Worshipping in a mainline Church for the first time in my life and trying to absorb the meaning relating to same are causing me to stretch the conventions of my spiritual thought processes.
Late last week my wife and I had dinner with two of the Pastors on our Church’s staff. They are the Revs Kent and Alison Shane, a unique husband and wife team who job-share one full time position but each with different portfolios. Both hold M.Div. degrees in theology, and both are ordained in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America.
Our discussion soon headed into the aspects of Luther’s thought with which we were less familiar and about which we had questions.
After sharing our diverse backgrounds we began to discuss the predictable. What were Martin Luther’s views on sin, the depravity of man, grace, redemption, salvation, etc., etc.? Of course to deal with all of this would have taken years more than the couple of hours we had available.
We ended up kind of focusing on God’s grace and mercy and on how undeserving we are of them. In fact, we discussed how humankind is incapable of doing anything that could earn us even a part of salvation.
I happened to mention that I had found John Wesley’s concept of “prevenient grace” quite satisfactory in this regard; that is, in Wesley’s view God provides even the grace needed before we are even capable of asking for it or experiencing it.
Pastor Alison spoke up and said, “Luther goes even farther than that.”
“Luther believed that we can’t not sin,” she interjected. And by that he believed we could do nothing in and of ourselves to earn or gain salvation. According to the church’s tradition, Luther may have even believed that to ask God for salvation was itself an act of works.
Carried further, Luther believed that when it came to behavior, we humans really have no choice at all. According to the book of Romans we have no free will in this regard. Therefore, God alone could, and must, provide salvation, and in this there is total freedom.
On the way home, with what I’d been taught as an evangelical admittedly lingering in my thoughts, there was one looming question: What, then, is the responsibility of the individual, if any, with regard to pardon, salvation, and attaining the Kingdom of God?
O, I know the easy evangelical answer. But now I’m contemplating these notions from a new angle.
1 comment:
Hi Roger,
Great stuff as always. In regards to the final question, "What, then, is the responsibility of the individual, if any, with regard to pardon, salvation, and attaining the Kingdom of God?" I have a few thoughts and a disclaimer, the disclaimer first.
And that is this, Lutherans do not agree among themselves. That is to say that in addition to some who would be "universal salvation" type folks on one end, you will also find semi-Pelagians and Pelagians in the mix as well. And in every congregation!
So that leads me to a response. I think that the most difficult aspect of the human condition to grasp is that we are now and always will be sinners, no matter how much I try not to sin, no matter how much I want not to sin, I will still do it, even if only thinking myself close to righteous.
Now to even say that, I have made some assumptions, but I make them based on Paul in Romans 7 where he talks about doing the very thing that he doesn't want to do and asks who will deliver him from his body of death? "Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord." v.14-25
Paul seems to constantly make his way back to Christ and what Jesus did. That is probably where we need to begin any conversation of "what must be done." When we see what Jesus has done nothing we could ever do compares to his sacrifice for us. That is why we cannot earn our salvation. Because if there is any requirement, if there is anything that I must do in order to attain the kingdom of God, then the whole of the law is back in play.
But Jesus' sacrifice, Jesus' saving action on our behalf, drives us to faith in him, decision or no decision, Jesus has died for you - that's the truth. That's the good news that we preach and teach, and that's the news that we cherish every day. And it is so good because there is no way that I could do it myself; I need a savior.
That's probably enough for now.
Peace,
Kent Shane
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