{"id":170,"date":"2009-12-07T15:47:52","date_gmt":"2009-12-07T22:47:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/?page_id=170"},"modified":"2010-01-02T21:19:43","modified_gmt":"2010-01-03T04:19:43","slug":"luther-was-not-like-gandhi","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/?page_id=170","title":{"rendered":"Luther was not like Gandhi"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"center\"><strong><a href=\"..\/2006\/HeavyLifting\/Ethics\/LutherGandhi.pdf\">Printable PDF<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>I\u2019m deeply troubled by the church<\/em>,\u201d said the pastor, \u201c<em>but, \t\t\t\t\tlike Luther, I\u2019ll wait to be thrown out<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>February 18, 2006, marks the 460th anniversary of Luther\u2019s death \u2013 a proper occasion \t\t\t\tto recall the kind of man he was. To be sure, he said, \u201cI would not have it that people fight \t\t\t\ton the side of the gospel with force and killing . . . . The world is to be won over with the Word.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But this does not mean that Luther was like Gandhi, a man of passive resistance. Luther did not \t\t\t\tpreach in a corner, nor did he just talk. He was a man of action.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>On December 10, 1520, Luther burned the papal bull and other papal documents because, as he said, \u201cI \t\t\t\t\tam, however unworthy, a baptized Christian, in addition a sworn doctor of Holy Scripture, and beyond \t\t\t\t\tthat a preacher each weekday, whose duty it is on account of his name, station, oath, and office, \t\t\t\t\tto destroy or at least to ward off false, corrupt, unchristian doctrine\u201d (LW 31:383).<sup>1<\/sup>The burning was not simply a symbolic act to counter the papal directive earlier \t\t\t\t\tthat year to burn his books. It was essentially a public act of separating from the Roman church.<\/li>\n<li>In 1521 Luther wrote to his mentor, Staupitz: \u201cThis is not the time to be timid but to \t\t\t\t\traise the voice loudly.\u201d Under the pressure from the church, however, Staupitz caved in. Their \t\t\t\t\tfriendship ended.<\/li>\n<li>Luther helped clergy find calls and, beginning in 1527, established supervisory visitations of \t\t\t\t\tcongregations. This meant, in fact, starting a new church.<\/li>\n<li>In 1530 Luther and his colleagues drafted the Augsburg Confession in defense of their movement. \t\t\t\t\tThis document was not an irenic appeal to preserve an existing unity. It was not an attempt to negotiate \t\t\t\t\ta compromise. Rather, it was political document drafted to demonstrate that the Reformers belonged \t\t\t\t\tto the \u201cgreat consensus\u201d (CA 1) of the church, in order to keep the Emperor from crushing \t\t\t\t\ttheir movement.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Luther did not wait \u201cto be thrown out.\u201d He fought with every means available, even \t\t\t\tbook burning, for the truth of the gospel because salvation is at stake.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cI\u2019m deeply troubled by the church,<\/em>\u201d said the pastor; \u201c<em>like \t\t\t\t\tLuther, I too will stand up for the truth of the gospel.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p><sup>1<\/sup> For this doctrine is our only light, which illumines and directs us and shows the \t\t\t\tway to heaven \u2026 we can be saved without love \u2026 but not without pure doctrine \u2026.\u201d (LW \t\t\t\t27:41).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Printable PDF \u201cI\u2019m deeply troubled by the church,\u201d said the pastor, \u201cbut, like Luther, I\u2019ll wait to be thrown out.\u201d February 18, 2006, marks the 460th anniversary of Luther\u2019s death \u2013 a proper occasion to recall the kind of man he was. To be sure, he said, \u201cI would not have it that people fight [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":5,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-170","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=170"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":399,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/170\/revisions\/399"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}