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BeeSweet
Guest
What were the reasons behind Martin Luther scrapping marriage as a sacrament, and did his doing so lead us to our current state of suffering same sex marriage laws and the Culture of Death?
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Angainor
Guest
Marriage isn’t a sacrament because it wasn’t given to us by God for the purpose of salvation.
Baptism and the Sacrament of the Altar were given to us for the forgiveness of sins.
Baptism and the Sacrament of the Altar were given to us for the forgiveness of sins.
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exiled
Guest
Well, that explains why protestants can marry over and over again. I’ve never known a protestant church to refuse to marry two people based on prior marriages, although I suppose there could be one somewhere.
According to protestants I know, neither is Baptism for the purpose of salvation. It is an act obedience once the person is already saved, and being that they are already saved, failing to be baptized couldn’t threaten that salvation.
I have know idea what a protestant “sacrament of the altar” is.
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BeeSweet
Guest
Sacraments are a means to our sanctification, they are not in and of themselves a means to our salvation.
On the sixth commandment from The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther (1530):
In the words of Christ Gospel of Matthew Chapter 5 verses 31 & 32:
If Luther’s only reason for scrapping marriage as a sacrament was because he believed it to be unecessary to salvation, then he didn’t understand the true nature of the sacraments in the first place. All of this divorce and remarriage that goes on in front of children today does not, “train them to the honor of God.”
On the sixth commandment from The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther (1530):
Source
In the words of Christ Gospel of Matthew Chapter 5 verses 31 & 32:
Luther acknowledges marriage as being sanctioned and guarded by God with the 6th commandment. Christ tells us that remarriage after divorce violates the 6th commandment.
If Luther’s only reason for scrapping marriage as a sacrament was because he believed it to be unecessary to salvation, then he didn’t understand the true nature of the sacraments in the first place. All of this divorce and remarriage that goes on in front of children today does not, “train them to the honor of God.”
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lak611
Guest
For Lutherans, Baptism is required for salvation. “Sacrament of the altar” is Communion (also known as the Lord’s Supper).
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Angainor
Guest
Salvation is given through baptism.
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Angainor
Guest
The true nature of the sacraments are that they are the means by which God grants us salvation.
Quite correct. I am not advocating divorce, just saying that marriage was not given as a means to salvation.
Jesus said divorce and remarriage violated the sixth commandment. He also said anyone looking at a woman lustfully violates the sixth commandment, and being angry with our brother violates the fifth.
We aren’t to violate the commandments. Period. Violating commandments, by rights, makes us unfit for heaven.
The good news is that God sent his Son. Jesus died for the forgiveness for the times we violated the commandments. They are no longer count against us. Salvation is given through the sacraments established by him.
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BeeSweet
Guest
Since when has a sacrament been defined as that which confers salvation? The definition of the word doesn’t claim any more than it confers grace, not salvation. Marriage is a sacrament because it is sacred to God, not because we are saved through it (although my husband in particular has been
).A sacrament is something that is sacred. When you deny the sacredness of marriage, you are just giving it over to the devil to do with it whatever he pleases, just as we see today. And it’s getting worse with homosexuals wanting to marry as well.
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Allweather
Guest
How do you define “salvation?”
What, precisely, does “salvation” consist of, according to the Lutheran definition?
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Contarini
Guest
I would say that the main link was Luther’s acceptance of the secular. Protestants often celebrate it because, allegedly, he made it possible for laypeople to live lives of holiness in their callings. I think he may have helped people realize that this was possible, but it was hardly a brand new concept (which many Protestants believe it was). I think that in the long run the idea that our social lives are lived out in a sphere governed by secular and pragmatic considerations lies behind many of our problems today.
I suppose this is what people mean when they say that the Reformation led to separation of church and state. Luther did separate the spheres, but not the institutions. The state had dominion over “outward” things, including the outward affairs of the Church. The Church had no institutional autonomy, but it had the responsibility of preaching the Gospel and administering the Sacraments. This is perhaps an oversimplification, but I think it’s basically correct.
Marriage, as an “outward” thing, falls under the authority of the state and is governed by practical, human considerations (companionship, the begetting of children, etc.). Hence Luther’s openness to bigamy (more than to divorce) if practical considerations warranted it.
Edwin
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Angainor
Guest
Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty forever. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”
John 4:10-15
“for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”
Matthew 26:28
“Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”
- John the Baptist about Jesus
John 1:29
Salvation is forgiveness of sins and eternal life, given freely, through the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.
