I agree that this is a bad reason not to become a Catholic. I am very Catholic friendly, but I can't think of a lot of good reasons to become a Catholic. I found your approach amusing though, where are the first 2?
pax,
Frank
A hyperlink for bad reason #1 may be found at the bottom of the article. You'll find a hyperlinke to #2 at the bottom of #1.
Let me stick up briefly for Luther's version of the sola fide, which is not dependent on a purely forensic doctrine of justification. Rather, he teaches we are saved by faith alone because we are saved by Christ alone, who is received by faith not by works. Justification is thus based on our union with Christ through faith alone.
Though this is not a common formulation in the previous tradition, it does answer a question that urgently needed an answer in the 16th century context, when horrific hellfire preaching was more common than it is now. In the face of the terror of God's judgment, where do you turn? The answer of sound Catholic pastoral theology for quite some time before Luther was: to Christ alone, not to any merits of your own. That's why a good priest would hold a crucifix up before the face of the dying, so they would look at their savior and not at their sins as they passed into the next world. (Eamon Duffy is good on this point in The Stripping of the Altars).
What Luther did was extend this Christocentric pastoral care of the dying to all of life. It seems to me the real question is whether this approach to the Christian life need be church-dividing. The danger Lutherans must face is that maybe it's not.
Thank you for responding to my article, Phillip.
Would you agree that Luther's understanding(s) of justification represents a transitional, mediating position between the Tridentine Catholic and classical Reformation construals of justification? Confessional Lutheranism certainly believes that its own understanding of imputational righteousness may be found in Luther, and he appears to have approved the forensic construal as developed by Melanchthon and others.
On the other hand, there is that other side to Luther's reflections on justification, as rediscovered by the Finns, that at least approaches an Eastern-like theosis. It appears to me that it is easier for Catholicism than confessional Lutheranism to appropriate this dimension of Luther.
And then to add to the confusion, there is the hermeneutical understanding of justification, as formulated by Jenson and Lindbeck, that reads Luther's concern as being primarily hermeneutical and proclamatory: the preached Word holds before the hearer the Crucified and invites his unconditional trust. Yet this hermeneutical understanding remains a minority position within Lutheranism and does not appear to have exercised much influence within the ecumenical dialogues.
Who is the real Luther?
Fr Kimel,
Who is the real Luther?
The question is, rather, what is the public confession of the evangelical Lutheran Church, which is not co-terminous with the thought of Luther.
You wrote the following, as if it were in constrast to the Lutheran teaching:
[The Fathers'] solution is simple and elegant: before baptism sinners are incapable of living lives truly pleasing to God; after baptism they are so capable, because they have been justified in Christ, regenerated in the Holy Spirit and given a new freedom to cooperate with grace and accomplish good works unto salvation.
But there is nothing in the teachings of the Lutheran Church that differs from this. As the Formula of Concord says: ... as soon as the Holy Ghost, as has been said, through the Word and holy Sacraments, has begun in us this His work of regeneration and renewal, it is certain that through the power of the Holy Ghost we can and should cooperate, although still in great weakness. But this [that we cooperate] does not occur from our carnal natural powers, but from the new powers and gifts which the Holy Ghost has begun in us in conversion, as St. Paul expressly and earnestly exhorts that as workers together with Him we receive not the grace of God in vain (2 Cor. 6.1) ... Therefore there is a great difference between baptized and unbaptized men. For since, according to the doctrine of St. Paul, Gal. 3.27, all who have been baptized have put on Christ, and thus are truly regenerate, they have now arbitrium liberatum (a liberated will), that is, as Christ says, they have been made free again, John 8.36; whence they are able not only to hear the Word, but also to assent to it and accept it, although in great weakness. (FC SD II.65ff)
This definitive Lutheran teaching is entirely consistent with the Fathers' teaching concerning post-regeneration cooperation with grace.
[continued ...]
[... continuing]
This definitive Lutheran teaching is entirely consistent with the Fathers' teaching concerning post-regeneration cooperation with grace.
The same cannot be said, however, of the teaching of Trent concerning the state of man's free will before justification. In your post, you quoted Trent as saying: If any one saith, that by faith alone the impious is justified; in such wise as to mean, that nothing else is required to co-operate in order to the obtaining the grace of Justification, and that it is not in any way necessary, that he be prepared and disposed by the movement of his own will; let him be anathema. But this notion that grace must be (or even can be) prepared for by the movement of our fallen will is clearly Semi-Pelagian; it is precisely what was condemned by the second Council of Orange. As the Fathers at Orange stated in the conclusion of their canons: ... we must, under the blessing of God, preach and believe as follows: the sin of the first man has so impaired and weakened free will that no one thereafter can either love God as he ought or believe in God or do good for God's sake, unless the grace of divine mercy has preceded him ... we know and also believe that even after the coming of our Lord this grace is not to be found in the free will of all who desire to be baptized, but is bestowed by the kindness of Christ.
