Martin Luther: Seduced by the Anabaptists

Like Paul, we struggle with the Word of God against the fanatical Anabaptists of our day; and our efforts are not entirely in vain. The trouble is there are many who refuse to be instructed. They will not listen to reason; they will not listen to the Scriptures, because they are bewitched by the tricky devil who can make a lie look like the truth.  -- Martin Luther



 Galatians 3:1

VERSE 1. Who hath bewitched you? In this sentence Paul excuses the Galatians, while he blames the false apostles for the apostasy of the Galatians. As if he were saying: "I know your defection was not willful. The devil sent the false apostles to you, and they tallied you into believing that you are justified by the Law. With this our epistle we endeavor to undo the damage which the false apostles have inflicted upon you." Like Paul, we struggle with the Word of God against the fanatical Anabaptists of our day; and our efforts are not entirely in vain. The trouble is there are many who refuse to be instructed. They will not listen to reason; they will not listen to the Scriptures, because they are bewitched by the tricky devil who can make a lie look like the truth. Since the devil has this uncanny ability to make us believe a lie until we would swear a thousand times it were the truth, we must not be proud, but walk in fear and humility, and call upon the Lord Jesus to save us from temptation. Although I am a doctor of divinity, and have preached Christ and fought His battles for a long time, I know from personal experience how difficult it is to hold fast to the truth. I cannot always shake off Satan. I cannot always apprehend Christ as the Scriptures portray Him. Sometimes the devil distorts Christ to my vision. But thanks be to God, who keeps us in His Word, in faith, and in prayer. The spiritual witchery of the devil creates in the heart a wrong idea of Christ. Those who share the opinion that a person is justified by the works of the Law, are simply bewitched. Their belief goes against faith and Christ.

Luther, Martin; Graebner, Theodore (2011-03-24). Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (Kindle Locations 1079-1090). Kindle Edition.

Was Bonheffer a Born Again Christian? Dietrich Bonhoeffer - Wikipedia

And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:3 NKJV)

Who was Dietrich Bonhoeffer?  Didn't he give his life for the sake of the Gospel in opposition to the Nazis and Adolf Hitler? And wasn't that proof that he died a saint and went on to glory?

That seems to be the opinion of modern Evangelicals and the "new" Calvinists.  Even late D. James Kennedy quoted Dietrich Bonhoeffer in regards to "cheap grace" versus being willing to literally die for Jesus Christ and the Christian Gospel message. But was Bonhoeffer saved? Is he in heaven? Judging from his writings and his theology that would be questionable. This is what Wikipedia says about his doctrine:

In his prison letters, Bonhoeffer also raised tantalizing questions about the role of Christianity and the church in a "world come of age", where human beings no longer need a metaphysical God as a stop-gap to human limitations; and mused about the emergence of a "religionless Christianity", where God would be unclouded from metaphysical constructs of the previous 1900 years. Influenced by Barth's distinction between faith and religion, Bonhoeffer had a critical view of the phenomenon of religion and asserted that revelation abolished religion (which he called the "garment" of faith). Having witnessed the complete failure of the German Protestant church as an institution in the face of Nazism, he saw this challenge as an opportunity of renewal for Christianity.

Years after Bonhoeffer's death, some Protestant thinkers developed his critique into a thoroughgoing attack against traditional Christianity in the "Death of God" movement, which briefly attracted the attention of the mainstream culture in the mid-1960s. However, some critics — such as Jacques Ellul and others — have charged that those radical interpretations of Bonhoeffer's insights amount to a grave distortion, that Bonhoeffer did not mean to say that God no longer had anything to do with humanity and had become a mere cultural artifact. More recent Bonhoeffer interpretation is more cautious in this regard, respecting the parameters of the neo-orthodox school to which he belonged. 

(See:  Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Wikipedia).

 

You might recognize the "Death of God" thing if you are an Episcopalian or Anglican.  John A. T. Robinson was an Anglican bishop and Thomas J. J. Altizer was an Episcopalian.  Both men were advocates of God is dead theology.

Bonhoeffer was an adamant proponent of Christianity as "religionless" and that the main purpose of Christianity is social justice on earth, not the eternal aspects of Christianity.  This is why modern Pentecostals and Charismatics will recite the mantra that Christianity is not a religion but a person.  The idea comes straight from neo-orthodoxy via Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth before him.  Furthermore, Bonhoeffer's theology has been used to justify the politcal movements of the American Civil Rights movement under Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Anti-apartheid movement in South Africa led by Nelson Mandela.  Both liberals and conservatives laud Bonhoeffer because he was martyred by the Nazis because of his opposition to their oppression and genocidal tactics.  But one has to ask if social justice is the sole focus or even the main focus of the Christian faith as a body of doctrinal propositions and teachings?

