September 9 2017
500 YEARS AGO RELIGION WAS A RACKET: IS IT STILL?
Next month – on October 31 – it is exactly 500 years since Martin Luther revealed 95 theses stating his opposition to the then all-dominating Roman Catholic Church with particular emphasis on indulgences. He nailed his objections to the door of his church in Wittenberg, East Germany.
When my younger brother was a project manager in Magdeburg, not too far from Wittenberg, he, my wife and I visited that town in the year 1996.
Today the exact church door is gone, for the simple reason that the French army in 1765 destroyed the entire church. On the front steps of this newer structure – actually quite an ugly church – we saw two young druggies, totally out of it, perhaps a symbol of the state of religion there today.
For the past few months I have been reading Heinrich Boehmer’s excellent and exhaustive book, MARTIN LUTHER: ROAD TO REFORMATION. The author must have read every piece of Luther’s writings – and there still is an amazing trove of his memos, sermons, treaties, and correspondence available.
Then, now 500 years ago, there was only one denomination which had, of course, a monopoly on religion. It dictated what people were allowed to believe. Then too ‘times they were a’changing’, because printing had been invented, so books were coming on the market. Before that only tedious copying of manuscripts – manu = hand, and script = writing – was the sole way to obtain books, and thus terribly rare. Umberto Eco’s book IN THE NAME OF THE ROSE is a perfect example of that time, the story centering on the life – and crimes – in a 14th Century monastery where dozens of monks were daily engaged in transcribing – by hand and adding beautiful illustrations – and also translating lots of ancient documents. Now suddenly through the Gutenberg invention of printing, the masses could obtain books.
SALVATION FOR SALE
Then, by the grace of God, Luther appeared on the scene. The Roman church needed money as the now famous St Peter church was under construction, a costly affair, so the clever clergy designed a perfect tool to both raise money and combine this with a spiritual bonus.
In those days HELL and PURGATORY were the most dreaded destinations, so “So soon as a coin in coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs”. (Purgatory is the place where the dying were destined to go and be purged from their venal sins through fire). This was a true example of a racket, knowingly fleecing innocent people.
Luther, by now steeped in Biblical knowledge, decided to publish 95 theses condemning these practices, called INDULGENCES. Since it was just before the great indulgence festival of the castle church in Wittenberg (November 1 1517) he decided to summarize his doubts and critical considerations concerning the indulgence question in the more concise form of a number of theses. He had these theses printed on a placard, and through this channel invited the members of the local university to a public disputation on the saving power of indulgences. He headed his venture with the words, “NINETY FIVE THESES ON THE POWER AND EFFICACY OF INDULGENCES.
This invitation to a debate took place on October 31 1517. Before he set to work he first went on his knees to submit the matter to God.
And well he should, because his challenging the church, the all-pervasive institution, dominating all facets of life, had major consequences. Years after it resulted in the 80 year war of the Protestant Netherlands with Catholic Spain (1568- 1648), and even later caused the highly destructive THIRTY YEAR War between Europe’s North and South (1618-1648).
The Complacent Church.
True, the church in 1517 had become lax, had grown lethargic, had lost her moral moorings, and concerned members were ready for a change. Thanks to an abundance of pamphlets, thanks to an intellectual awakening, thanks to a more critical attitude toward the behavior of the clergy, all this combined to garner popular opposition to the established church: in other words the time was ripe for drastic new thinking. Luther’s act of broaching the hitherto unspeakable was the spark that set off an entire new way of behavior. People now discovered that Religion had become a racket, served not to honor God, but to elevate the instituted church to her greater glory and higher influence in all daily affairs.
A TRUE REFORMATION?
That it was a true Reformation is not correct. Yes, it loosened the shackles of the all-powerful church. Yes, it brought the Bible to the masses, and yes, it opened the door to various religious interpretations as people now were free to think for themselves and worship God in diverse ways. So, a Calvin emerged and a Zwingli; a John Knox found followers, just as Menno Simons did, after whom the Mennonites were named, the so-called Anabaptists.
However what all religions retained was the TWO REALMS doctrine: it left intact the REGNUM GRATIAE versus the REGNUM NATURAE, the split between NATURE AND GRACE, between the SACRED and the SECULAR, declaring in essence that EARTH is evil and HEAVEN is good. In that sense the year 1517 did not herald a true Reformation.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his ETHICS, recognized this problem. He wrote that since the inception of the New Testament church, the one thought that has determined its entire course has been “the conception of a juxtaposition and conflict of two spheres, the one divine, holy, supernatural and Christian, and the other worldly, profane, natural and un-Christian”. He continued, “There are not two realities, but only one reality and that is the reality of God, which has become manifest in Christ in the reality of the world…… (The Nature/Grace Dualism) has resulted in an ever increasing independence of the secular in its relations with the spiritual.”
As is now widely recognized the Pre-Reformation Church created a situation where eternal salvation could be bought with money, declared acceptable because it was spent to build religious edifices, constituting gross deception.
Although Luther challenged this sinful act, the basic problem, separating nature from grace, secular from sacred, was left in place, and has been with us as long as the church has been in existence.