Thus it is the Formula of Concord, rather than Trent, that correctly sets forth what you (correctly) identify as "the Fathers' solution" to the question.
[continued ...]
[... continuing]
You also write in your article (again, as if it were in contrast to the Lutheran teaching):
according to Catholic teaching, justification is sacramentally mediated, specifically in the sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Penance.
So it is also according to Lutheran teaching, with the addition that according to Lutheran teaching, the Church's liturgical proclamation of the Word is also an objective means of grace, along with the sacraments. Thus the Augsburg Confession describes how justifying faith is mediated to us in these terms: That we may obtain this faith, the Ministry of Teaching the Gospel and administering the Sacraments was instituted. For through the Word and Sacraments, as through instruments, the Holy Ghost is given, who works faith; where and when it pleases God, in them that hear the Gospel ...
This teaching of the Augustana clearly gives the lie to the ridiculous straw man that justification according to the Lutheran teaching is antinomian, or that justifying faith is simply "intellectual assent". It is, as the Augustana says, a supernatural gift, mediated through the Church's covenanted means of grace.
Chris, you have offered a number of good reasons why Lutherans may become Catholic, which is precisely why so many notable Lutheran theologians have done so in recent years (Richard Neuhaus, Robert Wilken, and Bruce Marshall, to name just three).
But try as you might, you cannot rightly read back Formula of Concord into the Church Fathers. Sorry, it just won't fly. Confessional Lutheranism is working from a model of imputational righteousness and the simul iustus et peccator; the Patristics, scholastics, and Tridentine Fathers from a model of transformation and growth in holiness. It's apple and oranges.
In what way is the synergism of FC different from the synergism of Arminius?
I am reading Matthew chapter 25 and I cannot reconcile it with sola fide. Any comments?
Dear Fr Kimel,
The simple assertion that you cannot rightly read back Formula of Concord into the Church Fathers, without any supporting evidence, and without engaging the specific arguments and specific texts that I offered, is not in any way a substantive response to my comment. The forensic model is, to be sure, the dominant model in Lutheran soteriology (for which there are good historical reasons); but it is by no means the only way in which the question is approached. Transformation and growth in holiness are not excluded, and the paragraphs which I cited from the Solid Declaration deal precisely with those aspects of soteriology.
In what way is the synergism of FC different from the synergism of Arminius?
I do not know, since I am not familiar in any detail with the thought of Arminius. Arminian, in intra-Protestant polemics, is found chiefly as a term of reproach, which is not conducive to learning what its actual positive content is. My take on your rhetorical question is, that you also are using it as a term of reproach, and rhetorically accusing confessional Lutheranism of it.
Rather than compare my understanding of "Arminianism" (which is slight and no doubt incorrect) with the synergism of the Solid Declaration, I will simply say that if Arminius is in agreement with the Solid Declaration on this issue, then he is also in agreement with Second Orange on this issue; and if so, he is orthodox. (I suspect that he is not, in fact, in agreement with FC SD or with Orange; but I will not offer mere suspicion as fact.)
Neither in your original article, nor in your response to my comment, do you deal with the teachings of Lutheranism as they are found in the authoritative Lutheran Confessions. If you have an argument to offer that those teachings are not orthodox, then do so; until then, you are debating a "Lutheranism" of your own devising.
BTW, you also have not addressed the apparent conflict between Trent and Second Orange which I noted. If I have somehow misunderstood Trent, and it teaches the same faith as Second Orange, please enlighten me.
Chris,
Fr. Kimel has already answered whether Trent is semi-Pelagian here:
http://catholica.pontifications....ons.net/?
p=1971
I believe it addresses your questions.
I agree that the article of Al's linked by John Henry rebuts the charge of semi-Pelagianism in general, but it does not address the specific canon of Trent's that Chris quotes. That canon is the evidence Chris presents that Trent is incompatible with 2nd Orange. I shall address that here.
Chris says: ...this notion that grace must be (or even can be) prepared for by the movement of our fallen will is clearly Semi-Pelagian. That's a charge often leveled by Protestant apologists, but it depends on attributing an elementary confusion to Trent: that between God's offer of grace and our acceptance of that offer. Given the other canons Al had quoted in his earlier article, it is clear that Trent denied that the human will could do anything to prompt God to offer grace. All Trent affirmed in the canon Chris attacks is that some movement of our will is necessary for our acceptance of that grace, at first and thereafter. And that's perfectly compatible with affirming that grace is "prevenient," in the sense that the operation of grace is antecedently necessary as a condition of our freely accepting it. What would be semi-Pelagian would be the claim that our free acceptance of grace is sufficient apart from grace for our initial acceptance of grace. But that's not what Trent affirms.
