Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro

We’ve spent a lot of time talking about how the Reformers and Anabaptists ‘broke’ off from the Catholic Church.

Now it’s time to take a break from the timeline of the Reformation and do a direct compare/contrast of the major church movements during this time.

While we know that they disagreed with each other, we may not understand what exactly they disagreed about or how important the topics were that they couldn’t see eye to eye on.

It may look like the Catholic Church had it all wrong, but remember that most - if not all - of the Reformers started within the Catholic system and simply wanted to bring needed change within the church.

And while there were major issues that the Reformers pointed out within Catholic theology, there was also a lot that they agreed on.

Today we want to take a closer look at what exactly these three groups believed and taught.

Just a quick note: While there were some differences between Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli, they were close enough to each other in what they taught and thought that for this class we will group them together as the Magisterial Reformers.

There is something else I should mention.

While we won’t be able to cover this very much in class, it is easy to think of the Catholic Church as the bad guys.

While they got a lot of things wrong over time, we can’t leave it there.

In response to the Reformation, the Catholic Church called a council, the Council of Trent in 1545.

Here many Catholic leaders met together to clarify what exactly was taught and what wasn’t taught by the Catholic Church, to correct those things they had done and taught incorrectly, to correct abuses within the Church and try to bring people back to the Catholic fold.

The Council of Trent also showed that the Catholic Church was aware of the mistakes they had made in the past instead of ignoring them, and that they wanted to correct those mistakes.

Some of the Catholic doctrines we’ll be looking at are the ones that were set down at the Council of Trent, meaning that some of the issues that the reformers had with the Catholic Church won’t come out as clearly here.

Disagreements

So what did all three groups

What did the different groups disagree on?

We have brought up several of these disagreements in previous classes already.

Before we begin, I will add once again that this is just a very brief overview of each of these traditions, and I won’t be able to give any one of them the attention they deserve.

Also, I am no expert on any of these topics, so it is quite possible that someone has a question that I will not be able to answer to their satisfaction!

I will do my best and here goes!

Salvation

Catholic Teaching: The Catholic Church taught that Salvation was a process that took one’s whole life.

Here I have a diagram that gives us an idea of what the Medieval Catholic view of Salvation was.

To start, we are born in sin, separated from God.

At baptism (8 days after birth) God brings you into a state of Grace before Him.

So now we are in a state of grace.

Now in this stated of grace, we are responsible “to cooperate with grace throughout one’s life through good works.”

(Ryan Reeves).

In this state of grace we still sin, so we must confess to a priest and do penance (something assigned by the priest, including prayers, Mass, pilgrimages, and so on).

After we die, we go to purgatory.

Now purgatory is not hell, it is the final stage of penance which we go through after we die.

Once we have gone through our final penance in purgatory, we can then go to heaven.

If we wonder where God’s grace is in this whole process, it is EVERYWHERE.

The entire process begins with God’s grace and floats in God’s grace, since without God’s grace any confession or act of penance means nothing.

This is the official doctrine of salvation.

However, as we mentioned in our first few classes, things change.

In reality, it had become something very different.

The emphasis became less on salvation as a process and more on doing the things that seem good so that we will spend less time in purgatory and so that God will love us.

Add to that the idea of indulgences, a “pay-to-be-saved” mentality, and you see where the problem lies.

Reformers’ Teaching: The Reformers were all incredibly strong on the point of Salvation by Grace alone through Faith alone.

To them, the Catholic system didn’t go far enough in its definition of sin.

For the reformers, sin was a total, massive, all corrupting inability to do right, rather than just little lapses and rituals to correct those lapses, which is how they viewed the Catholic system.

Man is totally depraved and inadequate, mankind had lost their free will, and any attempt to do anything good apart from faith is totally meaningless.

As a result, it is up to God to save us, because we are completely unable to do anything for ourselves.

This is where faith comes in.

Faith is not something we give, it is something we receive.

Faith is God’s gift to us given by His grace.

