95 Theses … for the 450th Anniversary of the Reformation

“Out of love and zeal for the elucidation of truth, the following theses will be debated … in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,” wrote an obscure monk at the head of a series of propositions four and a half centuries ago this week. Those theses were posted not simply on a Castle Church door (which the ravages of time have long since claimed) but on the conscience of Christendom. Both the formal theology and the practical church activity of Luther’s day were leading men away from, rather than to, Christ’s salvation, for the Church had embraced the greatest error of all: the belief that man can earn his own way to Life. On the Eve of All Saints, 1967, “love and zeal for the elucidation of truth” demand that this same fundamental error—today appearing in a different but no less deadly form—be revealed for what it is. (Readers of these theses may enjoy comparing them, number by number, with the originals, some of which have been freely used here in various degrees of modification. Concordia Publishing House publishes an English translation of the theses in attractive booklet form with introduction by E. G. Schwiebert.)

1 Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, in saying: “Repent ye,” etc., intended that the whole life of believers should be penitence.

2 In the sixteenth century, indulgences diverted men from a life of repentance; in the mid-twentieth century, “secular religion” achieves the same purpose.

3 Then the world was kept from the Gospel by hyper-religiosity on the part of churchmen; now, by their hyper-irreligiosity.

4 Which is another way of saying that false religion and irreligion amount to the same thing.

5 The lamentable condition Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace” can result either from selling grace cheaply (as then) or from cheapening the very idea of grace (as now).

6 Grace is cheapened and man becomes his own pseudo-saviour when God is considered dead—either metaphorically or literally—for as God diminishes, man assumes his place.

7 Yet true religion begins with the Baptist’s affirmation: “He must increase, but I must decrease.”

8 A world without a name for God is a world without a name for salvation; all hope in such a world is man-made hope and therefore chimerical.

9 Secular towers of Babel, built over the alleged coffin of Deity, invariably produce confusion of tongues.

10 A “secular Christ” is a contradiction in terms, for he plainly said: “My kingdom is not of this world.”

11 The way is narrow and the gate strait leading to that Kingdom; to enter it, one must give up all hope of saving oneself and rely fully upon the Christ.

12 To rely on Christ is to take him at his word.

13 To question his teachings at any point is to stand in judgment upon one’s Judge and Advocate.

14 To translate the Christ of the New Testament into a secular “man for others” is to re-do God in our image instead of permitting him to re-do us in his image.

15 If the Christ in whom one believes is unable to say, “He who has seen me has seen the Father,” he is no Christ at all.

16 A “fully kenotic Christ” is by definition unknowable.

17 If nonetheless believed in, a “fully hidden Christ” will necessarily turn out to be the mirror-image of his worshiper or of the times in which the worshiper lives.

18 Salvation through such a Christ is self-salvation, which is in reality damnation.

19 If we are on the threshold of a “new age of the Spirit,” we had better be sure which “spirit” he is before we worship him; the spirit of the age is generally “the god of this world.”

20 “Test the spirits,” says Scripture, intending that God’s Word judge the spirit of the age.

21 But when Scripture itself is judged, what ultimate judgment remains?

22 Human judgment of Scripture assumes that we know more than God and must in the last analysis save ourselves.

23 Indeed, all “secular theology” is grounded in an optimistic view of man’s abilities.

24 How quickly has theology in our century come the full circle from modernistic optimism to secularistic optimism!

25 How very fast sinners forget the piles of eyeglasses and teeth and the bodies of naked children at Dachau.

26 How readily sinners forget that apart from the living God of Scripture and his Son’s death in our behalf, we turn our secular existence into a seething cauldron of hell and hatred.

27 They preach human doctrine who say that the soul achieves bliss as soon as the divine truths of biblical Christianity are reduced to “secular cash-value.”

28 What is achieved is “sinful cash-value,” nothing less, nothing more.

29 One wallows in secularity, without hope of a solution for its self-centered condition.

30 In the words of Tillich, one destroys proper theological correlation by turning revelational answers into existential questions.

31 Unless a clear and unimpeachable Word from outside the human situation is available to man, his existential predicament will remain overwhelming and secular optimism will stand revealed as naïve folly.

