Protestant beliefs

[FireDragon76]

Lutherans are not Arminians, and we are not Calvinists... we are Lutheran. In practice, we are somewhere in between and we do our own thing. We don't have the same theological categories as other churches. For us, the locus of theology isn't on election, or free will, it's on justification.

The only sin that can separate us from God is rejecting God. Now, we believe some behaviors are reasonable grounds to question ones faith, and to see if in fact it isn't really a dead faith, and to warn those people with God's law (which is why I suggested on another thread that our president should probably avoid receiving communion), but the typical things many evangelicals and Catholics worry about ("pelvic issues", personal purity, etc.) aren't part of them. As one Lutheran theologian once said, the sins you really think of as mortal are often really just venial, and the venial sins are often mortal.

You will have trouble understanding our faith and where it is coming from if you don't actually see it happening. It's not heady, rationalistic stuff, it's meant to be lived out, and we accept that ultimately God and life is more than a bit of a mystery and we are just trying to be faithful to the Word we have been given. The Word and Spirit must work on us and in us, we can't stand above it and judge it, it does require faith at some point.

Attend some Lenten services and you will have assurance that we have a serious sense of sin. I can't think of any service that has a more weighty sense of God's judgment upon sin, than the Lenten prayer services I attended this year. Heavier than even the Orthodox churches or the times I have gone to private confession. Even our Advent season is quite penitential in tone relative to other Protestant churches.

I am Lutheran because it holds all the essentials of the catholic faith. I am not Lutheran because all our doctrines are necessarily the best possible articulation of the faith, but because I intuitively know this is how the authentic Christian life can be lived out, at least for me. My little church is a piece of heaven on earth, it contains the kinds of people I would like to spend all of eternity with. They are more my family than my own biological family, who are irreligious, sadly. It's a pragmatic response but it's the best I can give on why my church's teachings are true, without selling you flim-flam.

 

[YouAreAwesome]

We are on the very same page and wonderful to hear. Please tell me if your church is affiliated with a denomination, and which one. I'd be interested as I'm feeling pretty alone at present.

Great! Sorry, no specific denomination; rather than gathering around doctrines, we gather around spiritual fathers. For me these include Bill Johnson, Kris Vallotton, Jonathan Welton, Shawn Boltz and many others but Bethel and Welton Academy are my two favourites

 

[ladodgers6]

All Protestants who know church history knows that it was Martin Luther who is the father of Protestantism. Since then, many Protestant denominations have arisen with differing beliefs on grace and sin and salvation. They differ from the most liberal - sin so grace can abound, all the way to sinless perfection.

Here is a letter from Martin Luther on his view. "Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong, but let your trust in Christ be stronger.

Here is the letter in context. What are the views of your denomination, and what denomination is that. Thanks.

If you are a preacher of mercy, do not preach an imaginary but the true mercy. If the mercy is true, you must therefore bear the true, not an imaginary sin. God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong, but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides. We, however, says Peter (2. Peter 3:13) are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth where justice will reign. It suffices that through God’s glory we have recognized the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world. No sin can separate us from Him, even if we were to kill or commit adultery thousands of times each day. Do you think such an exalted Lamb paid merely a small price with a meager sacrifice for our sins? Pray hard, for you are quite a sinner.

This is taken so out of context! Augustine and Luther were both monks of the Catholic Church. The corruption they witness, bought about the Reformation. Notice that they did not want to destroy the Catholic Church, but to Reform it back to Scripture. One point that all the Reformers 100% agreed upon was the Doctrines of Justification by Faith Alone!

The reason why Luther said those words to Philipp Melanchthon, was because Philipp was struggling with sin. That his sin as a believer will undo the Gospel and its promises. We will still sin, we are still in the flesh (Read Paul's struggles with his own in Romans 7). But Christ died and paid for the sins of the believers too!

Like Paul says in Romans that where sin abounds, grace much more abounds! What does this mean? Can we just sin, because we are under Grace, and not under the Law? Paul replies, God forbid!

But when we do sin, Christ saved us from those sins too! Luther is preaching the Gospel to Philipp. That when Satan accuse us of sin. Reply by saying, yes I am a sinner, but Christ came to save sinners!