Was Bonhoeffer a biblical and born again Christian who is in heaven now?  That question has to be a resounding no!  Why would I say this?

Let me say first of all, at the urging of the pastor I read The Cost of Discipleship when I was a youth minister at a Free Methodist church in south Florida.  Arminians, Pentecostals and other holiness groups love to quote Bonhoeffer.  The Lordship Salvation crowd in the particular Baptist circles advocate this book and it's emphasis on holiness and works.  Ironically, when I have attended so-called "Reformed" Baptist services I thought I was back in the Pentecostal holiness circles!  The same Pentecostal jargon is used:  "anointing of the Spirit", gifts of the Holy Ghost, total transformation, a changed life, supernatural sanctification, etc., et. al.

The degree to which personal piety and relationship have replaced solid doctrinal teaching and the central teaching of the Protestant Reformation is truly alarming.  What this really amounts to is a return to the Augustinian/Pelagian controversy of the fourth century.  My, how heresy has a way of reasserting itself over and over again.  Ironically, Luther championed the Augustinian view against the semi-pelagian emphasis on works righteousness and personal merits of his day as well. Martin Luther is considered the father of the Protestant Reformation.

Ironically, Bonhoeffer rejected Luther's theology of two spheres of God's law:  spiritual and natural.  For Luther we are always obligated to obey the civil and criminal laws of the local government.  But, in Luther's time state and church were united in a theocratic union.  It was assumed that the nation in which one lived would live according to the decalogue or ten commandments as the basis for a summary of the moral law.  Luther said that in regards to nature we are to obey the law or suffer temporal consequences.  In regards to the spiritual aspect of the moral law Luther consistently said that no one will measure up to the standard required by God, namely absolute, perfect sinless obedience from birth and after conversion to Christianity.  That standard cannot be met because all are born guilty of Adam's original sin (Romans 5:12-21), all are born with total inability to obey God perfectly (Psalm 51:5; Romans 3:10-23), none are able turn to Jesus Christ in faith (John 6:37, 44, 65, and all commit actual sins from birth (Psalm 51:3, 4; 58:3) 

Moreover, neo-orthodoxy was an attempt to mediate between liberal theology and traditional and orthodox Reformed theology.  In the end neo-orthodoxy repudiated all five of the solas of the Protestant Reformation and ended up as liberal as the liberals.  Liberal theology demythologized Christianity and reduced it to sociological, political and morality/ethics in regards to social justice and the here and now.  When Hitler combined Nietzsche's atheism with dominion theology in the guise of social justice and a syncretism of liberal theology with theonomy the result was the national Evangelical churches accomodated to the culture and the political agenda of Hitler.  Moralism led to genocide.  Neo-orthodoxy tried to recover traditional values by appealing to the theology of Soren Kierkegaard and before him, Friedrich Schleiermacher.  Basically, a mystical and personal encounter with God through an existential revelation centers in the subjective aspects of revelation posing as objective according to Barth's theology is the focus of neo-orthodoxy.  Barth did not actually believe that Jesus existed in real history as we know it but only from the point of view of an "inspired" history or "inspired myth", much like modern neo-Calvinist views of folks like Michael Horton, R. Scott Clark and other "Evangelical" men who have really sold out to the moralism of the liberal left.

Bonhoeffer's answer to the cultural accommodation of theological liberalism and Bultmann's demythologization of the Bible was to repudiate "cheap grace", i.e. the law and Gospel distinction and justification by faith alone of traditional Lutheran and Calvinist and Protestant theology.  For Bonhoeffer the Gospel of free grace is "cheap grace".  Evangelicals unwittingly jump on the same bandwagon of "religionless" Christianity that rejects all propositional truth claims of Scripture in favor of an existential encounter with an ahistorical Jesus Christ, a Christ that is of mythological proportions.  The theology of neo-orthodoxy does not believe in the historical reliability of the inspired and inerrant Bible but rather in a history that is "inspired myth" or "inspired story".  Recently even Mike Horton, who paradoxically claims to believe in the historicity of Adam and Eve as real person in time and space, has endorsed the view that Scripture is an "inspired story", i.e. myth, drama, act.  (See The Christian Faith).

The modern Lordship Salvation crowd is basically preaching Wesleyan entire sanctification but the difference is that their entire sanctification takes place at the point of conversion and they make a decision to "make Jesus Lord" of their lives.  The idea that the Gospel is transformative is to confuse justification by faith alone with sanctification.

