean Church of Revelation 3, it supposes that it is "rich, and increased with goods, and (has) need of nothing." The evil of Protestant churches today is that they preach and believe another gospel than did the Reformation Church. The Protestant churches are weighed and found wanting, above all, in respect to their gospel, their doctrine. This is fatal, for a church's gospel is the essential thing. It is the gospel that makes a church the true Church of Jesus Christ. In his work, "Concerning the Ministry," Martin Luther wrote:The public ministry of the Word, I hold, by which the mysteries of God are made known (is) the highest and greatest of the functions of the Church, on which the whole power of the Church depends, since the Church is nothing without the Word and everything in it exists by virtue of the Word alone.
By this criterion, the best that can be said of Protestantism today is that it is nothing. The Reformation was the restoration of the pure preaching of the gospel. That tremendous Church-reforming and world-shaking event was doctrinal. It was the purpose of the Reformers, as it was the purpose of the Holy Spirit, to do away with another gospel (that is no gospel) and to restore the gospel of God revealed in the Scriptures. Although there were abominable practices in the pre-Reformation Church, they were not the cause of the Reformation. The cause of the Reformation was not the papacy, unbiblical and tyrannical as that institution is. Luther said more than once that he would have lived with the pope, if only the pope preached the gospel. Neither was the cause of the Reformation the outrageous immorality of the Church's leaders, from the greedy, whoremongering, humanistic, political popes and cardinals to the lowly priest living in concubinage. In his "Reply to the Letter of the Cardinal Sadolet," John Calvin explained why the Reformation occurred:(There are) many examples of cruelty, avarice, intemperance, arrogance, insolence, lust, and all sorts of wickedness, which are openly manifested by men of your order, but none of these things would have driven us to the attempt which we made under a much stronger necessity.
What was that "much stronger necessity"? Calvin continued:That necessity was, that the light of divine truth had been extinguished, the Word of God buried...
Already at the outset, in 1517, in his 95 Theses, Luther indicated what the Reformation aimed at, when he wrote, as the 62nd thesis:The true treasure of the Church is the holy gospel of the glory and grace of God.
The Reformation - Gospel We must, therefore, briefly note what that "holy gospel" was, in contrast with the "other gospel" that was destroying the Church. The gospel restored by the Reformation is the good news of salvation by grace alone, to the glory of God alone. This gospel, encapsulated in the epistle to the Romans, proclaims that the misery of every man is that he is a sinner, totally depraved and exposed to the wrath of the offended God (Rom. 3:9ff.). Man's misery is not the various earthly ills that always plague mankind -- poverty, oppression, war, sickness, and death, as a natural calamity, but his sin, especially his guilt before the judgment of a just God. His great need is the forgiveness of his sins and a righteousness that will stand up in the judgment of God. This forgiveness and righteousness is in Jesus Christ (Rom. 10:3,4). It becomes ours through faith in Jesus. When we believe on Him, God reckons Jesus' righteousness to our account. Our righteousness before God is nothing that we have done, or what we are, but only what Jesus has done for us and what He is on our behalf. Christ's people are justified by faith alone (Rom. 3:20ff.). This justifying faith is not the basis of God's forgiving the sinner; it is not a work of the sinner to earn righteousness; it is not the one condition that man must fulfill, in order to be saved. But it is the means by which God imputes Christ's righteousness to the guilty sinner and the instrument by which he embraces Christ, his righteousness. In fact, faith itself is God's gracious gift to the man who has it: "...faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God" (Rom. 10:17). This passage points out the vital role that the preaching has in God's great work of justifying His people. It is by means of preaching that the Holy Spirit works in men the faith that knows and trusts in Jesus Christ, the Savior, including the repentance that renders them needy. Also, it is in the preaching that God presents Jesus Christ to men, as the object of faith (Rom. 1:1ff.). Then, it is through the preaching of the gospel that God utters the divine verdict in the consciousness of the believer, to acquit him: "...I am ready to preach the gospel... for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth...for therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith" (Rom. 1:15-17). It was not one of the least charges of the Reformation against the pre-Reformation Church, that it did not preach. That Church did many things -- built cathedrals, went on pilgrimages, plunged into politics, and fascinated the people with pageant and liturgy; but it did not preach. If the means of the forgiveness that is the heart of the gospel is preaching, the one and only