 

[FireDragon76]

One thing to keep in mind about Luther, is that we Lutherans think of him as a prophet more than a model of behavior- Jesus is our model for the perfect man, not Luther. We love our Doctor despite his faults. One of the Old Testament prophets ate dung, after all. To be a prophet at times, means to be a little crazy. The Jews and their Lies is one such example. Luther was surrounded by enemies, beset by health problems, and its not hard to see he was becoming paranoid, perhaps he even had the beginnings of senility and dementia (he died from heart disease, so it's possible he had a stroke, which is known to change behavior). Even many of his friends and peers were not fond of his decision to publish that book. His wife once told him "You are being harsh, dear." and he said "They make me harsh". So... the late Luther is not such a big model for us as Lutherans, even though he still said some important things for us even then, we are more critical. We are even a bit critical of the early Luther and sometimes he overstates things, such as in On the Bondage of the Will.

We are really a confessional church and we are not built on the opinions of one man. In many ways, Lutheran is a misnomer as an epithet about what makes us tick, like calling a presbyterian, "Calvinist" is likewise misleading. Like the Reformed, we were a college of theologians and pastors that got together and came up with a series of confessional statements about what our faith is, over a number of years.

 

[Episaw]

I can't resist - what was the question?

She kept going on about women in ministry so I asked what do you mean by ministry?

 

[Dale]

All Protestants who know church history knows that it was Martin Luther who is the father of Protestantism. Since then, many Protestant denominations have arisen with differing beliefs on grace and sin and salvation. They differ from the most liberal - sin so grace can abound, all the way to sinless perfection.

Here is a letter from Martin Luther on his view. "Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong, but let your trust in Christ be stronger.

Here is the letter in context. What are the views of your denomination, and what denomination is that. Thanks.

If you are a preacher of mercy, do not preach an imaginary but the true mercy. If the mercy is true, you must therefore bear the true, not an imaginary sin. God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong, but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides. We, however, says Peter (2. Peter 3:13) are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth where justice will reign. It suffices that through God’s glory we have recognized the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world. No sin can separate us from Him, even if we were to kill or commit adultery thousands of times each day. Do you think such an exalted Lamb paid merely a small price with a meager sacrifice for our sins? Pray hard, for you are quite a sinner.

"... it was Martin Luther who was the father of Protestantism."

Jesus Christ is the father of Protestantism.

One reason I would put less stress on Martin Luther is that at one time I belonged to the Moravian Church, which started sixty years before Luther challenged the RCC. I'm certain that I'm still on the rolls of the Moravian Church.

If you must have an individual who lived in the last thousand years as the founder of Protestantism, personally I think John Wycliffe was the first Protestant. He founded a sect called the Lollards, which does not survive. The Lollards were intensely persecuted, and persecution sometimes succeeds. Perhaps the fact that the sect Wycliffe founded isn't around today is why his contribution is overlooked.

John Wycliffe, who lived in England and Scotland, influenced Jan Hus, who lived in what became Czechoslovakia, and is now the Czech Republic. The Moravian Church goes back to the teaching of Jan Hus. Hus is honored in many Protestant churches. I have seen a stained glass window of Jan Hus in a Methodist church, for instance.

 

[FireDragon76]

Wycliffe influenced Hus but Wycliffe in many ways was his own thing. He had a very medieval view of the place of works in the Christian life. In that sense he was not Protestant because he did not really articulate justification by faith alone clearly, he articulated a predestinarian faith, similar to many medieval Catholics.

It's it's not like there was a complete "lineage" and in many ways Wycliffe, Hus, and Luther would have disagreed. For one thing, Wycliffe was iconclastic, whereas Luther and Hus were not, they both valued images used in worship. Wycliffe was a radical, Hus and Luther were churchmen, initially committed to a high view of the Church, and even the Papacy.

What Wycliffe is actually better know for is being the first western medieval to assert that the Church should be part of civil society rather than seen as standing over it. In that sense, he was "Protestant". But otherwise he was simply odd, and I find it embarasing that so many Protestants accept him uncritically (my church doesn't pay too much attention to him, but anglocentric ones do). Many of his religious ideals had dire fruit, particularly as they laid the grounds for the English Civil War and the incivility in the name of religion that resulted.