Needless to say, pietism rears its ugly head again.  Arminianism lowers the bar of God's absolute commands, commands which no one is able to meet with the 100% requirement of obedience (Matthew 5:17-48).  Modern Pharisees love to boast about how obedient they are and pray on the street corners and even how they are willing to be martyred like Christ (Matthew 6:5).   But even Peter failed that test!  (Matthew 26:34).  The disciples determined to follow Christ even to His death but were unable to even stay awake for prayer on the last night in Gethsemane!  (Matthew 26:41-47).

The further irony is that the very theology that Bonhoeffer was refuting, namely atheism, rears its ugly head through Bonhoeffer's own influence upon the liberal theologians in the Anglican church and the Episcopal church.  For Bonhoeffer, like Pelagius, obedience and doing the right thing--even to the point of martyrdom for a political cause or social justice--trumps the Protestant Reformation principles of sola gratia, grace alone, and justification by faith alone or sola fide.  John MacArthur, Paul Washer and a host of modern followers of Cornelius Van Til have sold out to a form of works righteousness and semi-pelagianism posing as Reformed theology.  Theonomy and dominion theology commit the same error by confusing civil and criminal aspects of the application of the moral law in society with the spiritual side of the imposition of the moral law.

Basically, the moral law does keep peace in society, even a society that is not predominately composed of born again Christians.  But to confuse natural law and the absolute demands of the moral law of God in the spiritual realm is to cross the line back from Augustinian theology into semi-pelagianism and even outright Pelagianism.

Of course the Christian does not have a right to sin or a license to sin.  But that is different from saying that Christians can attain some sort of supererogatory status of holiness by making a decision to "make Jesus Lord" of their lives.  Phoebe Palmer of the Free Methodist Church actually started this view when she made the logical connection between entire sanctification as potential and possibility (Wesley's view) to the view that entire sanctification can be claimed by faith and rests on a decision.  That decision is based on libertarian free will and for all practical purposes denies that sin remains even in the converted.  The dichotomy between "carnal" Christians saved by the skin of their teeth and sanctified Christians, who have reached a level of "total surrender" and the "higher Christian life" (reformed or Keswick holiness movement) and the Wesleyan doctrine of reaching a state of Christian maturity or a state of entire sanctification, is a false dichotomy.

The reason is that the first use of the moral law, that is the pedagogical use, never ceases.  The single purpose of the moral law is to convict sinners of their spiritual position before God as miserable sinners without hope of God's mercy or forgiveness.  God does not owe anyone mercy or forgiveness.  He owes us all justice, a justice that requires an eternity in hell for even one sin.  That's why grace is not "cheap".  Grace cost God the precious blood of His Son, Jesus Christ who died for all the sins of all His elect such that not one of their sins is not paid for and not one of the elect will be lost (1 Peter 1:17-21).  The idea that the price of redemption could be forfeited would mean that God could change who He is or renege on His promises.   That will never happen.  In fact Jesus was ordained for the redemption of the elect and it was never God's plan that salvation would be merely a potential based on our level of discipleship, obedience, sanctification, or any other personal accomplishment.  (1 Peter 1:20; Revelation 13:8; Ephesians 1:3-4, 7, 11).

The cost of discipleship is not what it costs you personally to follow Christ.  Rather the cost of discipleship is the price Jesus paid on the cross to purchase your forgiveness, pardon, justification, and sanctification.  What Jesus accomplished on cross guarantees not only the regeneration and conversion of the elect.  It guarantees their position as sanctified in Christ and their progress in dying more and more to the corrupt nature, albeit that progress is never enough to merit anything whatsoever.  This is why those who teach that sanctification is synergistic are in fact selling out to semi-pelagianism through the back door.

Anyone who thinks Arminianism is  anything less than than false religion and heresy is on some level compromising with heresy.  Modern neo-Calvinists and theonomists are inconsistent with Luther, Calvin and the Canons of Dort by their compromises with the semi-pelagians and even Roman Catholics and Anglo-Catholics as "brothers in Christ".  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Any so-called Reformed person who thinks Dietrich Bonhoeffer or C.S. Lewis believed the Gospel of grace and was saved is deceived and out of touch with both the Protestant Reformation and the biblical doctrines of grace, law and Gospel.





