Paul's Passing Thoughts

Martin Luther spawned the Protestant Reformation with his 95 Theses against Catholic indulgences, right? And it was also about salvation by faith alone, right? And Scripture alone, and stuff like that, right? On these and many other myths, NOT. Let me give you something to compare it with: Donald Trump’s many adversaries are really concerned that he may have had an affair with a porn star, right? Not, it’s an excuse to take him down for other reasons not honestly communicated.

I am not going to get into the real documents that formed the true reason Luther et al wanted to reform the Catholic Church, I have written and expounded on those documents that preceded the 95 Theses extensively, but will rather cut to the chase with this post.

Prior to the 13th century, the Catholic Church functioned primarily on Platonist ideas that mankind is unable to know reality. In Platonism, definition of good is knowing reality, and man cannot know reality, so mankind is totally depraved. Man is supposedly unable to reason because he can’t comprehend reality. Saint Augustine was the primary doctor of this philosophy in Catholicism.

Thomas Aquinas came along and began integrating Enlightenment-Like ideas that became widespread in the 18th century with Catholicism. So, Aquinas was ahead of the curve. This invoked the idea that mankind in general is able to reason, and also propagated the idea of “infused grace” within the believer. It is debatable whether or not Aquinas believed that regeneration precedes saving faith, but his teachings, known as Thomism, advocated the infusion of righteousness within the believer. This enables the believer to colabor with the Church and God to finish salvation.

This is where Catholicism and Protestantism are exactly alike; both hold to salvation as a process. The argument is the “right” beliefs that lead to a proper completion of salvation. Of course, true Biblicism holds to the belief that salvation is a finished work and justification and sanctification are completely separate. When a baby is born, that is a finished work totally separate from the baby’s life moving forward. We don’t go back to anything that happened in the birth to facilitate the baby’s growth; in fact, babyhood will soon be left behind for adolescence and then adulthood.

Between Catholicism and Protestantism, the whole argument was/is human ability. Catholicism holds to a new birth that transforms the believer and infuses righteousness within him or her. But remember, this is an ability to participate in the finishing of salvation. This was the crux of Luther’s contention that motivated the Reformation. The opposite school holds to total inability and all righteousness remaining outside of the “believer.” Faith, according to Protestantism, is a gift from God that enables one to see that only God possesses righteousness; therefore, faith doesn’t really make one righteous, it only enables one to see righteousness while confessing that no individual has any. This is where Protestantism insists that righteousness on the part of a “believer” is only a legal edict that declares someone righteous according to the law while righteousness remains completely outside of the believer. This is known as, “the objective gospel outside of us,” or the “centrality of the objective gospel outside of us.”

These terms aptly describe the Protestant gospel though contemporary terms. We are not going to get into the objective/subjective part of it, but these additional elements speak to man’s ability to understand reality and gets into some heavy philosophy that I don’t want to include in this post. However, “Pictures of Calvinism” does venture into that and can be found at tancpublishing.com.

As documented by this ministry, the who’s who of evangelicalism attests to the fact that Protestantism strayed away from this doctrinal construct and became essentially Catholic in its beliefs. And as further documented, the Australian Forum was the think tank that awakened Protestantism to this fact beginning in 1970. The Forum is responsible for coining the phrase, “the centrality of the objective gospel outside of us.” Scandalous is the fact that contemporary evangelicals have deliberately swept the Forum under the rug and replaced it with a story about John Piper founding present-day New Calvinism. They know this is a lie, but are hardly anxious to announce that an Adventist theologian reintroduced Protestant scholars to true Protestantism.

The smoking gun to all of this can be found in the fourth chapter of “The Truth About New Calvinism” (tancpublishing.com). That chapter documents the inviting of one of the core four of the Forum to do a lecture on the Reformation at Southern Seminary, and John Piper’s follow up article regarding the lecture. In the article, Piper confirms what the lecture taught: Catholicism strayed away from Augustine’s Platonist Christianity into Thomism, and thereby making the Protestant Reformation necessary.

In summary, it can be said that Protestantism denies the new birth while Catholicism holds to a new birth that enables the “believer” to participate in the finishing of salvation. Both see salvation as a process, while Biblicism sees salvation as a finished work separate from the believers new life.

paul