 

[FireDragon76]

We Lutherans would actually look more to Bernard of Clairvaux or even Meister Eckhart (whose disciples lead to a whole school of Rhineland Mysticism that penned the Theologica Germanica, which is a book that Luther commended to Christians, along with the Bible). Bernard at least seemed to preach justification by faith alone, as we would understand it, and Tauler and Rhineland Mysticism set the tone for the subjective focus of Lutheranism. We are not used to thinking of Lutheran and mysticism going together, but that is only because much of our scholastic method obscured this, especially through the influence of rationalism.

 

[Buzz_B]

It seems to me that at 2 Corinthians 5:14 thru at least 2 Corinthians 7:1 Paul is speaking to the church who are ones that have already embraced belief in Christ. Therefore the word of reconciliation he speaks of is something beyond ones initial expression of faith. And the culmination of that word of reconciliation is what he describes at 2 Corinthians 7:1 "Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God." Talk is cheap, even to God. It is not what one says that expresses faith in Christ. It is what one does.

A part of that process of reconciliation is to add to ones faith as Peter says: 2 Peter 1:5-11
5 "And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge;
6 And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness;
7 And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity.
8 For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
9 But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins.
10 Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall:
11 For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

 

[Vicomte13]

All Protestants who know church history knows that it was Martin Luther who is the father of Protestantism.

Luther successfully made his point about the sale of indulgences, the Catholic Church doesn't do that anymore. So much has changed since the 1500s. I would say that the most coherent form of Protestantism is modern Roman Catholicism.

 

[1stcenturylady]

Great! Sorry, no specific denomination; rather than gathering around doctrines, we gather around spiritual fathers. For me these include Bill Johnson, Kris Vallotton, Jonathan Welton, Shawn Boltz and many others but Bethel and Welton Academy are my two favourites

I've heard of Bethel in Redding, and visited a Bethel church here in Tennessee, but they are not affiliated at all. I hate all this church hopping, but since I left California in '95, I'm lost in a jungle of powerless congregations, thus it has been hard for me to find like-minded friends here. And this is suppose to be the Bible Belt! I haven't followed any of the people you listed, but the Holy Spirit keeps teaching me on His own, and what I learn, I teach on here. Sounds like He's teaching them the same thing. I used to be a very social person, but now I seem to be turning into a hermit and invalid. Thank God for telephones. I can still talk to friends in California who are more open to what I learn and teach. Please remember me in your prayers.

 

[Marvin Knox]

Read “On the Jews and Their Lies” and let us know if you still think he would never encourage Christians to sin.

No true Christian would today condone the harsh rhetoric of Luther against the Jews. I won't defend it myself - even though there is much to be said in trying to understand it.

But we are talking here in this thread about the idea of Luther supposedly encouraging Christians to sin in order that grace may increase.

Clearly he did not consider the harsh sanctions he recommended for Christians against the Jews of his time to be sin. In fact - he obviously considered that they would be acts of righteousness and not acts of disobedience to God.

Therefore - Luther's rants in "On the Jews and Their Lies", as interesting as they are to talk about, are not pertinent to our discussion in this thread.

 

[1stcenturylady]

"... it was Martin Luther who was the father of Protestantism."

Jesus Christ is the father of Protestantism.

One reason I would put less stress on Martin Luther is that at one time I belonged to the Moravian Church, which started sixty years before Luther challenged the RCC. I'm certain that I'm still on the rolls of the Moravian Church.

If you must have an individual who lived in the last thousand years as the founder of Protestantism, personally I think John Wycliffe was the first Protestant. He founded a sect called the Lollards, which does not survive. The Lollards were intensely persecuted, and persecution sometimes succeeds. Perhaps the fact that the sect Wycliffe founded isn't around today is why his contribution is overlooked.

John Wycliffe, who lived in England and Scotland, influenced Jan Hus, who lived in what became Czechoslovakia, and is now the Czech Republic. The Moravian Church goes back to the teaching of Jan Hus. Hus is honored in many Protestant churches. I have seen a stained glass window of Jan Hus in a Methodist church, for instance.