Sincerely in Christ,

Charlie J. Ray, M. Div.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

See also, Tim Challies' weak critique here: Counterfeit Bonhoeffer

Law Givers Promote Sin and Despair: Martin Luther

It is impossible for human nature to fulfill the law . . .   Martin Luther

Does that mean that Christ promotes sin? This is a Hebraism that Paul also uses in 2 Corinthians 3. To promote sin is to be a lawgiver or someone who leads us to the law, which teaches good works and love and that we must suffer afflictions and follow the example of Christ and the saints. Someone who teaches and requires this is promoting the law, sin, wrath, and death, for by teaching this he is only terrifying and afflicting people’s consciences and giving them over to sin. It is impossible for human nature to fulfill the law; indeed, in those who are justified and have the Holy Spirit, the law at work in the members of their body fights against the law of their mind (Romans 7:23). What will it not do in wicked people, then, who do not have the Holy Spirit? Therefore, a person who teaches that righteousness comes through the law does not understand what he is saying, and much less does he keep the law; rather, he is deceiving himself and others and laying on them a burden they cannot bear, requiring and teaching impossible things, and in the end he brings himself and his disciples to despair.


The real point of the law is to accuse and condemn those who live in complacency, so that they see themselves to be in danger of sin, wrath, and eternal death and may be terrified and brought to the brink of despair. Being like that, they are under the law, for the law requires perfect obedience to God and condemns all those who do not achieve this. It is certain that there is no one living who is able to do this. The law therefore does not justify but condemns (see Deuteronomy 27:26; Galatians 3:10).


Paul has good reason in 2 Corinthians 3 to call the ministry of the law the ministry of sin, for the law accuses consciences and reveals sin, which without the law is dead. Now the knowledge of sin terrifies the heart, drives us to despair, kills, and destroys (Romans 7:11). (I am speaking here not about the speculative knowledge of hypocrites but about true knowledge, by which we see God’s wrath against sin and feel a true taste of death.) That is why Scripture calls these teachers of the law and works oppressors and tyrants. Just as the slave drivers in Egypt oppressed the Israelites with physical servitude (Exodus 5), so these lawgivers drive people into wretched spiritual bondage of soul and in the end bring them to despair and utter destruction. They know neither themselves nor the force of the law. Nor is it possible for them to have a quiet conscience during great internal terror and the agony of death even if they have observed the law, loved their neighbors, done many good works, and suffered great affliction, for the law always terrifies and accuses, telling us we never did all that the law commands and that those who have not done everything contained in the law are cursed. So the conscience still has these terrors, which get worse and worse. If such teachers of the law are not raised up by faith and the righteousness of Christ, they are driven to despair.

This was also notably indicated when the law was given, as we can see in Exodus 19–20. Moses brought the people out of the tents to meet the Lord, so that they might hear him speak to them out of the dark cloud. A little earlier the people had promised to do all that God had commanded, but now they were afraid and fell back, saying to Moses, “Who can bear to see the fire and hear the thunder and the sound of the trumpet? If you talk to us, we will listen; but do not let God speak to us or we will die.” So the right place of the law is to lead us out of our tents—that is, out of the complacency in which we live—and stop us from trusting in ourselves and bring us into God’s presence, to reveal his wrath to us and to set our sins before us. Here the conscience feels that it has not satisfied the law, nor is it able to satisfy it, nor to bear the wrath of God, which the law reveals when it brings us into God’s presence like this—that is, when it makes us afraid, accuses us, and sets our sins before us. Here it is impossible for us to stand; and being thoroughly afraid, we flee and cry out with the Israelites, “We will die, we will die! Do not let the Lord speak to us! You speak to us!”


To teach that faith in Christ does not justify us unless we observe the law is to make Christ a minister of sin—that is, a teacher of the law, teaching the very same doctrine that Moses did. Thus Christ is no Saviour, no giver of grace, but a cruel tyrant who, like Moses, requires things that none of us can do. But the Gospel is a preaching of Christ who forgives sins, gives grace, and justifies and saves sinners. There are commandments in the Gospel, but they are not the Gospel but expositions of the law, and they depend on the Gospel.


Luther, M. (1998). Galatians. The Crossway classic commentaries (94–95). Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books.

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Glory be to the Father, and to the Son : and to the Holy Ghost; As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be : world without end. Amen.

Bear Grylls Christian campaign draws inquiries | News stories | Sydneyanglicans.net

Bear Grylls Christian campaign draws inquiries | News stories | Sydneyanglicans.net

Looks like celebrity gimmicks rather than confronting people with the Law of God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the focus of the Sydney Anglicans. Amyraldianism, like Arminianism, has more in common with theology from below than with God's revelation of Himself in Jesus Christ and the Holy Scriptures. Why would the church need to resort to celebrity appeal to get sinners interested in the Gospel? (Romans 3:20; Romans 7:7; Romans 3:1-8)

What Is the Difference Between Law and Gospel?

