Thank you for more interaction and explanation of what you have said.

You stated: “So, let me ask you. Have we ‘repainted’ that faith that Luther held onto? Or do we continue to believe in the power of the pope to administer pardons? Do we continue to believe in purgatory?”

You would be correct to wit if this was in fact a reading of Luther and his entire corpus. Not even seven months later of his posting the 95 Theses, Luther said of himself that he was a papist himself when he wrote the 95 Theses. Luther did not have his evangelical conversion till later. His writings were continually changing as he discovered the locus of interpretation around Christ as our Vicarious Substitute in his active and passive obedience, the law/gospel distinction, Two Kingdoms, etc.

In taking his mature theology, we can say what has been said concerning Luther. Dewalt, citing Luther’s more ‘Lutheran’ works, has indeed interpreted him correctly as well as the Reformers.

Concerning Bell’s understanding of Scripture, I would disagree that it is not in fact orthodox or what the Reformers held to. The quotation your provided shows how unorthodox and in fact liberal his understanding of Bibliology is. People are not inspired; councils are not inspired. Only Scripture is inspired as a text. He speaks of inspiration as something that happens when songwriters find inspiration to write. This is a very Gnostic understanding of spirituality.

“8. The penitential canons are imposed only on the living, and, according to them, nothing should be imposed on the dying.

“9. Therefore the Holy Spirit in the pope is kind to us, because in his decrees he always makes exception of the article of death and of necessity.

“49. Christians are to be taught that the pope’s pardons are useful, if they do not put their trust in them; but altogether harmful, if through them they lose their fear of God.

“71 . He who speaks against the truth of apostolic pardons, let him be anathema and accursed!

“72. But he who guards against the lust and license of the pardon-preachers, let him be blessed!

Luther also takes it as a given that purgatory exists, though he disagrees with his contemporary theologians as to what that looks like.

“17. With souls in purgatory it seems necessary that horror should grow less and love increase.

“26. The pope does well when he grants remission to souls [in purgatory], not by the power of the keys (which he does not possess), but by way of intercession.”

So, let me ask you. Have we ‘repainted’ that faith that Luther held onto? Or do we continue to believe in the power of the pope to administer pardons? Do we continue to believe in purgatory?

Wading in even a bit deeper I want to take issue with the way that Bell is presented in this article. He is not given the benefit of the doubt, but misconstrued. For example, when Bell talks about not believing that it is possible to make the claim of the Reformers that the only authority we need is the scriptures, he is not taking a post-modern/liberal view of truth, but rather an Orthodox view. Here is the context of the citation for Bells rejection of scripture as reference above.

“This is part of the problem with continually insisting that one of the absolutes of the Christian faith must be a belief the “Scripture alone” is our guide. It sounds nice, but it is not true. In reaction to abuses by the church, a group of believers during a time called the Reformation claimed that we only need the authority of the Bible. But the problem is that we got the Bible from the church voting on what the Bible even is. So when I affirm the Bible as God’s Word, in the same breath I have to affirm that when those people voted, God was somehow present, guiding them to do what they did. When people say that all we need is the Bible, it is simply not true.”

“In affirming the Bible as inspired, I have to affirm the Spirit who I believe was inspiring those people to choose those books.”

Far from being a rejection of the authority of the scriptures, it is a recognition that the scriptures are recognised and properly interpreted within the context of the church, or the faith.

Well, this is giving someone the benefit of the doubt. We can just go straight to pride and unwillingness of the heart to submit to God. This may be in fact what Bell is doing but we are not discussing that right now in the main post but that his arguments are fallacious and misinformed and dead wrong

@ Tim:
As always, great thoughts. I don’t think I can add anything to what you said but I’ll at least put my 2 cents in.

@ CH:
“Your thoughts on God are too human.” Case and point of Bell. Well stated.

@ Pastor Chad:
I think I would have liked to see your “quibbling” about the theology of Luther v Bell. Quibbling doesn’t sound nice, so instead, I would have liked you to expound on what you know about the 2 specifically because as you continue in dialogue it shows you don’t know either very well. Luther’s main enemy, if you will, was the Pope and the fact that the Bible was not being interpreted correctly; people were in danger of hell because the truths of the 5 sola’s, mainly sola fide, were not taught and instead were anathematized by Rome. On the other hand, Bell’s main fight that he is picking is against the disillusioned children of failed fundamentalists, prohibitionists, and even early church marketers. People are tired of the legalism and moralism present in 95% of evangelicalism, so Bell instead presents an easy going, neo-evangelical message – “We just have to choose which reality we want to live in.” What does that even mean? I’ve heard new age guru’s with more solid statements than that! To equate the Reformation that began with Luther to the “reformation” that Bell claims he’s a part of is quite ignorant of the beliefs of both men.
If you will, please convince me that Luther would agree with certain statements that Bell makes by giving proof from Luther’s writings in comparison to Bell’s. First, and I would contend most important, look what Bell states right off the bat – he wants to change THEOLOGY, not cosmetic, superficial things. Once you understand his premise for the rest of his book, it will come as no surprise when he does in fact change and try to reform key points of theology, namely sin, a literal hell/heaven, the virgin birth, the infallibility of Scripture, etc. Scary phrases should grab your attention as a pastor and wave huge red flags, especially ones such as, “Heaven is full of forgiven people that God loves, that Jesus died for. Hell is full of forgiven people that God loves, that Jesus died for. It just depends on which reality we choose to live in.” If things like this aren’t contrary to Scripture and we can’t say that they are objectively, God help the Church. Keep reading and studying, but may I suggest you leave Bell and the other emergents out and incorporate more of our historical fathers who had their eyes set on Christ and not being hip.