Chris, it wasn't the intent of my piece to directly refute the Lutheran confessions, the interpretation of which is highly controverted even among Lutherans. Many Lutherans do not even acknowledge the confessional authority of the Formula of Concord! If you are correct that some Lutheran construals of the sola fide approach the synergistic understandings of Catholicism and Orthodoxy, then so much the better. That is just one less reason not to convert to the Catholic Church.
I chose Gerhard Forde as my example of sola fide because he captures the evangelical spirit of Luther perhaps better than any other contemporary American Lutheran writer that I know. He is also hopelessly idiosyncratic and well displays the chasm between at least one popular form of Lutheranism and ecumenical Christianity.
With regards to II Orange and Trent, the first thing I want to say is that II Orange may not be used as a club to beat up on Trent, for the same reason that Trent may not be used as a club to beat up on Vatican II. We must hermeneutically assume a fundamental continuity between the two councils, because it is the same Spirit who guided both. This also means that if you do not accept the authority of Trent, there is clearly no reason for you to accept the authority of an obscure Gallic synod. II Orange, after all, only matters if one accepts the authority of the Bishop of Rome, who confirmed the decrees of the synod and gave its decrees a more than local significance.
I have to chuckle, therefore, when Lutherans or Reformeds quote Orange against Catholicism, given that Catholicism is the only Church in which the decrees of Orange can be recognized as dogmatically authoritative.
I have already published my thoughts on Semi-Pelagianism. If Semi-Pelagianism is understood as stating that fallen man can take the first step toward God without the assistance of grace, then clearly the Council of Trent is not Semi-Pelagian.
Would the bishops of II Orange have agreed with the Tridentine Decrees on Original Sin and Justification? I do not know. I suspect that they would have. The influence of Augustine on the decrees is manifest, yet clearly Trent is not a mere reiteration of Augustine. A lot of theological reflection flowed under the doctrinal bridge in the 1,000 years between II Orange and Trent.
One must also add that Catholic reflection on grace, free-will, and justification did not stop with the Council of Trent.
But to return to my article, my thesis is that the complaint that one should not convert to Catholicism because it does not teach faith alone does not hold water, because the Church has never taught faith alone, at least not in the way that the Reformers taught it. Not even the great Augustine, whom the Reformers cite on their behalf more than any other of the Church Fathers, supports the Reformation position.
Mike L,
You see correctly that my objection is not to Trent, as such, but to the specific canon that Fr Kimel cited (and note that it is not I who brought that canon forward, but Fr Kimel). Perhaps in context, the canon is not Semi-Pelagian, but the text, on its face, certainly is.
You read the canon as affirming that some movement of our will is necessary for our acceptance of that grace, at first and thereafter. But that does violence to the text itself of the canon, which speaks of the fallen person being prepared and disposed by the movement of his own will. Being "prepared and disposed" is not about responding to grace once it is offered; it is about the state one is in at the time it is offered. And the canon makes justification dependent on the existing state of the fallen one. That is what is inconsistent with Orange.
Fr Kimel,
You can't have it both ways. If you are going to set yourself against "the Reformation position," you cannot fall back on saying that "Many Lutherans do not even acknowledge the confessional authority of the Formula of Concord!". You are just choosing those Protestant opinions which are easient to refute, and calling that "the Reformation position". If you are going to argue against the Reformed, argue against the public confession of the Reformed. If you are going to argue against the Lutherans, argue against the public confession of the Lutherans. Otherwise you are simply contrasting the opinions of individuals whom you regard as definitively Protestant, against the dogmatic position of the Roman Catholic Church. It is a category error. You would not let me get away with it if I argued against the opinions of individual Catholic theologians that were at variance with the Catholic magisterium; neither will I allow you to characterize as "the Reformation position" teachings which are at variance with the Lutheran Confessions (unless, of course, your real target is the Reformed, and you will join me in regarding Lutheranism as Catholic).
You wrote:
We must hermeneutically assume a fundamental continuity between the two councils
We must do no such thing, unless we have previously accepted Papal supremacy, and thus our acceptance of II Orange is based solely on its Papal endorsement. If, on the other hand, we do not accept Papal supremacy, and our acceptance of II Orange is based on the fact that it teaches the Catholic faith, then to hermeneutically assume continuity between the two councils is simple question-begging.
Chris:
You're reading the canon as implying that prevenient grace is not necessary for the preparation and disposition of the will to accept grace. That's not its intent at all, at least as the Church understands it. It's implying that prevenient grace is not sufficient, just by itself, for the will to accept grace, inasmuch as the movement of the human will is also necessary.
