Was Luther’s
Justification by Grace sola- against Holiness? ---Did Luther downplay, deny, deride or
ignore “the holiness without which no one shall see the Lord” (Heb. 12:14)? ---Anglican pastor Phillip L. Anderas
studied it in his dissertation and answered no. ---He explained that Luther was not
loose on holiness as many scholars are thinking. ---Luther in 1510 started to have an
interest about Augustine. ---In 1514 he made an “Augustinian
turn”. ---The Augustinian turn is that in the
doctrine of sin, grace and holiness, he scooped up what he could get from
Augustine and warmed it up to his own style and kept to it until his death in 1546. ---Luther was interested in the period
of Augustine’s life from 420 AD and onwards. ---Luther made his doctrine of salvation
(sin, grace and holiness) a mixture of Augustinian Catholicism and
evangelicalism. That was between 1535-1546. ---There were continuities and
discontinuities of Augustine’s doctrine in Luther and between 1518-1521 there was a
“breakthrough”. ---Anderas said that he believed in a
theology of progressive renewal in holiness which is balanced with a reality of
residual sin on one side of the balance and the gospel of grace in Jesus Christ on
the other. ---But is it biblical? My answer is no.
It is experientially. ---Luther said that. “Luther
appeals immediately not to Scripture, but to experience: “For Experientia
testifies, that in whatsoever we work well, this concupiscentia ad malum is
left behind (relinquitur), and no one is clean from it”.
Oops. Not Bible but experience. ---What Anderas 2015 did is to analyze
Luther in periods. ---He wanted to focus on the later
mature Luther so he started looking at the Smalcald Articles (Dec.
1536/Jan.-Feb. 1537—1538). ---Hold your chair: they were written
intended for an ecumenical Council of the Church. See Wikipaedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smalcald_Articles ---Catholic and Protestant politicians
met but because of kidney problems, Luther could not attend. ---So Philip Melanchton decided not to
read the ecumenical purposed paper and thus wrote an attack on the pope and his
supremacy instead. ---Was the kidney attack divine
intervention? Was Melanchton’s writing also in that line? ---Questions were asked during these
times about the law and grace: Is there a need in the Christian life
for the preaching of the Law? Should pastors proclaim the Law, such as
the demands of the Decalogue, from the pulpit in the Christian congregation? Does the Law play a role in the
Christian’s life of repentance? ---Agricola and other teachers were
teaching that one should not preach the law because it will make the members
legalists. ---Luther called them “antinomians” = “Against
law people”. ---In 1528 Phillip Melanchton taught
that the law should be preached in order to understand what sin is. ---Johannes Agricola objected and became
an antinomian. ---Agricola argued that it was the
sacrifice of Christ that one should preach and this should turn people away
from sin and lead to repentance. ---It was quiet for a while and in 1537
Agricola distributed tractates of his view around anonymously. ---Agricola said that the Holy Spirit
operates not through the Law only through the gospel. We do not need
law-preaching, only gospel-preaching. ---When one repent of sin, Agricola
said, it is not because you violated the law but because you hurt a Man called
Christ. Nice. ---Luther answer in disputes with
Agricola, that it is not a case of either Christ or the Law but both Christ and
the Law. Very nice. “[Since]
the saints in this life do not entirely leave the old man and feel the Law in
their members rebelling against the Law of their mind and bringing it into
captivity (cf. Rom. 7:23), the Law must not be removed from the Church, but
must be retained and faithfully driven home.” Again
Luther writes, “To be sure, man is to be led to repentance through the cross
and suffering of Christ. But it does not follow from there that the Law is
totally useless, inefficacious, nothing, and to be removed completely. Quite
the contrary, we rather come to repentance through the knowledge of the Law as
well as through the knowledge of Christ’s cross or of salvation.” ---During this dispute, Luther brought
in the citations of Augustine on the simul. ---What is Augustine’s simul? Augustine (as
accepted by Luther’s) held to simul is simul iustus et peccator. Meaning: At the same time saint and sinner. Oops.
