Jun 24 2008
The Dawn of Covenant Theology
Chaos suddenly flared across Europe, tearing apart the fragile coalitions of the Holy Roman Empire, the “Protector of the Church.” This was bad timing, because Muslim Turks were marching into the soft underbelly of Europe and advancing to the heart of the Empire.
Europeans were romantic and hopeful about their Holy Roman Empire. It was the rebirth of ancient Rome and Europe’s best hope for holding back the invasions of Muslims equally bent on world domination. When Charles V (1519–1558) came to power, he wore the crowns of Spain, Austria and Germany, which could finally unify most of Europe under church rule.
But a crazy monk messed it up early one frosty morning in 1517 with a hammer, a nail, and a handwritten list of “protests” against local abuses by church authorities. As he tapped the nail he had no idea his protests would expose deep fractures lying beneath the glossy surface of the HRE.
His complaints became a movement defying the Vatican’s monopoly on Christianity. It was infectious and flashed across Europe, triggering religious confusion, chaos in revered social structures, riots and wars. The armies of Charles V were preoccupied with the invading Turks and could do little to quash the Protestant Reformation for years, and then it was too popular and unstoppable.
Luther’s Mess
Martin Luther was the guilty monk, but he never meant to plunge Europe into a revolution that rocked dynasties, but it happened anyway when he posted a Disputation of Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences (he was long-winded). Today we call it The 95 Theses. It was an endless list of Luther’s “protests” against Indulgences: a growing practice of the church not dissimilar from mob racketeering!
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By paying the church an Indulgence, peasants could free their dead relatives from the tortures of Purgatory. This practice grew so widespread it became a major stream of revenue for building St. Peter’s Basilica.
With such monies at stake, it is not surprising that the Holy Roman Empire was desperate to throw enormous energies and armies to stamp out Lutheranism, but it was not easy.
Brave Beginnings
The achievements of early Reformers like Martin Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and Melachthon were extraordinary. They were courageous men breaking away from superstitious dogma fermenting for a millennium in dark pockets of the Middle Ages.
When Roman Emperor Constantine seized control of the church in 383 AD, Christianity required major surgery to function as a branch of government. The greatest need was to establish and modify an “official” version of Christianity, so the decrees of the Pontifex Maximus1 (Pontiff) gained equal standing with the Bible.2
By Luther’s time it was called The Holy Roman Empire, and it dominated most of Europe. Today’s Catholic church bears little resemblance to this product of the Middle Ages. Catholic and Protestant historians largely agree it was corrupt, fantastically wealthy, and a fat bureaucracy in pursuit of conquest.
Luther’s “protest” was dangerous, but not uncommon. Calls for church reform were increasing across the empire. But the pressure to unify Europe under Charles V and fight Turkish invasions greatly reduced tolerance for dissent at this time.
This whole affair is so foreign to modern Americans because we enjoy the separation of church and state. Columbus “sailed the ocean blue in 1492” just before the Reformation exploded, so his discoveries opened escape routes for large numbers of Europeans fleeing religious persecution. This is the reason why the American Constitution was the first attempt in history to separate the church from state. In 1776 it was radical, but in the 1500s the separation was unthinkable.
Europe was emerging from feudalism in the 16th century, and society was ordered by strict customs. Protestants were disturbing the social order, not merely raising questions of faith, so they were branded enemies of the state and suffered terrible persecution.
But persecution only spread the rebellion as people fled one jurisdiction for another. A newfangled invention by Gutenberg also enabled Protestant refugees to bring along Luther’s new German-language Bibles. Suddenly people could see and discuss the book which only church authorities were allowed to read, and it became immediately clear why the book was controlled so tightly: many popular beliefs were not in the Bible, or contradicted by it. Soon monks, priests, bishops and masses of peasants joined the movement.
Just as the monarchs and church warned, chaos erupted as church authority was questioned.
Five Solas
The Vatican demanded that Luther and his sympathizers either recant and retract their protests, or become excommunicated. This was a serious threat, since the church could make life like hell not only on earth, but for all eternity, too! Since the church owned the keys to heaven and hell, Luther was anathematized by excommunication, meaning he was damned to hell!3
The Reformers united under “Five Solas” against the Roman Catholic church, and these became the first clear divisions between Catholics and Protestants:4
- Faith alone (Sola Fide) - Justification (that is, becoming right before God) comes through faith only, not good works.