Your misunderstanding here, it seems to me, arises from an unwarranted assumption: that the movement of the will which Trent claims is necessary is also temporally prior to the inspiration of grace, and thus does not depend on grace. But that is not and could not be the case; for the human will never temporally precedes God's self-communication, which is grace in the primary sense of the term, and which is a precondition of the human will's acceptance of it. Grace and human will operate synergistically and thus synchronically. The canon's purpose is to lay down that the movement of the will is necessary as well as that of grace—it being understood that the latter makes the former possible, but not inevitable.
The canon's language is not the best because it invites more than one interpretation that would make it incompatible with what Trent affirms elsewhere (as Al quotes). Yours is certainly one of them; if it weren't, it wouldn't have been, and be, so common. But it is not the Church's own interpretation, which of course is the only normative one.
Best,
Mike
Chris, you appear to have completely misunderstood the intent of my series. I am not trying to refute Protestantism, of whatever variant. My purpose is far more modest. I am simply addressing specific objections often advanced by Protestants of many different stripes against converting to the Catholic Church. If a person is not interested in converting to the Catholic Church, I do not expect he will find my articles persuasive.
Thus, for example, in my latest article I suggest that a potential Protestant convert should not be deterred from converting to Catholicism because of sola fide, and for two reasons: (a) the Apostle James clearly rejects sola fide, and (b) the Church Fathers taught a view of justification that is incompatible with most Protestant construals of sola fide. In other words, there is no compelling reason why a Protestant Christian should believe that faith alone is constitutive of the gospel. Of course, Protestants will continue to read Scripture as authorizing faith alone, no matter how many biblical and patristic citations are presented against them.
The Protestant confessions are interesting as historical artifacts, but they are only authoritative to the extent that Protestant communities accept their authority, which most do not. And even those who accept the authority of the confessions disagree in their interpretation of the documents. Why should anyone put himself under the authority of the Book of Concord instead of the Westminster Confession, or vice versa? But on this see my articles "The Craw of Private Judgment" and "The Quia Catch."
You are welcome to embrace the Second Council of Orange, if you so desire; but the mere fact that you personally believe that it accurately formulated the catholic faith (whatever that means) is simply your own private opinion. Its decrees have never been received by the Eastern Church; therefore it does not fulfill the criteria of the Vicentian canon (which of course has no ecclesial authority whatsoever). Consequently, one cannot even assert ecumenical authority for the Second Council of Orange. It was simply one of many fallible local councils that have been held in the Church over the past 2,000 years.
Do you accept all of the Orange decrees or just the ones with which you agree? And since the meaning of the decrees are not self-evident, who decides whose interpretation of the decrees is correct?
One might even ask by what confessional authority you assert the authority of II Orange. Do any of the Protestant confessions affirm it? I am not asking rhetorically or polemically. I do not know the answer.
I'd like to encourage Dr Liccione to devote an article to this interesting question. This is right up his alley! 
One more thing. If, Chris, your primary beef with my article is something like "Forde doesn't represent my favorite form of Lutheranism," that's fair enough, but so what? I already acknowledged in my article that there are many different Protestant construals of justification. I picked Forde for my article because he is an interesting and fun writer who captures the spirit of Luther better than most contemporary Lutheran theologians. But he is more a Luther Lutheran than a confessional Lutheran.
"no one thereafter can either love God as he ought or believe in God or do good for God's sake, unless the grace of divine mercy has preceded him"
This statement from Orange is consistent with Canon 9 of Trent's Session 6, if read in the context of Chapters 5 and 6 of the same session.
These chapters discuss "The Necessity for Adults to Prepare Themselves for Justification and the Origin of This Justification" and "The Manner of Preparation", respectively.
It's clear from these chapters that "being prepared and disposed by the movement of [one's] own will" (Canon 9) is begun and sustained by grace — "prevenient grace" — the grace that precedes "the grace itself of justification".
This sounds entirely compatible with Orange.
John D.S.,
The way I have heard Matthew 25 (assuming you're talking "sheep and goats," here) explained according to sola fide, is to highlight the fact that the people don't know whether they are sheep or goats until the Lord declares them such.
This explanation was actually given to me personally by Dr. Nestigen at Luther Seminary. He's quite respected within the Lutheran world (even amongst those who are not ELCAer's, but are more conservative in their Lutheran Christianity).
Fr. OH:
Your exegetical point is true. It is also perfectly compatible with the fact—which is also perfectly apparent in context—that people will be separated into sheep and goats partly on the basis of their deeds, not just their faith. I think John was merely pointing out said fact.
Best,
Mike
Yeah, Mike, I agree. I was not defending sola fide (defined Lutheran-style). I was just answering his question. Maximos the Confessor and the Sixth Ecumenical Council long ago (while still Lutheran!) convinced me that before we ask the free will question, we have to answer "Who do you say that I am?"
So, no debate here. Just answering a question that John D.S. asked. That's all.
