Martin Chemnitz

And so these confessions were supposed to be subordinate, of course, with the Word of God as the highest authority, which takes me to the point of Catholicity, which is why I termed it Reformational Theology as Catholic Theology.

So, I'm quoting from Martin Chemnitz, who is a Lutheran.

Chemnitz would say that, therefore, we want these two creeds, which is the official and the Transylvanian, repeated here again as ours.

We confess them as strongly and as firmly and no less than the other three, which is the apostles, Nicene, and Athanasian.

We also recite the...

the Nicene Creed, right? Chemnitz is Lutheran, again.

And second, we have Lancelot and Drewes, Bishop of Worcester.

I'm so sorry, I did not include the citation.

Um, I actually wrote a whole paper on this in seminary that, that Luther gets rid of some distinctions, uh, in there and we don't need to get into all the weeds on that, but has surrounding absolute necessity.

And by the time you get to Chemnitz, Chemnitz will kind of gently correct Luther and point out that Luther and the Book of Concord point to Luther's later Genesis lectures where Luther's kind of like, yeah, I went a little too far with what I said there.

It could be taken to mean double predestination, predestining people for hell.

And so you need to understand it in light of what I'm saying right here.

But let's not then push and apply it to the doctrine of election.

That's where things get too – they go too far.

And I think what Luther was doing, and this happens, and like I said, Luther seemed to realize this by the time of his Genesis commentary, and Chemnitz realized it while he's writing about Luther's view, is that Luther, in an argument, he's trying to crush Erasmus.

And so, you know, he says some things, and then looking back, he's like, oh, it worked to crush Erasmus, but now these Calvinist guys are taking it and running in a different direction than I intended, right? And so...

I think I mentioned to you a week or two ago some of the great Lutheran writers on this subject, and that's worthy of your Christian reading as well.

One thinks right off the bat of Martin Chemnitz, who was a contemporary of Luther's or was a student there soon near the time that Luther died.

And the plaudits through the centuries have said, had the second Martin not been born, the first had not survived.

It was a way of saying that Martin Chemnitz continued the work faithfully that Luther had begun, and he can be forgiven for some small errors like being paid to do astrological charts for people.

A great scholar, and you can still get in print The Lord's Supper from Concordia.

It's a marvelous little exposition of the Lutheran doctrine.

And he said, one of the reasons I write so well is I write when I'm the maddest.

He figured he wrote his best when he was the most angry.