On October 31, 1999, in Augsburg, Germany, representatives of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) and of the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) signed a Joint Declaration of Justification (JD), disclaiming previous differences. Headlines such as “JOINT DECLARATION VIRTUALLY ENDS REFORMATION ARGUMENT” appeared around the world. Seemingly, Luther had been deceived into thinking he had discovered “justification by faith,” when, in fact, the Catholic Church believed it all along. The Reformation had been a blunder fought over a semantic misunderstanding. Catholic/Lutheran differences had been put behind them. Peace and unity had been restored at last.
That the JD was signed on the very day (October 31) that Martin Luther, in 1517, publicly nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Castle chapel could hardly have been a coincidence. Nor could it have been by chance that the document was signed at the very place where (in the absence of Luther, who dared not appear for fear of his life) the Augsburg Confession (composed by Melanchthon in consultation with Luther) was read June 25, 1530, before 200 dignitaries of Church and state.
Condemned by Rome at that time and ever since, the Augsburg Confession was foundational to Lutheranism for 469 years. Apparently, that is no longer the case, at least for the LWF. Lutheran leaders have now joined Rome in betrayal of the very truths for which Luther suffered so greatly. Rome has been vindicated at last.
Upon the 49-member LWF Council’s earlier unanimous vote to accept the JD, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America’s Presiding Bishop H. George Anderson (an LWF vice president) led the Council in singing “Now Thank We All Our God.” Swedish Archbishop K.G. Hammar called it a “big day for the Lutheran world.” Indeed, what could be bigger than renouncing the Reformation and discrediting Luther?
The JD was the fruit of 30 years of dialogue between Lutheran and Catholic leaders. If justification by faith in Christ is that complicated, who can be saved? When the Philippian jailor cried in Acts 16:30, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?,” Paul did not reply, “Do you have about 30 years for me to explain?” He simply said, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved” (Acts 16:31) with not a word about the many complex rules and rituals Roman Catholicism has subsequently made essential to salvation.
In signing the JD, Lutherans surrendered; Catholics changed nothing. The Vatican has refused to rescind any of the more than 100 anathemas still in effect against those who proclaim justification through faith in Christ without Roman Catholic sacraments. Yet many Protestants and Catholics are now convinced that Luther misunderstood true Catholicism and that both sides are now in agreement on the crucial point of justification by faith alone. In fact, Martin Luther was not the only one who misunderstood Catholicism, if that was the problem. There were many contemporary reformers such as Calvin, Zwingli, Denck, Hess, von Amsdorf, Zutphen, Propst, Esch, Voes, and a host of others. In fact, they understood Catholicism very well and knew exactly what they were protesting and why. To imagine otherwise is to embrace a lie.
Furthermore, for 1,000 years before Luther, Europe saw persecutions, burnings, and drownings of evangelical Christians who had never been Catholics and were not called Protestants. That epithet would only later be attached to those excommunicated from the Church for protesting its evils.
A movement among priests and monks calling for a return to the Bible began many centuries before the Reformation. The reformation movement within the Roman Church can be traced as far back as Priscillian, Bishop of Avila. Falsely accused of heresy, witchcraft, and immorality by a Synod in Bordeaux, France, in A.D. 384 (seven of his writings which refute these charges have recently been discovered in Germany’s University of Wurzburg library), Priscillian and six others were beheaded at Trier in 385. Many martyrdoms followed through the centuries.
Jumping ahead to the late 1300s, John Wycliff, “moring star of the Reformation,” championed the authority of the Scriptures, translated and published them in English (and almost as fast the Catholics burned them) and preached and wrote against the evils of the popes and Catholic dogmas, especially transubstantiation. Jan Hus, a fervent Catholic priest and rector of Prague University, was influenced by Wycliff. Excommunicated in 1410, Hus was burned as a “heretic” in 1415 for calling a corrupt church to holiness and the authority of God’s Word. We have already quoted the letter from Pope Martin V commanding the King of Poland in 1429 to exterminate the Hussites—almost 100 years before the Protestant Reformation.
Such early reformers set the stage for Martin Luther. Luther himself said, “We are not the first to declare the papacy to be the kingdom of Antichrist, since for many years before us so many and so great men. . .have undertaken to express the same thing so clearly....” For example, in a full council at Rheims in the tenth century, the Bishop of Orleans called the Pope the Antichrist. In the eleventh century, Rome was denounced as “the See of Satan” by Berenger of Tours. The Waldensians identified the Pope as Antichrist in an A.D. 1100 treatise titled “The Noble Lesson.” In 1206, an Albigensian conference in Montreal indicted the Vatican as the woman “drunk with the blood of the martyrs,” which she continued to prove.
