Digging Out the Embedded Church - The Maranatha Community

Erasmus wrote he asserts, through one of the characters of a dialogue, „The Church is a body
of men who, however good they may be, are not infallible‟.
In 1517 Martin Luther (1483-1546), an Augustinian monk and lecturer at the new university
of Wittenberg in Germany, summarised in 95 theses a series of ideas for debate which
challenged accepted attitudes and practices of the Church. The issue of the validity of Papal
indulgences, bought to mitigate the Church‟s temporal punishment for sins, came to the fore,
and led to a whole host of Catholic practices and doctrines being questioned.
Luther‟s own journey to assurance of faith had come through reading the Bible in the original
languages (Erasmus‟s Greek New Testament came out in 1516) and his discovering that the
Scriptures taught that God justifies (sets right) the sinner on the basis of his faith in Christ
alone.
The newly developed art of printing enabled his ideas to spread quickly throughout Europe in
the form of tracts and polemical woodcuts.
Luther‟s views were condemned by Pope Leo XII, and he was excommunicated in 1521
when he refused to retract his beliefs. Luther‟s own peace of mind coram Deo („in the
presence of God‟) came through personal trust in Christ‟s sacrifice alone: he campaigned
against the superstitions of the folk religion of his day as also against a sacramental system
which he believed deprived people of direct access to God. It must be borne in mind,
however, that Luther was not the only priest in the Church in his day who had struggled
through to an experience of being justified by God by faith alone.
On the subject of Christian unity, Luther‟s view was that there were plenty of true believers
outside the Church of Rome. He knew Hus‟s views and approved of his stand against Rome.
He met the Bohemian (Czech) Brethren and generally admired them. He read the Greek
Fathers and knew they did not submit to the authority of the Bishop of Rome.
As for unity with Catholics, Luther was more cautious than some of his fellow Reformers.
For Luther it was not peace at any price. Catholics and Protestants met at Augsburg in 1530,
and seven Princes signed in favour of the Lutherans‟ Confession (the first Evangelical
Confession), drawn up largely by Philip Melanchthon, Luther‟s assistant, to try to conciliate
Catholics.
Much of the text of the Confession was on matters held in common by both Catholics and
Protestants (for example opposition to Anabaptism), but the particular Protestant insistence
on the place of personal faith for salvation was retained. The Confession made the plea that in
it,
„…nothing can be found differing from scripture, or from the Catholic Church, or from
the Church of Rome as we understand it from its (classical) writers. We are not
heretics. Our trouble is with certain abuses, which have crept into the Churches
without any clear authority. The ancient rites are to a large extent carefully preserved
among us.‟ 45
45 Rupp, E G and Drewery, Benjamin, ed, Martin Luther, Documents of Modern History, Edward
Arnold, 1970, pp 145-148.
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