basis of forgiveness is the satisfaction and atonement of Jesus Christ. In His life-long passion, but especially by His death on the cross, Jesus paid in full for the sins of His people, and fulfilled all righteousness. The Reformation proclaimed the cross of Christ as redemption from sin -- effectual, substitutionary, bloody, sin-covering redemption (Rom. 3:24ff.). Just as it declared Jesus to be the eternal Son of God (Rom. 1:4), so the bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead proved the cross to have been the effectual acquiring of righteousness for those sinners for whom Jesus was delivered: "(He) was raised again for our justification" (Rom. 4:25). The source and foundation of this salvation is God's eternal, gracious election (Rom. 9-11). In Christ, God has chosen unto salvation a people from all the nations -- His Church. The grace of this election is peculiarly illustrated by the fact that God did not choose all men, but reprobated some, according to His own good pleasure. Salvation is wholly and exclusively gracious. The life of the man who believes this gospel will be a life of freedom -- freedom to serve God and his neighbor, in thankfulness, (Rom. 12-15). Rome's "Gospel" In contrast to the gospel stood the "other gospel" of Rome. That was the teaching that the sinner must save himself by his own works. The gross form of this teaching, against which Luther went to war in 1517, in the 95 Theses, was indulgences: selling the pardon of sins for money. But the root error was Rome's official doctrine that men could, and must, earn righteousness with God by their own good works. A man's righteousness with God consisted partly of the work of Christ and partly of his own work. Justification was by faith and works. What made it possible for a sinner to earn, or merit, salvation, according to Rome, was his possession of a "free will." Though fallen, mankind is not totally depraved; all men retain the ability to choose God and the good, and to cooperate with grace, when grace is offered in the Sacraments and in the Word. If a sinner will only exercise his "free will" properly, God will bestow grace upon him. By virtue of his own will and by virtue of grace bestowed, the man performs good works. On the basis of these works, as well as on the basis of Christ's work, God forgives the sinner's transgressions and pays him the salvation he has partially earned. "Free will" was fundamental for that "other gospel." Upon it, all of salvation depended. Even God's election of men to salvation in eternity (which the pre-Reformation Church taught!) was due to God's foreseeing who among men would believe and who would not believe. The life of the man who believed this "gospel" was bondage -- the bondage of the fear that he had not done enough to placate God, and the bondage of a service of God (often exacting, arduous service) from the motive of a slave. This doctrine, this "gospel," the Reformation condemned as "another gospel," in terms of Galatians 1:6-9: "If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed." It was not merely a faulty presentation of the gospel; but it was heresy -- Christ-denying, God-dishonoring, Church-destroying, comfort-robbing heresy. Galatians 5:2 proves the Reformation to have been right in this indictment: "Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing," that is, "If you add any work of man to Christ as part of your righteousness and as the basis of salvation, you destroy the gospel altogether, and whoever trusts in that work, in addition to Christ, will be eternally damned." The Condition of Protestantism Now how does the Protestant Church today compare with the Reformation Church, as regards the gospel? This is a proper question, because the gospel of grace restored by the Reformation is unchanging truth, the good news for every age. It is a particularly foolish and arrogant notion of some today that we "modern men" need a new gospel. But this is the same as to insist on, and create, a new christ and a new salvation. So the question is in order: Where does Protestantism stand with regard to the gospel proclaimed by the Reformation Church? The Roman Catholic Church today is the same as it was in the days of the Reformation. On the essential matter of the gospel, Rome has not changed; nor does she claim to have changed. The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, which condemn total depravity, denial of free will, justification by faith alone, the doctrine of a once-for-all sacrifice of Christ, and predestination; which damn those who teach and believe these truths; and which even bless the practice of indulgences, stand to this day as the official creed of Rome. The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) explicitly reaffirmed every Roman doctrine contested by the Reformation. One of Rome's own, the priest and author, Malachi Martin, gives the lie to the popular, Protestant pipe dream that the Roman Catholic Ecumenical Council, Vatican II, effected basic changes in the Roman Catholic Church. In his book, The Jesuits, published in 1987, Martin writes:...the intent, the effort, and the message of Vatican II were simple. They formed an attempt on the part of the Roman Catholic Church to present its age-old doctrine and moral outlook in a new way that would be intelligible to the minds of modern men and women. The Church changed no doctrine. It changed not part of its hierarchically structured bishops and Pope. It abandoned not one of its perennial moral laws. It affirmed all. (p. 477)