Provoked by the licentiousness he had seen among the Pope and clergy in his visit to Rome, and by the sale of indulgences as tickets to heaven (financing the construction of St. Peter’s basilica), on October 31, 1517, Luther nailed his “Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences” (known as “The Ninety-Five Theses”) to the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church. Copies translated from the original Latin were widely distributed, inciting heated debate all over Europe about selling forgiveness of sins.
On October 12, 1518, arrested and summoned to Rome by order of Pope Leo X, Luther was held at Augsburg for trial before Cardinal Cajetan. Refused an impartial tribunal, Luther fled for his life by night. On January 3, 1521, a formal bull was issued by the Pope consigning Luther to hell if he did not recant. Summoned by the Emperor, who pledged his safety, Luther appeared before the Imperial Diet in Worms on April 17, 1521. Asked to retract his writings, Luther replied:
I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not retract anything...here I stand; may God help me.
Now an outlaw by papal edict, Luther fled again and was “kidnapped” on his way back to Wittenberg by friends who took him for safekeeping to Wartburg Castle. From there he disseminated more “heresy” in writings that further shook all Europe. Rome’s determination to eliminate Lutheran heresy, as expressed in March of 1529 in the second Diet of Speyer, provoked a number of independent princes to assert the right to live according to the Bible. They expressed this firm resolve in the famous “Protest” of April 19, 1529, from which the word “Protestant” was coined.
The Imperial Diet was convened in Augsburg for a thorough examination of Protestant heresies. On that occasion the Augsburg Confession was first read. It delineated the clear differences between Lutheranism and Catholicism. In particular, Article IV declared that men “are freely justified...their sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake, who, by His death, has made satisfaction for our sins.” Article XIII declared that “the Sacraments were ordained...to be signs and testimonies” and condemned “those who teach that the Sacraments justify by the outward act....” Article XV admonished “that human traditions instituted to propitiate God, to merit grace, and to make satisfaction for sins, are opposed to the Gospel and the doctrine of faith. Wherefore vows and traditions concerning meats and days, etc., instituted to merit grace and to make satisfaction for sins, are useless and contrary to the Gospel.”
How shocked the Reformers would be to know that in the same city of Augsburg, Lutherans recently signed a new document proclaiming agreement with the Roman Catholic Church on justification. This is all the more shocking in view of the fact that Roman Catholicism remains the same as in Luther’s day. In spite of signing the JD, the Roman Church continues to teach and practice the very things which the Augsburg Confession specifically rejected.
Undeniably, the belief and practice of 1 billion Roman Catholics around the world (ignored by the JD) remain precisely what they always were. That fact renders the JD’s careful and complex theological language meaningless. Catholics still flagellate themselves and offer good works and suffering to earn their salvation. They still pray to Mary for salvation. One still finds Roman Catholics at Marian shrines around the world walking on their bruised and bloody knees to earn God’s grace. This is not the Middle Ages but present day Catholic “salvation” as practiced worldwide.
Catholics still believe that the “merits and graces Christ won on the cross” can only be received in small installments that never fully save and are dispensed only through Mary and through the sacraments and dispensations of the Church. And they still believe, and their Church continues to insist, that to these “merits and graces of Christ” have been added the merits earned by Mary and the saints through their prayers and good deeds. All of these together make up the “treasury” the Church possesses and from which it dispenses salvation in installments along with indulgences.
Catholics still wear scapulars and medals to open heaven’s door, they still look to Mother Church to offer masses after their death to release them from “purgatory.” Official Roman Catholic dogma still holds, in denial of abundant Scripture attesting to Christ having died once for all time on the cross, that Christ is being perpetually immolated as sacrifice on their altars. They still pray to “saints” such as Padre Pio, whom they believe suffered to pay for others’ sins and thereby redeemed multitudes through the stigmata he bore for 40 years. Indeed, several hundred thousand of the faithful filled St. Peter’s Square May 2, 1999, when Pope John Paul II beatified Pio on the way to making him a “saint.”
This is Catholicism as it has been practiced for 1,500 years, unchanged by the JD or ETC. Wittingly or not, evangelicals who sign such documents are endorsing these pagan practices and encouraging a billion Roman Catholics in a false hope.