One could use the Pontificator's post to start a series "Bad Reasons to Leave Evangelicalism" and list as #1 that "JDDJ shows that the evangelical doctrine of justification you value is allowed as a theological viewpoint within the Catholic church". I seem to remember an argument something like this being one of the Pontificator's own stages in his conversion.
His post-conversion evolution shows better than any theological argument could that no, the evangelical doctrine of justification is not allowed in the Catholic church, and the matter still stands roughly where it did in the sixteenth century.
CPA, you're not alone. I remember Dr. Simpson at Luther Seminary arguing quite forcefully against JDDJ, claiming that the Lutherans who signed off on it were signing off on Lutheranism. He made a powerful case to me it seemed at the time, though I no longer remember what he said.
Frankly, at the risk of opening a whole 'nother can of worms, I think the debate is really one over Augustine. Who has Augustine right? Luther? Or Rome?
Fr OH:
From a scholarly standpoint, the question who has Augustine right is quite interesting and has been debated accordingly for centuries. For what it's worth, my opinion is that the Jansenists were more faithfully Augustinian than either Luther or Trent. From a doctrinal standpoint, however, the matter is relatively unimportant.
From the standpoint that matters most, the question is who is right, period, whether or not they have Augustine right. Whatever else you might want to say about "Rome," it must be conceded that the Tridentine doctrine of justification is more patristic than Luther's—assuming, of course, we can get agreement on what the latter is!
Best,
Mike
Oh, of course, it is obviously a matter of who is "right" theologically speaking. I was just saying that Augustine looms so large for the West (during that period, at least) that I see it an an "intra-Augustinian" debate, if you will. While that in itself is not controversial, I thought the concern of what's "Augustinian" would be a can of worms. Yes, what's "Luther" is also a can of worms. E.g. the whole "Finnish" interpretation of Luther that seeks to make him sound "Eastern Orthodox" in some ways.
As for what's more patristic, that's also an interesting question.
All you eager bloggers--I can't keep up with you! To answer Al's question many posts back (and perhaps help with the questions raised by Chris Jones) I would say the real Luther is the Luther of simul justus et peccator--which is the great sticking point at which Rome hesitated in the reception of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification.
For Luther, there is no sharp distinction between before and after justification, as assumed by the Formula of Concord and most Protestants. What is true of our will "before justification" is true our whole lives, because "even a righteous man sins in doing good" (Contra Latomus, LW 32:183. So even after justification, "all our good works are mortal sin" (LW 32:91, from Luther's defense of the 95 theses vs. the Papal Bull). We are thus always in need of justification, to which our free will and good works contribute nothing except sin.
So, after the grace of justification (if you want to use that un-Lutheran language) we do indeed co-operate by our own free will in doing good works, which Luther calls our "proper righteousness" (in the famous sermon on two kinds of righteousness). But this righteousness of our own is in itself, apart from Christ, simply mortal sin. That is why it is important that our sin is not imputed to us.
On the other hand, the righteousness of faith (or "alien righteousness" as the sermon calls it) is not merely imputed to us, but is the righteousness of God in Christ, which is truly given and imparted to us to be our possession. For Christ himself is not merely imputed to us but truly given to us with all he is and has (including righteousness, justification, etc.). He is ours by faith alone, but by faith alone he is truly ours, together with all his righteousness. That's the justus part of the simul justus et peccator. And that is what Luther means by justification by faith alone.
No, it can't be squared with Trent. Nor is it exactly the teaching of the Formula of Concord. Is it "transitional," as Al asks? Well, it's not Roman Catholic but also not quite Protestant (as I argued in Pro Ecclesia last fall). There can be a lot of traffic over this bridge, from Catholic to Protestant and back (as we have seen recently with Lutheran theologians going to Rome). There is something volatile about Luther's theology, as there is about Barth's. But like Barth's theology, in its radical Christocentrism it makes a proposal to and for and (in my view) within the Great Tradition, which Trent was wrong to reject.
Philip,
Let me see if I can knell down in a nutshell what you just stated.
1) Everything man does prior to justification is tainted with sin "more or less."
2) Everything man does after justification is tainted with sin "more or less" on its own, but we are righteous in as much as we are united to Christ by the act of faith. (I would assume that even this act of faith on its own is mortal sin too.)
My question here would be this: In the justified, is there any act that is true synergy (to use Eastern language with respect to Christology) that is really and actually a holy act? Is that even a possibility here for Luther?
Thanks.
Photios
Photios,
Very interesting questions, to which I'd like to see some well-informed answers. Btw, if you have never read it, you might find Steve Hutchens' review article on "the Finnish School" of Luther/Lutheran scholars (who see "theosis" in Luther) in the July/August issue of *Touchstone* (www.touchstonemag.com -- click on "Archives" and find the issue)? Dr. Hutchens' conclusion is that Luther was inconsistent -- mine, for what it is worth, is that the works of Luther that the Finns cite in support of their views are all from the early 1520s and that can find nothing in Luther after 1529 or so to support their case.
