Material Principle – Page 2 – What Does This Mean?

Church Word #14: Faith

Encore Post: Faith is one of those “church words” that everyone knows and uses, but find hard to pin down. We use it to mean everything from a family of church bodies, to a system of things people believe, to trust in God, to accepting something is true, but that we cannot prove. Hebrew uses various forms of the word ( אמן — ‘aman— firm, trustworthy, safe). The word Amen comes from this same word. It means something like: “I believe that. I agree. It is true”) The Greek language uses one word for both faith and belief. (πιστεύω — pisteoo — to believe, πίστις– pistis — Faith) When the New Testament uses the word, it uses it for both what we believe in and our trust in God to keep his promises to save us.

Many Christians think of faith or believing in a different way. They think it means something like accepting as true and as facts things they can’t prove, such as “Jesus is God,” “God will raise us from the dead on the last day,” and other teachings of the Holy Scripture. They may understand passages like Hebrews 11 to mean this. (For example, verse 1: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”) What they miss is that most of the chapter is about what the Old Testament saints did because they trust God and his promises. James, the brother of Jesus, demonstrates how mistaken this view of faith is when he wrote: ” You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder! ” (James 2:19)

When the Bible talks about faith in God, (Saving Faith, Justifying Faith) it means a trust in God to keep his promises, especially his promise to save us. This trust is not something we create by things we do. It is created in us when the Holy Spirit comes to us through the Gospel, Baptism or the Lord’s Supper. (Romans 1:17, John 20:30-31, Ephesians 1:13, Romans 1:16-17) Our faith clings to Jesus, believing that his sufferings and death on the cross forgives our sins and gives us everlasting life. This faith responds to the Grace given to us in God’s Word and the Sacraments. It thanks God for his mercy, praises him and gives us the desire to serve God and our neighbors.

Rev. Robert E. Smith
Concordia Theological Seminary
Fort Wayne, Indiana

©2018-2019 Robert E. Smith. All rights reserved. Permission granted to copy, share and display freely for non-commercial purposes. Direct all other rights and permissions inquiries to cosmithb@gmail.com

Church Word #5: Evangelical

Encore Post: The phrase “Evangelical Lutheran” may sound strange to your ears. When you think of the word “Evangelical,” you think of Baptists, revivals, altar calls, accepting Jesus as your personal Savior, the rapture and many similar notions, measures and cultural traditions. Like F. C. D. Wyneken, you might think: “I don’t know whether it is of God or the Devil, but it is certainly not Lutheran!” You’d be right! This kind of Evangelicalism is not Lutheran at all.

You might be surprised that Lutherans actually coined the word “Evangelical.” It comes from the New Testament Greek word: εὐαγγελίον (euangelion, evangel) It means “good message, good news” — the gospel! At first, Lutherans did not call themselves “Lutheran” at all. Their enemies made that term up to suggest that Lutherans were not catholic or orthodox, but were heretics. Lutherans wanted to be known as gospel-oriented. Their faith was founded on the teaching that salvation is by faith alone through the grace of God alone for Christ’s sake alone. For centuries they preferred to be called Evangelical — and until the 1800s, when someone in Europe used the name Evangelical, Evangelisch, they meant Lutheran.

Like the word “Protestant,” which also used to mean Lutheran, other non-Catholics really liked the sound of the word. Many of them also cherish the gospel of salvation by the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross. They even like the phrase: “salvation by grace or faith alone.” So, even though they believe very different things than Lutherans do, they call themselves Evangelical. Since there are a lot more Christians of this tradition than Lutherans, they are the people that come to mind when people say “Evangelical.”

Unlike the word “Protestant,” however, Lutherans refuse to give up this word, because it summarizes what we believe so well. So, you will notice, we put the word in our church names, include it in our Baptism and Confirmation services and at other times. For the Good News is that it is not God’s will that sinners like us perish forever. So in the person of Jesus Christ, our Lord, he set aside all his power and authority, was born a man in the womb of Mary, bore our sins on the cross, paid their price by his suffering and death and rose again so that our sins might be forgiven, we might rise on the last day from the grave and live with him forever. All that packed into the simple word, “Evangelical.” So we use it proudly — but add the word “Lutheran” to keep from being confused with others.

