Bible Students

A reflection based on “Christianity’s Dangerous Idea” by McGrath (chapters 1-2)

The first section of Christianity’s Dangerous Idea covers the introduction through chapter two. This section introduces the scope of church history in addition to giving a biography of Martin Luther’s life. 

In the introduction, the reader is introduced to a handful of theological principles which were borne out of the Protestant reformation. All Christians everywhere have the right to interpret the Bible for themselves. Ministers do not have the sole authority of biblical interpretation. Any lay Christian has the authority to interpret the Scriptures by themselves, for themselves. Now, this does not mean they should only interpret the Scriptures by themselves, but it does mean they are responsible for their study of the Scripture and discovering what the text means. This causes many different doctrinal positions, but also allows Protestantism to be like an organism which can change depending on the religious climate of the day. Protestantism swings back and forth between hard doctrinal positions and life-changing pietism. What is meant by this is that often Protestantism will go too far into living out Christianity, without enough focus on understanding Scripture and theology, and will pendulum over to have theology as its main pursuit. Then, when lonely theology puts forth a stale and lifeless Christianity, the pendulum will swing back and produce a Christianity which focuses on personal holiness. Orthodoxy and orthopraxy are difficult to balance, and Protestant history has gone back and forth, and for good reason. 

A few differentiations important to be made about the time of the Reformation are, firstly, that the Catholic church was not hugely corrupted and, secondly, the Reformed and Protestant denominations are not the same. These will be touched on below. Protestantism has changed in recent years in response to hyper-pentecostalism, which has in the eyes of many swung too far into orthopraxy without enough orthodoxy, and even boasts up to 500 million adherents today. 

Chapter one discusses the events leading to the Reformation. A little boy in Germany was about to set fire to a whole religious system, and his name was Martin Luther. Technically, his name was closer to Martin Luder, but it was eventually changed for linguistic localization. At the time, the Pope was so authoritative that the king sat under his authority. The move of the Papacy to France was a huge power shift, and was not responded well to by the people. It was often referred to as the Babylonian captivity due to the negative effects it brought. At the time, there were three different individuals who claimed to be the true Pope, which weakened the trust in the church significantly, on top of the other untrustworthy activities committed by the church. After that specific issue was resolved, there remained only one Pope in Rome from that point on. On the local level, priests were likely the only learned people in their area, and no salvation could be given outside of them. They were the chaplains of heaven in their area, and the most understanding of academic matters. However, eventually individuals began to buy their way up the church government ladder, which led to a higher mistrust by the people toward the church. Additionally, when the people began to increase in learnedness, the clergy were no longer the most learned individuals in their areas. This further divided the clergy from the layperson. Even further, the clerics were exempt from taxes. Folk religion of the time began taking over in the form of saint veneration. Personally, when I hear stories of calling on saints, I can not help but think of folk religion. Rather than neutral spirits being called upon, one calls upon saints to aid them. I have seen saints dedicated as the patron saint of finding lost items, and many other strange folk-religion-esque roles. Additionally, as the Renaissance began to roll in, academics began questioning the Vulgate, the authoritative Scripture of the time, when comparing it to older Greek manuscripts. This led to a religious shock in the laypeople. All of this put together was a surefire recipe to divide the interests and religion of the clergy and people. The tides had changed, and the clergy were not the top academics in their area, and became less respected as time went on. 

Finally, in chapter two, a summary of the beginning of Luther’s life is given. Luther was faced with death when he was struck with lightning, and called upon saint Anne to save him. In exchange, he pledged to become a monk. He reasoned that going to be at a monastery would be the best way to avoid hell, which he was deathly paranoid about. He feared he would be sent to hell under the Catholic system. Would God deny grace to those who did their best? When Luther came out with his idea about justification, the whole Catholic church would be attacked at the majority of their day-to-day theological points. Practically, the whole church’s public doctrine was at stake. How would purgatory reconcile us to God is Christ’s sacrifice had already reconciled us to God? Was there a need for a double sacrifice, that of Jesus on the cross and that of our own in purgatory? Luther attempted to debate this idea of purgatory, but was publicly humiliated. However, this experience aided him in creating a stronger and wiser offense against the Catholic church. Another big question of the day was why indulgences were allowed by the church. Indulgences promised less time in purgatory for the individual or their loved on if they would pay money to the church. This system was not found in the Bible, which was pointed out by Luther. Though he did not find much against purgatory itself, he strongly opposed indulgences. Luther aimed to make positive reformation in the church along the lines of reforming the salvific understanding and the purpose of holy living (in light of the novel soteriology). Eventually, when Luther’s relatives believed him to be crazy, he was kidnapped and locked in a building against his will. This could have been a terrible time for Luther, but instead he took this time to write his German translation of the Bible, which was quite the feat. Additionally, there is a famous event which transpired in that building, which is where Luther drove away the devil with his pen. While today many people see an ink blotch on the wall while visiting this memorial site, the literal understanding of Luther driving away the devil with his pen is likely referring to what he wrote on parchment, and is not related to throwing an ink well at the devil.