It seems quite a stretch to make the claim, as the quote does below, that the history of Christianity is a story of continuous conflict between man-centeredness and God-centeredness. I have been making the claim that the heart of doctrine is that same issue. While people hold to the same external teaching and the same words, there is no real common ground between a man-centered and a God-centered view of doctrine. From a man-centered view of things there is not a lot of difference between Arminianism and Reformed thinking, but from a God-centered view the difference can be quite enormous. The difference between what a proud person says and what a humble person says can also be enormous. While many think that Luther was very proud in standing up to the ecclesiastical and governmental powers of his day, I think that it was done in utter humility. There is also a difference in what a man-centered view says of pride and humility and what a God-centered view says of pride and humility. A man-centered view thinks of humility as being unable to state things with certainty and that humility is primarily shown to men. A God-centered view thinks of humility as the emptiness of self and is primarily before God. A man-centered view of humility is really pride and a man-centered view of pride is really humility. Luther stood before God first and so he stood for the glory of God before men. His humility was seen as pride. The so-called humility of man-centeredness is nothing but pride because it will not stand for God first.
“The history of Christianity is a story of continuous conflict between the two contrasted tendencies. In the light of what has been said, it should be clear what is implied by the claim that Luther is a Copernicus in the realm of religion. Religion as he found it in medieval Catholicism was of an essentially egocentric character-despite the presence of certain undeniably theocentric traits in it. His significance in the history of religion is that in him the theocentric tendency fully and unequivocally asserted, or rather reasserted itself. For it had done so at least once before. In primitive Christianity, God was both Alpha and Omega, both the ground and the goal of the religious relationship. Of Him and through Him and unto Him were all things. But this insight early began to be obscured and subordinated to the egocentric tendency that crept in with moralistic and eudemonistic ideas. Such ideas Luther found playing a dominant role in medieval Catholicism.” (Let God Be God! An Interpretation of the Theology of Martin Luther)
When God brought Luther on the scene, He brought a man that He had prepared both intellectually and spiritually. It must be added that Luther also grew in this. Other than Paul and the apostles, he was the epitome of a man that feared God so much that he had no fear of man. This is, after all, true humility. God had trained this man to be God-centered in his thinking and his living. This was why he began to see through the man-centeredness at the heart of Roman Catholicism. God stripped this man of his pride and this man’s sight of the man-centeredness of Roman Catholicism became sharper and sharper. He could see that though Rome used the name of God in what it said it was not truly centered upon God and His glory. It had started off on the Roman road by holding on to something for man to do and it followed that road for centuries. It was at that point little more than human-centered in what it did with a covering of religious language. It was, to put it plainly, a religion built on pride and man-centeredness. It was a religion opposed to the glory of God offering salvation apart from a God-centered grace.
Since the time of the Reformation the battle has continued to be with men who in their pride want to allow the foot of man-centeredness in the door. Instead of a true and whole-hearted “to God alone be the glory,” they want to use those words while in reality allow some of the glory to be taken away from God. The words “grace alone” and “faith alone” are used a lot, but in reality they are used to mean something a lot different than the Reformers had. Even more importantly, they are used a lot differently than Scripture uses them. We live in a day where man-centeredness and pride rules both in the nation and in the “Church.” We live in a day where there is still a lot of religion going on but man-centeredness has rotted the core of it so that it is in reality nothing more than idolatry. The same pride and man-centeredness that took Roman Catholicism down its path is now taking much if not most of Protestantism down a path as well. It is interesting to note that both Rome (in its history) and modern Protestants began down the road with pride and man-centeredness and what Rome was at the time of the Reformation much of modern Protestantism is now though with different rituals. Both had man having part of the salvation process. Both had rituals for men to go through. Both were filled with immorality and claimed that grace would cover that. Both used biblical language. But both came from pride. We badly need a Copernican revolution of God-centeredness now. If we do not have that, the vestiges of truth in America will be gone along with the nation.
God Loves... Himself 
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