Lecture 8
Post Tenebras Lux: Luther and the Reformation
Dale W. Schaefer
Panis Angelicus, Sung by Charlotte Church
Panis angelicusFit panis hominum:
Dat Panis coelicus
Figuris terminum:
O res mirabilis!
Manducat Dominum
Pauper, servus et humilis. / Lo! the Angelic Bread
Feedeth the sons of men:
Figures and types are fled
Never to come again.
O what a wondrous thing!
Lowly and poor are fed,
Banqueting on their Lord and King.
Fifth Stanza of Sacris Solemnis by St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) composed at the request of Pope Urban IV (1261-1264) when the Pope first established the Feast of Corpus Christi in 1264. Sung on the Feast of Corpus Christi on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday (1st Sunday after Pentecost) to commemorate the institution of the Holy Eucharist. Aquinas had a mystical experience in later life and abandoned his logical approach to Christianity and gave him self to meditation.
Precaution: Study of the reformation can be very disturbing. Although many of the medieval practices of the Roman church persist to this day, protestants share far more in common with Catholicism than secular paganism. Vatican II led to a tolerant attitude toward Protestants. Attempts by contemporary politicians to drive a wedge between Catholics and Protestants suggests that secular paganism sees a united Christendom as a formidable barrier to its agenda.
Luther's Soul
R. C. Sproul Tape.
On his wedding night, Luther sheltered his combative foe Andreas von Karlstadt who was fleeing the Peasant war. Radical reformer and iconoclast, Karlstadt, was previously run out of Saxony, with Luther approval, for destroying the symbols of the Catholic faith.
Luther and Katie raised four orphaned children in addition to their own six. They also had 4-6 student boarders who recorded 6,596 conversations (Table Talks). Katie called him Doctor and addressed him as Sie rather than Du. He sometimes refereed to her affectionately as Kette (chain).
Dying Luther spent his last hours arbitrating a civil dispute. He died traveling home.
Luther and Civil Order:
Strong believer in civil order. State must use the sword. Church must not. Believed Zwingli was killed in battle as a punishment for a minister taking up the sword. Had no interest in changing the political order. Just wanted to reform the church. Society would follow.
To von Karlstadt Luther's faculty colleague and radical reformer
"Given them time. I took three years of constant study, and reflection, and discussion to arrive where I am, and can the common man, untutored in such matters, be expected to move the same distance in three months? Do not suppose that abuses are eliminated by destroying the object that is abused… I did no more than pray and preach. The word did it all. Had I wished I might have started a conflagration at Worms. But while I sat and drank beer with Philip and Amsdorf, God dealt the papacy a mighty blow."
Luther distinguished between individual and corporate morality, not between public and private.
"The natural man, when not involved for himself, has enough integrity and insight to administer the state in accord with justice, equity, and even magnanimity. These are the civil virtues. But the Church inculcates humility, patience, long-suffering, and charity–the Christian Virtues–attainable even approximately only by those endowed with grace, and consequently not to be expected from the masses. That is why society cannot be ruled by the gospel. And that is why theocracy is out of the question. … The God of the state is the God of the Magnificat, who exalts the lowly and abases the proud. The God of the Church is the God of Gethsemane, who suffered at the hands of men without retaliation or reviling and refused the use of the sword on his behalf."[1]
Peace of Augsburg (1555) Prince could determine the religion in his territory (cuius regio eius religio), but dissenters were given the right to migrate. If a Catholic bishop converted, he must abdicate, but not vice versa. Lutheran princes protested this inequality leading to the name "Protestant." At least it was a step toward pluralism and allowed survival of Lutheranism. Luther came to accept this form of pluralism as the only feasible solution.