Dear Photios,
Yes, I agree with your characterization. (The act of faith itself, apart from its object, Christ, is also sin).
And the question you ask is a really good one. Of course it's not in quite the same terms Luther would use, but I think it is clear enough what his answer would be. In one sense, yes, there are fruits of our justification in Christ that are the outgrowth of our willing co-operation with the Spirit of Christ in us, and these are truly good and holy works of love. In Luther's terms: faith does good works. These works are what he calls our "proper" righteousness, by which he means a superficial and external righteousness that does not make us truly and inwardly righteous in God's sight. That is why they are both good works (truly!) and mortal sin (truly!). So Luther would be willing to call them holy, but not in the strong sense of producing a righteousness that could save us from the wrath of God. Such righteousness is what he calls "alien righteousness," by which he means the righteousness of Christ in us.
Perhaps the point is expressed reasonably well when Luther says "Every good work of the saints [i.e., holy ones!] while pilgrims in this world is sin" in Contra Latomus, LW 32:159
Perhaps the point is expressed reasonably well when Luther says "Every good work of the saints [i.e., holy ones!] while pilgrims in this world is sin" in Contra Latomus, LW 32:159
I think the question is then almost demanded "Where is this in the Great Tradition?" I can't think of even one Father, nor even any notorious heretic, who made such a claim. Certainly, it is not Augustinian. Perhaps you have something in mind with the "Great Tradition" to include every influential Christian thinker, in which case Luther and Barth must surely be included, but then I find it hard to understand how Christianity is not just a self-conrtadictory jumble of nonsense. I have sympathy for many brilliant theologians who succumbed to grave error (Valentinus, Origen, Eunomius, and Nestorius all ended up being too smart for their own good), but I don't see what purpose it serves to act as if their errors did not ultimately strike at the heart of Christianity, no matter what we may think of them subjectively. And this, it seems to me, strikes at the heart of Christianity if anything does.
Bill,
Yep I used Hutchins' article on my entrance paper into grad school. Good article.
Photios
Philip,
It seems like there is a dialectical relationship here with Luther: Man as a general category can't be righteous in personal activity because man is Not-God. It seems like this dialectic would apply whether we are discussing Pre- or Post-Fall. Correct me if I'm wrong. A couple more questions:
Is there a possibility of my question applying to a Pre-Fall condition: that is, was there a synergy between God and man that was not simul justus et pecattur in the person of Adam?
And secondly, given Luther's view of justification: Does the simul justus et pecattur also true of the Saints in the eschaton?
Photios
Dear Photios,
Luther's objection to a synergistic view of justification does not rest on our being other than God, but on our being sinners, and on the Augustinian teaching that there is sin that remains after baptism (which Luther insists is really and truly sin).
Before the fall and in the state of final blessedness, there is no sin in us, and therefore we do what we were made for, perfectly and freely loving God (see Luther's lectures on the early chapters of Genesis). Since this is a result of grace, one can certainly call it synergy.
The dialectic of simul justus et peccator, with its rejection of synergy in justification, concerns our status before God in this life and especially as we face the last judgment. When you face the great Judge, do you want to offer him your works and merits--your contribution to the synergy? Isn't the very thought just terrifying (as Luther suggests to Latomus)? Yet this same judge is pleased with the works of his saints (Luther insists on this in his treatise on Good Works) and is apt to say to believers who do good works: "Well done, good and faithful servant." That's the dialectic: faith looks to Christ alone, and God is pleased with the good works that result, even though if judged strictly they are sin.
Dear Jonathan,
You won't find anything quite like Luther's theology in the fathers because he faced with a different question (see my first post). Instead of the Augustinian via or journey toward God, in which there is gradual improvement in righteousness, Luther's attention was drawn to what happens at the Last Judgment (see the thought experiment in Contra Latomus, LW 32:190, picked up by Calvin, Inst. 3:12). Does any of my improvement in righteousness count there? Would I dare put my trust in it? Luther answers a resounding no. Do you really think Augustine would answer differently, if asked? But he wasn't asked.
Think of how people died in the late middle ages. Eamon Duffy is very good on this in The Stripping of the Alters: you see woodcuts of people on their deathbeds with devils whispering in their ear about all their sins, trying to plunge them into the sin of despair. This is the late medieval experience of conscience, which is Luther's problem not the fathers'. And what does a good pastor do in this situation? Again Duffy tells us: he holds up the crucifix in front of your eyes (as the priest did for Julian of Norwich during her illness) and urges you to trust in Christ alone. That's what Luther is doing. Would you do anything else?