The very practice of offering indulgences (which opened Luther’s eyes to the evil of Rome’s gospel), which he denounced and against which he labored so diligently, is still a vital and official part of Catholicism. Yet that fact is strangely ignored by evangelicals in their current endorsement of Rome and acceptance of Roman Catholics as “brothers and sisters in Christ.” Even while Lutheran/Catholic negotiations were being finalized, the Pope was promising special Jubilee indulgences for the year 2000 and continuing to make dogmatic pronouncements in support of this gross heresy. For example, in the General Audience of August 4, 1999, at the Vatican, the Pope explained again that “we cannot approach God [i.e., enter heaven] without undergoing some kind of purification [through one’s personal suffering in addition to what Christ suffered on the cross]. Every trace of attachment to evil must be eliminated, every imperfection of the soul corrected.. .and indeed this is precisely what is meant by the Church’s teaching on purgatory.” Protestants signing the JD and ECT are thus mocked in the very act.
On Christmas Eve 1999, John Paul II opened a “holy door” in St. Peter’s (and subsequently three others in Rome) through which pilgrims coming from around the world have been walking in order to gain the promised forgiveness of sins. John Paul II boasts that this practice was begun in 1300 by Pope Boniface VIII. In “Unam Sanctam,” in 1302, in infallible bull still in force today, Boniface made absolute obedience to the Pope a condition of salvation. To this the JD and ECT are also blind.
As we explained earlier, Boniface was so evil that Dante buried him in the lowest depths of hell. He simultaneously had both a mother and her daughter as his mistresses. He utterly destroyed the beautiful city of Palestrina with its priceless art and historic structures dating back to Julius Caesar, reducing it to a plowed field which he sowed with salt after killing its 6,000 inhabitants. Why? Palestrina’s ruling family, the Colonna, had made themselves the Popes enemies, and he gave indulgences (yes, indulgences) to those who helped defeat them. John Paul II must know all this, yet he and his Church trace his alleged “apostolic succession” back through such monster popes, of whom Boniface was by no means the worst.
It seems more than ironic that although the Reformation began over indulgences, and that Roman Catholicism continues to promote indulgences and to anathematize those who will not accept them, Romanism has now been declared not only by liberal Lutherans but by leading evangelicals to preach the true gospel of salvation by grace through faith in Christ’s finished work. The treatise Martin Luther nailed to the door of the Wittenberg Castle chapel October 31, 1517, though popularly referred to as his 95 Theses, was originally titled by him “Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences.” While it appears that at the time Luther was still struggling with and had not yet fully rejected the false doctrine of purgatory, he denounced indulgences in no uncertain terms as offered then and now by the Church of Rome. Among his 95 theses were the following:
21. Thus those indulgence preachers are in error who say that a man is absolved from every penalty and saved by papal indulgences.
24. For this reason most people are necessarily deceived by that indiscriminate and high-sounding promise of release from penalty.
37. Any true Christian, whether living or dead, participates in all the blessings of Christ and the church; and this is granted him by God, even without indulgence letters.
45. Christians are to be taught that he who sees a needy man and passes him by, yet gives his money for indulgences, does not buy papal indulgences but God’s wrath.
52. It is vain to trust in salvation by indulgence letters, even though the indulgence commissary, or even the pope, were to offer his soul as security.
62. The true treasure of the church is the most holy gospel of the glory and grace of God.
76. We say on the contrary that papal indulgences cannot remove the very least of venial sins as far as guilt is concerned.
82. Why does not the pope empty purgatory for the sake of holy love and the dire need of the souls that are there if he redeems an infinite number of souls for the sake of miserable money with which to build a church?
83. Why are funeral and anniversary masses for the dead continued...?
90. To repress these very sharp arguments of the laity by force alone, and not to resolve them by giving reasons, is to expose the church and the pope to the ridicule of their enemies and to make Christians unhappy.