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Angainor
Guest
Marriage is blessed and instituted by God, but it is not sacred, that is, it is not counted among the heavenly things. It is earthly.For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.
Matthew 22:30
The Lord rebuke him.
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mercygate
Guest
The Catholic view is that marriage is definitely re-instituted as a sacrament by Christ both by his witness at Cana and by his subsequent testimony on divorce.
As for salvation: Marriage, as an outward sign of an inward grace, definitely contributes to our sanctification. Unlike most Protestant traditions, as you know, the Catholic view is that salvation is “clinched” after a life-long relationship of in grace and faith towards the goal post (to modify a Pauline image).
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Angainor
Guest
This goes back to St. Augustine.
This is a colossal understatement. Secular governance exists out of necessity. It is 100% pragmatic. A fallen world without a pragmatic government would be chaos.
A secular government is necessary, but that doesn’t mean we should run our lives by it. That is why Lutherans separate “church” and “state”. The state does what it needs to to promote order to society, and doesn’t necessarily have the best interests of the individual citizens in mind. It is ill-advised for any Christian to look to the state for guidance.
A good illustration of this is:They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.” And Jesus said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’
Mark 10:4-6
Moses, acting in the capacity of a pragmatic administrator, allowed divorce because of the hardness of people’s hearts. But as Jesus points out, anyone looking to the “pragmatic administrator” for actual guidance is mistaken.
The Lutherans call this the doctrine of the kingdom of the left hand and the kingdom of the right hand, in case anyone reading this wants to look it up.
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BeeSweet
Guest
Sacred does not mean that something is “counted among the heavenly things”, nor does sacred mean something is not earthly. Things that are sacred are done for the worship and service of God. Which is why we observe marriage as something that is sacred. If you don’t observe such, then what is marriage? If marriage is not done for God, what’s the purpose, and why all the rules? You see what it’s turned in to today, now that God has been completely removed from the observance of marriage. People don’t think there’s anything wrong with divorce aside from what they may suffer personally with their own emotions, or finances. They don’t even consider their children anymore, even thinking their children are better off if they just give up on each other.
Maybe marriage is not sacred solely because it “is blessed and instituted by God,” but how we observe marriage makes it sacred, how we offer marriage to God as worship of Him, and in service to Him, that is sacred, and how and why marrige is a sacrament.
The fact that marriage does not exist in heaven does not negate the sacred nature of it on earth. Our observance of marriage as something that is sacred is indeed one of the things that will get us into heaven.
I feel this passage is being interpreted out of context. The full text reads:
The point the author was making was that the men of Sodom and Gomor’rah “revile the glorious ones,” and that we as mere humans should not do so (speak abusively of the angels and glorious beings). Especially since Archangel Michael did not speak abusively of the devil during a dispute with him over the body of Moses. The point is that humans should not speak ill of angels and glorious beings.
Interestingly (at least to me anyway), the next verse in Jude 1 is:
It’s interesting to me that since we do not understand marriage as something that is sacred, it has turned into something we observe more “by instinct as irrational animals do.” We are seeing the effects of disregarding the sacred nature of marriage today, in the destruction of the family.
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BeeSweet
Guest
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Angainor
Guest
Quite right. I was using shorthand. That’s why Lutherans accept/recognize a separation of church and state.
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valient_Lucy
Guest
That’s hard to say. I doubt very much that Martin Luther decided marriage was not a sacrament for the expressed purposes of bringing about same-sex marriage and the culture of death. Also, if that is true, we would expect Lutheran and Protestant countries exclusively to have same-sex marriage and legalized abortion, but this is not the case. Spain, a Catholic country where the Reformation did not really have much impact, has both legalized abortion and same sex marriage.
It’s possible that the idea that marriage as not a sacrament did contribute to the current state of the world, but I think it would be hard to prove, or really establish, and even if it did, it would simply be one of 1,000 other causes.
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valient_Lucy
Guest
bump.
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valient_Lucy
Guest
I’ve given this some thought, and I don’t believe that Martin Luther deciding marriage was not a sacrament contributed to the Culture of Death.
However, he did make a decision about marriage that did contribute to the Culture of Death: the belief that marriage was under the province of the State, that marriage was a civil affair.
If he had taught that marriage was not a sacrament, but was still under the control of the church, the damage would not have happened.
However, he did make a decision about marriage that did contribute to the Culture of Death: the belief that marriage was under the province of the State, that marriage was a civil affair.
If he had taught that marriage was not a sacrament, but was still under the control of the church, the damage would not have happened.
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