Saturday, November 22, 2008, 4:32 AM
The tragic error of Protestants, of all denominations and flavours, can be best summed with the abusive substitution that they operate between the wholly scriptural Augustinian quip, embedded in his comment to 1 John 4:4-12 ...
“Love, and do what thou wilt” (Augustine of Hippo, Tractatus VII, 8)
... with the unscriptural and abominable Lutheran quip ...
“Sin boldly, but believe more boldly still” (Martin Luther, letter [#] to Philip Melanchthon, 1521)
[#] This is the context of the sentence, in the letter than Luther wrote to Melanchthon while he was hiding at the Castle of Wartburg:
“If you are a preacher of grace, then preach a true and not a fictitious grace; if grace is true, you must bear a true and not a fictitious sin. God does not save people who are only fictitious sinners. Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly, for he is victorious over sin, death, and the world. As long as we are here [in this world] we have to sin. This life is not the dwelling place of righteousness, but, as Peter says, we look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. It is enough that by the riches of God’s glory we have come to know the Lamb that takes away the sin of the world. No sin will separate us from the Lamb, even though we commit fornication and murder a thousand times a day. Do you think that the purchase price that was paid for the redemption of our sins by so great a Lamb is too small? Pray boldly—you too are a mighty sinner.”
-- Martin Luther, Luther’s Works Volumes 1-55 (editors J. J. Pelikan, H. C. Oswald & H. T. Lehmann, Ed.) [Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1999, c1967], 48:281
Luther explains elsewhere how to take on the attitude of sinning “boldly”:
“Therefore let us arm our hearts with these and similar statements of Scripture so that, when the devil accuses us by saying: You are a sinner; therefore you are damned, we can reply: The very fact that you say I am a sinner makes me want to be just and saved. Nay, you will be damned, says the devil. Indeed not, I reply, for I take refuge in Christ, who gave Himself for my sins. Therefore you will accomplish nothing, Satan, by trying to frighten me by setting the greatness of my sins before me and thus seducing me to sadness, doubt, despair, hatred, contempt, and blasphemy of God. Indeed, by calling me a sinner you are supplying me with weapons against yourself so that I can slay and destroy you with your own sword; for Christ died for sinners. Furthermore, you yourself proclaim the glory of God to me; you remind me of God's paternal love for me, a miserable and lost sinner; for He so loved the world that He gave His Son (John 3:16). Again, whenever you throw up to me that I am a sinner, you revive in my memory the blessing of Christ, my Redeemer, on whose shoulders, and not on mine, lie all my sins; for "the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all" and "for the transgression of His people was He stricken" (Is. 53:6-8). Therefore when you throw up to me that I am a sinner, you are not terrifying me; you are comforting me beyond measure.”
-- Ewald Plass, What Luther Says Volumes 1-3 (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing house, 1959), 3:1315
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