Shepherd’s Vineyard Christian Church
Sunday School
Mar 7, 2010
When Good Turns Bad
Introduction
All Christians should expect to experience some persecution because of the faith they hold. These
events usually come at the hands of non-believers. But what do we do when the persecution comes
from the leaders of our church?
This may seem like an odd question but it has been a recurring theme throughout the church’s
history. In this lesson we will look at some examples where church leaders have drifted from the truth
and persecute those who try to bring them back. When the leaders are the problem the followers are
the only ones to correct it, and so they become leaders.
Lesson
“After Jesus Christ’s ascension into heaven, no Christian had ever heard of the ‘Catholic’ [(meaning
all-inclusive / all-embracing)] or the ‘Protestant’ church. Christ’s church was the Church.”1 In time it
became centered in Rome and became known as the Roman Catholic Church. It grew to be a
powerful force in the world and gained the right to enforce its laws, even with the punishment of death
when required.
“As time passed, however, the Catholic church strayed from the teachings of Christ and the Bible.”
This ultimately led to splits in the church that resulted in the creation of the Coptic and Armenian
churches in the 5th century and the Orthodox Church early in the 2nd millennium. “The events leading
to schism were not always exclusively theological in nature. Cultural, political, and linguistic
differences were often inextricably mixed with the theological”2
Originally the gospels and epistles that would become the New Testament were written in languages
the people knew. “As time went on, Latin became the language of scholars, and so the Bible was
translated into Latin. The common people had no way of reading the Bible and searching for Truth on
their own, which meant that most people believed whatever the Pope or their local priest said. This
led to a mass deception of the Christian community. It started small, but over time the heresies added
up, until Popes were preaching salvation through works, [the doctrine of] Purgatory, the practice of
indulgences, transubstantiation, and others. The common people could not challenge the church
leaders, because the people themselves did not know what the Bible says.”3
“Indulgences, which were granted by the pope, forgave individual sinners not their sins, but the
temporal punishment applied to those sins. These indulgences had become big business in much the
1
http://www.hyperhistory.net/apwh/essays/cot/t2w08countereform.htm
http://www.greekorthodoxchurch.org/history.html
3 http://www.hyperhistory.net/apwh/essays/cot/t2w08countereform.htm
2
same way pledge drives have become big business for public television in modern America.” 4 Many
of the great Catholic Church buildings were paid for by the sale of indulgences.
Martin Luther was “a priest and theology professor”5 of the time. He managed to get his hands on a
Bible, an item which was rare and valuable at the time. To us it seems strange that a priest would not
have a Bible, but that shows the scarcity, a scarcity due to the difficulty of publication at the time. In
his readings he came to the realization that many practices of the church were unscriptural, especially
indulgences. “Because of [these false teachings], Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to a
church door, telling the people the ninety-five reasons why he disagreed with the Roman Catholic
Church’s practice of indulgences among others.”6 It’s important to understand that nailing something
to the door was the equivalent of posting a message on a bulletin board. It was not an act of defiance.
Luther, as he is usually called, finds himself with a problem similar to the one that Jesus found. Most
of the religious elite of Jesus’ time, the Pharisees and Sadducees, had become very corrupt. In
addition to many other sins and bad behaviors, Jesus accused the Pharisees of living for money.
Luke 16 13"[…] You cannot serve both God and Money."
money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus.
14The
Pharisees, who loved
In Luther’s time we see the same naked desire for money in the church leadership. Luther quoted an
indulgence salesman as saying “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory [also
attested as 'into heaven'] springs.”7
Jesus’ approach to confronting the straying Pharisees was as different as possible from Luther’s.
Because Jesus knew the hearts of the Pharisees, he was able to criticize their motivations and
thoughts. Luther could only criticize the actions he saw.
1. What is “Salvation by Works”? What is Purgatory?
(Answers on last page)
2. Knowing the power of the church of that time, how would you have felt if you were Martin Luther?
3. What actions would you take to ensure that your interpretation of the scriptures was correct before
presenting your reasons why the religious authorities were wrong?
