Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Celebrating the Reformation (2/2)

This morning I am going to the Transitional Cathedral for the funeral of Les Brighton, a friend for some 30 years and a recent, valued colleague for a couple of years when his last position before retirement was Theology House Administrator. Some readers here will have known Les and agree with a sentence a mutual friend wrote at the weekend, "Who can forget Les’s charm, whimsy, and acuity!"

Les was foremost a Bible teacher, a servant of the Word, who loved to delve deep into Scripture in order to prepare a sermon and, in recent years, to write a book on Romans. He was passionate about Scripture, thankful for God's grace and the joy of the Lord was his strength, especially through the last eight years or so as he fought cancer, beat it back, but, sadly, has finally succumbed to it.

Anyway, yesterday I promised a one line description of the Reformation on this 500th anniversary of Luther's Exocet exegetical missile fired against the ecclesiastical iniquities of his day. It comes via Les Brighton who pointed out to me a couple of years ago the splendour of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall brought to the TV screen through an adaptation starring Mark Rylance. In particular, as evidence of the brilliance of the insightful script writing, he described a scene which - unfortunately - I cannot pinpoint for you re the episode though I later saw it myself. In this scene Mark Rylance's character, Thomas Cromwell hands his wife a copy of Tyndale's New Testament, urging her to read it, and says, from memory, this line:

"You'll be surprised what you do not find in there."

That is my one line summary of the Reformation to ponder on this Anniversary!

8 comments:

Andrei said...

"You'll be surprised what you do not find in there."

But those themselves are the words of Hillary Mantel a 21st century novelist who rightly or wrongly is often assumed to be anti Catholic

And her protagonist who says them was a very tough Tudor Statesman and one time protege of Cardinal Wolsey

Cardinal Wolsey himself was a Tudor Statesman, one of the rare ones who had the luxury of dying in his bed, though if he hadn't his head would have been surely been separated from his body with an ax.

And all of this might lead to doubts about the reformation, it being not so much a religious movement but a political one and a remarkably bloody one at that. And it is not only Catholics killing protestants and protestants killing Catholics but protestants killing each other.

It has always confused me, burning and disemboweling people has never seemed Godly to me

Why did John Calvin have Michael Servetus burned alive?

I'm not being deliberately provocative here - this is a genuine source of confusion for me and something that delights those who hate the Church who bring it up

David Wilson said...

Burning people preceded the Reformation. It was the standard means for dealing with heretics. I have read that in Henry VIII's time, in England they were burning a few people each year. They were typically Lollards, following the tradition of John Wycliffe from 150 years earlier. The Catholics executed under Elizabeth were given the standard punishment for treason. The pope had told them that killing the Queen was a good thing to do.

I don't think the "Old Believers" in Russia were treated kindly, nor the Cathars in southern France. The Fourth Crusade, when it reached Constantinople in 1204, did not do much for ecumenical relations between East and West.

If the Reformation is associated with politics and violence, then it is in the mainstream of Christianity, alas.

It is, however, possibly true that it is for political reasons - the desire of the German princes to be free of the rule of the Holy Roman Emperor - that the Lutheran reformation took root in a way that the not dissimilar views of the Waldensians, Lollards and Hussites did not.

Anonymous said...

I will not celebrate until next year. The real Reformation began on 26th April 1518 with this--

http://www.bookofconcord.org/heidelberg.php

For a brilliant contemporary exposition of the Heidelberg Disputation that will deliver you from shallow Reformed and trivial pop culture misunderstandings of Luther's protest, see Tuomo Mannermaa's study Two Kinds of Love: Martin Luther's Religious World. His translator Kirsi Stjerna summarises it this way--

Anonymous said...

"Luther, in Mannermaa's treatment here, emerges as a unique theologian of love. His most central theological logical paradigms, such as the theology of the cross, justification by faith and salvation by grace, and *deus absconditus*, can only be understood wholly and to their fullest when set in the framework of the theology of love. Love, not "faith alone," is the actual key to understanding Luther's entire theology; faith without love remains an abstract principle in Luther's thinking...

