Dr Paul Allen

Reformers like John Calvin quoted Augustine more than any other author outside Scripture. They celebrated, among other qualities, how he championed the truth that God saves sinners not on the basis of their works but by his grace.   When it came to the doctrine of justification by faith, however, the Reformers did not find the clarity they wanted in the great church father.  Augustine never offers a systematic treatment of the meaning of justification, and a careful reading of his works reveals ambiguities in his treatment of the doctrine.   Nevertheless, he speaks of justification mainly in terms of God making sinners righteous rather than declaring sinners righteou s. To the Reformers, then, his way of expressing the doctrine obscured, even if it did not deny, Christ’s righteousness as the sole ground of a sinner’s justification before God. Augustine of Hippo (354–430) championed the truth that God saves sinners not on the basis of their works, but by his grace alone. E...

People assume (as I once did) that since Martin Luther (1483–1546) first protested the abuse of indulgences, in 1517, Rome must have been shamed into ending the practice. She was not. The sale of indulgences continues. In section 1471, the Catechism of the Catholic Church uses revealing language. The benefit of indulgences is available “under certain conditions through the action of the church.” It cites Paul VI’s Indulgentarium Doctrina (1967). Notably, the catechism criticizes past abuses but does not forbid their sale. This is because canon 28 of the Council of Constance (1414–18) set the conditions for the sale of indulgences: Can. 27. And whether he believes that by reason of this sort of grant those who visit the church and those contribute to them can gain indulgences of this kind. Can. 28 Likewise, whether he believes that, for a just and holy reason, the pope can grant indulgences for the remission of sins to all Christians who are truly contrite and have confessed, especially...

What do the sovereignty of God, salvation by grace, justification by faith, and new life in union with Christ mean for the living of the Christian life? For Luther, they carry four implications: The first implication is the knowledge that the Christian believer is simul iustus et peccator,1 at one and the same time justified and yet a sinner.   This principle, to which Luther may have been stimulated by John Tauler’s Theologia Germanica, was a hugely stabilizing principle: in and of myself, all I see is a sinner; but when I see myself in Christ, I see a man counted righteous with His perfect righteousness. Such a man is, therefore, able to stand before God as righteous as Jesus Christ—because he is righteous only in the righteousness that is Christ’s. Here we stand secure. The second implication is the discovery that God has become our Father in Christ.   We are accepted. One of the most beautiful accounts found in Luther’s Table Talk was, perhaps significantly, recorded by th...

This year, many people are celebrating the five-hundredth anniversary of the Protestant Reformation . But not everyone is. Some have raised severe criticisms against the Reformers and their work. The Reformers, they allege, replaced the authority of the church with the authority of the autonomous individual. Moreover, the doctrine of justification by faith alone , these critics claim, cut the nerve of morality and, effectively, baptized licentious living. Martin Luther and John Calvin , they continue, opened Pandora’s box, releasing two forces that not only rent the church but also went on to define the modern age: radical individualism and antinomianism. Understood on these terms, the Reformation is cause for lamentation, not celebration. These criticisms rest on a profound misunderstanding of the Reformation and, specifically, a misunderstanding of two of the leading doctrines of the Reformation: sola scriptura ( Scripture alone ) and sola fide (faith alone). What were the ...

October 31st is Reformation day. This year, we celebrate the 500th year of the reformation. As we consider the boldness of Luther, who was pretty much being asked to either recant his writings or be killed, it is tough to put ourselves in his shoes. As he said his famous words, “HERE I STAND, I CAN DO NO OTHER, SO HELP ME GOD. AMEN,” we can’t help but feel not only inspired by Luther but at the same time intimidated by the idea of being as bold as him. It is important for us, though, to understand that we are called to be bold in our lives as well. The declaration from the Reformation that should ring true in our hearts, as well, is that the Gospel is more important than anything in this life. The call of the Reformation for each of us in our lives is to live a life unashamed of the Gospel. When Paul declares that he is unashamed of the Gospel in Romans 1:16, he does so because he must know that it is a temptation for the people of Rome to be ashamed. You’d have to live in a cave no...

Gemälde Katharina von Bora /Öl auf Eichenholz (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Martin Luther, author of the text of Christ lag in Todes Banden, and who, with Johann Walter, also wrote the melody (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) The fourteenth century was a bad time for the papacy. For a period, there were two rival popes and the papacy was under pressure from the French monarchy. It wasn’t a good time for the city of Rome either—seven successive popes abandoned Rome in favor of Avignon in France. Rome was sidelined and Saint Peter’s Basilica fell into disrepair. The popes returned to Rome in 1377 and then sorted out their divisions in 1417. A hundred years on, things were looking up: in 1505, Pope Julius II had decided to knock down the old St Peter’s and start again. He had big plans for his own tomb and wanted a basilica to match. It was time to make Rome magnificent once again. But that didn’t come cheap, so the church embarked on a fundraising campaign. It was this campaign that br...

Why did Luther ever question the canonical status of James? The answer is clear. Luther’s struggle with James grew out of the deepest theological controversy in the history of the church, the struggle over the nature of the Gospel as it was focused in the doctrine of justification by faith alone (sola fide). Luther’s opponents constantly cited the book of James to repudiate the evangelical understanding of the Gospel. The Roman Catholic community in particular relied heavily on the epistle, especially at the Sixth Session of the Council of Trent, which cited James 2:17 and 2:20 in chapter seven and James 2:24 in chapter 10. James 2:24 reads, “You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only.” On the surface, this text clearly seems to repudiate sola fide in that it states explicitly that justification is by works and not by faith alone. The problem is intensified by James’ earlier statement: “Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac h...

Next Saturday will be the 498th anniversary of Martin Luther famously nailing his 95 Theses to the Castle Church door in Wittenberg, Germany, and kick-starting the Protestant Reformation as a result. Because of that, there will likely be many posts in the Christian blogosphere celebrating the recovery of the biblical Gospel from the perversions of Roman Catholic theology. And because of that, there will likely be many Romanist sympathizers who chide us Protestants as divisive, overly-narrow, unity-destroying, and judgmental. They’ll say something like this : This is what drives me nutty about Christianity. We all believe in the Bible, Jesus Christ, the road to salvation and the Resurrection. Do I believe exactly as you do? I’m sure I don’t, but I don’t believe you’re any less Christian than I am. We need to understand that there’s more that unites us than divides us. The problem, of course, is that Protestants and Catholics don’t all believe the same things about the most foundati...