I believe this post (which is more lengthy than normal) will be extremely enlightening to many people. Written by Dr. R. C. Sproul, this article is reproduced from Modern Reformation, Vol 10, Number 3 (May/June 2001), pp. 22-29.
Shortly after the Reformation began, in the first few years after Martin Luther posted the Ninety-Five Theses on the church door at Wittenberg, he issued some short booklets on a variety of subjects. One of the most provocative was titled The Babylonian Captivity of the Church. In this book Luther was looking back to that period of Old Testament history when Jerusalem was destroyed by the invading armies of Babylon and the elite of the people were carried off into captivity. Luther in the sixteenth century took the image of the historic Babylonian captivity and reapplied it to his era and talked about the new Babylonian captivity of the Church. He was speaking of Rome as the modern Babylon that held the Gospel hostage with its rejection of the biblical understanding of justification. You can understand how fierce the controversy was, how polemical this title would be in that period by saying that the Church had not simply erred or strayed, but had fallen — that it’s actually now Babylonian; it is now in pagan captivity.
I’ve often wondered if Luther were alive today and came to our culture and looked, not at the liberal church community, but at evangelical churches, what would he have to say? Of course I can’t answer that question with any kind of definitive authority, but my guess is this: If Martin Luther lived today and picked up his pen to write, the book he would write in our time would be entitled The Pelagian Captivity of the Evangelical Church. Luther saw the doctrine of justification as fueled by a deeper theological problem. He writes about this extensively in The Bondage of the Will. When we look at the Reformation and we see the solas of the Reformation — sola Scriptura, sola fide, solus Christus, soli Deo gloria, sola gratia — Luther was convinced that the real issue of the Reformation was the issue of grace; and that underlying the doctrine of solo fide, justification by faith alone, was the prior commitment to sola gratia, the concept of justification by grace alone.
In the Fleming Revell edition of The Bondage of the Will, the translators, J. I. Packer and O. R. Johnston, included a somewhat provocative historical and theological introduction to the book itself. This is from the end of that introduction:
These things need to be pondered by Protestants today. With what right may we call ourselves children of the Reformation? Much modern Protestantism would be neither owned nor even recognised by the pioneer Reformers. The Bondage of the Will fairly sets before us what they believed about the salvation of lost mankind. In the light of it, we are forced to ask whether Protestant Christendom has not tragically sold its birthright between Luther’s day and our own. Has not Protestantism today become more Erasmian than Lutheran? Do we not too often try to minimise and gloss over doctrinal differences for the sake of inter-party peace? Are we innocent of the doctrinal indifferentism with which Luther charged Erasmus? Do we still believe that doctrine matters?1
Historically, it’s a simple matter of fact that Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and all the leading Protestant theologians of the first epoch of the Reformation stood on precisely the same ground here. On other points they had their differences. In asserting the helplessness of man in sin and the sovereignty of God in grace, they were entirely at one. To all of them these doctrines were the very lifeblood of the Christian faith. A modern editor of Luther’s works says this:
Whoever puts this book down without having realized that Evangelical theology stands or falls with the doctrine of the bondage of the will has read it in vain. The doctrine of free justification by faith alone, which became the storm center of so much controversy during the Reformation period, is often regarded as the heart of the Reformers’ theology, but this is not accurate. The truth is that their thinking was really centered upon the contention of Paul, echoed by Augustine and others, that the sinner’s entire salvation is by free and sovereign grace only, and that the doctrine of justification by faith was important to them because it safeguarded the principle of sovereign grace. The sovereignty of grace found expression in their thinking at a more profound level still in the doctrine of monergistic regeneration.2
That is to say, that the faith that receives Christ for justification is itself the free gift of a sovereign God. The principle of sola fide is not rightly understood until it is seen as anchored in the broader principle of sola gratia. What is the source of faith? Is it the God-given means whereby the God-given justification is received, or is it a condition of justification which is left to man to fulfill? Do you hear the difference? Let me put it in simple terms. I heard an evangelist recently say, “If God takes a thousand steps to reach out to you for your redemption, still in the final analysis, you must take the decisive step to be saved.” Consider the statement that has been made by America’s most beloved and leading evangelical of the twentieth century, Billy Graham, who says with great passion, “God does ninety-nine percent of it but you still must do that last one percent.”
What Is Pelagianism?
Now, let’s return briefly to my title, “The Pelagian Captivity of the Church.” What are we talking about?
Continue reading
“But when our wickedness had reached its height, and it had been clearly shown that its reward, punishment and death, was impending over us; and when the time had come which God had before appointed for manifesting His own kindness and power, how the one love of God, through exceeding regard for men, did not regard us with hatred, nor thrust us away, nor remember our iniquity against us, but showed great long-suffering, and bore with us, He Himself took on Him the burden of our iniquities, He gave His own Son as a ransom for us, the holy One for transgressors, the blameless One for the wicked, the righteous One for the unrighteous, the incorruptible One for the corruptible, the immortal One for them that are mortal. For what other thing was capable of covering our sins than His righteousness? By what other one was it possible that we, the wicked and ungodly, could be justified, than by the only Son of God? O sweet exchange! O unsearchable operation! O benefits surpassing all expectation! that the wickedness of many should be hid in a single righteous One, and that the righteousness of One should justify many transgressors!”