32 Those who believe that they are made sure of their own salvation by “finding God where the social action is” will be eternally damned along with their teachers.

33 We must especially beware of those who say that such social and political action is that inestimable gift of God by which men are reconciled.

34 The “horizontal” reconciliation of man with man depends squarely upon the “vertical” reconciliation of God and man at the Cross, even as the Second Table of the Decalogue follows and rests on the First.

35 They preach no Christian doctrine who teach that contrition and faith in Christ are not necessary for doing God’s will in society.

36 Every Christian who feels true compunction over his sins has plenary remission of pain and guilt, even without involvement in social and political causes.

37 Involvement in politics and society will follow as a fruit of faith, for “we love because he first loved us.”

38 But when the Christ-relationship is not seen as the ground of Christian social action, Law is confused with Gospel, and neither faith nor properly motivated social action remains.

39 It is a most difficult thing, even for the most learned theologians, to exalt before the people the great riches of political action and, at the same time, the necessity of true contrition.

40 True contrition seeks and loves punishment for its sins, while stress on changing society makes it seem relatively unimportant.

41 It is well to remember that the Great Commission had to do with the proclamation of the Gospel, not the reformation of the Roman Empire.

42 The Empire was much transformed through the Gospel, but where this occurred it happened because believers “sought first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness.”

43 Christians should be taught that he who proclaims to a man an eternal word of grace does better than he who participates in a sit-in.

44 For by a preachment of God’s Word, which never returns void, man becomes better, while by sit-ins he does not become better but only less subject to adverse social conditions.

45 Christians should be taught that he who substitutes political lobbying for the proclamation of divine grace is not obtaining God’s favor but calls down upon himself God’s wrath.

46 Christians should be taught that he who does not perform charitable acts to his immediate neighbor accomplishes little in attempting to improve the lot of those at a distance.

47 Christians should be taught that while they are free to engage in social and political action, they are not commanded to do so for their soul’s salvation.

48 Scripture nowhere sets forth a normative political or social system; Christians are to proclaim the eternal riches of Christ under political systems of the “right” and of the “left.”

49 Christians should be taught that political and social philosophies are useful if they do not put their trust in them, but most hurtful if through them they lose the fear of God.

50 Adherence neither to the “American way of life”—conservative or liberal—nor to socialism nor to Communism will save or damn a man; adherence to Christ, and Christ alone, saves, and rejection of him, and him alone, damns.

51 To demand that all Christians accept a given political or social philosophy as a test of “consistent Christianity” is to elevate man’s word to the level of God’s word.

52 Vain is the hope of salvation through secular activity, even if a divinity-school dean—nay, the President of the World Council of Churches himself—were to pledge his own soul for it.

53 They are enemies of Christ and of the Church who, in order that a secular salvation may be preached, condemn the Word of God to utter silence in their churches.

54 Wrong is done to the Word of God when in a sermon as much time is spent on secular topics as on God’s Word, or even more.

55 If secular participation by Christians is celebrated with single bells, single processions, and single ceremonies, the Gospel should be preached with a hundred bells, a hundred processions, and a hundred ceremonies.

56 A theology derived from the sinful human situation will be humanistic and sinful, likewise an ethic stemming from man’s situation instead of from God’s revelation.

57 A “contextual” or “situation” ethic foolishly assumes that proper norms will automatically arise from descriptive action; this is a precise example of what G. E. Moore called the “naturalistic fallacy.”

58 If human “contexts” and “situations” are self-centered, will not the ethic found there have the same qualities? Can water rise above its source?

59 The importing of agape-love into a situation as a norm is of little help apart from God’s revealed law, for agape is a motive, not a guide for specific action; it will be interpreted in whatever direction the sinful interpreter wishes.

60 How ironical that churchmen today combine “absolute” social and political programs with relativistic situational ethics! Is this not the predictable imbalance of Paul’s “natural man”?

61 Only the eternal Word of God can show the relative to be truly relative (e.g., political systems) and the absolute to be truly absolute (e.g., God’s moral law).