Concerning the Peasant Revolt:
"Thus, a rebellion brings with it a land called murderers and bloodshed, makes widows and orphans, and turns everything upside down like a great disaster. Therefore, let everyone who can, smite, slay, stab, secretly or openly, remembering that nothing can be more hurtful, or poisonous than a rebel. It is just as one must kill a mad dog; if you don't strike him, he will strike you, and the whole land with you."[2] {Luther was criticized by his contemporaries for these words and they remain among his most quoted statements.}
The Medieval Church
Sacerdotalism: salvation comes through the means of grace, which are administered, and governed by the institutional church. Justification occurs primarily by means of a sacraments-most importantly the sacraments of baptism, penance and Eucharist which require the priests. (sacerdotum (latin) = priest). Alter is center of attention, not pulpit.
Cyprian (200-258, Carthage)
"Extra Ecclesium Nulla Salus"
Visible Church = Noah's Ark
Augustine (~400): One, holy, Catholic, apostolic
Developed concept of the mother church.
"He who does not have the church as his mother does not have God as his father."
Council of Florence 1441: Unam Sanctum à There is no salvation outside the visible Roman Catholic Church.
Post Reformation sacerdotalism:
Vatican I (1870): Condemned Protestants as schismatics and heretics and embraced Papal infallibility, immaculate conception, and assumption of the virgin, etc. Pius IX (1792-1878) in Syllabus of Errors condemned toleration in religion, Bible societies, and separation of church and state, but opened the door a crack in his Singulari quadem (9 Dec 1854):
" For it must be held by faith that outside the Apostolic Roman Church, no one can be saved; that this is the only ark of salvation; that he who shall not have entered therein will perish in the flood; but, on the other hand, it is necessary to hold for certain that they who labor in ignorance of the true religion, if this ignorance is invincible, are not stained by any guilt in this matter in the eyes of God."
Pius XII (1876-1958) Mystici Corporis (June 29, 1943) identified the visible RC church with the mystical body of Christ. If your outside the your not part of the body. He forbade ecumenical cooperation in Mortalium Animos (1928).
Vatican II (1962-1965) and John XXIII (1881-1963): Reversal of attitude toward Protestants:
"Separated Brethren" replaced "schismatics and heretics."
Protestants were present as observers at Vatican II.
Lay participation in mass, vernacular mass, Bible study encouraged.
Charismatic Catholic movement germinated.
Charles Colson and Richard John Neuhaus "Evangelicals and Catholics Together"
Modern RC theologians: votum ecclesia implicita: People who have a real desire to be part of the true church, but for circumstances beyond their control are not Catholics are part of the "implicit church." Others churches are said to express vestigia ecclesia.
C. S. Lewis
"The divisions of Christendom are undeniable and are by some writers most fiercely expressed. But if any man is tempted to think—as one might be tempted who read only contemporaries—that "Christianity" is a word of so many meanings that it means nothing at all, he can learn beyond all doubt, by stepping out of his own century, that this is not so. Measured against the ages "mere Christianity" turns out to be no insipid interdenominational transparency, but something positive, self-consistent, and inexhaustible. I know it, indeed, to my cost. In the days when I still hated Christianity, I learned to recognise, like some all too familiar smell, that almost unvarying something which met me, now in Puritan Bunyan, now in Anglican Hooker, now in Thomist Dante. It was there (honeyed and floral) in Francois de Sales; it was there (grave and homely) in Spenser and Walton; it was there (grim but manful) in Pascal and Johnson; there again, with a mild, frightening, Paradisial flavour, in Vaughan and Boehme and Traherne. In the urban sobriety of the eighteenth century one was not safe—Law and Butler were two lions in the path. The supposed "Paganism" of the Elizabethans could not keep it out."
"We are all rightly distressed, and ashamed also, at the divisions of Christendom. But those who have always lived within the Christian fold may be too easily dispirited by them. They are bad, but such people do not know what it looks like from without. Seen from there, what is left intact despite all the divisions, still appears (as it truly is) an immensely formidable unity. I know, for I saw it; and well our enemies know it." (C. S. Lewis, Introduction to the English translation of Anathasius “De Incarnatione Verbi Dei”)
It is important to prioritize the opposition.
