Sunday, October 05, 2003

Luther

A dozen of us met up this afternoon and went to see the movie "Luther", followed by dinner at a Thai restaurant. What a great movie. I was deeply moved at many points throughout the film.

An interesting point about Luther (one that was a bit too obscure to appear in the movie) was that he actually envisioned three distinctly different types of meetings for the reformed church. The first was to be a traditional "Catholic"-style Latin liturgy for the (largely unsaved) masses who had only known this style of worship. Less emphasis would be placed on the eucharist however, and more on teaching. The second type of service would still be somewhat "Catholic" in style, but would be conducted in German instead of Latin. The attendees were still assumed to be largely unsaved. Luther saw the purpose of these two types of services as evangelistic in nature; using familiar forms and liturgies to introduce the parishioners to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The third type of service that Luther envisioned was to be for actual believers. Here's how Luther described this type of meeting:

"The third kind of service should be a truly evangelical order and should not be held in a public place for all sorts of people. But those who want to be Christians in earnest and who profess the gospel with hand and mouth should sign their names and meet alone in a house somewhere to pray, to read, to baptize, to receive the sacrament, and do other Christian works. According to this order, those who do not lead Christian lives could be known, reproved, corrected, cast out, or excommunicated, according to the rule of Christ, Matthew 18. Here one could also solicit benevolent gifts to be willingly given and distributed to the poor, according to St. Paul's example, II Corinthians 9. Here would be no need of much and elaborate singing. Here one could set out a brief and neat order for baptism and the sacrament and center everything on the Word, prayer, and love.... "

Luther was describing what we today would call a house church, or what the 1st, 2nd and 3rd century believers simply called ekklesia. These were not to be merely attachments to the parish church, but were to be self-contained house-based churches.

Sadly, this form of church was unrealized by Luther and his followers. This was probably largely due to a lack of mature believers who would be able to provide leadership to large numbers of house-churches. Political and social pressures also interfered. It was perhaps too radical a leap from the enforced rule of Catholic Christendom to the liberty of house-churches. Luther was also repelled by some of the violent excesses of some reformation groups and saw that a certain amount of centralized control was still necessary to prevent anarchy from filling the vacuum left by the ouster of Catholicism.

Other reformers, such as the Anabaptists, were able to make the leap to the type of "believers church" that Luther described, but were severely persecuted (by both Protestants and Catholics!).

Luther went on to write of his church for earnest believers: "As yet I neither can nor desire to begin such a congregation or assembly or to make rules for it. For I have not yet the people or persons for it, nor do I see many who want it. But if I should be requested to do it and could not refuse with a good conscience, I should gladly help and do my part as best I can."


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