"Already in his Heidelberg Disputation (1518) Luther defined true theology as the theology of the cross, which, in his treatment, is ultimately the theology of love. In contrast to the vain and fallacious theology of glory-theology that looks for God in all the wrong places without recognizing that the appearance of God in God's full glory would be inconceivable and unbearable to human beings who can only expect to see the backside of God-the theology of the cross appreciates the unfathomable, that God surprises us in God's radical and incomprehensible love for us feeble-in-ourselves ourselves unlovable creatures, who continuously fail to see or respond to God's creative life-giving love with the right kind of love. Divine life needs to be given, and is given, to those whom God first loves. Luther concludes that God loves us sinners not because we deserve it or are lovable but in order to make us lovable, which is God's utmost desire. God's love creates, redeems, and sustains, without ceasing.

"In that "radiation therapy," we receive godly love-because because of Christ's love, which we can believe with the faith that saves, the faith that also comes from God in Christ. Christ coming to us in grace, in all fullness, means a transformation and a new force that fills our beings and thus enables us to enter a relationship ship of love with our creator and fellow creatures, just as God has designed. Christ is the subject of that love, God's Love. In that love, we can experience oneness with God. Justification by faith-understood stood by Luther as our being made right with God and filled with God, becoming forgiven and fortified because of Christ, becoming full of God and transformed by God's love-can thus be most fully understood from the perspective of love. Being loved and becoming beloved and loving is at the heart of justification...

Anonymous said...

"Looking at the idea of love in Luther's theology, and appraising his teaching of the oneness in Christ in justification from that angle, we can indeed encounter the mystical heart of Luther. This recognition suggests significant continuities in the concerns and ultimate goals of the mystics and the reformer who was, after all, heavily influenced by late medieval mysticism, such as *devotio moderna* and the German Theology (the work he himself edited and translated)...

"The passion for Christians through the centuries has been the search to know God and for a personal relationship with God. Intimacy and unity with God are themes that Christian writers have explored consistently through centuries, with different visions for what we can expect from God in this life and the life to come, and what our options are in this regard. Luther shared these concerns and offered a vision much more radical than that of the dominant confessional Lutheran teachings. He boldly envisioned magnificent things to be in store for those loved by God and loving God. Oneness with Christ, the full presence of the Holy Spirit, godly life, and with that, the call to love as Christ loved, thus transforming the world with God's love...

"He thereby opens a new vista on justification as real oneness with God, with a radical Christ-centered holiness beyond human achievement or effort. Trying to explain this through the concept of faith alone is difficult, if not unsatisfactory; taking the concept of love as the basis, the "effective" side of justification opens up with more ease and leads to a more holistic perspective on the God-human relationship and the Christian life. This, and much more, Mannermaa invites us to ponder with this focused reflection on the basics of Luther's theology of love and its place in his doctrine of justification, and vice versa." (Kindle Locations 35-79).

BW

Father Ron Smith said...

""Luther, in Mannermaa's treatment here, emerges as a unique theologian of love. His most central theological logical paradigms, such as the theology of the cross, justification by faith and salvation by grace, and *deus absconditus*, can only be understood wholly and to their fullest when set in the framework of the theology of love. Love, not "faith alone," is the actual key to understanding Luther's entire theology; faith without love remains an abstract principle in Luther's thinking..."

Thank you 'Anonymous'!

"Though you have faith - enough to move mountains - but without love, it is NOTHING WORTH" - Saint Paul.

This aligns Martin Luther securely in the Gospel tradition of Jesus. In this way, I am at one with Martin Luther. A much better theology of the 'Great Love of God as Revealed in The Son' than that of many Protestants - including some of those whose faith seems to thrive on the prospect of punishment and the Wrath of God for sinners (other than themselves).

I guess Dear Martin had sussed out the Pharisees in the Roman Catholic Church who demanded money for indulgences; without even suspecting that future Protestants might forget that Jesus offers redemption for ALL who look to him alone for forgiveness and reconciliation.

Anonymous said...

Thank you, Father Ron. You may be interested in my comment to Nick on the other Reformation thread.

Bowman Walton

Anonymous said...

"I will not celebrate until next year. The real Reformation began on 26th April 1518"

Typical Yank - late for WWI, late for WWII, now late for the Reformation Quincentennial. SAD!