Evangelicals and the Evangel Future

Invited to give a plenary address in Wittenberg on the weekend of the Reformation’s quincentenary (October 31, 2017), I took my teenage son on a tour of Martin Luther sites along the way. I’ll use this travelogue as a way of exploring what it means—or at least meant—to be an “evangelical.”

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We visited the cell of the Erfurt monastery in which Luther,
the Augustinian monk, searched passionately—
and for the most part, in vain—for a gracious God.

“Just love God,” his confessor counseled, but Brother Martin was not just an overly scrupulous monk. He was not even looking for a gracious God; he was looking for the real God, whoever he might be.[1] Yet the more he read the Bible, the further he felt from this God. It was not God’s mercy, love, and grace that first struck him, but God’s righteousness, holiness, and justice.

As a theology student, Luther had been taught that “God will not deny his grace to those who do what lies within them.” Following Scotus and Ockham, his teachers thought they were making salvation more accessible. Take even the smallest step and God will accept it. Contrition (sorrow for sin) isn’t necessary, just attrition (fear of judgment). The sacrament of penance isn’t required, as long as you love God above all else in your heart. “Love God? I hate him!” That was where such teaching drove Luther. After all, “Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself” was Jesus’ summary of the law.

Happily, there was Johann von Staupitz, head of the German Augustinian Order and Luther’s mentor. “If it had not been for Dr. Staupitz, I should have sunk in hell,” Luther recalled.[2] True to the order’s namesake, Staupitz directed the anxious monk outside himself to the wounds of Christ, to God’s grace in election, forgiveness, and the preservation of his people. It was a stroke of genius in 1508 when Staupitz sent Luther to teach the Bible at newly established Wittenberg University. As he lectured on the Psalms, Romans, and Galatians, however, he was as much the student as the professor.

We mark October 31, 1517, as the beginning of the Reformation, but Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses say nothing about the justification of the ungodly. Luther found the traffic in indulgences to be scandalous in its misrepresentation of God as a banker who can be quite literally be bought off. More than that, God is remote, outsourcing the management of the “treasury of merits” to a church with unlimited power to set the terms for human destiny beyond the grave. Beginning with the first of his famous theses, Luther protested that the sale of indulgences threatened repentance with no mention of justification. You could reduce your purgatorial sentence in the morning and then stop by the whorehouse at night.

In 1520, through the assistance of Philip Melanchthon, Luther came to clearly understand that God justifies the wicked by Christ’s “alien righteousness.”[3] The only person who fulfilled the law completely, from the heart, was the incarnate Son, Jesus Christ. For the early Luther, however, the example of Jesus’ complete surrender to God’s righteousness was only more “law.” The righteousness of God condemned. It offered no relief to transgressors, no bending of the rules, no time off for good behavior.

It was not that Luther’s teachers and the pope’s traveling salesmen like Tetzel were too legalistic. It was that they were antinomian: they set aside God’s law for their own vain and indeed villainous propitiations. They did not take God seriously. They kept changing the rules of the game in order to manage both God and the people, imagining that they made the path to justification easier.

Luther, however, took the righteousness of God revealed in the law with utter seriousness. The righteousness of God condemns everyone without exception, because “no one is righteous, no not one” (Rom. 1:18–3:20). Then he discovered in Romans 3:21–31 Paul’s shift from the law to the gospel, from the righteousness of God to the righteousness from God. Sinners are declared righteous not because of some “legal fiction,” but by the imputation (crediting) of Christ’s fulfillment of the law to all who are united to him through faith alone. This justification is a gift bestowed, not a goal to be achieved.

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Our next stop on the Luther trail was Wartburg Castle, where a superb exhibit on the Reformation had attracted scores of tour buses.

In 1521, having presided over the Diet of Worms, Emperor Charles V decreed that the now-excommunicated Reformer was to be regarded as a heretic and hunted down as an outlaw. On his way back to Wittenberg from Worms, Luther was cleverly “abducted” by the elector of Saxony, Frederick III. Throughout the rest of that year, Wartburg was what Luther called “my Patmos,” where he translated the New Testament into German. In his absence, however, Wittenberg took a radical turn. Andreas von Karlstadt, his associate from the beginning, had come to reject the baptism of infants and encouraged popular insurrection against the secular authorities.

