“Provoking Christian Insights” series

Part 17

What kind of Child of God am I?

When I was a little kid and beginning to comprehend things in the church, I began to wonder. My wonderment was about some serious things. At school all of us kids learned the same things. But the kids at one church learned one thing, and the kids at another church were taught something else.

This was evidenced by the fact that the Catholic kids believed differently that we did. Worse, there were kids that believed what we did but had a different baptism. They were baptized young as babies and we were not to be baptized until we were about teen aged and could tell what we were being baptized into.

We were called Protestants, and the Catholics were whatever Protestants weren’t, or something like that. Although our parents didn’t elaborate, they let us know that there was a big difference in our churches and when Protestant kids would marry Catholics, it was understood that their children would be raised Catholic.

We had God and Jesus, so did they, but they also had The Virgin Mary. Then there were the Jewish kids who just had God and Jesus was a prophet. Then there were the strange little churches around that parents told us to “just stay away from,” that ranged from “Holy Rollers” to “Jehovah’s Witnesses” and “Christian Scientists,” “Seventh-Day Adventists,” and the “Mormons,” also called “The Later Day Saints.”

I saw a little medal like you’d get from a vending machine with a penny in the middle that read, “I will never marry an unfit girl, nor will I ever marry a Catholic.” That bothered me because in church we recited that we were part of the holy catholic church (Apostles Creed), and I had a crush on Roxine, who was a Catholic.

My religious questions didn’t seem to bother me much as I grew older. I played with Catholic kids and still had a case for a girl whom I had only danced with after a high school football game. Many years later a Catholic friend told me that they had been warned about “non-Catholic” involvements.

On Easter Sunday in 1949, I dawned a little white robe made of what I thought was the same thing they made “ghost costumes” out of, or a bed sheet, and stepped down into the “baptismal font” and made a confession of faith in believing in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Oh, what a feeling that was! I was 12 years old, as were my classmates who entered the waters with me. From then on I was a genuine water-baptized Christian.

Why did they call us Protestants?

Sooner, or later, I would find out that we were Protestants because of something that happened in 1529 called the second Diet of Speyer, which birthed the term “Protestant.” It had to do with religiously divided peoples who believed, for the most part, that the membership should run the church and not its management person, namely the Pope. It involved Martin Luther and the first Diet of Speyer three year earlier had essentially suspended the Edict of Worms and allowed Lutheranism to spread. Now no further spread of Lutheranism would be allowed.

The Protestant historians don’t always mention the dark side of the Diet of Speyer. This Diet including the Lutheran princes, condemned the Anabaptis movement, and decreed that “rebaptizers” should be punished, even with death if recalcitrant and persistent in their errors. These “Lutheran princes” felt little wrong to their attitudes and actions condemning and persecuting the Anabaptists. Thousands of Anabaptists (rebaptisers, who baptized people who had been baptized as babies) died at the hands of both Catholics and Protestants in the years following. History of the Reformation of the 16^th century, p 76, HJ.H. Merle D’Aubigne.

The split is more involved than there is time or space or print here, but basically what Luther was preaching was arguments from is 95 thesis,’ he nailed to the door of the Catholic church, regarding the priesthood of believers in the Address and his teachings in the “Secular Authorities” was to turn the doctrine of thee two swords into a model of the two kingdoms, the church and the state (government).

Luther viewed the proper role of the church in relation to the individual, Scripture, and society. He believed the Catholic Church had wrongly erected three walls of privilege that prevented the corrections if its abuses.

The first wall was the assertion that spiritual authority was superior to that of the civil authority. Here the Church was not subject to secular jurisdiction in many matters.

The second wall was that the Papacy alone had the right to authoritatively interpret Scripture and could not be corrected by others.

The third wall was that the pope alone could call councils, allowing him to control the church and prevent any appeal from his decisions.

Luther effectively argued that all Christians truly belong to the religious class. The fact being that our baptism consecrates us all without exception and makes us all priests. “You are a royal priesthood and a realm of priests,” 1 Peter 2:9, and again in Revelation, “You have made us priests and kings by your blood,” Rev 5:9. Luther believed that all Christians had an equal spiritual status, though they may fulfill different spiritual offices. Those selected as pastor or bishop, act merely on behalf of the congregation, all of whom have the same authority he does. He serves at the command an consent of the community, who can equally dismiss him from his offices should they desire.”

This sound doctrine and its implications undercut all three walls of papal privilege by putting all Christians on a similar plane. The church hierarchy was no longer above secular rulers and rules. Luther turned the dual sword of the medieval world into a single sword and placed it firmly into the hand of the secular ruler. Any guilty man would pay the penalty.

The Apostle Paul wrote: “Let every soul (including the Pope) to be subject to higher powers, for they bear not the sword in vain. They serve God alone, punishing the evil and praising the good,” Romans 13:1-4.

Paul also said; “He that is spiritual judges all things and is judged by none,” 1 Corinthians 2:15. Worldly laws extend no farther than to life and property and to what is extant on earth. For over the soul God can and will let no one rule but Himself.

Lastly, the priesthood of believers overturned the third wall as well, as under the concept the church lay in the body of believers rather than a supreme head. According to Luther, all people are divided into two classes, “the first belong to the kingdom of God, the second to the kingdom of the world.” Those in God’s kingdom “need no secular sword or law,” since they have their hearts in the Holy Spirit who instructs them and causes them to wrong no one.”

Non-Christians are “subjected to the sword, so that, even though they would do so, they cannot practice their wickedness” in peace and prosperity.

Luther saw the clear dichotomy between these two kingdoms, and viewed Christ’s kingdom as limited to His followers.” For this reason these two kingdoms must be distinguished and both be permitted to remain, the one to produce piety, the other to bring about external peace.

As Protestants we believe that Christi’s kingdom does not involve using the sword. “Christ did not wield the sword nor give it a place in His kingdom; for He is a King of Christians, and rules by His Holy Spirit alone.

However, the events of the 1520’s caused Luther to begin to find different emphasis within his views on church and state. “The turmoil surrounding the peasant’s revolt and the controversy surrounding the Anabaptists focused Luther’s mind on the importance of respect for civil authority, as well as the civil implications of spiritual beliefs,” (Liberty Magazine of Religious Freedom, May-June 2007).

INSPIRATION: “then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, ‘We ought to obey God rather than men.’” Acts 5:29.

Write: croneis@earthlink.net

Note: My email address will change next week due to Embarq dropping earthlink.