- Scripture alone (Sola Scriptura) - The Bible is the only inspired and authoritative Word of God and is accessible to all. This is “the formal cause of the Reformation because it was the underlying cause of disagreement” in the Reformation.
- Christ alone (Solus Christus) - Christ is the exclusive mediator between God and man, not Mary, the saints, or priests.
- Grace alone (Sola Gratia) - Salvation comes by grace only, not through any merit on the part of the sinner.
- Glory to God alone (Soli Deo Gloria) - “The Reformers believed that human beings (such as the Catholic saints and popes) and their organizations (the Church) were not worthy of the glory that was bestowed on them.”
The Solas were bold, rebellious claims. A large body of authority and official church practices were supported by these pillars of Medieval Christianity attacked by the Protestants.
Everyone who comes to know Jesus as their personal savior today must be deeply indebted to the early Reformers and their success at resurrecting biblical Christianity. The Solas became the bedrock of classic Reformed theology and still distinguish between Protestant and Catholic views today.5
The Visible Church
The Solas were great strides toward biblical Christianity, but more strange beliefs from the Middle Ages remained which the early Reformation retained. The Visible Church was a big one retained by Reformed theology.
The Visible Church concept justified the Vatican’s claim on divine privilege to rule the earth. It teaches that the organized institution headquartered in Rome is the only true church on earth, and it will eventually establish the reign of Christ on earth as Revelation 19 describes: the so-called “The Millennial Reign of Christ.” Reformed theology simply moved the Visible Church from Rome to their native countries where Protestants retained a close relationship between church and state authorities.6
A thousand years earlier Augustine wrote The City of God in which he formulated the Visible Church to help Christians deal with the shock of the fall of Rome. Terror gripped the Roman Empire when Goths sacked the great city:
Since Rome had been undisputed queen of civilization for a millennium, her fall shocked the ancient world. As [church leader] Jerome put it, “The whole world perished in one city.” Josef Pieper notes, “To Augustine himself and to all with whom he dealt, Rome was nothing less than the symbol of order in the world.” …Augustine’s answer was The City of God. - Christian History & Biography
In the City of God Augustine wrote about a hopeful future for Christianity: it is not dependant on the Roman empire, but God’s authority. This is clearly a biblical position. But Augustine went further and reasoned that the Visible Church was God’s earthly kingdom which will last forever.
This would all be very abstract except that Emperor Constantine turned Christianity into a state-run institution. As outcasts in the empire, Christians gathered in simple groups that shared spiritual life and God’s love. But once legalized, this simple “fellowship” became an institution called “church” with military, money and power. 7 This institution of the church gained more authority and power when Augustine identified the Visible Church as God’s Kingdom on earth.
The Dark Ages plunged Europe into social chaos, but the church organization survived and became the center of civilization and learning for 1,000 years. It seemed that Augustine’s Visible Church was indeed God’s earthly kingdom because it endured and grew into a monolithic Holy Roman Empire.
Visible Atrocities
By Luther’s time the Visible Church had the power to grant salvation or damnation, gather armies, and was intimately tied to state authority.8 It maintained an iron grip over people’s lives, often with cruelty and great military power.
It is mistaken to think the teachings of Christianity caused the horrors perpetrated in that era. The Spanish Inquisition and so many other atrocities were initiated and sustained by human governments subjugating their populace and expanding territory. Tyrannical governments like monarchies, oligarchies, and eve the dictatorships in our modern era are especially cruel, but democracies can also be cruel, as American Indians and African Americans know.
Monarchies controlled everything during the feudalism of the Middle Ages, including the Visible Church, and great atrocities were perpetrated by the state-owned Visible Church. Augustine was brilliant, but The City of God exposed Christians to government control and transferred God’s authority to human-engineered institutions. It was common for monarchs to give high positions of church authority to cronies and relatives, irregardless of belief.
Bad ideas like the Visible Church arise when Christianity strays too far from the authority of God’s Word. The Bible in fact teaches against a Visible Church. God’s kingdom is invisible and spiritual, according to Jesus:
Pilate summoned Jesus and said to Him, “Are You the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.” John 18:33,36
Anyone who claims that Jesus Christ established an earthly kingdom is somehow overlooking one of the clear teachings of the New Testament.9
The Visible Protestant Church
Why would Protestant leaders continue to embrace a philosopher’s concept of the Visible Church? If the Bible taught otherwise, why did it transfer to Reformed theology?
The answer is found in one word: Anabaptists. They were the most feared threat to arise from the Protestant movement.
