A Living and Unshakable Confidence

Since I blogged about one of my classes I'm taking at Westfield House last week, I thought today I'd blog about my second class: Readings in Luther. In this class, the two Ft. Wayne seminarians and I read selections of Martin Luther's writings and discuss them in class with Dr. Rosin. He works both here and at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, so every couple weeks he flies back and forth. In order to teach all his classes at both institutions, we use Skype during class sometimes.

I really like this class because it forces me to read entire documents that Luther wrote. I think far too many Lutherans (including myself sometimes) cling to one-liners or "soundbites" from his writings and use them out of context, thinking they know how Luther thought. The most obvious example of this is Luther's quote "Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly." Many Lutherans toss this quote around as a self-justification for their own sins to relieve themselves of their guilt, with no desire to look into the context. So here it is: Luther's good friend and fellow reformer Philip Melanchthon, was in a very difficult situation in his parish. Melanchthon went through every scenario of what he could do in response to it, and every one seemed sinful to him. Luther said these words to him, basically telling him to act, not to intentionally sin, but to take action, and live in continual repentance. Given the context, it's a beautiful quote! Which is one reason why I like this class so much: I get to pour through entire works of Luther.

My favorite quote I have read so far in this class comes from his Preface to Romans (I encourage you to read the entire thing---it's fantastic). He wrote, "Faith is a living and unshakable confidence, a belief in the grace of God so assured that a man would die a thousand deaths for its sake." No one in the past millennium could nail down faith quite like Brother Martin. I'm thankful to be in a class where I can really learn what Luther had to say: both the good (i.e. his Preface to the Romans) and the bad (i.e. his Preface to James). I look forward to reading his other works and sifting through them with my fellow scholars. In this land that's practically depraved of conservative theology, it's nice to have healthy doses of Luther delivered to me through this class.