I really don't care who started Protestantism. I've found this strange teaching on sin and grace preached here and there depicted in the quote I posted for years and never knew where it started, until someone posted that Martin Luther said to "Sin Boldly" and I googled it very recently. It was an "ah ha" moment.

 

[Vicomte13]

I am not so sure Luther was the father of Protestantism. Yes, he presented the Catholic Church with his 95 theses but he never left the Catholic Church and he did not disown his leadership in it.

His main purpose was to challenge indulgences which were being used to make money and not always for the Catholic Church. Some used them to pocket the money for themselves.

He never challenged the hierarchy, transubstantiation, or the place of the priesthood in the church. From what I have read it was another priest in Germany who took up Luther's thoughts and started the breakaway from the Catholic Church.

Having done that he took a lot of the church with him as the Protestant Communion is nothing more than an expression of the Catholic Mass, the Pastor is nothing more than an expression of the Catholic Priest, church leaders dressing up to lead meetings is nothing more than the Catholic regalia to show the superiority of the chosen few and denominations are nothing more than various branches of the Catholic Church.

So what we really have is a variation on the Catholic Church but not a true protestant church except in a few circumstances, mainly churches that meet in the home as the New Testament Church did.

That's about right, really, when it comes to Luther. And Luther was right about the abuses too. He (eventually) won his point about the sale of indulgences. When I read the 95 Theses, I would say that there are perhaps 92-93 of them that are what Catholics believe today. One or two of them are controversial, but within the range of what a Catholic CAN believe and be Catholic. And maybe one of them is at the fringe that would best be described as "fringe" Catholicism - nobody would be excommunicated for believing it, but it would not be the standard belief.

To a Catholic looking today, Luther's 95 theses look like the writings of a legitimately angry medieval priest with a couple of shaky points that, with conversation, could probably worked out. Of course, the medieval church DIDN'T try to work it out. They came down on his head with heresy accusations.

Luther became radicalized when, instead of being reasoned with, he was addressed with violence. That is not so very surprising. Most of us would react in the same way.

As he became radicalized and politicized, and angrier, he ended up going places that medievals went (such as hammering the anabaptists and the Jews) that I'm sure make Lutherans cringe today, just like the way the medieval Church treated Luther (who was essentially right in his theses) makes Catholics today cringe.

The proper answer to Luther's 95 Theses is what the Catholic Church has come to today: Yes, Martin, you are right about those things and we need to stop the crap. By drawing the sword, reason went out of everything, and everybody said and did crazy things to nobody's credit.

Martin Luther's 95 Theses ended up reforming the Catholic Church too, you know. He made his point, and he was basically right. So Catholics don't do the egregious things he was complaining about anymore.

Today, Martin Luther would be a (very, very conservative) Catholic priest, and he'd be grousing about the lack of discipline in holding Catholics feet to the fire (literally) for their wide ranging beliefs about all sorts of things.

Also, today we have medical treatments for the very severe gastrointestinal problems and constipation he suffered with (all that German beer, sausage and sauerkraut), and he would not have spent so much of his life in real discomfort, which tended to explode as distemper when he was angry.

 

[1stcenturylady]

She kept going on about women in ministry so I asked what do you mean by ministry?

Thanks. Don't know what was so bad about that question...

 

[Marvin Knox]

So I started this post to find a church where I might find some like minded people to fellowship with comfortably. Maybe I should start my own denomination like Amy Semple McPherson did. LTT (laughing through tears)

While I said before that I was not officially a member of any denomination - I have been, like you apparently, a charismatic for most of considerable Christians years.

Even so I either reject or am very critical of "word of faith", "holiness", extreme "Pentecostals", and many others of the "charismatic" persuasion".

I value strong doctrines of grace while rejecting some of the extreme 5-point Calvinist views.

There aren't many "Reformed/charismatic" churches around although there are some.

I have, for many years now, been happily associated with a church with a Baptist history (even though they are not affiliated now in any way). There are "Calvinistic" Baptist churches and there are "Arminian" Baptist churches. My church is of the former persuasion.