European monarchies were initially thrilled by the opportunity to relocate church power to their own locality. King Henry VIII of England is a famous example of a monarch who leveraged the Reformation for his own political gain. These political favors were not unwelcome to leaders of the Reformation, because they enjoyed abundant protection from local, ambitious fiefdoms. This was especially helpful to Luther, who worked in safety among the “German princes” for most of his life.
But Anabaptists threatened this new social order. Their name came from “baptizing again” church members already baptized as infants. Anabaptists claimed that only adults could make the decision to be saved by Jesus Christ, so adults who made this decision were baptized as Jesus instructed (Mt. 28:18ff).
This was more than a dispute over rituals: it was sedition. The state church needed all citizens to be “Christian,” which meant Christianity-at-birth, not later. Especially in wars against Muslims, the battlefield is no place to ask, “Am I a Christian yet?” Infant baptism settled the issue, and battlefield generals wanted it that way.
But more seditious was the Anabaptist teaching that Jesus Christ was the only head of the church, not any human authority. They denied the vast spiritual authority assigned to the Visible Church, and this clearly alienated any monarchy that might support Protestants. Monarchs controlled a Visible Church with authority over ignorant peasants, but Anabaptists denied that authority.
The Institutes
The leaders of the Reformation were not thrilled with the social chaos that erupted with the Visible Church of the HRE removed, so John Calvin established a new Visible Church in Geneva. But this was ruled by Calvin, not the Pope.
And rule he did! Thousands of Catholics and Anabaptists were hounded, persecuted, burned alive and tortured. Calvin provided a scholarly foundation for his “Geneva experiment” by writing Institutes of the Christian Religion. He reaffirmed Augustine’s City of God, affirming the authority of the Visible Church, infant baptism, Christian salvation at birth and other doctrines which perpetrated a state-owned church.
Armed with Calvin’s Institutes and other condensed “confessions of faith,” European authorities held the weapons to stamp Anabaptists out. They were hounded and hunted everywhere by the tens of thousands. No European powers wanted Anabaptists around.
Thus Protestant European states killed more religious dissidents than the Holy Roman Empire, many estimate.
The Calvinist Problem
Calvinism as a movement took a wrong turn when it placed such great authority on Institutes and other “Great Confessions”. All these new tests of “true faith” undermined Luther’s original, simple conviction: “Sola Scriptura!”
Sadly, despite their efforts to remove the unbiblical precepts of the Holy Roman Empire, early Reformers still retained whatever restored social order and legitimized their organizations. In the end, the church and the state remained integrated organizationally and theologically.
Reformed theology today is virtually unchanged since Calvin’s Institutes. Burning heretics and torture are not condoned, of course, but Calvin’s modern adherents cling to the legacy of Institutes with a tenacity that knows no end.
Next: Calvin’s Amillennial doctrine.
- Pontifex Maximus was a title used by the ancient Etruscans of Rome for their high priest. “At the end of the 6th century Gregory I was the first Pope to employ Pontifex maximus in a formal sense, in a broader program of asserting Roman primacy. It has remained one of the titles of the popes to this day. - BibleStudy.org [⇑]
- The right of the Vatican to modify and add to the Bible was formally approved at the Council of Trent in 1514, as a response to Luther’s denial of the Vatican’s authority. But the church’s power to add “divine Revelation” to the Bible was already common practice. Vatican II reaffirmed this broad authority in 1964: “[Bishops] bring forth from the treasury of Revelation new things and old, making it bear fruit and vigilantly warding off any errors that threaten their flock. Bishops, teaching in communion with the Roman Pontiff, are to be respected by all as witnesses to divine and Catholic truth.” — Wikipedia, Vatican II. [⇑]
- Only the pope could sentence people to hell, and it required a ceremony which included 12 other priests. Thus Pope Benedict VIII pronounces: “Let them be accursed in their bodies, and let their souls be delivered to destruction and perdition and torture. Let them be damned with the damned: let them be scourged with the ungrateful; let them perish with the proud. Let them be accursed with the Jews who, seeing the incarnate Christ, did not believe but sought to crucify Him. Let them be accursed with the heretics who labored to destroy the church. Let them be accursed with those who blaspheme the name of God. Let them be accursed with those who despair of the mercy of God…” So it goes on and on - from History of the Christian Church, Volume IV: § 86. Ecclesiastical Punishments. Excommunication, Anathema, Interdict. [⇑]
- Quoted from Theopedia, Five Solas, but edited for brevity here. [⇑]
- See Theopedia, Reformed Theology. [⇑]
