The Doctrine of the Means of Grace - Page 9© John L. Hoh, Jr.
Page 9
Jan 25, 1999
As I stated in the beginning of this article, Christians have three tools at their disposal - Scripture, Tradition and Reason. Luther upheld Scripture over Tradition and Reason. If Tradition had become detrimental to one's faith, either because the intent or meaning was gone or because it had led to work-righteousness, then it was no longer beneficial. He also felt that Reason should be subject to Scripture. God's Word, to Luther, reigned supreme: "I know that all spirits and scholars together are not as wise as is the Divine Majesty in His little finger." 31 Rome has let itself be guided and swayed and dictated to by what the Traditions of the church have taught and believed throughout the ages. The Reformed branch relies on Reason to interpret Scripture. Again, the mystery cannot remain; each teaching in Scripture must be comprehendable to the human mind and must have a relevance and a personal meaning. A practical method of applying this treatise to see if it is true, look at the published works in each branch. The Confessional Lutheran publishing concerns will most likely feature and publish titles that are Scripturally based: Christian Dogmatics, The Abiding Word, The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel. The Reformed are into self-help books and books with catchy titles that would suggest an attempt to be relative to the times: Improving Your Serve, Strengthening Your Grip, Dropping Your Guard, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Tears to Pearls, The Be (Happy) Attitudes, etc. Rome puts out books that are defensive of the Catholic Teachings: The Basic Catechism, This is the Faith, The Catholic Handbook, Purgatory, The Eucharistic in Your Life,etc. Just a glance at the titles again points out the approach to dogma that each branch follows. In closing I would like to quote primary sources to seal the content of this treatise. First, from This is the Faith:
Tradition
As we shall see later, the Holy Ghost guides the Church; He, too, inspires the Scriptures. Hence, the one cannot contradict the other. Scripture was written for the Church, to be used by the Church, but, as it says explicitly, it is not a complete account of all the teachings of Christ, and so there must be another source of faith, namely Tradition.
It is through rejecting Tradition and leaving every man to interpret the Bible for himself that Protestantism has resulted in such a multiplicity of contradictory sects, and that the Bible is less respected, less used and less understood in the world than ever before.
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You are entirely correct in presenting the rules and regulations as what you coin to be the spirit of legalism. Much like the Pharisees, many a congregation today is so caught up with the rule ...
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In response to message posted by rjp7:
It might be that I used terms that are more divisive than descriptive of the three main bran ...
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In response to message posted by sicarri:
You state you cited two sources that had Imprimaturs, yet your Endnotes indicate at le ...
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Sir, While researching into the Reformed doctrine on the means of grace, I came across your article. First, may I respectfully suggest that your division of the Christian Church into Lutheran, ...
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In response to message posted by sicarri:
You are correct in stating I cite four catechisms. However, one is Luther's Catechism, wh ...
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