While they are not for the most part practicing and teaching charismatics - they are open to it and there is a great percentage who are charismatic. We all co-exist very well both in church proper and in our home groups.

Thus - I have found what is for all practical purposes a "charismatic/reformed/Baptist" church and am very happy here.

My church very much believes in eternal security while at the same time living and advocating a very "holy" lifestyle and preaching against sin and at the same time being very open to the things of the Spirit - even as staying leery of the many abuses in the current charismatic community.

Finding a good well balanced church can be a difficult task for those "Berean" minded believers with a multi faceted theology and walk with the Lord. But it can be done.

There is one out there for you if you keep strong and without compromise in your various scripture based beliefs and practices.

Try not to get buy totally into the beliefs and practices of any one particular denomination. I believe the true church is somewhere in between several so-called Protestant denominations.

I hope that helps and good luck in your quest for a good fellowship.

 

[Vicomte13]

In a similar vein, Tyndale was right. It is good to read a solid translation of the Bible in your own native language. In his day, the Catholic Church discouraged all of that. Today, every Catholic is given a full modern translation of the Bible in his own native language at his Confirmation, and individual and group Bible study is encouraged.

So, Luther was right, at the beginning anyway, with 92 or 93 of the 95 theses, and Tyndale was right also, and the Catholic Church acknowledges that by actually doing what they said we ought to be doing.

By contrast, even though Anglicanism looks a lot like Catholicism, Henry VIII was NOT right about divorce or about state supremacy over the Church, and the Catholic Church has never changed either of those two bases on which Henry effected the splitting away of his Church from the Catholic Church. This does not mean that Anglicans and Catholics cannot closely cooperate. It means that there remains a permanent point of difference over divorce, which really stems from English politics of the 1500s, and not from any deep seated doctrinal difference on the matter.

Calvin? Well, he's a different story.

 

[Marvin Knox]

.......(all that German beer, sausage and sauerkraut) .......which tended to explode as distemper when he was angry.

Funny - I get very mellow and laid back when I drink a good German beer and eat some sausages and sauerkraut - especially when I follow it with a good quality cigar.

 

[1stcenturylady]

While I said before that I was not officially a member of any denomination - I have been, like you apparently, a charismatic for most of considerable Christians years.

Even so I either reject or am very critical of "word of faith", "holiness", extreme "Pentecostals", and many others of the "charismatic" persuasion".

I value strong doctrines of grace while rejecting some of the extreme 5-point Calvinist views.

There aren't many "Reformed/charismatic" churches around although there are some.

I have, for many years now, been happily associated with a church with a Baptist history (even though they are not affiliated now in any way). There are "Calvinistic" Baptist churches and there are "Arminian" Baptist churches. My church is of the former persuasion.

While they are not for the most part practicing and teaching charismatics - they are open to it and there is a great percentage who are charismatic. We all co-exist very well both in church proper and in our home groups.

Thus - I have found what is for all practical purposes a "charismatic/reformed/Baptist" church and am very happy here.

My church very much believes in eternal security while at the same time living and advocating a very "holy" lifestyle and preaching against sin and at the same time being very open to the things of the Spirit - even as staying leery of the many abuses in the current charismatic community.

Finding a good well balanced church can be a difficult task for those "Berean" minded believers with a multi faceted theology and walk with the Lord. But it can be done.

There is one out there for you if you keep strong and without compromise in your various scripture based beliefs and practices.

Try not to get buy totally into the beliefs and practices of any one particular denomination. I believe the true church is somewhere in between several so-called Protestant denominations.

I hope that helps and good luck in your quest for a good fellowship.

Thanks. And I know what you mean about the extreme Charismatic/Pentecostals. I'm not into name it and claim it, or legalistic holiness. But I would be bored in a powerless church. So there must be the Holy Spirit present and unquenched with signs following. Just haven't found one yet.

 

[Hawkins]

not an imaginary sin. God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong, but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world.

I think that this may have been taken out of context. He mentioned about "an imaginary sin". So the "strong" may mean "obvious". It means that you don't hide your sin or avoid addressing your sin. You need to make them more obvious and thus to know more clearly how your faith in Christ will work.