Grace Alone and Scripture alone at Leipzig

It really was not about indulgences. The Ninety-Five Theses were a spark that ignited a debate about the place of the Pope and other church authorities. Luther’s opponents noticed the Reformer had challenged their authority when he criticized the abuse of indulgences. Luther had given German princes the excuse they needed to forbid the sale of forgiveness. Luther pleased Renaissance thinkers, who lived by the motto Ad Fontes (to the source) and put the allies of the papacy on the defensive. That is why the attack on an obscure monk consumed all of Europe and why Johann Eck led the charge.

Eck challenged Luther’s friend Andreas Karlstadt to a disputation about free will and grace. He did this hoping the Reformer would join the debate. His goal was to get the Reformer to admit he was attacking the Pope and his power. Duke George “the Beard” of Saxony offered to host the disputation in Leipzig. He pressured the University of Leipzig into organize the event. On 27 June 1519, the disputation opened with a mass at St. Thomas Church (where two centuries later Johann Sebastian Bach would be a Church musician and composer) The event itself was held in the great hall of Duke George’s castle.

Karlstadt and Eck began the debate by discussing the role of free will and grace in the salvation of sinners. Karlstadt argued that a sinner had nothing to contribute to his own salvation, but was completely dependent on the grace of God. He defended this doctrine on the basis of the Scriptures. Eck responded that the Pope and Church tradition taught that grace was necessary, but there was something in a person that worked with it to save him. Karlstadt countered that Scripture is the final word on such matters. The Wittenberg professor was a good scholar, but Eck was a brilliant debater and had set the table for Luther to enter the discussion.

Luther and Eck covered a wide range of topics. In the end, the debate turned on the authority of the Pope and Church Councils. Eck accused Luther of promoting the teachings of Jan Hus, who was condemned as a heretic by the Council of Constance one hundred years earlier. Hus was burned at the stake when the Holy Roman Emperor at the time went back on his promise to Hus of safe conduct. It was a powerful slander. With that, Eck labeled Luther and his followers Lutheran, implying they followed Luther and not Christ. This forced Luther to admit that both Popes and Councils could make mistakes and that there was some truth to the charge.

Later Eck would admit that Luther had proved twelve of his thirteen theses. The last one, and in his eyes, the most important, Eck believed he had won. The result was to make clear the brake between the teachings of Luther, and the Scriptures, and the Pope. There would be no turning back. It was only a matter of time before the church would excommunicate Luther.

Martin Luther, St. Paul and Righteousness

We think of Martin Luther as a great reformer, a writer and a pastor. And he was all of these things. But his call was as a professor. His first lectures were on the Psalms, Romans, Galatians and Hebrews. To do these well, he spent many hours reading commentaries and the writings of the Church Fathers and the scholars of the Middle Ages. Once in awhile, he found himself not quite understanding a passage or a word. He spent months trying to understand some words. When he finally came to understand repentance, he described his excitement as if it unlocked all of Scripture for him.

Over Five Hundred years ago, as he was preparing to lecture on Romans, the great scholar, Erasmus of Rotterdam, published a Greek New Testament (1516) with Erasmus’ own Latin translation with it. It was then he came up against Romans 1:17: ” ‘For in it [the Gospel] the righteousness (δικαιοσύνη) of God is revealed from faith for faith” Everything he read said this righteousness was the quality of God that moves him to condemn sinners. He just couldn’t understand how that was good news.

His friends urged him to lecture on the Psalms again, so he began teaching the book in March and April of 1519 — five hundred years ago. While he was working on his lectures in his tower study, he couldn’t get Romans 1 off of his mind. Then his eyes fell on the context: “The just shall live by his faith.” All of a sudden, it occured to him that the righteousness of God is not the holy nature of God, but it is God’s gift of righteousness that Christians receive by faith as a free gift for the sake of Jesus’ death and resurrection. It was as if God had opened the gate of heaven for him. God’s righteousness is a gift God gives by his grace.

Luther has a way to go before he fully understood theology they way Lutherans do today. Yet God had revealed to him the central teaching of the faith. He would never forget his tower experience.

Reading Ephesians in the Summer

If you have been reading this blog awhile, you may remember my comments on the structure of the Church Year in liturgical churches, especially the Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod. Our long Pentecost season allows continuous reading of books of the Bible — in some cases whole books. In the three year lectionary, we will be doing this with the book of Ephesians beginning this Sunday.

As it turns out, I did a running commentary of Ephesians 1 & 2 at the beginning of this year. If you want to read this series of posts, start with “So, Does God Hate Me?”. At the bottom of each post, select the link for the next “Material Principle” post. If you find your curiousity peaked, drop Pastor Hercamp and I a comment on the blog itself. We would be happy to write a post to answer a question or explore a topic.