The quote is from The Epistle to Diognetus 9, translated by Roberts-Donaldson. This text dates from early to mid 2nd century AD. It is an early indication that the doctrines of substitutionary atonement and double imputation were not first the product of the Protestant Reformation, but were held dear by the earliest generations of Christians. The author is unknown – he refers to himself simply as a mathetes “disciple”.
Guido de Bres is not a name that most people are familair with, however, thanks to a recently released children’s book, a new generation are being introduced to him. He is the main character behind the Belgic Confession, a wonderful outline and statement of biblical Christianity. His life story is certainly a fascinating one.
The following is a lengthy quote by Kevin DeYoung but something well worth the time to read:
Guido de Bres was born in 1522 in Mons, on the border between France and the part of the Lowlands which is now Belgium. He was the fourth child in a family of glass painters. As a young man he was apprenticed to a stain glass artist, but his life’s work was not to be in glass artistry.
While a teenager, he obtained a copy of the Bible (which was not nearly so easy to do in those days) and read it for himself along with some of the literature coming out of the Reformation. Before he was twenty-five, he converted to Christ and embraced the teachings of the Reformers.
He then moved, for a time, perhaps because of the threat of persecution, to London, which had become a haven for religious refugees. In London, he found a Reformed Walloon congregation (French-speaking citizens from the Lowlands). Here he studied for the ministry and heard great Reformers like a Lasco and Bucer.
In 1552, at the age of 30, he returned to the Lowlands and became an itinerant preacher. He ministered to a group of Christians meeting in secret in Lille (about 35 miles from Mons). The fellowship there called themselves “The Church of the Rose” and many of them would be martyred when Philip II came to power in Spain and called for a crack down on the Protestant heretics.
Much of the congregation fled to Frankfurt where there was a Flemish congregation. De Bres met John Calvin while in Frankfurt and from this meeting, he wound up spending two years studying Hebrew and Greek with the Reformer Theodore Beza, and then another year in Geneva studying under Calvin. Continue reading
Dan Brown may be a very good and interesting writer (his books have sold in the millions), there’s a reason why he will not engage in public debate (though challenged to do so by many) – he has everything to lose (much credibility) and nothing to gain – but scholars who know the facts are appalled by Dan Brown’s flimsy and unsubstantiated arguments, hid behind a veil of what he calls “historical fiction.” Just one example – he claims Christianity knew nothing of the Divinity of Christ until Constantine and the Council of Nicea and then “the Church” added the concept of Christ’s divinity to the New Testament (under Constantine’s oversight) so that he might unite the people under his rule in the Roman Empire. This is totally ridiculous and any scholar of history knows it.
Firstly, it would have been impossible to do this (even if he wanted to) as not even the Emperor had control over the New Testament manuscripts – they were not in one location but scattered throughout the Empire, both in large texts and small.
Secondly, lets remember the historical context. Continue reading
The last Sunday in October is traditionally known as “Reformation Sunday,” drawing from the date of October 31, 1517, when Martin Luther nailed his “95 Thesis” to the door of the Wittenburg Church in Germany. The Church door acted like a bulletin board, and it was not unusual for topics to be listed there for future discussion or debate. This seems to be exactly what Luther had in mind; a discussion of what the Scriptures taught regarding the 95 issues he was raising.
This idea that Luther simply wanted further discussion has been challenged by some, who think that all along, Luther simply desired to cause the biggest split in Church history. However, the evidence seems to suggest that Luther simply wanted further debate on the issues. Luther was still a loyal son of Rome, at least at this point, and he penned his 95 Theses, not in the language of the common people (German) to stir up the masses into a revolt, but he wrote instead in Latin, the language of the scholars.
Whatever Luther’s intentions or motives, what is clear that some students quickly translated Luther’s words into the common vernacular. Because of the recent invention of Guttenburg’s printing press, the words were then copied at an amazingly fast pace, until Luther’s words spread like wildfire throughout every hamlet, city and county within the nation, and in fact, right across Europe. The immediate effect of this was that it thrust Luther into the leadership role in the emerging Reformation.
Luther’s great hope was that the Roman Church would embrace the changes he saw that Holy Scripture demanded, but as he was to find out, such was not to be the case. Based on the Scriptures, he boldly proclaimed that salvation is by God’s grace alone received by faith alone, in Christ alone. Works therefore play no part in a person’s salvation (Rom. 3:28; 4:4,5; Gal. 2:16; Eph. 2:8, 9; Phil. 3:9) but are merely the by-product of a relationship with God established by God’s grace alone. This, of course, was not the doctrine of Rome and Luther was therefore summoned to appear at the Imperial Diet of Worms in 1521 (a “Diet” being “a formal assembly of princes,” and “Worms” being the town in Germany where they gathered). What was clear was that anyone who opposed Rome’s official teaching was to be regarded as a heretic, and the fate of a heretic was usually death. Luther, therefore, knew full well, what the result of opposing Rome might be. Continue reading