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What happens when you dare to allow God to challenge a lifelong “packaged” belief? You grow. There is no other way. First my father wound and Martin Luther’s writings, and now, how the familiar tabernacle and Bible brought me to the Church.
Our next series, After This Our Exile, Making Sense of the Old Testament, will cover the biblical material and all the references from this show in depth.
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Ante Nicene Fathers’ writings.
Here is a quote from History of the Christian Church, by Protestant academic Philip Schaff, who himself points out Luther’s agenda and rebellion.
The most important example of dogmatic influence in Luther’s version is the famous interpolation of the word alone in Rom. 3:28 (allein durch den Glauben), by which he intended to emphasize his solifidian doctrine of justification, on the plea that the German idiom required the insertion for the sake of clearness. 464 But he thereby brought Paul into direct verbal conflict with James, who says (James 2:24), “by works a man is justified, and not only by faith” (“nicht durch den Glauben allein“). It is well known that Luther deemed it impossible to harmonize the two apostles in this article, and characterized the Epistle of James as an “epistle of straw,” because it had no evangelical character (“keine evangelische Art“).
He therefore insisted on this insertion in spite of all outcry against it. His defense is very characteristic. “If your papist,” he says,465 “makes much useless fuss about the word sola, allein, tell him at once: Doctor Martin Luther will have it so, and says: Papist and [ass] donkey are one thing; sic volo, sic jubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas. For we do not want to be pupils and followers of the Papists, but their masters and judges.” Then he goes on in the style of foolish boasting against the Papists, imitating the language of St. Paul in dealing with his Judaizing opponents (2 Cor. 11:22 sqq.): “Are they doctors? so am I. Are they learned? so am I. Are they preachers? so am I. Are they theologians? so am I. Are they disputators? so am I. Are they philosophers? so am I. Are they the writers of books? so am I. And I shall further boast: I can expound Psalms and Prophets; which they can not. I can translate; which they can not …. Therefore the word allein shall remain in my New Testament, and though all pope-donkeys (Papstesel) should get furious and foolish, they shall not turn it out.”466
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