---Same
time saint and same time sinner. ---Does the Bible teach that we are at
the same time Righteous and Sinner? No. ---Jesus said to the woman in adultery in
John 8: “Go and do your best not to sin but run to Me when you do”.Correct? ---Go and sin no more. No more? Was
Jesus joking with her? ---Augustine and Luther would say yes
because not biblically, but experientially they think that one remains a sinner
because the brain keeps feeling miserable. ---Why? Augustine said there is before
conversion original sin in us inherited from Adam based on a mistranslation of
the Itala and Vulgate of Romans 5:12. ---After conversion, said Augustine,
there is an “opium peccatum” in us. An addicted sin chemical that causes all to
remain sinful. ---Slightly different than Augustine,
Luther said that after conversion the original sin is pulled apart but
particles remain. ---Luther felt that God left it there in
us so that we should constantly be reminded to seek Christ for forgiveness. ---Luther said that there should not be
sinful acts in the person because there has to be a fight against these
particles that remain. ---At this point I leave the Anglican
Anderas behind and go forward with my own discussion. ---Adventist pioneers used various
descriptions to explain the sin in a person: sinful propensities, tendency to
sin, evil habits, sinful habits, weakness of the flesh, the old man. Ellen
White too. ---Ellen White differed from Luther,
Calvin and Wesley that “original sin” whether opium of sin, whether particles
of sin in us, if they reflect habits or tendencies, they have to be given up
before the Door of Mercy closes and Christ completes His meditorial work of
Atonement. ---It is for me such that what remains
after true conversion in the converted person, or reconverted person later, who
overcame all acts and habits of evil, that the scars of sin remain in the cognitive
part of the brain as memory pop-ups by Satan. ---Ellen White says Satan continues to
accuse us in the mind and we should not pay attention to him. Provided… ---If a sinner does not pay attention to
the accusing in the mind, then the person may be a Schizophrenic. A double life
person. Double minded. ---But a Christian does not need to pay
attention to the accusing in the mind unless there are still victims out there
as a result of the past actions. ---If the Christian has approached the
victims of his actions to explain and express her/his story, then still the
accusing mind should be avoided for Christ forgives in full. ---Luther said that one cannot have acts
of sin and claim to have true faith. He does not believe in cheap gospel. That
is what holiness is for him. ---This is what Adventism is all about. ---Cheap gospel Lutherans are eclectic Luther.
---Cheap gospel Adventists are eclectic
Ellen White. ---Are you? If your pastor is not
preaching the overcoming messages of the Bible, there is not a proper feeding
of the hungry sheep in the church. Correct? ---Luther, Calvin, Arminius, Wesley and
Ellen White said the same messages here. Amazing. Is it not? ---Luther on holiness now. ---Luther said there are evil passions
of sin that remain in a converted person. The law unmasked them. It is peccatum
and truly sin and require confession of 1 John 1:8. ---God forgives it out of mercy to all
who acknowledge and confess and hate it and plead to be healed from it. ---Luther feels that it is an error to
think that these evil passions can be healed through works. Only grace will do
it. ---Luther said “As “sin” brought forth its ‘fruit’ in peccata actualia (actual sins), so
this inner righteousness—received as a gift by grace, renovating the heart, and
thus reversing its affective propensities—brings forth its fruits in good
works: opera autem sunt potius fructus Iustitiȩ. (see Anderas at footnote
846 mentioning the works of Augustine and Luther. WA 56.271.13, cf. LW 25.259). ---This is Luther’s view of holiness.
This is what Ellen White also taught. ---Are we talking past each other with
our terms and jargon different? Make me wonder. Source: Phillip L.
Anderas, Renovatio: Martin Luther’s Augustinian Theology of Holiness. A
Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School. Marquette
University Phd, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, December 2015. Downloaded
from the internet at https://epublications.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1614&context=
dissertations_mu