Bell is doing a lot more than reminding us of our responsibility toward others, he in many ways wants to fundamentally change the way we view God. This in and of itself is not bad, as Luther demonstrated. However, I think the comparison between Bell and Erasmus is very fitting. What are we “reforming” toward?

Just like some politicians appeal to “change,” making an appeal to “reforming” is such a nebulous statement unless one clearly defines what they mean by reforming. Toward a more biblically accurate view of God, or toward a view calls into question the authority and clarity of Scripture? I think Luther’s statement to Erasmus, “Your thoughts on God are too human” is very fitting for Bell as well.

Excellent points on the historicity of Luther and the Reformers’ religion. One of the main problems with Bell and the emergent folk is that they do not read the primary sources but recreate history around their thinking.

Excellent historiography of the doctrine of sola Scriptura… very helpful. I am glad to see your emphasis upon the One-Source theory of tradition as the context of sola Scriptura so that it would not be confused with solo Scriptura or Scripture in the nude as many modern Evangelicals think of it as.

Pastor Chad,

Luther and Bell would not agree. Dewalt perfectly delineated the huge epistemological differences between the two. Bell states: “Things changed. Thousands of people connected with God in ways they hadn’t before.” This statement of Bell’s is misleading. He wants people to assume it is okay to repaint the Christian experience where we see Luther in fact wanting to restore it to the apostolic tradition. The Reformation was not anti-tradition. No, they held a very high view of Creeds and confessions along with the Apostolic Fathers right until the middle of the Medieval Church.

Bell is not being honest but rather not working with the primary sources and reinterpreting the Reformation to make it work into his ‘emerging’ Schleiremachean view of history and of the development of the Church (i.e. he’s saying ‘that was Luther’s way of doing things and here is our way, they’re both legit and I have historical precedence’). This idea is not only foreign to what was thought but down right deceitful to lead people astray like this.

“Because of this movement, the churches he was speaking against went through their own process of rethinking and repainting, making significant changes as a result. And this process hasn’t stopped. It can’t.”

While if Bell may in fact mean by this that we should learn how to interact and defend THE Christian faith once delivered to the saints in the ‘dilemmas’ being posed, then fine but I doubt this is what he is referring to. He wants a recreation of the Christian faith in every age, ‘if this kernel of practice works in the present we will take it but the elements of Luther’s time are in no way imposed upon us.’ This thinking is contrary to historic Christianity and what the Scriptures, coinherent with the Creeds, display for the watching world. This spectrum is nothing but the old liberal view of Scripture, tradition, and Christianity.

I would also like to the comment on this part of the quotation to prove this pastor wrong: “People believe that in Jesus, God came among us in a unique and powerful way, showing a new kind of life. Giving each of us a new vision for our life together, for the world we live in. And as a part of this tradition, I embrace the need to keep painting, to keep reforming.”

This rhetoric, or I should say sophistry, is so close to that of the classic liberalism that it should be spotted immediately. “that in Jesus, God came among us.” What is that? That he showed a new kind of life? No, Christ did not primarily come to be a new law-giver. He did not give a law that was a lot easier to obey than the Mosaic Law. This idea of Christ as our new guru is not only consistent with classic liberalism but with Roman Catholicism. Bell is not apart of historic Christianity which sees Christ’s coming as penal, judicial, forensic – as a life lived vicariously for his people in agreement to the Father’s just demands for our sin.

To add to what has been insurmountably been stated: there is a context out of which we define the doctrines of Scripture. For many in Evangelicalism, they hold to solo Scriptura and not what Luther put forth. Luther and the other Reformers saw Scripture in a churchly and Creedal context. The Creeds were authoritative, although not the norming norm, they indeed held weight. If a person does not confess Christ as fully God and fully man, he is not united to Christ.

Bell confuses Luther and the Reformers with modern Evangelical notions of ‘me and my Bible’ – pure Biblicism which is simply not true. What Bell does not know how to deal with is Confessionalism at its best, for it is an entirely different animal from that of conservatives and liberals, post-conservatives and emergents, Evangelicals and fundamentalists. Confessionalism does not fall for the Kantian division between the rational and irrational, the noumenal or phenomenal. Epistemologically Bell does not know how to incorporate this third view and therefore feels free to reinterpret history for his benefit.

How does one exactly overdue their emphasis on God? I would really like to see that panned out. You are posing a false dilemma.

If you read the Reformers, the Reformed tradition, or the Lutheran tradition, they in fact place quite a bit of emphasis on serving our neighbor. I do not think you know the primary sources nor are you using them correctly if you have, in step with Bell.

When the Reformation used the term semper Reformanda, it was always in the context of Ecclesia Reformata. There is an essence to the Faith that never changes. What does continually Reform is the accidental parts of theology, faith, and practice. For example, in the Reformed tradition, the Westminster Standards were changed to exclude a Establishmentarian view of Government that were originally apart of the 17th century originals b/c it was believed to be inconsistent with the heart of Calvinism/Reformed theology.

Again, he may perceive the faith in ways that are different than Luther, but then again Luther did not have everything right either. I DO think that Luther would agree with Bell. The church should always be reforming. It should always be challenging the accepted perception of God and the faith.

The traditions that commonly link themselves back to the Reformation, I would argue, do a good job of exalting Christ and God, but they do it to the deficit of things human. Jesus did not only say that we should love God with our whole being, but that we should love others as we love ourselves.

The correlation I see between the two is that Luther was reminding us of our responsibility toward God, and Bell is reminding us of our responsibility toward others. Taken to the extreme, neither is correct. Taken together and ‘all the law and the prophets hand on these TWO commandments.