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Oxford Research Encyclopedias. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion. Oxford Research Encyclopedias Religion. Advanced search. Your current browser may not support copying via this button. Outside his people there is no salvation. All the baptized are given spiritual authority and called to use his Word for others, but these priests call pastors, who lead the ministry of the Word in the congregation. Keywords: church , communion of saints , office of the keys , priesthood , baptized , believers , pastor , marks of the church , papacy , Antichrist.
David P. Access to the complete content on Oxford Handbooks Online requires a subscription or purchase. Public users are able to search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter without a subscription.
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For questions on access or troubleshooting, please check our FAQs , and if you can''t find the answer there, please contact us. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice. I believe that the Holy Ghost makes me holy, as His name implies.
But whereby does He accomplish this, or what are His method and means to this end? Answer: by the Christian church…. But outside of this Christian church, where the Gospel is not, there is no forgiveness, as also there can be no holiness Large Catechism, Art. I am not a Christian. I do not believe that Christ died for me.
I do not believe that He took away my sins. I do not believe that His blood has cleansed me, or that it can cleanse me. In short, I do not believe a word of what God has declared of Christ and all Scriptures testified.
Luther rightly rejected this, for the Catholic Church is not where the pope rules where Peter is, as Rome expressed it , but where Christ is, whether in Wittenberg, Germany; London, England; or Zurich, Switzerland.
To turn that around, where Christ is preached wherever that might be , there the Holy Ghost does create, call, and gather the Christian church. It is precisely because Christ is not preached under the papacy that there is no church there, her boasts of unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity notwithstanding.
Third, Luther was clear on the marks of the true church. For Luther, the church was much more important than it seems to be for many modern evangelicals, many of whom despise the church by living in isolation from it. The preaching of the gospel was for Luther primary in the church, for in the preaching of the gospel the believer was confronted with Christ. Indeed, such a confrontation did not take place in the private reading of the Scriptures, at least not to the same degree and with the same effect.
For Luther, this had important pastoral implications. He will not hear it at home, and he certainly will not hear it in the false church. If the person had excluded himself from the objective means of grace, not only would spiritual problems be expected, but also Luther could really offer nothing else to help him.
Let that be a warning and an encouragement to the struggling saint who is tempted to forsake the means of grace today! Finally, Luther loved the church. Above all, Luther saw himself not as a mighty Reformer, or even as a great spiritual leader, but as a humble yet thankful member of the church:. I want to be and remain in the church and little flock of the faint-hearted, the feeble, and the ailing, who feel and recognize the wretchedness of their sins, who believe in the forgiveness of sins, and who suffer persecution for the sake of the Word which they confess and teach purely and without adulteration.
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