4. How is it that church leaders, the ones who are to be the shepherds, can go so far astray?
The Theses Are Posted
“Luther was not a person you would want to have dinner with; he was temperamental, peevish,
egomaniacal, and argumentative. But this single-mindedness, this enormous self-confidence and
strident belief in the rightness of his arguments, allowed him to stand against opposition, indeed, to
harden his position in the face of death by fire, the usual punishment for heretics.”
Luther was not alone and he was not the first to recognize the errors of the church and try to get the
church to reform. In fact Luther’s reforms were only a small part of what many reformers wanted to
achieve. “Luther still believed in transubstantiation, a practice that some [had begun] to question.
[Other reformers] firmly believed that the bread and the wine in the Lord’s Supper were symbolic, and
did not actually change into the real blood and the real body of Christ” 8
4
http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/REFORM/LUTHER.HTM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther
6 http://www.hyperhistory.net/apwh/essays/cot/t2w08countereform.htm
7 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_luther
8 http://www.hyperhistory.net/apwh/essays/cot/t2w08countereform.htm
5
“Hans Hillerbrand, [a scholar on Luther], writes that Luther had no intention of confronting the church,
but saw his disputation as a scholarly objection to church practices, and the tone of the writing is
accordingly ‘searching, rather than doctrinaire.’ Hillerbrand writes that there is nevertheless an
undercurrent of challenge in several of the theses, particularly in Thesis 86, which asks: ‘Why does
the Pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus [(a wealthy Roman
family of note)], build the basilica of St. Peter with the money of poor believers rather than with his
own money?’”9
The archbishop of the church where Luther had posted his theses did not respond. Instead he
checked them for heresy and forwarded them to Rome, to Pope Leo X. A heresy case was drafted
against Luther, whom Leo then summoned to Rome. But the Pope was persuaded to have Luther
appear in a court at Augsburg, Germany instead, in October 1518.
In the time between the posting of his theses and his appearance in court, Luther became
progressively more anti-Papal. During the hearing “Luther informed Cardinal Cajetan that he did not
consider the papacy part of the biblical Church, and the hearings degenerated into a shouting match.
Cajetan's original instructions had been to arrest Luther if he failed to recant, but he lacked the means
in Augsburg, where the [city leader had] guaranteed Luther's security. Luther slipped out of the city at
night, without leave from Cajetan.”10
On June 15, 1520, the Pope warned Luther with a papal edict that “he risked excommunication
unless he recanted 41 sentences drawn from his writings, including the 95 Theses, within 60 days.”11
That autumn, the edict was proclaimed into force in the town where Luther lived and other nearby
towns, but Luther publicly set fire to the edict on December 10, 1520, an act he defended in a later
book. As a consequence, Luther was excommunicated by Leo X on January 3, 1521.
On April 18, 1521, Luther appeared before a general assembly of the Holy Roman Empire. Luther
refused to recant his writings. Over the next five days, private conferences were held to determine
Luther's fate. The final draft of the decision on May 25, 1521, declared Luther an outlaw, banned his
literature, and required his arrest. “It also made it a crime for anyone in Germany to give Luther food
or shelter. It permitted anyone to kill Luther without legal consequence.”12
Luther was as flawed a man as any, but there are still interesting parallels to the life of Jesus. Though
Luther did not die at the hands of the church that rejected him and his teachings, the life he had
known was over. Jesus’ attempts to set things straight in the church ran into the same problem.
Those in control of the system that he tried to reform were not interested in his message or efforts. In
fact it interfered with their control of the system. Rather than trying to confirm if the message matched
the scriptures, it was compared against the understanding of the leaders and their desires and
summarily rejected, as was the messenger.
