Thread by @RScottClark

This is complete nonsense! There are many reasons to celebrate Reformation Day. I shall proceed to enumerate them.

First, the Reformation, symbolized by the Ninety-Five Theses (but not at all summarized by them) represented a rejection of false damnable errors.

https://twitter.com/mattwalshblog/status/1057677553597591552

Not the least of which was the Romanist claim that the church has an “unwritten apostolic tradition.” This is a complete fiction without warrant either in Scripture or in the earliest Christian writers, who said nothing about any such thing.

When they did mention was the “apostolic tradition,” which was merely a way of speaking about the Epistles. See e.g., Ad Diog., c. AD 150). Basil was the 1st to speak of an unwritten apostolic tradition and he was just making up things to refute the Eunomians.

Over against the Romanist marginalizing of Scripture the Protestants recovered the Scriptures as the unique, final, sufficient, perspicuous authority for the Christian faith and the Christian life. It freed millions of Christians from the tyranny of human opinion.

Under sola Scriptura, the Reformed, in particular, were able to clear out centuries of man-made tradition, without root or precedent in apostolic or early post-apostolic history in worship and in the Christian life. Christian liberty is something to celebrate.

Sola scriptura freed us from the tyranny of a deeply corrupt and often malevolent Roman magisterium and papacy, which, by the 16th century, had become a bloody, petty, Italian duchy. It freed us from stupid, unhistorical, unbiblical, manipulative myths like “purgatory.”

It freed us from a series of dreadful ecclesiastical decisions in the 13th, 14th, and 16th centuries to add five false, man-made sacraments. As late as the 9th century NO ONE knew anything about those five false sacraments. They weren’t even ratified by a council until 1274.

They were nothing but elaborations on the dominical sacraments and they were without warrant in holy Scripture a fact that honest Romanist scholars freely admit (with the exception of extreme unction).

Recovering our Lord’s two instituted sacraments and recovering the cup for the laity (which we did at considerable cost to ourselves) is worth celebrating.

Then there is the matter of what had become the dominant medieval doctrine of progressive justification by grace and cooperation with grace. This is still the Roman doctrine BTW. See the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1994) sect. 1987.

This doctrine was not that of Scripture nor that of the earliest post-apostolic church (see e.g., 1 Clement or Ad Diog. ch. 5 for 2 early examples). The Reformation recovered the biblical definition of grace as unconditional divine favor toward sinners (sola gratia).

The Reformation recovered the biblical definition of faith as resting, receiving, trusting in Christ and HIS obedience FOR ME (not the Spirit’s work in me and my cooperation with it). This is sola fide.

In Romanism Christ is an enabler but the cooperating believer is really the savior—which is blasphemy. Rome makes Jesus but half a Savior. The Reformation restored, as it were, salvation to Christ. This is worth celebrating.

The Reformation recovered the biblical doctrine of assurance. Rome made it so that one had to have direct, special revelation to know if one is really justified. Whereas Paul says plainly (as Raymond Brown acknowledges) that we are NOW justified.

There are not two stages of justification. Baptism doesn’t justify initially (contra Rome and the Federal Vision) and there is no final justification at the judgment. Believers are justified now—“having therefore been justified” says Paul.

BTW, shame on those evangelicals and prots who have em braced the two-stage view of justification. You’re only degrees away from Rome.

The medieval church and Rome and Trent (and since) corrupted the gospel (see Galatians 2) and with it the assurance and peace of millions of Christians. The Reformation restored the gospel and assurance. That’s worth celebrating.

The church is not fractured. The church has been freed from its Babylonian Captivity and is now calling the Roman sect to repent of her sins and errors and to embrace Jesus the only Savior by grace alone, through faith alone.

One more thing. Show me in the NT or in ANYONE in the 2nd century where the early Church spoke, as Rome does now, of the Blessed virgin as “Advocate, Helper, Benefactress, and Mediatrix” (CCC, 969). Mediatrix?

Holy Scripture: “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim 2:5).