Once we are saved, we do good works, but they are because we have been changed in Christ, they do not gain anything for us.

Anabaptist Teaching: Anabaptists agreed with the Magisterial Reformers that salvation is by grace through faith and not through any merit of their own, but it looked a little bit different.

To them, “man was not saved in spite of himself.

God has graciously provided a way of salvation, but in order to benefit from it man must freely choose it for himself.”

(Klaassen, 41) God’s grace has freed our will so that we can choose to do the God that God desires.

“Anabaptists simply refused to accept Luther’s separation of works from faith, or action from confession.

Works, they argued, were a part of faith, and without them faith was not faith… Works were the outward expression of faith and not simply the fruit of faith as Luther said.”

(Klaassen, 42)

What do you make of these different views of salvation?

Open for discussion

The Church

Catholic Teaching: The Catholic teaching is that the Catholic church is the true church of Christ.

“One, holy, catholic, apostolic church.”

The theology of the church offered reassurance to believers who might doubt that the church they saw was the ‘true’ one.

The true church is not necessarily the people in it, but rather the institution of it.

This is tied to the idea of church tradition.

The Catholic church traces its origins back to the first 12 disciples, it is the very institution that started with Christ and His disciples.

To come before God, we must go through a priest, since the church is God’s representation on earth.

Reformed Teaching: To the reformers, the true church, at its core, was the sum of all Christians who truly believe.

The true church is not simply a visible organization with a fallible human being at its head.

All of us are priests and have direct communion with God, but there is also a communion with God that only happens in the reality of the church.

In the church we are all priests to each other, and all of us are priests to the world.

And while we don’t need priests to come to God, we still need each other.

God knows who is truly saved, and not everyone in a physical congregation is necessarily one of the saved.

There are always believers, unbelievers, and Pharisees in the church.

The Word and the Sacraments (baptism and communion are the marks of the true church.

The Church is made up of sinners and saints whose holiness is revealed in heaven.

Anabaptist Teaching: Anabaptist taught that the church was the gathered congregation of believers who had voluntarily entered it by baptism upon confession of faith, and love is the most important mark of the church.

To them, you could not be part of a church by being born into it (infant baptism).

Also, they did not believe that we couldn’t know who was part of the church.

It will be obvious in a person’s life if they are saved or not.

And that is why their doctrine of the church as the baptised population was so important.

It signified who was part of the church and who was not, as it showed clearly that they were following Christ.

Any thoughts or questions?

Open to discussion

Scripture and Tradition

Catholic Teaching: The Catholic Church taught that the Church had birthed Scripture.

It was the church who had met together who decided what books were part of the Bible and which ones were not.

While the Bible was sufficient in issues of faith and practice, the truths of the Bible acquired their authority as interpreted in the continuing life of the church.

So basically, the church knows what the Bible is saying and how it should be interpreted.

Also, there is a second source of authoritative truth based on the unwritten knowledge and practice of the church through the ages.

So there is both a written (traditional commentaries and writings) tradition and an unwritten tradition, and both of these are equally authoritative.

And ultimately, the voice of the Holy Spirit guiding the church makes both the Scriptures and the Church valid in their authority.

While in theory Scripture and tradition were equal in authority, over time the traditional way of viewing Scripture was the ONLY way of viewing it, thus tradition trumps Scripture.

Why do you think the Catholic church had this view of Scripture and tradition?

Reformed Teaching: The Reformers taught something quite different.

Just as they were strong on the idea of salvation by grace alone through faith alone, so they also held fast to the idea of Scripture alone.

Scripture was ALWAYS the final authority no matter what.

They criticized the Catholic church for flipping the authority from the Word of God to the tradition of the church.

Everything should always be based against what the Bible says.

It is only through the Holy Spirit that proper interpretation of the Bible is found, and because of all the errors found in the Latin Bible over the last few centuries compared to the original texts, they would say that tradition was in error too, even though the Catholic church claimed to be led by the Spirit in this too.