What Luther Got Right
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
The article "Martin Luther's Confession of Orthodox Christianity" describes the teachings of Martin Luther, a former Roman Catholic monk-priest who in the 16th century rejected papal supremacy, celibacy of all clergy, purgatory, and indulgences, which the Orthodox Church also rejects. It was only in the 11th century that Pope Gregory VII issued a decree requiring all priests to be celibate and he expected his bishops to enforce it. Thus celibacy has been the rule for clergy ever since A.D. 1054, when the Catholic Church broke away from the Orthodox Church.
In a debate with Johann Eck, Luther "...invoked the Orthodox Church as an example of true Christianity for the past thousand years. Indeed, he held up the Orthodox Church as a source of truth to show that the Roman Catholic Church had deviated from the principles of the Early Church, saying, 'The truth lies with the Greeks' (i.e. Orthodox)." In his recent book, Rock and Sand (Amazon), Archpriest Josiah Trenham provides "a competent overview of the history of Protestantism and its major traditions, from its beginnings in the 16th century to the present day. This overview relies heavily upon the Reformers' own words as well as the creeds of various Protestant faiths." Highly recommended!
Why didn't Luther unite with "the Greeks" (the Orthodox Church)? Because after nailing his 95 Theses in Wuerttemburg and his trial at Worms, he needed an army, not merely theological support, to withstand Rome's military forces. Constantinople no longer had an army because in the previous century it had been conquered by the Muslim Turks. So he allied with the German princes. Several years later, after Lutheranism had solidified its theology, they sent emissaries to Constantinople. Read "Luther Had His Chance" (online), a detailed recounting of Luther's emissaries to Patriarch Jeremiah in Constantinople. The Patriarch welcomed the Lutherans as friends and fellow Christians, but was at first reluctant to respond to their doctrines. At last he was persuaded to give a detailed refutation to the erroneous teachings that Luther had carried over from Catholicism. Contacts continued for a couple more exchanges, but eventually were broken off.
In our last issue, we quoted from an article from LifeSite News about the visit to Romania of Pope Francis, who said - "The Eastern Orthodox differ markedly from Catholics on several points of doctrine. The Orthodox tend to defend the liceity [legitimacy - ed.] of artificial contraception within marriage, for example, and Orthodox bishops will bless up to two 'remarriages' when the divorced person's spouse is still living. The Orthodox also deny the Catholic dogmas of Original Sin and the Immaculate Conception. Most obviously, the Orthodox reject the supreme authority of the pope, instead considering the bishop of Rome 'first among equals' in the episcopal hierarchy, with no special powers of infallibility."
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Lutherans agree with the Orthodox that priests don't need to be celibate. Concerning divorce, both believe it should be avoided if at all possible. An abandoned or victimized spouse is free to remarry (I Cor. 7:13) but should seek pastoral counseling beforehand because of the psychological and spiritual factors involved in divorce. The Orthodox do not allow a fourth marriage, as the pre-schism Catholics also believed. Recall English King Henry VIII who abandoned the Pope (which started the Anglican Church) so he could marry his dead brother's wife! Artificial contraception within marriage is now allowed by Lutherans, although prior to the 20th century Lutherans along with most Protestants did not permit it.
Concerning original sin, Lutherans have carried over this doctrine from the Roman Catholic Church that all people are born guilty of Adam's and Eve's original sin. What do the Orthodox believe? As I wrote in my last essay, In the late-300s, Augustine of Hippo, trained as an orator and lawyer, was converted from paganism to Christianity. Although he was born and raised around Carthage, North Africa, part of the Greco-Roman Empire ruled from Constantinople, his native language was Latin and he only knew Greek poorly. So he relied on St. Jerome's translation of the New Testament from Greek into Latin. Unfortunately, Jerome had translated a key passage incorrectly:
Jerome in his Latin Vulgate translation rendered the end of Rom. 5:12 as "...death passed to all men, in whom [Adam] all sinned." The pronoun, however, cannot be translated as "whom" because it is neuter in Greek. People deserve or earn death only for their own sin: this corresponds to the Greek text of this verse - "Therefore, as sin entered into the world through one man, and death through sin; and so death passed to all men, in that all sinned." So Augustine, who knew less Greek than did Jerome, picked up as the basis of his early teaching the idea that all sinned in Adam and are guilty of Adam's sin. Orthodox teaching is that human nature is weakened by the Fall, predisposed to sin and subject to death, but not guilty of Adam's sin. The doctrine that all mankind is subject to death (but not guilt) because of the Fall is repeated in 1 Cor. 15:22 - "For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive."
If a person believes in original sin and guilt inherited from the Fall, then how could the Virgin Mary give birth to Jesus, the sinless Messiah? This is where the Catholic doctrine of Mary's immaculate conception originated. They teach that Mary was "infused with a special grace" at her conception and thus was exempted from the guilt of original sin. But the Orthodox do not believe that people have inherited Adam's and Eve's guilt, only the tendency toward sinning ("concupiscence") and the fact of death, which actually has the beneficial effect of keeping a person from committing more and more sins ad infinitum.
Virtually all of the Early Church Fathers affirmed the ever-virginity of Mary, as did the early Reformers Luther, Calvin, Wesley and others. Only in the Radical (Anabaptist) Reformation that discarded many traditional doctrines and practices did the ever-virginity of Mary begin to be questioned. Orthodoxy teaches that Mary was born with a tendency to sin (the Orthodox understanding of original sin), but by God's grace was able to keep from committing any personal sins.
Regarding the supreme authority of the pope, this was one of the primary doctrines that Luther rejected, replacing it with the primary authority of the Bible, or "sola Scriptura." Later Protestants, especially those of the Radical Reformation (Anabaptists), elevated Scripture to a verbally inerrant authority to supplant the supreme authority of the Roman pope, the Magesterium of the Catholic Church, and Holy Tradition. It was only on 18 July 1870 that the Roman Catholic Church declared papal infallibility when defining doctrine "ex cathedra" (from the throne). So what we have here are two conflicting, supposedly "absolute" authorities: an inerrant Bible versus an infallible pope. From an Orthodox perspective, neither is absolute because only God the Holy Trinity can be absolute. There are verbal discrepancies in the Bible, for example, when you compare the four Gospels; and papal infallibility doesn't work because some earlier popes have been contradicted by later popes.
So let us worship neither the Bible nor the pope, but only God the Holy Trinity!
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Christ is among us! He is and ever shall be!
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Things seem to have got a bit muddled! It was Henry (not George) VIII who had the divorce problem - but from his first (not fourth) wife. The Pope refused to grant him a divorce, as he's already had a special dispensation to marry her, as she was the widow of his elder brother. So he ceased to recognize the Pope as head of the English church (but didn't change much else). He remained a Catholic in belief, but no longer in communion with the Bishop of Rome.
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