SOCRATES VERSUS JESUS
From its very inception, the church has been influenced by Greek Pagan thinking, originating with Socrates and Plato. When Socrates died, he welcomed death. In The Trials of Socrates, Plato depicts Socrates’ last moments before his death. Plato quotes Socrates: “I’ll no longer stay put, but will take my leave of you and depart for certain happy conditions of the blessed”.
Socrates is certain that he’s on the way to heaven, and even says a prayer to the gods after drinking the poison: “‘One is, I suppose, permitted to utter a prayer to the gods – and one should do so – that one’s journey from this world to the next will prove fortunate”.
Socrates died to celebrate death, celebrating HEAVEN. Jesus died to assure life, celebrating life eternal in his new creation.
By and large the entire Christian church has opted for heaven, giving the faithful an erroneous message, becoming more evident each day as the entire creation is suffering from our actions, clamoring for a new earth. Scriptures are quite clear: John 3: 13 unambiguously says, ”No one has ever gone into heaven, except the one who came from heaven, the Son of Man.” John 3: 16 affirms that God loved the cosmos and was willing to offer his Son to buy it back from Satan, who today still is in charge (1 John 5: 19). That makes loving the earth our priority too.
The church, almost in her entirety has followed the Pagan Socrates faith, resulting in global neglect, now all too evident in the disaster of HARVEY and worse to come with IRMA.
Basically the church has made Jesus the recipient of sweet-sounding platitudes resulting in what Bonhoeffer called “pious secularism”. He also stated in his ETHICS, “Church-goers either seek Christ without the world, or they seek the world without Christ. In either case they are deceiving themselves.”
A NEW REFORMATION IS NEEDED.
All this begs for the final and ultimate Reformation.
Johan Herman Bavinck, in his book BETWEEN THE BEGINNING AND THE END: A RADICAL KINGDOM VISION writes, “The coming of Jesus Christ into the world has, when seen in the light of Scripture, as its sole intention the restoration of the Kingdom, the NEW CREATION. Christ’s suffering and death, indeed the entire order of redemption, has no other purpose than the realization of that Kingdom. Grace itself is not there for its own sake. The central point of the gospel is not us poor humans and our pain and suffering: its entire focus is aimed at the unique, powerful reality that God wants to reinstate his Kingdom.
It is God’s intent to unite all fractured parts of his creation into one over¬arching harmony. There is no such thing as individual salvation. All salvation is of necessity universal. The goal of our life can never be that we personally may enjoy God and be saved in him. The goal of our life can only be that we again become part of the wider context of the King¬dom of God, where all things are again unified under the one and only all wise will of him who lives and rules for ever. End of quote.
In other words: Human Salvation and the Salvation of Creation are two sides of the same coin: we can’t have one without the other. To say we love Jesus, but willfully polluting creation, is a contradiction in terms.
Sad to say, but the present-day church is no different from the pre-Reformation church. Then the Roman Catholic Church had a fire-sale on HEAVEN, guaranteeing deliverance from Purgatory and Hell, for a price. Today we have let go of Hell, and Purgatory too is no longer mentioned. Today we promise Heaven to anyone who is a faithful adherent of a denomination: nothing more than regular church attendance and a token contribution is required, and, at the graveside, the clergy will declare a safe passage to heaven. Basically the same bargain as the pre-reformation deal.
The final stretch.
All signs point to an early demise of our civilization, if that is the right word to describe our way of life. The Revenge of Creation is continuing. Our planet hosts close to Seven and a Half Billion people, the vast majority either living an extravagant life style or desiring to attain it by hook or crook.
Slowly we are discovering that our present state of consumption and our polluting ways have a definite expiry date, but we really don’t know how to end it and assume a more sustaining way.
In general the church does not have the answer to this cardinal question, mired as it is in its rites and customs, its preaching mode, its awkwardness with the Created Word, vaguely perhaps sensing that there is more to eternity than heaven, yet unwilling or unable to visualize a new creation, even though the Lord’s Prayer contains such lines as Thy Kingdom Come, and Thy Will Be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.
It is simply too stuck on semantics to be able to flesh out the entire Kingdom Idea as verbalized by Bavinck and Bonhoeffer, who both see it as an eschatological event: the perfect earth in a perfect setting, peopled by perfect people.
The heaven heresy is proving too powerful, far easier to proclaim than the advent of the Coming Kingdom, which requires NOW, TODAY, the beginning of a NEW way of Life, a PERFECT REFORMATION.
Yes, basically nothing has changed in the 500 year interval between October 31 1517 and today, in the year of the Lord 2017. Then Martin Luther affixed his 95 theses on the door of his church lamenting the error of his church and venturing with the help of God to change the church, now the task is even more difficult, and the people even more set in their ways, because it involves resisting the ways of The Evil One, who now unquestionably rules the world (1 John 5: 19).
We have, however, one advantage. Jesus saw this coming when he prayed, as recorded in John 17, “My prayer is not that you take them out of this world (no rapture, no heaven) but that you protect them from the evil one.”
The Father always hears the Son’s prayer.