Continuing the Reformation: A Call to Biblical Faith

"MOHLER: I think the easiest answer to that is, 'Do you think the church, your church, the larger church represents exactly what Christ desires for His church?' If not, then there is the need for Reformation. By the time you get to the seventeenth century, the motto, semper reformanda, becomes very much a part of the Protestant vocabulary coming from the Dutch first and then becoming more widespread. The liberals loved it and claimed this in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They were continuing the Reformation. But that phrase coming from the Dutch was 'the church always being reformed by the Word of God,' and that's the issue. We want the church always to be reformed by the Word of God." [00:01:16]

"LOHMANN: I would say atheism is probably not the big issue in some parts of Germany. I think it is agnosticism. Atheism is certainly the big issue here in Wittenberg and eastern Germany, and that's obviously the result of the communist regime and the church really being sidelined completely, a church that was weak already coming out of, you know, everything that had to do with higher criticism over the last two hundred years. And so, I would say atheism is definitely the name of the game in east Germany. In the rest of Germany, I think, the bigger problem is that people actually think they are Christians and think they know what it means to be a Christian, but they have no clue of it." [00:03:13]

"MUELLER: I would say it's just that liberal theology has really destroyed the church and the seminaries. When you have young pastors who don't believe that Jesus Christ actually was on the cross literally, that He died, that He rose again, the church cannot prosper. And then, I think, another point is that obviously by God's grace the Holy Spirit did mighty things here during the Reformation, also at some other times, as you think about even Halle, Leipzig, Frankfurt. And I do think that the devil is also very much active in fighting against where there has been already a lot of light, a lot of Jesus Christ in the gospel." [00:04:01]

"NICHOLS: I think some of the work by Michael Kruger is very helpful. We need to also engage the issue of the canon and the process of the canon in terms of the text itself, and I think from his work it can be very helpful and very helpful for a layperson. I think in terms of some of the faculty at your place, Dr. Mohler, the New Testament faculty there, that have been very helpful in terms of engaging this issue. One of the things, I think, we need to recognize is, as we look at the doctrine of inerrancy and we look at the doctrine of the authority of Scripture, it is very easy to think that somehow because we have this, and this is a challenge to inerrancy, and because we have this English Bible or the German Bible, that somehow then that is a paper doctrine, that because we don't have the autographs it is no longer necessary to be talking about inerrancy." [00:05:35]

"LAWSON: Yeah, in the Philippians 2, 'Work out your salvation in fear and trembling for it is God who is at work within you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure;' that has nothing to do with earning your salvation. Salvation comes in broad brush strokes in three categories: justification, sanctification, and glorification. This is a very often repeated statement, but we have been saved, we are being saved, we will be saved. It's a total package. The Philippians 2 refers to working out what God has already worked into us, Philippians 1:6, the previous chapter, 'being confident of this very kind that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.'" [00:11:35]

"LAWSON: Well, in the 1 Timothy 2 passage it's obviously not cultural as of that time, because Paul makes his appeal going all the way back to the creation of Adam and Eve. He bases it upon creation and God's order in creation and headship and submission as God has established it from the very beginning. So, the appeal is not to the present-day culture that's going on at that time and moderating some practice that's already there. No, this is how God established it from the very beginning, but the 1 Timothy 2 passage where he says, 'I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man,' he follows that by appealing to creation." [00:14:49]

"NICHOLS: If we go back to Luther, I think one of the translations of one of his thirty-eight hymns is about the Word of God, and I just try to remember the lines, pull them back from memory, he says, 'For feelings come and feelings go and feelings are not worth believing. Our warrant is the Word of God.' And I think when we look into this idea of the ongoing gifts, I don't know how to see them in any other way than an addition to the Word of God, and in a way of saying that the Word of God is not sufficient, that we need this extra revelation. We need something more." [00:26:39]

"LAWSON: We were just talking about it at lunch today. In the United States, Dr. Mohler was pointing out to us, one, the demise of Sunday school and training young people in the Word of God, the cancellation of Wednesday night, the cancellation of Sunday night church preaching specifically, such that people hear such little truth actually being preached and taught. Maybe, there's only one sermon a week. If you came every time every week and then no adult education in Sunday school, I mean, we should not be surprised that there is such a low biblical literacy rate in the church. So, we obviously need more Bible and more Bible teaching, more Bible equipping, more Bible preaching, I think, for the church to be healthy and strong." [00:28:25]

"MOHLER: Yes, absolutely to all that has been said, also just in terms of the premise behind the question, we shouldn't confuse the ability to read with the practice of reading. We are living in a time in which, yes, more people can read. That doesn't mean that they do read. So, if you talk to booksellers and publishers, they will tell you that the book reading public is getting narrower, but deeper. It's a thinner slice of the population buying more books per capita. It's really not a widespread phenomenon that everyone who can read does read." [00:32:59]

"MOHLER: Well, I will say not in terms of any pragmatic secret strategy. We should simply take advantage of the opportunity to preach the Word, knowing that no one else is going to do it. No one else is going to carry any of the freight for the Christian church anymore, even in terms of morality. It used to be that the Christian church could peach and teach, but it understood that the larger part of society would reinforce basically biblical moral judgments on issues of marriage, sexuality. So, it's not an accident that the Ten Commandments are ensconced often in stone in some of the most historic American monuments and also here in Europe as well." [00:35:15]

"MUELLER: Well, I think, the light of the gospel was shining forth very brightly and then what we've heard this morning, just standing up for God's Word and with that God granted some level of revival." [00:41:52]

"MOHLER: Amen. In spending so much time with Luther over the last couple of years, especially preparing for this, having found my theological identity in the Reformation for all of my adult life, I was reminded of something profoundly in the midst of all of this and that is this. I think if Luther were asked, 'What one thing did the Reformation represent?' he would say, 'Listening to the Word of God, the people God again hearing the Word of God.' And Luther then made the point that everything else will follow. And so, he made the point in one of his last public statements that if all he had done was to translate the New Testament into German, the Reformation would have happened, because if the people simply hear and read the Word of God—and he meant that, first of all, in terms of the Word 'preached'—the Reformation is going to happen." [00:43:42]