It just happened no 6

After writing about Luke’s description of Jesus entering Jericho yesterday, today I was reading Alister McGrath’s book ‘Christianity’s Dangerous Idea’. A completely different genre and topic but suddenly I found McGrath referring to the city himself as I read: 

“For Luther, it was this idea that would bring down the walls of the old Jericho and replace them.” And what was the paragraph about? It just happened to be about faith. McGrath was summarising the key themes of Luther’s reform and this was his third point. Here’s the paragraph:

“Salvation is a free, unmerited gift of God, received by faith. This notion, often referred to as ‘justification by faith alone,’ was central to Luther’s reforming agenda. Every aspect of faith, Luther argued, depends on this central, controlling doctrine. If this idea is misunderstood or denied, the church loses its identity and the gospel is compromised – which was precisely what Luther believed to have taken place during the Middle Ages. Reformation was about restructuring the beliefs and practices of the church to be consistent with this core, foundational, driving belief. For Luther, it was this idea that would bring down the walls of the old Jericho and replace them. Later Protestant writers would refer to this as the articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae – the ‘article by which the church stands or falls.’” (McGrath, Christianity’s Dangerous Idea, p 57.)

It’s a marvellous book about the Protestant reformation and I was planning to share some snippets though I would not have begun here…but for McGrath using old Jericho in this way and the timing with my own blog post writing. It’s nothing ‘earth shattering’ but it did just happen like that.