Elements of Lutheran Reforms

It is interesting to consider how after nearly 500 years the ideas of Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and the Roman Catholic Church have shaped Christian ideas about the salvation, faith, the Eucharist and sacraments. Protestant reformers of the visible Christian church made their reformed ideas at great personal cost and the thirty years war of liberation from Romanism and it's subject princes tore the European peasantry. The American revolutionaries were of the reformed school-George Washington if Catholic couldn't have revolted from his Prince, although Britain had reduced Romanism already since Henry VIII. Values developed by Martin Luther in the 16th century reformation stimulated political and ecclesiastical changes immediately. As the United States fails to maintain a strong Protestant religious ethic it commensurately develops globalism, concentration of wealth through networking and a variety of forms of ad hoc imperialism with the collateral degradation of nationalism and democracy. Protest against inhuman forces of impersonal hierarchical power in church and state are basic to the revolutionary esprit. In direct relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ mankind finds freedom.

Approximately half of the German princes took up the independence from Roman catholicism movement right from the start. The first democracy in Europe-the Dutch democracy led by the Dewitt brothers in the 16^th century. Severing ties from the Holy Roman Empire at Vienna was essential and just a first step in the rise of the age of democracy.

All was not perfect in the Lutheran style reformation though. Martin Luther was quite conservative and retained some Roman catholic liturgical forms although abolishing the exclusive priestly caste.

When the hierarchy of corrupt Bishops and priests was overthrown Luther advocated and received support for Erastian transition; the German princes themselves became the religious leaders appointing bishops for themselves. Frederick the Elector did follow Luther's instructions for making visitations to German districts to correct the corruptions made during the ineffective prior regime. The people were ready to receive the word of God in a more egalitarian way and German book publishing of the Bible skyrocketed from fewer than 100 books annually in the entire country to thousands and thousands of vernacular editions of the Bible.

Mobs actually burned two of the first catholic priests of Prussia that converted to the reformed relationship to God that Luther set out. Anabaptists were persecuted by new Protestants to for abolishing infant baptism. Questions and controversy about infant baptism, and of how much water needed to be used in any baptism were taken so seriously that many were put to death. That seems remarkable today, so I will toss in my own ideas on the topic of do infants have original sin and does baptism do them any good since they have no ability to intentionally accept the Lord as their personal savior through faith.

It was pointed out that John the Baptist has awareness of God in the womb, even so John was born with original sin. I believe that original sin predominantly refers to the mortal context of being subject to entropy as a biological being. Hence every human has original sin. The entropy condition was a reduction from the perfect environment of Eden and imposed to correct the errors of will of Adam and Eve.

Infants have yet to develop consciousness sufficiently to choose willfully to do evil. They may all have a naturally sort of trust or faith as they are dependent on and reacting to others. Baptizing them may acknowledge that trust socially and can do no harm. Since parents are generally regarded as lawfully accountable for their charges again baptism can do no harm and may confer an element of grace upon the infant. If the infant grows to develop faith as an adult then they may become born in the Spirit as saved souls. Jesus Christ is not bound to the legalisms of liturgical methods or theological positions such as humans entertain. 

Human beings need firewalls in the visible church to defend against interpretive error and union within the invisible church of Jesus Christ.

I tend to believe in the Lutheran concept of salvation through faith yet also have the Calvinist concepts that election and pre-determinism by God are correct. I also would think that the Eucharist is not a transubstantiation of the bread and wine into human blood or body, but rather something more like a commemoration and recognition of the fundamental elements of mass and energy as God's. 
 

The Eucharist would be an acknowledgment of the sovereignty of God in everything, analogous to an assertion of political sovereignty. It's a metaphysical statement on the ultimate building blocks of cosmology. 
 

Visible church outlets in the consumer era may be compared to franchise cheeseburger stores on Main street. It may be true that McDonald's was the first vast franchise empire yet they do not have an exclusive formula to the true cheeseburger. Even the faithful may wander into Burger King or Wendy's now and then. Also, there are home cheeseburger outlets relating directly to the true Platonic Universal form of cheeseburger. 

Particular cheeseburgers are examples of forms of the Universal. Partaking in then cheeseburger acknowledges the organic Earthly origin as grain from the Earth in the Eucharist. The wine is the organic grapes of the Earth. The Lord took the body of the Earth-the organic bread, and human beings broke it on the cross spilling his blood. Yet the salvation of the Lord given to mankind of faith transcends the world and it's consumable produce.

I would guess that the idea of relationship surpassing form is the fundamental reformist paradigm in the gestalt of the church with the Lord. Liturgical forms and concepts about sacraments are a continuum of respect between Creator and created. That relationship continues to be significant even as salvation through faith rather than works or sacraments administered by a sacerdotal set-aside priestly caste has risen to the positive better expression modality for Christians. 
 

The priesthood of believers is a correct form rather than a partitioned dichotomy of priests and laity mirroring that of traditional aristocracy-subjects paradigms. Developing an active priesthood of believers church structure with just three ranks of beginner, intermediate and elder will be a challenge and a renewal of reformation. In the world today the political drift is toward ad hoc neo-imperlialism of class of wealth through global networks.