Calvinism Defended:
Luther The Drunk and Cheap Grace
By
This is the 25th section of the e-mail exchange I had with Bill, an individual who objected to Calvinism. Click here to go back to the table of contents, or here to go to the full 88 page exchange.
My First E-mail: It wasn’t long before the false gospel of Pelagius crept back into the church, and as a result we were thrust into the Dark Ages and the radical abuses of the Roman Church as the pure Gospel of grace was buried more and more under an avalanche of traditionalism and corruption, until it reached its climax in the 16th century when that false church declared through the mouth of Tetzel, “As soon as a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs!”
Bill's Response: How did we get from
Pelagius (who coined the often-quoted phrase “justification by faith alone”;
it wasn’t Luther who started that phrase) to purgatory?
Is this a rhetorical devise that you are charging me with? Lets be
factual not rhetorical. Where in
Pelagius’s writings did he teach purgatory?
I thought so. Now where did
Augustine get his ideas about purgatory? Well
you guessed it.
My Response: I was simply trying to provide some historical context as to
why the Reformation began. As for
you encouraging me to be “factual, not rhetorical,” I find that extremely
interesting given all that has been stated to this point; I mean, where are your
facts Bill? All I have heard, and
have had to address, is empty rhetoric and straw men.
From My First E-mail: It was an Augustinian monk named Martin Luther,
who having himself discovered what the Bible actually said with regard to the
nature of God, man, and the Gospel, reacted and nailed his 95 theses to the
church door at Wittenberg.
Bill's Response: From my reading the life of Luther, he was a tormented man who suffered from alcoholism and died an alcoholic. Jesus Christ frees us from the torment and bondage of drug and alcohol addiction. He doesn’t just cover over our sins like a dunghill covered with snow. Luther’s or Calvin’s message is not a message of freedom in the Holy Ghost and the glorious liberty of the sons of God.
My Response:
Your facts about Luther are incorrect. He
was not an alcoholic, as his enemies would paint him to be.
As for Jesus and the freedom He gives us, this can only be said from a
Reformed perspective, because it is only from a Reformed perspective where it is
Jesus who actually does any and all of the freeing.
Much more to say in regard to that, but it has all already been stated.
The bottom line is that non-Reformed theology teaches that Jesus is
merely a hypothetical savior instead of a real savior; a hypothetical liberator
instead of a real liberator; a “possible” deliverer instead of an actual
deliverer. You may not like that, but that is precisely the case.
From My First E-mail: From that time
on Martin Luther, as well as those who followed in his train (i.e., Zwingli,
Calvin, Cranmer, Knox, etc.) found themselves as marked men.
It was Augustinianism that resulted in the recovering of the Gospel to
the church at the Reformation. Hence,
if that which is the purest expression of the Gospel Jesus Christ withers away,
then what replaces it is not the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but is in fact the
false gospel of humanistic philosophy dressed up in the garb of Biblical
Christianity that exalts man and his “power,” dishonors and robs God of all
the glory for His work in our salvation, and produces bondage.
And, it wasn’t long after the Reformation and Calvin that the error of
Pelagius once again crept back into the church with the advent of the
Remonstrance in the Netherlands.
Bill's Response: Luther’s Gospel of Cheap Grace led to a society that the martyr Bonhoffer condemned.
My Response:
What in the world does Bonhoeffer
have to do with the Scripture texts? Nothing!
As for cheap grace, let me ask you, what is it that makes grace
“cheap?” Cheapness has to do
with worth, and worth is based on any number of factors, e.g., how well does the
thing in question work; how important is the thing viewed; how valuable is it to
someone, etc. From the Reformed
perspective, God and His grace are everything.
His grace, which is undeserved, is not only necessary for salvation, but
God’s grace actually accomplishes what it sets out to do:
save. God’s grace in
salvation was perfectly secured for us by the perfect substitutionary work of
atonement by Christ on the cross, and God’s grace is perfectly applied to us
by the Holy Spirit. Hence, God’s
grace derives its worth and effectiveness from the nature and work of the Triune
God alone.
In non-Reformed theologies, God
and His grace are ultimately powerless to do anything unless man lets him.
In the Reformed understanding of grace, grace actually does something: it
overcomes our deadness…it saves. It
has real power, and the reason it has power is because it is all based and flows
from the perfect work of Christ on the cross. Simply put; no cross, no grace.
In the non-Reformed understanding, grace has no power to save, because
salvation ultimately rests with man and his “free will.”
Grace does not rest or flow from the perfect work of Christ.
This view of grace is not merely makes grace “cheap,” it makes grace
utterly worthless, because this grace doesn’t do anything!
Thus, if one view exalts the
power of God and His grace, and maintains that God’s grace comes to us purely
and effectually by and through the blood of Christ and His Gospel, and that this
grace never fails to accomplish its redemptive purpose (because Christ’s blood
never fails to save!), but the other view maintains that God’s grace is just
something that, while needed, nevertheless does not secure anything, and is
itself ineffectual (which, in turn, means that Christ’s blood and work are
ineffectual), then what view of grace is “cheap?”
Not only is the non-Reformed view of grace cheap, it is utterly worthless
because it is ineffectual, and it does not come to us not through a perfect work
of a perfect Redeemer. The
non-Reformed view of grace isn’t even grace, for it looks to something good in
man as the basis for its bestowal, which in turn means that man has, in effect,
done something deserve undeserved favor, clearly a contradiction in terms.
If Bonhoeffer did object to
Luther’s view of grace, he merely objected to Jesus’ view of grace.
Rather than Bonhoeffer objecting the Luther’s view of grace, I have a
suspicion that he objected to people’s
abuse of that grace,
whereby some would continue to sin that grace might abound, and turn God’s
grace into a license to sin. I also
object to that as well. But again,
what does it matter what Bonheoffer thought anyway?
I could just as easily usher in one scholarly source after another that credits
Reformational thought as the basis for much of good that transpired in the past
and today. But, of what value is all of that in trying to render a
proper exegesis of 1 Cor 2:14, or Romans chapters 4 and 5, or any other passage?
None.