What is the difference between the law and the gospel?

Romans 4:16.

The universal depravity of our race is nowhere more evident than it is in the fact that we are all proud, self-righteous, legalists by nature. All men naturally cherish the foolish notion that we can, in some measure, atone for our sin and win God’s favor by our obedience to his law, or by some other works of righteousness we perform but it is all a vain delusion. It is this natural tendency toward self-righteousness and legalism that Paul constantly exposed and denounced. It was as common to the Gentiles as it was to the Jews. He declared as plainly to the Romans as he did to the Galatians, "that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law" (Galatians 3:28). Paul keeps insisting, in all his writings, that salvation is by faith alone, in Christ alone, that it might be by grace alone, without the works of human flesh. Paul opposed nothing so fully and constantly as he did legalism, and he opposed that in any form. He gave no place for the law in the house of faith (Read Galatians 4:21-31).

Why is the law/grace issue so important? The answer is obvious; Any mixture of law and grace is a total denial of grace (Romans 11:6). Almost all doctrinal error and religious heresy arise from man’s inability to distinguish between the law and the gospel. Blessed is the man who knows the difference between grace and works, gospel and law, very few do. The law says, "Do". The gospel says, "Done!" That is the difference. Legalism always attempts to wear the mask of grace but it always smells like works. The smell of the carcass is easily detected. Legalism will always enforce its claims, somewhere, with the promise of reward or the threat of punishment. It may talk about "love" and "faith", but legalism must have its "stick and carrot". At some point the legalist will either promise or threaten something, conditioned upon man’s obedience or disobedience. The gospel conditions everything on the Person and work of Christ alone!

From:  Free Grace

Seized by Grace: A Sermon by Dr. Andrew Purves Refuting Dr. Edith Humphrey

I was pleasantly surprised to hear Dr. Andrew Purves of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary speak on the distinction between Law and Gospel. He directly refutes his colleague, Edith Humphrey, who spoke at Wheaton College during the lauding of N.T. Wright's divisive doctrines on the New Perspectives on Paul.  (See Conference:  A Dialogue with N. T. Wright). He even says that we do not ascend to God on a ladder but God comes down to us in Jesus Christ!  I cannot help but think that Dr. Purves deliberately intended to refute Dr. Humphrey, who has recently converted to Eastern Orthodoxy from Anglo-Catholicism.  One has to wonder why Dr. Humphrey is on the faculty of a Reformed Seminary in the first place since her background is Arminian via the Salvation Army.  (You can hear Dr. Edith Humphrey's talk, "Glimpsing the Glory—Paul's Gospel, Righteousness and the Beautiful Feet of N.T. Wright," by clicking on the title, which seems a bit idolatrous to say the least).  The only thing which I could find that I disagreed with was his statement in the beginning of the video that it is not our faith in Christ that Paul is speaking of but the "faith of Christ." Clearly the ESV has the right translation of Philippians 3:9. At any rate, I found Dr. Purves to be an excellent preacher and one who is not afraid to speak against those who are preachers of Law rather than Gospel. 

Seized by Grace from Dennis & Barfety Design Group on Vimeo.

The Indicative Versus the Imperative in Scripture: Who You Are in Christ and What You Are Commanded to Do

"So many of us cavalierly gloss over what he has done and zero in on what we're to do, and that shift, though it might seem slight, makes all the difference in the world. Our obedience has its origin in God's prior action, and forgetting that truth results in self-righteousness, pride, and despair."

From: Become Who You Are: Indicatives and Imperatives of the Gospel

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son : and to the Holy Ghost;
Answer. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be : world without end. Amen.

http://www.eskimo.com/~lhowell/bcp1662/

www.reasonablechristian.blogspot.com

Christless Christianity

Michael Horton argues strongly that churches need to focus more on right belief and on the person and work of Jesus Christ rather than on "doing." Most pastors are more concerned with getting people to volunteer and "do" things for their local church. However, this is misplaced since without a real and solid understanding of our condemnation under the law of God we cannot understand the mercy and grace in the Gospel and the objective atonement where Christ died for the sins of His people. Only as Christians come to know their just due is damnation can they gratefully appreciate the forgiveness and propiation for their sins. And then and only then are they able to work for the cause of the Gospel out of a sense of devotion and gratitude rather than out of obligation, duty, and oppression. We begin to joyfully WANT to serve Christ when we truly understand how precious His shed blood really is.