Wittenberg was set on fire by violent spirits. Ransacking churches, Karlstadt appealed to the holy wars of the Old Testament and his own inspiration by the Spirit. For Luther and other Reformers, “enthusiasm” (literally, “God-within-ism”) is the nadir of idolatry. Locating authority within, as if the deepest self were a spark of divinity, renders the individual the source of the law and the gospel. “Adam was the first enthusiast,” Luther said, by turning away from the external word of God that judges and justifies.[4] Wittenberg became a seedbed of radical Anabaptist sects, such as the Zwickau prophets, who claimed the imminent return of Christ to institute a millennial reign. It would be nothing less than a restoration of the golden age of the church from the book of Acts.

Luther finally returned after pleas from the city council, and he immediately set about restoring order through the peaceful preaching of the word.

I will preach, but I will force no one; for faith must be voluntary. Take me as an example. I stood up against the Pope, indulgences, and all papists, but without violence or uproar. I only urged, preached, and declared God’s Word, nothing else. And yet while I was slumbering or drinking Wittenberg beer with Philip Melanchthon and Amsdorf, the Word inflicted more serious damage on popery than prince or emperor. I did nothing, the Word did everything. . . . Do you know what the Devil thinks when he sees men use violence to propagate the gospel? He sits with folded arms behind the fire of hell, and says with malignant looks and frightful grin: “Ah, how wise these madmen are to play my game! Let them go on; I shall reap the benefit. I delight in it.” But when he sees the Word running and contending alone on the battlefield, then he shudders and shakes for fear. The Word is almighty, and takes captive all hearts.[5]

These radicals, however, were not interested in Luther’s evangelical message; they wanted to establish a Spirit-led commonwealth where the millennial reign of Christ would replace both church and state. The Reformation therefore was not only opposed by the Roman Church but also by radical Protestants. As John Calvin told Cardinal Sadoleto, “We are assailed by two sects: the Pope and the Anabaptists.” Both claimed an ongoing apostolic office, boasting in continuing revelations. “In this way, both separate the Word from the Spirit and bury the Word of God in order to make room for their falsehood.”[6]

The greatest of these falsehoods was the anathematizing of the gospel itself by a reliable group carefully selected by the pope. Meeting in 1546, the sixth session of the Council of Trent decreed the following:

CANON IX. If any one says that by faith alone the impious is justified . . . let him be anathema.

CANON XI. If any one says that men are justified, either by the sole imputation of the justice of Christ, or by the sole remission of sins . . . let him be anathema.

CANON XII. If any one says that justifying faith is nothing else but confidence in the divine mercy which remits sins for Christ’s sake; or, that this confidence alone is that whereby we are justified; let him be anathema.

CANON XV. If any one says that a man, who is born again and justified, is bound of faith to believe that he is assuredly in the number of the predestinate; let him be anathema.

CANON XVI. If any one says that he will for certain, of an absolute and infallible certainty, have that great gift of perseverance unto the end, unless he have learned this by special revelation; let him be anathema.

CANON XXIV. If any one says that the justice received is not preserved and also increased before God through good works; but that the said works are merely the fruits and signs of Justification obtained, but not a cause of the increase thereof; let him be anathema.

CANON XXX. If any one says that, after the grace of Justification has been received, to every penitent sinner the guilt is remitted, and the debt of eternal punishment is blotted out in such wise, that there remains not any debt of temporal punishment to be discharged either in this world, or in the next in Purgatory, before the entrance to the kingdom of heaven can be opened (to him); let him be anathema.

CANON XXXII. If any one says that the good works of one that is justified are in such manner the gifts of God, as that they are not also the good merits of him that is justified; or, that the said justified . . . does not truly merit increase of grace, eternal life, and the attainment of that eternal life, if so be, however, that he depart in grace, and also an increase of glory; let him be anathema.