5. What was the Holy Roman Empire?
6. What does it mean to recant?
7. Can God use our short-comings to achieve his purposes?
8. What is excommunication?
9
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther
11 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther
12 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther
10
Greatness From Ruin
But Luther had friends and the Pope had enemies. On his way home, Luther was intercepted and
escorted to the security of the Wartburg Castle. During his stay at Wartburg, which he referred to as
"my Patmos" Luther translated the New Testament from Latin into German. This had “a tremendous
impact on the church and on German culture. It fostered the development of a standard version of the
German language, added several principles to the art of translation, and influenced the translation
into English of the King James Bible. His hymns inspired the development of singing in churches. His
marriage to Katharina von Bora set a model for the practice of clerical marriage, allowing Protestant
priests to marry.”13
While there were reformers prior to Luther, he was the one that broke the gates down. As a result the
Lutheran church came into being. But Luther was not prepared to go as far as other reformers. “The
reformed movement split into two parts. Lutherans, who kept the hierarchy of the church, but instead
of having a Pope, priests were accountable to princes. The more extreme reformers stripped
everything from their Churches [for which] they could not find scriptural basis.”14
This thinking was the basis for the concept of Sola Scriptura (“Only Scripture”) that guides the
protestant churches. In adopting this view, the churches rejected a mass of traditions with dubious
foundations and significant paganisms that had crept in to the Catholic Church. In this view, it became
impossible to know which traditions were valid but it was known that some were not. In effect, the
Protestants started over, using the only source they could rely on, scripture.
Luther’s affect on the Catholic Church was also profound. “By the mid sixteenth century, [about 40
years later] the Catholic Church had mostly stopped the practice of indulgences, many Catholics
themselves being outraged knowing that their ‘indulgence’ money was being used simply for the
Pope’s pet schemes. Although many people left the Catholic Church, some stayed behind and tried to
reform the Catholic Church itself.”15 Not much later the Catholic Church would lose its authority under
law.
The parallels to the results of Jesus’ death and resurrection are also interesting. Just when it
appeared the church leaders had gotten their way, their dominion was shattered and their power
reduced. In Jesus’ time this meant the end of the covenant that gave the leaders their authority.
About 40 years later their center of power, Jerusalem, was destroyed and their people were scattered
across the globe, homeless. But this brought in the new and better covenant and the Spirit as guide.
9. What does Luther mean by “my Patmos”?
10. What other Catholic beliefs were dropped in the reformation? Intercessor / confession, statuary /
pictures
Conclusion
There are some points from this lesson that we can take home:
1. Both good men and corruptible men are attracted to leadership roles and Satan will work on them
both
2. All organizations, including churches, build up traditions over time. We must be vigilante in
checking that our traditions are in line with scripture
3. We need to follow God’s word and the leading of the Holy Spirit, whatever the cost.
13
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther
http://www.hyperhistory.net/apwh/essays/cot/t2w08countereform.htm
15 http://www.hyperhistory.net/apwh/essays/cot/t2w08countereform.htm
14
Answers to Questions
Some of the questions in the study above have answers that depend on the student. Others have
specific answers. Those are answered here.
1A. What is “Salvation by Works”?
Salvation by Works is an unscriptural belief that salvation can be achieved by doing enough good
things.
1B. What is Purgatory?
Purgatory is an unscriptural place in the after-life. There are variations in the belief but essentially it is
a waiting room where those who were not truly bad nor truly good are sent for punishment until they
are prepared for heaven. Part of this is a belief that prayers of priests are able to shorten the time
spent in Purgatory.
5. What was the Holy Roman Empire?
The Holy Roman Empire was a combination of government and the Catholic Church. The church’s
authority validated the rulers of the empire and the church’s edicts had the force of law. The first
emperor of the Holy Roman Empire was crowned in 962. The Empire was formally dissolved on
August 6, 1806 when the last Holy Roman Emperor abdicated.
6. What does it mean to recant?
It means to rethink and reject something that was previously said or written.
8. What is excommunication?
Excommunication is the severing of a person’s communion with the church. An excommunicated
person cannot participate in the church. Since there was only one church at the time, being “kicked
out” was serious. Also the excommunication was generally for heresy and was followed by charges
that could end in execution.
9. What does Luther mean by “my Patmos”?
Luther is drawing a parallel to John, who wrote the Book of Revelation from the island of Patmos
where John was exiled by Nero Caesar. Luther is conveying his frustration at being unable to leave
the castle and doing nothing but writing.
10. What other Catholic beliefs were dropped in the reformation?
- Neither a priest nor the pope acts as an intercessor between the Christian and God
- Neither a priest nor the pope has a role in confession nor may they dictate punishments for sins
committed.
- The Catholic practice of displays of wealth, statuary, and pictures in the church is considered too
close to idolatry.