Outer Rim Territories

Why even one false doctrine cannot be tolerated

In his "Brief Confession Concerning the Holy Sacrament," Dr. Luther moves from the ecumenism of the Marburg Colloquy to recognizing the seriousness of a denial of Christ's words concerning His holy supper. Especially teachers of the faith cannot hold error in any part of the Christian doctrine, without compromising the entire faith. While the Christian faith is not a system, it is a body, that is, Christ and he must remain whole. The elder Dr. David Scaer's important contribution "All theology is Christology" rings true through the example of Arius and the Sacramentarians of Luther's day. Remove the Lord's Supper from your confession of faith and you'll have a significantly different Jesus than the Scriptures reveal.

...We say that everything is to be believed completely and without exception, or nothing is to be believed. The Holy Spirit does not let himself be divided or cut up so that he should let one point be taught and believed as trustworthy and another as false—except in the case where there are weak believers who are willing to let themselves be instructed and are not stubbornly opposing his truth. Otherwise, if this attitude should obtain that it does not harm anyone if he desires to deny one article of the faith because he still regards all the others as true (although basically this is impossible), then no heretic would ever be condemned, indeed, there could not even be a heretic on earth. For it is charactristic of all heretics that they start by denying one article of the faith; after that, all the articles must suffer the same fate and they must all be denied, just as the ring, when it gets a crack or a chink, is totally worthless. And if a bell cracks at one place, it does not chime any more and is completely useless. Let the examples of history teach you this: Arius singled out this one article of the faith [and said] that Christ was not God but a creature. All the other articles of the faith, particularly that God the Father was one God, Creator of heaven and earth, that Christ died for our sins, that there were baptism, sacrament, keys, resurrection of the dead, and eternal life, he probably believed more reverently (to judge from his words) than true Christians believe. However, the Holy Scripture stands firm and testifies that he did not believe any article of the faith. For thus St. John says in I John 2 [:23]: “No one who denies the Son has the Father. He who confesses the Son has the Father also.” Now if Arius does not have the Son and the Father, then he also has no God or Creator of heaven and earth. That is, it is of no use to him that with his mouth he calls God the Father and Creator of heaven and earth, and highly exalts him, even though no other God is Creator of heaven and earth than this one whom Arius mentions with his lying tongue. However, for Arius he is not a God, because he is denying and blaspheming his only Son, Christ, by saying that he is not God. Thus baptism is no longer baptism for him, forgiveness of sins is no longer forgiveness of sins, the sacrament is no longer the sacrament; that is, it no longer does him any good even if previously he was indeed rightly baptized and had received true forgiveness and the true sacrament. Thus he has forfeited all articles of faith because he denies the true God of faith, Christ, and no article is of any use to him and he is also unable to believe any article with true seriousness, but must make use of all of them for his condemnation, as the second commandment states: “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain” [Exod. 20:7]. Here it is brought to your attention that even the true, holy name of God does not help but rather hurts those who do not believe in it rightly and abuse it. For this reason, too, the ancient fathers debated whether the baptism of the Arians was indeed a true baptism. Thus one misfortune always leads to another one.