Often scholars of the Reformation want to separate Luther from the long history of the church's proclamation of Jesus Christ as the only Savior of the world. They want us to consider Luther an oddity; someone who was teaching outside of the accepted norm. There is no doubt that Luther was a groundbreaking theologian, but he was also a conservative theologian, that is, he sought to preserve the scriptural truth of God's Word to the church. His conservatism was "radical," that is that he sought to return to the clear and pure fountain of Israel, Holy Scripture. He did not merely desire to return to a fondly remembered, but stultifying, past. He was not a purveyor of calcified nostalgia. Every teacher and theologian (including Luther himself) was under the critical function of the divine Word. Every human was a liar, only God was true.

God alone was able to justify sinners in His sight. Luther was perfectly clear about this. However, despite the views of some church historians and theologians, Luther was not an oddity in this. He followed the path of faithful theologians and Christian teachers through the centuries. In my sermon on Reformation Sunday, I quoted the ancient church father, Augustine of Hippo saying, "I say to the pious reader, do not be willing to yield to my writings as to the canonical Scriptures. But when you have discovered in the Scriptures what you did not previously believe, believe it unhesitatingly" (St. Augustine, On the Trinity, 3.1). Here is the hallmark of the faithful Christian teacher; the ability to place every thought under the Word of God so that it is capable of reformation by that Word of God. I didn't tell my listeners who said those words, and they presumed that I was quoting Martin Luther on Reformation Sunday. That would be a safe bet, but one that was wrong. A thousand years before Luther, Augustine was extremely clear about the authority of the divine Word and its ability to deliver the righteousness of God to poor sinners like us without any work or merit in us. Luther stands sturdily in the midst of the stream of the faithful teachers of the church. He is not some obsessed lunatic or perverter of the holy faith.

Augustine, a thousand years before Luther, taught clearly about the nature of grace in the face of the Pelagian heresy. Pelagius taught that within man there was the capacity to keep the divine law and so be pleasing to God. The longer Augustine contemplated this heresy the more horrified he became for it robbed Christ of His proper glory and because it simply ignored the actual words of Scripture which attributed to God all the glory of our salvation. In a sublime mystery of the gospel even our good works find their source in God Himself, not in those who do them. This was not the mad ranting of the German monk, but the teaching of God Himself in Scripture and taught by all the faithful teachers of the church before and after Luther. Preservation of that saving message is what the Reformation is all about.

Augustine of Hippo