While “Lutheran” was a sectarian label coined by papal opponents, Luther insisted instead on the moniker “evangelical,” from the noun euangelion (gospel, “good news”). It was the recovery of the gospel that distinguished this cause from the works-righteousness and mystical “enthusiasm” of the pope on one side and the Anabaptists on the other.

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Finally, we drove into Wittenberg, where a bronze Luther continues to preach in the center of the city square, facing the Castle Church.

Packed with tourists, the plaza resembled a Renaissance fair with all sorts of food, drink, trinkets, and costumed musicians. Banners festooned the broad alleys proclaiming the five-hundredth anniversary of the Reformation. Standing in Wittenberg on Reformation Day, I discerned no sign of the actual message that changed the world—until we joined a modest gathering of believers inside a hotel ballroom.

In contrast with the mainline World Communion of Reformed Churches, the World Reformed Fellowship consists of church bodies committed to the inerrant Scriptures and to the creeds and confessions as subordinate standards. Here, there were no reporters or dramatic historical reenactments. Though slight in comparison with all the activity outside, representative leaders had been sent by their churches from places that would have been completely unknown to the Reformers.

Two Anglican archbishops from Africa attended, representing more than the total of communicant members in the Church of England. The largest confessional Reformed denomination in the United States is the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), with 384,000 members. Sister churches abroad include the Presbyterian Church of Brazil (650,000), the Evangelical Reformed Churches of Christ in Nigeria (6 million), and South Korea, where Reformed and Presbyterian believers number around 10 million. Though located in the capital of the world’s most populous Muslim nation, the Evangelical Reformed Church in Indonesia has reached millions throughout the region with the gospel.

Analogous figures could be provided for confessional Lutherans: for example, 100,000 in Kenya and the same number in Papua New Guinea. And even mainline denominations in the majority world are more orthodox today than the European, British, and American churches that spearheaded the modern missionary movement. Taking its stand on the authority of Scripture, salvation through Christ alone, and the teachings of the Thirty-Nine Articles, the Global Anglican Future Conference (CAFCON) represents about 35 million regular church attenders, mostly in the Global South, while 800,000 attend church on an average Sunday in the Church of England—the great majority of these attending evangelical parishes.

As we looked around at one another’s faces, singing “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” it was difficult to hold back tears of joy, even as we wept for the land of the Reformation and the declining light of the gospel across Europe and North America.

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Evangelicals and the Evangel Today

During the 1990s, I learned just how easily respected evangelical leaders could surrender the doctrine of justification. The project known as “Evangelicals and Catholics Together” (ECT) claimed agreement on the gospel regardless of differences over justification. In the face of growing secularism, so it was thought, Roman Catholics and evangelicals need to stand together. To be sure, I argued, wherever I could: on the Trinity, the dignity of all people created in God’s image, original sin, the need for Christ’s atonement, the return of Christ, and the resurrection of the dead. But to affirm that we agree on the gospel entails that justification solely by Christ’s imputed merits is not essential to the good news. Defending his signature of ECT, a good friend, mentor, and justly esteemed Reformed stalwart even called the imputation of Christ’s righteousness “the fine print.”

According to the current Catholic Catechism, “justification is not only the remission of sins, but also the sanctification and renewal of the interior man.”[7] Justification is therefore regarded as a process of becoming actually and intrinsically righteous. The first justification occurs at baptism, which eradicates both the guilt and corruption of original sin.[8] Due entirely to God’s grace, this initial justification infuses the habit (or principle) of grace into the recipient. By cooperating with this inherent grace, one merits an increase of grace and (one hopes) final justification.[9] So while initial justification is by grace alone, perseverance and final justification depend also on the works of the believer, which God graciously accepts as meritorious.[10] Since the progress of believers in holiness is never adequate to cancel the guilt of their actual sins, they must be refined in purgatory before being welcomed into heaven.[11]

Most recently, the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (1999), including representatives of the Vatican and the Lutheran World Federation, achieved a consensus sufficient to justify the announcement that the condemnations of the sixteenth century no longer apply to the partner in dialogue.[12] Subsequently, the other mainline bodies—Reformed, Anglican, Methodist, and Baptist—joined their Lutheran counterpart in announcing reconciliation on the Reformation’s chief point of division.