Rome is a false Church, proclaiming another gospel. But what about Protestantism, heir of the Reformation? Very early in its history, the Lutheran Church strayed from the truth and became a bitter foe of the Reformed Church over the doctrine of salvation by sovereign grace -- the very doctrine that was the central message of the Reformation and that Luther so vigorously defended in The Bondage of the Will. Soon after Luther's death, Philip Melanchthon, the leading Lutheran theologian, taught, in his popular work on theology, the Loci Communes, that the conversion of the sinner is accomplished by three co-operating factors -- the Word of God, the Holy Spirit, and the free will of man. In their confession, The Formula of Concord (1576), the Lutheran church paid lip-service to the doctrine of election, which testimony, weak to begin with, it promptly corrupted by an explicit affirmation of a universal will of God for the salvation of sinners and by an explicit denial of reprobation. She also launched a furious attack upon the Reformed doctrine of predestination, caricaturing it just as Rome has always done and slandering it as "false, horrid, and blasphemous," depriving godly minds of "all consolation." Today, much of Lutheranism shares in the advanced apostasy of Protestantism generally, denying such cardinal doctrines as the infallible inspiration of Scripture, creation, and the Virgin birth of Jesus. In 1963, international Lutheranism assembled in Finland, to formulate a statement on the crucial truth of justification. The conference failed, because the Lutheran Churches were unable to agree on the doctrine that Luther called "the article of a standing or falling church." Luther's fear that the Church would not be able to maintain the truth that is the cornerstone of the gospel has been realized in much of the Church that bears his name. In light of these developments, it is not surprising that Lutheran churches are presently engaged in ecumenical discussion with Rome and that both the secular and the religious press report that agreement has been reached on all main doctrines, including that of the Sacraments, and that only the issue of the papacy remains to be resolved. The Anglican Church ordains a bishop, the Bishop of Durham, who publicly denies the Virgin Birth of Jesus Christ, and thus His Deity, and who ridicules the bodily resurrection of the Lord as a "conjuring trick with bones." Antichrist sits in that temple of God, opposing and exalting himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped (II Thess. 2:4). As for the largest, "mainline" Protestant Churches in the United States, their apostasy from the faith once delivered to the saints is appalling. They have abandoned the gospel entirely. Man's misery is no longer sin, but poverty and physical oppression. The enemy is no longer the Devil of hell, but the capitalism of the West (never mind the communism of the Soviet Union), the government of South Africa, and the chauvinism of the male. Redemption is no longer by the blood of Jesus, but by social action, including violent, revolutionary action that sheds the blood of all "oppressors." The people of God are no longer the poor in spirit, but the materially and politically poor. Salvation is no longer peace with God, but earthly peace. Miserable examples are the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. and the United Church of Christ. The Presbyterian Church, spiritual heir of John Knox, the Westminster Assembly, the Hodges, and Thornwell, has officially shelved the Westminster Confession of Faith and replaced it with the humanistic Confession of 1967. Nothing more needs to be said. The United Church of Christ, recent amalgam of the Congregational Church (descendant of the Puritans and Pilgrims) and the Evangelical and Reformed Churches, is bold to advertise its defection from the Reformation. In 1966, one of its leading theologians, Douglas Horton, wrote a booklet, "The United Church of Christ," in which he explained his denomination to the world:...the bond which joins the United Churchmen to (Roman) Catholics is of the essence, and the differences between them are largely accidental.
Again:Often in the course of history theological issues which at one time divided the Church have faded eventually into nothingness or even become transformed into bonds of agreement. The doctrine of justification by faith was crucial to Protestants in the 16th century, for example, as was also the authority of the Bible. Yet, since today many Catholics and Protestant theologians see eye to eye on these matters, so, it is felt by United Churchmen, tomorrow may show us that differences which rule in theological thought today are on the whole, secondary, and susceptible of being resolved.
With reference to the Reformation:...many of the great divisions in Christendom were the result not of opposing theologies but of bad human relations...It is obviously for us...to substitute good for bad human relations.