Grace and peace to you,
It occurs to me that there is something to say that should be helpful to both Jonathan and Photios. It's about the holiness of the saints.
We look at the saints and see glorious holiness, and rightly so. But the judgment of God is different from the judgment of men. Hence our third person perspective (What is HIS holiness like, or HERS...?) must give way before a question asked in the first person: What shall I say about MY own righteousness before God? Ask the saints themselves, and will they not answer with one voice: it is filthy rags.
So if you want to see the roots of Luther's theology in the Great Tradition, look at what the saints say about their own holiness, in the first person. It will largely agree with Luther: all my good works are in themselves nothing but sin, without merit before God. I have no hope before his judgment but Jesus Christ.
What saint would want any other Gospel?
Philip:
...f you want to see the roots of Luther's theology in the Great Tradition, look at what the saints say about their own holiness, in the first person. It will largely agree with Luther: all my good works are in themselves nothing but sin, without merit before God. I have no hope before his judgment but Jesus Christ.
I've long understood how a soteriology such as Luther's is motivated partly by the aspect of the Great Tradition you describe above. But I don't think the respect in which Luther's soteriology differs from Trent's can in any way be logically derived from the above.
The saints and the Church agree that whatever is good in us comes ultimately from God and that the sin in us, whether acts or states, derives from ourselves alone. So it's not as though Tradition says that our good works include a contribution of ours that is independent of God's causation. But it doesn't follow that the good in us is caused only by God. That would be what you call 'absolute monergism', which you reject as much as Catholics do. Nor does Augustinian-Thomistic monergism about faith, as distinct from salvation, follow from it either, even though the two are obviously compatible; Molinism too is logically compatible with it, though not of course with A-T monergism about faith. Yet Luther's innovation, it seems to me, was precisely monergism about salvation as well as about faith. I find no evidence that Augustine and the medieval doctors would have answered with Luther on that one.
Best,
Mike
Thanks, Mike, I think what you're getting at is a conceptually helpful (though of course I still disagree about whether this belongs in the Great Tradition). It is indeed useful to think of the sola fide as extending an Augustinian-Thomist monergism about faith to a monergism about salvation.
Of course, Luther does affirm that in faith we do good works, which is a form of synergism. Combine this with his monergism about salvation, and you get the distinctively Protestant claim that our good works, real as they are, make no contribution to our salvation. They are really and truly good works, though weighed in the balance of God's strict judgment they are really and truly mortal sins.
Consequently, I don't think Luther is committed to saying, as you suggest, that "the good in us is caused only by God." Our good works, to which we contribute by our own renovated free will, are truly and really good. But they do not contribute to our salvation.
By contrast, our salvation is indeed a good caused only by God. But is it so out of sync with the Tradition to say that Christ alone is our saviour? Or to expand upon a Biblical parable: what contribution does the lost sheep make to the salvific work of the Good Shepherd, aside from getting lost?
Grace and peace,
Philip:
Of course I agree that Christ alone is our savior. But it does not follow that our good works are mortal sins. Assuming Luther consistently maintained that they are—which somebody will probably dispute, but never mind—I can see only two ways in which that claim avoids outright self-contradiction. Neither way seems compatible with Tradition.
One is to say that what's good in our good works is in no sense ours but is God's alone. That's just absolute monergism, which you neither maintain yourself nor attribute to Luther. So that's out.
The other is to say that, while the good works we are empowered by grace to do are ours inasmuch as we are secondary causes, with God as primary cause, they also are so vitiated by sin that they in no sense contribute to our salvation. Here, another distinction is needed.
If what's meant is that our good works cannot earn grace, which is itself absolutely necessary for our salvation, there's a sense in which that is perfectly true. We can in no sense elicit God's offer of salvation or do anything salvific without unmerited grace, including prevenient grace. But that's Tridentine, so it doesn't quite capture your point. That point emerges if the claim in question is taken to mean that good works done by grace in no sense merit further grace, in the sense of bearing fruit for which we can be rewarded. Trent says they do merit further grace in that sense; Luther denies it. But the only reason one would deny it would that we contribute nothing good to our salvation. Yet that is absolute monergism on salvation, which has already been ruled out.
QED.
Best,
Mike
Philip,
I agree with Luther on what the identity of righteousness is when we ask the question from the Bible: What is righteousness? And what is the righteousness that I have before the Triune God? So I agree here this is the only righteousness that stands before God. I think the Reformation was reading the bible correctly with regard to this.
Where I have a problem, it seems, is that Luther doesn't seem to think that the Saints in the act of their synergistic works, post-justification, that these works have the same ontological status as Christ's works in virtue of their consubstantiality with Christ. Where as Patristic theology would say that the Saints DO have this virtue by dent of their own hypostasis where there is a perichoresis of the divine energy and human nature. Hence, there is no *increase* in righteousness, since it is Christ's, but there is genuine union by one recapitulating the work of Christ. (At this point: The Roman Catholics and the Augustinian/Tridentine doctrine locate justification in the *habitus* that is formed in the human soul that results when doing Christ's work. Though this is undoubtedly a quality or by-product of the union, I do not believe this is what Saint Paul meant by justification or the essence of the union with Christ.)
