{
{
trines that were at the core of the Reformation, it was first of all Christ alone. In Christ we have justification. We have sanctification. We have adoption. We have glorification. All the blessings that we have from God the Father come to us in the Son. We don’t look for any of the gifts of God apart from Christ. If you have Christ, you have everything. This is so hard for us to believe. Yet it’s what the Scriptures teach—that Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us, sort of like someone’s wealth being credited into the account of someone who is penniless or in debt. That means we can stand before God, clothed in his righteousness. The Bible uses so many metaphors for this, and the Reformers were delighted to talk about this great exchange: his riches for our poverty, his righteousness for our rags of sin. This exchange affects all kinds of other doctrines. How is it that we grow in the Christian life? Is it by trying to become a better person, or is it through union with Christ, being gradually conformed to the image of the Son through the gospel and the sacraments in the power of the Holy Spirit? On all of these points the Reformers differed from Rome. It all really came down to this: is God a gift-giver or a gift-receiver? Is he gifting the kingdom to us, or are we are building the kingdom and doing stuff for him that he then rewards us for?
them to the door IT’S HARD TO of the church, he R E A L LY E V E N TA L K wasn’t trying to start a reformation. He A B O U T U LT I M AT E was simply raising T H I N G S T H AT questions for debate among scholars. LitM AT T E R B E C A U S E tle did he know that THINGS ARE SO it would be picked up by everybody POLITICIZED, AND and the press would T H AT ’ S T H E WAY carry it as a headline in the morning. T H E Y W E R E AT There are lots of theTHE TIME OF THE ses I think we could think of in our day, R E F O R M AT I O N . but I think that a lot of them would come down to the same thing: commercialization of the gospel. That was what the Roman church was doing by selling indulgences. If you do enough, if you give enough, if you can become enough, then you are fit for the kingdom of God. All of those issues are still alive and well for us today.
Matt: What would be the Ninety-five Theses that we ought to nail to the American church’s door?
Matt: Just in terms of rhetoric these days, we can’t really disagree anymore, can we? We don’t have this type of discourse that Luther wanted to have back then. It’s no longer an open discussion as disagreement is taken as insult. People react with violence and vitriol.
Michael: A lot of them are there in Luther’s Ninety-five Theses. The main thing for him was Rome was selling salvation literally for money in order to build the largest cathedral up to that point, which stands even now: St. Peter’s in Rome, where the Pope gives his speeches. That was the reason for the Reformation. At that point when Luther wrote the Ninety-five Theses and, according to legend at least, nailed
Michael: It’s both on the left and the right. It’s hard to really even talk about ultimate things that matter because things are so politicized, and that’s the way they were at the time of the Reformation. At the end of the day the Popes didn’t care who was right doctrinally. What they cared about was that the Pope got to decide because of the political hegemony of Christendom. Politics has always had a way of
70
THE ADVENT