On its own admission, the United Church of Christ has sold out its Reformation birthright, with specific reference to both the formal and material principles of the Reformation, the sole authority of Scripture and justification by faith alone. It now stands ready for union with Rome, with whom it professes to be essentially one. If we look to the Reformed Churches, heirs of John Calvin, for a clear, loud, certain, and fearless blast of the trumpet, against all this iniquitous departure, we are bitterly disappointed. They too have dropped the standard and are become traitorous. Of them too, it is true, as a version of Psalm 74 sings, "amid Thy courts are lifted up high... The standards of the foe... And impious hands with axe and fire... Have laid Thy temple low." The "axe and fire" are higher critical scholarship, universalism, and sheer world-conformity. Where we ought to find an unabashed defense of an inerrant, authoritative Bible, we find instead the admission of Scripture's fallibility; the denial of the historical truth of Genesis 1-11; and the insistence that much of the New Testament is the mistaken word of man (about the earthquake at the time of Jesus' resurrection, about the headship of the husband, about the exclusion of women from the offices in the Church, and about many more matters) rather than the Word of God. Where we expect the message of salvation by free, sovereign, particular grace to be sounded forth, as is required by these Churches' creed, the Canons of Dordt, there is instead a bold denial of predestination, limited atonement, and total depravity, or a deafening silence regarding these doctrines of grace. Where we expect to hear a ringing call to holiness, in obedience to all the commandments of God's Law, we hear instead from the degenerate sons of that "theologian of holiness," John Calvin, an approval of homosexuality. In the infamous "Report of the Commission on Church and Theology of the General Synod of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands, Bentheim 1981," these Churches speak of "many sincere Christian homophiles." They assert that:There will be... homophilial Christians who -- likewise in much struggle and prayer -- through a growing friendship find a genuine friend, male or female, with whom they are prepared and willing to share the joys and sorrows of life. Only that intimate union may create an atmosphere of trust and confidence in which people can give themselves to each other. They will also feel constrained to involve God in their relationship.
The Church may not condemn such a relationship. On the contrary, we must "accept one another in the ongoing process of understanding and reflection." Where we hope to see separation from infidelity and idolatry, in a faithful keep of the marriage-covenant with the Church's only Husband and Lover, Jesus, we see instead Reformed Churches in bed with the apostates of the National and World Council of Churches, or lusting after such carnal union, and shamelessly eyeing Rome itself. Indeed, they give signals that they, like the churches of the World Council, now desire the world religions and their gods. The Protestant church-world also includes the churches that call themselves "evangelical." They have not been backward in railing on Rome and in excoriating the "liberals." As their name indicates, they pride themselves on proclaiming the gospel (evangel is the Greek for 'gospel'). Nevertheless, a large part of "evangelical Protestantism," although it preaches about sin, Jesus, the blood, and heaven, has perverted the gospel. Its error is the lie of "free will." It holds that every man naturally possesses the spiritual ability to make a decision for Christ, to open up his heart to God, and to accept the offered salvation. It maintains that all of salvation, from election to final glory, depends squarely upon the will of man. Their revered representative is Billy Graham. This gospel is a different gospel than that of the Reformation; and it is another gospel than the gospel of grace of Scripture. It is not a whit better than the gospel of Rome.... There are, in fact, many "evangelicals" who proclaim a dependency of salvation on man who would have embarrassed Rome in the 16th century, and who would have given that old hawker of salvation, Tetzel, pause. Rome teaches that salvation is of man's running, that is, working; "evangelical Protestantism" teaches that it is of man's willing; both are equally opposed to the gospel's teaching that salvation is of God Who showeth mercy, as Paul declared in Romans 9:16. The apostle mentioned "running" here, because the Holy Spirit saw Rome coming; he mentioned "willing" because the Spirit saw "evangelical Protestants" in the offing. That the doctrine of free will is "another gospel," in the sense of Galatians 1:6ff., was the judgment of Augustine (cf. his "Anti-Pelagian Writings" in The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. V, Eerdmans, 1956). It was the judgment of both Luther, who, in his The Bondage of the Will, declared the issue of the bondage or freedom of the will of the natural man to be the basic issue of the Reformation, and of Calvin, who, in Chapters II-V of Book II of the Institutes, refutes those who teach free will, characterizing them as "enemies of divine grace," and their efforts on behalf of free will as the erecting of "their statue of free will," that is, idolatry. The Reformed Churches officially condemned free will as heresy at the Synod of Dordt (1618, 1619), in the Canons of Dordt; and the Presbyterians did so by implication when, in the Westminster Confession , they confess the bondage of the will to be the truth of the gospel (Chap. IX). In embracing free will, "evangelical Protestantism" has returned to the vomit from which Christ delivered His Church by the Reformation.
The conclusion of the article above is in our November 1993 issue.
It is not a whit better than the gospel of Rome.... There are, in fact, many "evangelicals" who proclaim a dependency of salvation on man who would have embarrassed Rome in the 16th century... The Whole Counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man's salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit or traditions of men... The Westminster Confession, Chapter I, Section VI. Chaper
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