It just seems to me that *the logic* of Luther's view wouldn't say that even Prelapsarian Adam could say that he had a righteousness of his own (to use your first person perspective) that could stand before the Triune God. Hence, it just appears (mind you), that sin is a property of our nature in Luther's understanding of justification or to put it another way: sin is an individuating principle between God and man, though I recognize Luther would never say this and would actually proclaim the contrary.
The way I'm looking at this question, Maximus style, is that Creation serves the purposes of the Incarnation and there being an intimate connection between theology and economy. Hence, as an ordo salutis, there is a Creation because the Triune God willed the Incarnation in the order of his decree (though it comes temporally later). With that in mind, the only type of righteousness that stands before God, is Christ's, whether Pre-Fallen condition, Post-Fallen condition, or Escahtological humanity. So it seems like the *logic* of my view would affirm that the only righteousness we could ever have with God is Christ's, but where I see a difference is in the simul justus et pecattur that seems to affirm a kind of separation between what man does and what God does. *Unless* its intention is used as a pastoral tool to warn the believer never to *think* that they can have a righteousness that is ever any good apart from Christ.
Just some thoughts.
Photios
Dear Michael,
Your argument contains an equivocation, precisely where I insisted on a distinction in my earlier post.
"Absolute monergism" in your second paragraph, I would deny (on behalf of Luther). Which is to say: our good works are in some sense our own. That is precisely why Luther speaks of "proper righteousness"--a righteousness that is truly our own, by grace.
But "absolute monergism on salvation" (your final paragraph) is different. This Luther (and I) affirm. For our proper righteousness makes no contribution to our justification or salvation. That is effected by Christ alone, received by faith alone.
Pardon my being brief--some people who don't like logic think such brevity is rather brutal. But I bet that, like me, you're too much an admirer of Thomas to feel that way.
Grace and peace,
Dear Photios,
I think I'll need more explanation of your take on Maximox before I understand you fully. But that would be well worth hearing.
Still, I can say a few things that might be helpful. For Luther, the synergistic works of believers (Luther's "proper righteousness") indeed do not have exactly the ontological status as Christ's own works, for they are really our own as well as Christ's (though Luther will go quite far in talking about Christ working in us through faith). By contrast, the righteousness by which we are justified before God ("alien righteousness") is indeed nothing other than Christ's own divine righteousness (i.e., the justitia dei or righteousness of God).
When Luther thinks about this he is using the Cyrillian pattern of communicatio idiomatum, in what later Lutherans called the genus majestaticum: the communication of divine attributes to the humanity of Christ. This divine humanity is then given to us when we are united to Christ by faith, so that by faith alone we receive the righteousness of God in Christ.
In short, our justification and salvation consists in an extension of the communicatio idiomatum to us through our union with Christ by faith alone. This may not be exactly how Maximos thinks, but is it that far off?
This is perhaps the difference (correct me if I'm wrong): for Luther, our proper righteousness is like Christ's in that it is the work of a human being using the divine righteousness (justitia dei) which comes to humanity through the incarnation. But unlike Christ's proper (human) righteousness, it is not perfect, and therefore is in itself mortal sin, which is why in order for it to be acceptable to God, our sin must not be imputed to us (the forensic addition to Luther's theology).
And I emphasize: unlike later Protestants, for Luther this forensic element in justification is not fundamental. What is fundamental is the justitia dei, the divine righteousness of Christ, which is ours when we are united to the man Jesus Christ by faith alone.
For Michael,
One last clarification, for anyone who is still following the thread of this conversation. In my previous response to Michael, I failed to notice that he was picking up the phrase "absolute monergism" from my own discussion of monergism (in Al Kimmel's blog Pontifications). I'd actually forgotten the term, because it was simply a label I invented for a position I find uninteresting: the denial of the efficacy of secondary causes, which some late Calvinists are attracted to, but which was not even on the radar screen for Luther, Calvin, or the Westminster Confession, much less Augustine or Aquinas.
Given the way I defined "absolute monergism" (i.e., monergism about absolutely everything), it is misleading to speak as Michael does of "absolute monergism on salvation" in Luther. Luther is a monergist on salvation, not an absolute monergist.
What this means, in plain terms, is that Luther thinks we make a real contribution to the good in our own good works (working together with grace), but that this real good makes no contribution to our salvation. The reason is that our good works are so far from perfect that in themselves they are mortal sins, if weighed by God's strict and true judgment.
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