In my view, the Joint Declaration did not achieve the results many have claimed, and as Eberhard Jüngel judges, “The understanding that allegedly has been reached rests on ground which proves at places quite slippery.”[13] On the Lutheran side, the confessional doctrine of justification was surrendered at crucial points, particularly the conflation of faith and love and therefore justification and sanctification.[14] On the Roman Catholic side, soon after the statement was released, the Vatican followed up with disclaimers and even corrections of the Declaration, noting that it does not have any binding status.[15]

Yet these differences seem irrelevant when one considers that Protestants today default to the same religion of the human heart. On the five-hundredth anniversary of the Reformation, Pew Research conducted a poll that led to the conclusion that the Reformation is basically irrelevant today. A majority of Protestants in the United States (52 percent) say that both good deeds and faith in God are needed to get into heaven, a historically Catholic position. These Protestants also split on sola scriptura (Scripture alone): again, a slight majority (52 percent) say that Scripture is not the sole norm for faith and practice. Just 30 percent of all US Protestants affirm both sola fide and sola scriptura. Only 44 percent of US evangelicals affirm both.

Evangelicalism has always been a mixed bag, but it had a fair number of informed leaders rooted in Reformation traditions. I have always appreciated the courageous labors for the gospel by the pioneers of the modern missionary movement. Most of these leaders in fact were energized by Calvinistic and Lutheran confessional convictions. In contrast, consider the following verdict: “The gospel preached and the doctrine of salvation taught in most evangelical pulpits and lecterns and believed in most evangelical pews is not classical Arminianism but semi-Pelagianism if not outright Pelagianism.”[16] This is not an exaggerated Calvinist screed; this is the judgment of my friend and Arminian Baptist theologian Roger Olson. Sociologist Christian Smith has documented that the working religion of most Americans today is “moralistic, therapeutic deism.”[17]

The justification of the ungodly has never been an essential doctrine in American evangelicalism. The central emphasis is conversion—the transformation of individuals from sinner to saint and of sinful societies into virtuous ones. For the most part, doctrine gets in the way, which is why even evangelical theologians are often found reinventing doctrines we share with Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy, such as the Trinity. American Protestantism has been obsessed with defining itself against Rome, to the point of embracing an Anabaptist fanaticism that downplays even the formal ministry of word and sacrament. This nineteenth- and early twentieth-century fear of “papalism” had more to do with politics and cultural hegemony of WASP (White-Anglo-Saxon-Protestant) culture than of a concern to defend the chief article of the gospel. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s assessment at the end of his American tour, that the United States was “Protestantism without the Reformation,” aptly sums up American evangelicalism.[18]

So now here we are, after five centuries. Is the Reformation over? Clearly, Rome has not moved an inch toward the gospel. Instead, both Rome and Protestantism have moved farther away from it in the direction of semi-Pelagian, if not outright Pelagian, confidence in humanity to save itself. Peter Wehner’s recent article in The Atlantic bears the headline, “The Evangelical Church Is Breaking Apart.” In it, he writes, “For many Christians, their politics has become more of an identity marker than their faith” and quotes a Presbyterian pastor as saying, “We have forgotten the cross.”[19]

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Conclusion

I have spent a lot of space focusing on my own context of American evangelicalism because it’s where I come from. God has included American missions in his mighty work. Yet often in our effort to get the gospel out, we fail to get the gospel right. Pragmatism, consumerism, self-help moralism, and the prosperity gospel are among the human-centered messages and strategies we have developed and exported. The underlined part of the Great Commission is “Go!” As a nation of immigrants, we have learned to travel light. The strength of this is evident in the enormous spread of Christianity through technology and a vast parachurch network across denominational lines. Yet the weakness is evident in the shallowness and sometimes erroneous teaching that result in superficial and artificial conversions. Although accountability to creeds and confessions and to visible churches may slow us down, this enables us to bring God’s word faithfully to the nations. As the articles in this issue attest, the best evangelism and discipleship emerge not when we adopt a lowest-common-denominator approach but when, out of the depths of our own confessional traditions, we declare the same gospel.