· Protestants have much in common with Catholics, very little in common with secular pagans.
· "Live in harmony with one another. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge" Rom. 12:16-19.
Sacramentalism: RC church has always believed in "salvation by grace through faith."
Medieval Faith = Right Doctrine, correct thinking. Implicit faith = you just need to believe what the church teaches. Need not know what that teaching actually is. You only need to affirm that what the church teaches is true, whatever that is. The deposit of faith is secure in the pope, bishops and priests.
"I would believe black is white and white is black if the church said so." Igantius Loyola
Faith is lifeless until linked to love (formed vs unformed faith). Soul must be enlivened by love to be justified. Because I am a morally different person, I am justified. Condemned by reformers Traced to Augustine's threefold conversion (intellectually, morally and baptismally converted, [conversio]).
Grace is in imparted through the sacraments that are administered only by ordained RC priests. Grace is quantitative. Grace infuses into the penitent who then is able to merit salvation congruously by living a holy life. Sanctification precedes justification.
Sacrament = Greek musterion = something hidden that is now revealed (Vulgate)
Seven Sacraments (Florence 1439) Baptism, Confirmation, Holy Matrimony, Penance, Eucharist, Holy Orders, Extreme Unction.
Key sacraments: BaptismàPenanceà Eucharist which function automatically (ex opere operato)
After baptism, any mortal (heinous sin) precludes salvation. Salvation is restored through penance and the Eucharist (re sacrifice of Christ). Calvin = no sin is mortal.
Penance (key point of controversy in Reformation).
Vulgate "do penance" = Greek "repent"
"I venture to say they are wrong who make more of the act in Latin than of the change of heart in Greek." Luther.
Form (essence) = Priestly absolution. (Aristotle's Form) "
Matter (visible) = contrition, confession and satisfaction. (Aristotle's accidens)
· Contrition = sorrow for affronting God (no real problem for reformers), not attrition = sorrow out of fear of punishment.
"O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins because of Thy just punishments, but most of all because they offend Thee, my God, Who art all-good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to sin no more and to avoid the near occasions of sin."
· Satisfaction (Major problem for reformers)
Works of satisfaction do not carry intrinsic merit that merits salvation, yet they are truly meritorious works (quasi merit or congruous merit).
Condign merit (meritum de condigno) = merit that imposes an obligation on God to reward because of its intrinsic value.
Congruous merit (meritum de congruo) makes it fitting for God to reward.
Merits of Christ are given only after penitent has congruous merit–removes temporal punishment, and satisfies God's justice and wrath. Does not remove eternal guilt for which only the cross offers satisfaction.
If satisfaction is not achieved in this life, punishment is meted out in purgatory. Purgatory was a source of hope to the medieval Christian since only the truly holy actually merit salvation. Canon lawyers figured out exactly how many days had to be spent in purgatory for each sin. Papal indulgences were for remission of temporal punishment, even for those who were in purgatory. Sales reps may not have understood that contrition was necessary. Tetzel was selling tickets out of purgatory without contrition. Luther was sympathetic with him after he was ex communicated–viewed him as a scapegoat and victim of Papal greed.
Works of superogation and the treasury of merit (Gregory the Great, Innocent III). The good works of the saints are stored up and can be dispensed by the Church.
Sale of indulgences + simony à Luther's 95 thesis
· Absolution: "Te absolvo" (not a serious problem for reformers)
· Tape on Jubilee Indulgence.
Luther's 95 Thesis
Luther though reform would follow as soon as prince and pope knew what was going on. Luther was unaware that Albrect (Hollenzollern , Kaiser family until WWI) was getting a kickback from the sale of indulgences. 95 thesis are quite conservative and not very evangelical. German nationalists published the 95 thesis and made Luther a popular figure for standing up to the bullies in Rome. Luther only wanted to carry on an intellectual exercise with scholars.