- Easton’s Illustrated Bible Dictionary provides a good snapshot of Reformed theology on the Visible Church: “A credible profession of the true religion constitutes a person a member of this church. This is ‘the kingdom of heaven,’ whose character and progress are set forth in the parables recorded in Matt. 13. The children of all who thus profess the true religion are members of the visible church along with their parents. Children are included in every covenant God ever made with man. They go along with their parents (Gen. 9:9-17; 12:1-3; 17:7; Ex. 20:5; Deut. 29:10-13).” Later we will see the importance of the children clause imported from the Old Covenant into the New Covenant. [⇑]
- The Bible uses the Greek word Koinonia to describe Christian gatherings, translated “to share” or “fellowship together.” But the word “church” means “building”, and the Bible never associates that word or concept with Christianity. As a Roman institution, however, buildings and property were a vital part of Constantine’s new “Department of Christianity”, so “Christian building” became synonymous with Christian gathering. [⇑]
- From the Catholic Encyclopedia: “Moreover, there is a true sense in which they may be said to be saved through the Church. In the order of Divine Providence, salvation is given to man in the Church: membership in the Church Triumphant is given through membership in the Church Militant. Catholic Encyclopedia, The Church: The necessary means of salvation. [⇑]
- Wherever people indwelt by the Holy Spirit gather, in whatever format, they are part of the invisible “Body of Christ.” (See Eph. 1:22 - 23; 4:12; Eph. 5:23; Col. 1:18; 2:19.) Thus, the biblical term “ecclessia” (or “gathering”) is a generic term which describes a house meeting of Christians, a whole region where Christians reside, or all Christians across the globe. Only God knows the real members of the ecclesia, according to the Bible. Augustine’s Visible Church turns a generic, broad word (ecclesia) into a narrow, technical term used by institutions today to define church membership. [⇑]
Great article but FYI the second half of it switched into italics.
I have always been intrigued by Luther — His passion and tenacity for what he believed, his courage to stand firm and to evaluate what he believed the Word said, his blustering denunciations of what was false or unwise, and his humorous and egocentric table talk discussions. I longed to sit at his dinner table and to observe what and how he thought and taught.
“By Scripture alone” - Such a powerful and simple understanding. Although Luther lessen the importance of “by faith alone” concerning adult baptism over infant baptism - he was true to evaluating the anabaptist by the word. He did not write these “prophets” off at first.
If I understand history clearly, did not many of these anabaptists claim to have direct revelation from God? In light of that Luther assessed these men and their claims by evaluating both their message and their lives in light of scripture and whether or not they were indeed “prophets.” He deemed their message as heresy.
This visible and invisible church is something I had never studied. This concept makes many things so much more clear - like why the Arminius position on perseverence of the saints is clearly wrong - when I reason in my mind that a teacher of the Word can go atheist or heretic - and when I read passages like the one found in 2 Peter 2 - I realize why this doctine is so vital to a healthy Christian walk and relationship with God and others.
I think that part of me perhaps - deep down - so full of the pride of life - wants to be able to holdfast to salvation. It is so ridiculous to imagine that I may be influenced by this - But if I must then others must be as well.
Praise God that it is His work that holds us fast in redemption - it is and can never be a work of our own - such folly. Seriously I never understood the implication of the Arminian stance on this until recently. I merely thought it to be a docrinal intellectual preference.
Thanks for this write up - it really has me thinking things through and not for just some intellectual head trip either!
Sorry for the delayed response Lisa, but you’re raising some great questions. And these issues do deserve consideration. But I also should be clear there’s a distinction between “Covenantal Theology” and “Calvinism” as the term is often used (to describe the famous T.U.L.I.P. of Calvin’s view of predestination). “Calvinism” touches on the perseverance of the saints issue you raised, above, whereas “Covenantal” deals with the Invisible/Visible church issue. Both are explicated in Calvin’s “Institutes”, however, so “Calvinism” really does encompass both issues. I’ll try to deal with these two one at a time for the sake of simplicity.
Yes, thank you for this article. It is good to know the history of our faith. I know that I don’t know enough about it. I have had run-ins with people who ask me questions along these lines. They want to know how we know that “our way” is the best way when there are all these denominations and differences.
So thanks again for the insight!
[…] is one of the earliest English writings, and almost 200 handwritten copies remain today. [⇑]See The Dawn of Covenant Theology, where we describe the superstitious ritual of Anathema. It requires a papal delegate and 12 other […]
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