So, is the Reformation over? It all depends. Any parent of teenagers today knows that “justification” is more existentially real than ever. Many of the younger generations tend to find their identity in social media, where their “likes” and “followers” become a measure of their worth. It is not God’s verdict, but that of their peers that condemns or justifies. Also, according to the CDC, 1.38 million Americans attempted suicide in 2019 and 50,000 were successful. In addition, 841,000 died of drug overdose.[20] It’s time to challenge the “theology of glory,” as Luther called it, with the “theology of the cross.”

At least Rome and the Reformers shared a world in which heaven and hell hung in the balance, one in which Christ would arraign all before his bar. This common horizon made the Reformation debates relevant. Today, people still feel guilty but they don’t know why or what to do about it. We continue to find ways to “suppress the truth in unrighteousness”—even to the point of idolatry or even atheism—but is this not a base effort to evade an objective and therefore condemning evaluation of our life? Friedrich Nietzsche came closer than many preachers today with his character the “Ugliest Man” in Thus Spake Zarathustra. The God who beholds all, “men’s depths and dregs,” had even “crept into my dirtiest corners,” said this character. “On such a witness I would have revenge—or not live myself. The God who beheld everything, and also man: that God had to die! Man cannot endure it that such a witness should live.”[21]

But the price of this evasion is steep, even if only in existential terms. “Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself,” Sartre asserted, and bears “the entire responsibility for his existence squarely upon his own shoulders.”[22] That is an astonishing doctrine. Is it any wonder that we would rather be accountable for this burden to ourselves rather than to an external authority who has the power—and the right—to judge us? Is not such secularized Pelagianism (as if the heresy itself is not already secularized enough) the incubator of so many of our anxieties?

Robert J. Lifton, a psychiatrist and pioneer in brain research, observes that the source of many neuroses in society is a nagging sense of guilt without knowing its source.[23] The anxiety is “a vague but persistent kind of self-condemnation related to the symbolic disharmonies I have described, a sense of having no outlet for his loyalties and no symbolic structure for his achievements.” I interpret this theologically as suggesting that there is no external law to measure oneself by or an external gospel through which one becomes rescripted in Christ. “Rather than being a feeling of evil or sinfulness,” he says, “it takes the form of a nagging sense of unworthiness all the more troublesome for its lack of clear origin.”[24]

Preachers who want to appeal to the felt needs of people today assume that they already know what they need: our job is simply to show that Jesus is the answer to their questions. Deep down, though, they know that superficial diagnoses will not suffice. We don’t even know the right questions until the law arraigns us before God’s bar. No longer pretending, giving excuses, or blaming others, we are called to account. The preacher’s job is to show people that their felt needs aren’t their real needs. It may be that the justification of the ungodly is not on everyone’s radar. But when has the question “How can I be saved?” ever been a common question of the average person? Regardless of whether this was an urgent question for Jews of the Second Temple period (and it was), it was evidently provoked repeatedly by the preaching of Jesus and the apostles as they exposed human guilt, corruption, and death, pointing to Golgotha and the empty tomb as its solution. Jesus upbraided the religious specialists for refusing him because they “trusted in themselves that they were righteous” and consequently missed the whole point of their own scriptures.

Evidently, the apostle Paul did not find a ready audience for his message either, reporting that most Jews found it “a stumbling block” and most Greeks found it simply “foolishness.” The greatest threat to the gospel came not from external forces but from within the churches themselves, as Paul’s stern warning to the Galatians made clear. Yet it is precisely in its foolishness that the gospel is “the power of God unto salvation for all who believe.” Let us never lose our confidence in that gospel. Let us never take it for granted, assuming it is something we already know. No better than anyone else, we can only echo Luther’s dying words: “We are all beggars. That is most certainly true.”

Michael Horton is editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation and the J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology at Westminster Seminary California in Escondido.