As we have explained elsewhere and shown from the Bible, the doctrines of purgatory and indulgences are a denial of the sufficient efficacy of the finished work of Christ upon the cross and deny the very words that Christ cried in triumph to all the world, “It is finished!” Roman Catholic forgiveness of sins was not procured through the once and for all sacrifice of Christ, a forgiveness received alone by faith in Him, but it is earned by Catholics’ personal good works and sacrifices according to their Church. The Pope has made the year 2000 a unique Jubilee of forgiveness during which he offers special indulgences, even granting forgiveness of sins for giving up cigarettes for a day. The following are excerpts from his “Bull of Indiction of the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000”:
The coming of the Third Millennium prompts the Christian community to lift its eyes of faith to embrace new horizons in proclaiming the Kingdom of God. It is imperative therefore at this special time to return more faithfully than ever to the teaching [not of the Bible, but] of the Second Vatican Council....May the ecumenical character of the Jubilee be a concrete sign of the journey which, especially in recent decades, the faithful of the different Churches and Ecclesial communities have been making. It is only by listening to the Spirit that we shall be able to show forth visibly in full communion the grace of divine adoption which springs from Baptism....
We recall the year 1300 when, responding to the wish of the people of Rome, Pope Boniface VIII solemnly inaugurated the first Jubilee in history... [and] offered abundant remission and pardon of sins to those who visited Saint Peter’s Basilica in the Eternal City...a pardon of sins which would not only be more abundant, but complete....On the occasion of this great feast, a warm invitation to share our joy goes out to the followers of other religions, as it does to those who are far from faith in God. As brothers and sisters in the one human family, may we cross together the threshold of a new millennium....
I therefore decree that the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000 will begin on Christmas Eve 1999, with the opening of the holy door in Saint Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican...and the opening of the holy door in each of the other Patriarchal Basilicas of Rome....Another distinctive sign, and one familiar to the faithful, is the indulgence, which is one of the constitutive elements of the Jubilee.... Free and conscious surrender to grave sin, in fact, separates the believer from the life of grace with God....It is precisely through the ministry of the Church that God diffuses his mercy in the world, by means of that precious gift which from very ancient times has been called indulgence....With the indulgence, the repentant sinner receives a remission of the temporal punishment due for the sins already forgiven as regards the fault....Every sin, even venial...must be purified either here on earth, or after death in the state called Purgatory. This purification frees one from what is called the temporal punishment of sin....
I decree that throughout the entire Jubilee all the faithful, properly prepared, be able to make abundant use of the gift of the indulgence, according to the directives which accompany this Bull.... The nations will never grow weary of invoking the Mother of mercy [Mary] and will always find refuge under her protection. May she...guard the steps of all those who will be pilgrims in this Jubilee Year....Given in Rome, at Saint Peter’s, on 29 November, the first Sunday of Advent, in the year of our Lord 1998....
Then follows the rules for obtaining the Jubilee Indulgence.
By the present decree.. .expressed in the Bull of Induction...by the same Supreme Pontiff, the Apostolic Penitentiary defines the discipline to be observed for gaining the Jubilee Indulgence...[it] can also be applied in suffrage to the souls of the deceased [in purgatory]....Then too, the rule that a plenary indulgence can be gained only once a day remains in force during the entire Jubilee year....
Participation in the Eucharist, which is required for all indulgences, should properly take place on the same day as the prescribed works are performed....With regard to the required conditions, the faithful can gain the Jubilee indulgence:
1) In Rome, if they make a pious pilgrimage to one of the Patriarchal Basilicas...take part devoutly in Holy Mass or another liturgical celebration...or some pious exercise (e.g., the Stations of the Cross, the Rosary...)...prayer to the Blessed Virgin Mary....
2) In the Holy Land, if....
3) In other ecclesiastical territories, if they make a sacred pilgrimage to the Cathedral Church...there spend time in pious meditation....
4) In any place, if they visit for a suitable time their brothers and sisters in need or in difficulty....
The plenary indulgence of the Jubilee can also be gained through actions which express in a practical and generous way the penitential spirit which is, as it were, the heart of the Jubilee. This would include abstaining for at least one whole day from unnecessary consumption (e.g., from smoking or alcohol, or fasting)....
There can be no doubt that Catholicism today, as in Luther’s day, denies salvation through faith alone in Christ and equally denies the sufficiency of His finished sacrifice upon the cross for our sins. This is the same Catholicism practiced in Luther’s day and for centuries before him. It is still in practice today, a fact which makes mockery of the documents deceived Protestants and evangelicals join Catholic theologians in signing. As always, today’s Roman Catholicism adds works to faith as a condition of gaining heaven and claims that forgiveness of sins is dispensed only through the Church, through her priesthood and rituals and in accord with her dogmas. Paul would pronounce the same anathema upon today’s Catholicism as he pronounced upon the Judaizers in Galatians chapter 1. We can only conclude that those crediting Roman Catholicism with preaching the true gospel have renounced not only the Reformation but the gospel itself.