62 The true treasure of the Church is still the holy Gospel of the glory and grace of God.

63 This treasure, however, is deservedly—today as yesterday—most hateful because it causes the first to be the last.

64 But the treasure of secular salvation is deservedly the most acceptable because it causes the last to be the first.

65 Hence the treasures of the Gospel are nets wherewith churchmen of old have fished to save men from a sinful society.

66 The treasures of secularity are nets wherewith churchmen now fish for acceptance by a sinful society.

67 Those activities which the preachers loudly proclaim to be the greatest graces are seen to be truly such as appeal most to unregenerate standards.

68 They are in reality in no degree to be compared with the grace of God and the piety of the Cross.

69 Christians ought to receive with all reverence exhortations to racial justice, open housing, and equality before the law, for these are demonstrably the will of the God of scriptural revelation.

70 But they are still more bound to open their eyes and ears lest churchmen preach their own fancies in place of the biblical Word.

71 He who speaks against legitimate and proper social action, let him be anathema and accursed.

72 But he, on the other hand, who is seriously concerned about the wantonness and licenses of speech of the preachers of social action, let him be blessed.

73 We should justly thunder against those who by rationalization (“I’m for the slow evolution of fair housing”) impede the advance of social justice.

74 And, much more, we should thunder against those who, under the cloak of social programs, depreciate the proclamation of divine grace and the gospel message.

75 To think that secular involvement has such power that it can absolve a man even if he denies the atoning death and bodily resurrection of God’s Son, is madness.

76 We affirm, on the contrary, that all of man’s good works cannot take away even the least of venial sins as regards its guilt.

77 The saying that Jesus was “the most”—the ideal man and “the place to be”—but not, as he claimed, the very incarnate God, is blasphemy.

78 We affirm that the true grace the Lord Christ has to grant is not a program but himself: his death for our sins and his resurrection for our justification.

79 To say that any earthly goal is of equal rank with the Cross of Christ is blasphemy.

80 Those bishops, curates, and theologians who allow such ideas to have currency among the people will have to render an account for this.

81 The preaching of “secular Christianity” today makes it no easy thing, even for learned men, to protect the reverence due to the visible church against the calumnies of unbelievers and the criticisms of the laity.

82 For instance: Why do the secular theologians always claim credit for jumping on social bandwagons that have been put into motion outside the Church?

83 Again: Why bother with all the theological jargon if Christianity really reduces to humanism?

84 Again: Why not study sociology or politics or psychiatry instead of attempting to be a sloppy representative of these fields with irrelevant theological training?

85 Again: If the Church’s beliefs are derived from the fallible human situation like everyone else’s, why does the Church presume to judge others or declare grace to them?

86 Again: If God is ipso facto “where the action is,” was he motivating the action of the Third Reich, as National Socialist theologians said he was?

87 Again: If the theologian judges the Bible and its Christ, who judges the theologian?

88 Again: When Christ demanded fidelity to the “once for all” character of his saving work, how is it that the contemporary Church is satisfied only when it continually proclaims “some new thing”?

89 And how does it happen that faithful preaching of the eternal Word of grace is despised, while the most bizarre theological and ecclesiastical innovations are lauded to the skies as a true mark of “relevance”?

90 Repressing these scruples and arguments is to expose the Church to the ridicule of her enemies and to make Christian men unhappy.

91 If, then, churchmen would subordinate themselves to God’s Word, and seek first to bring their wills into accord with Christ’s will, and make his Gospel their Gospel, all other things would be added, and the troubles of today’s Church would be resolved with ease; nay, they would not exist.

92 Away, then, with all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, “Peace, peace!” though there is no peace.

93 Blessed be all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, “The cross, the cross,” and there is no cross.

94 Christians should be exhorted to strive to follow Christ, their Head, through pain, death, and hell;

95 And thus to enter heaven through the tribulations of his cross rather than in the pseudo-security of optimistic secularity.

Milton D. Hunnex is professor and head of the department of philosophy at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon. He received the B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Redlands and the Ph.D. in the Inter-collegiate Program in Graduate Studies, Claremont, California. He is author of “Philosophies and Philosophers.”

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