Remembering the Reformation: Martin Luther and Catholic Theology

By Declan Marmion and Gesa E. Thiessen

The dramatic unfolding of events after Martin Luther’s revolutionary act led to the ultimate, and seemingly irreparable, fissure with Roman Catholicism: excommunication and schism. From the point of that rupture, up to and including most of the 20th century, the history of theological and ecclesial readings of Luther has been controlled largely by a rubric assuming the inevitability of fracture and the portrayal of Luther as a veritable bete noire of Catholic history and theology. Remembering the Reformation enters into this contested history and pursues a more nuanced and considered reading of Luther’s relationship with the Catholic tradition, from his Augustinian roots and medieval training to his reading of scripture and investigations of ecclesiology, as well as his continued relevance and challenge to Catholic theology today. An international consortium of scholars, Catholic and Protestant, contribute to this volume and provide a thoughtful, textured reimagining of Luther for an ecumenical future. Marking the 500th anniversary of the inauguration of Luther’s movement for reform, this volume aims to bring Catholics, Protestants, and Evangelicals into conversation in a shared, but distinct, theological space.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Release date: Feb 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781506423289

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decades.

Introduction

In 2017 we commemorate the five hundredth anniversary of that key date in European history that has traditionally marked the beginning of a long period of Reformations that divided western Christianity along confessional lines. The figure of Martin Luther is, of course, central to this story both in its historical unfolding and its later legacy. We are all too aware of the polemic and counterpolemic that followed on all sides and resulted in a succession of religious wars across Europe, culminating in the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), which, at its heart, was fuelled by many factors other than doctrinal division. Nonetheless, the effects of the sixteenth-century Reformations were long-lasting, and for centuries polemical literature, exchanged between all parties, highlighted contested theological issues and perpetuated cultures of mutual suspicion and, indeed, mutual miscomprehension. Happily, in more recent decades, in large part thanks to the ecumenical movement, much progress has been made in helping Christians of all confessions focus on what unites them rather than what has separated them these past five hundred years. And yet there is much still to be done.

This volume had its origin in an international conference held at the Pontifical University, St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, on 15–17 May 2015, at which eleven keynote speakers were invited to present papers. They were joined by a number of emerging scholars who delivered papers in parallel sessions. The conference was entitled Martin Luther and Catholic Theology: Remembering the Reformation: What have we learned? What have we yet to learn? and its aim was to gain some new insights into the meaning of the Reformation and what its significance might be for the churches today. That process of mutual learning would recognise that many of Luther’s concerns have since found their way into Catholic consciousness and theology, particularly since Vatican II—for example, the centrality of Scripture in the life of the church, the rediscovery of the common priesthood of all the baptised, and the ecclesia semper reformanda—and yet also acknowledge that there are difficulties that have yet to be overcome.

In an address to a delegation from the World Lutheran Federation on 7 November 2005, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI expressed the wish that as we prepare to mark the five-hundredth anniversary of the events of 1517, we should intensify our efforts to understand more deeply what we have in common and what divides us, as well as the gifts we have to offer each other. A key part of this dialogue involves the continuing effort to listen attentively to each other’s languages with a view to comprehension rather than misapprehension. The joint document of the Lutheran World Federation and the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, From Conflict to Communion: Lutheran-Catholic Common Commemoration of the Reformation in 2017, published in 2013, puts this well in paragraph 33:

Dialogue demonstrates that the partners speak different languages and understand the meanings of words differently; they make different distinctions and think in different thought forms. However, what appears to be an opposition in expression is not always an opposition in substance. In order to determine the exact relationship between respective articles of doctrine, texts must be interpreted in the light of the historical context in which they arose. That allows one to see where a difference or opposition truly exists and where it does not.

Each of the essays in this volume, in its own way, responds to the above challenge.

The volume is divided into four sections: the first deals with historical foundations (Schilling and Marshall), the second with Luther and the medieval tradition (Cary, Dieter, and Methuen), the third with Luther and modern Catholic theology (De Mey, Corkery, and De Witte), and the fourth with the question what can Catholics learn from Luther? (Thiessen, Saarinen, and Helmer).

Heinz Schilling opens the volume with an essay that seeks to recontextualize the Reformation event of 1517 in light of broader contemporary church reform movements and with a less Eurocentric approach than standard narratives have often followed. Thus, Luther’s reform movement is situated side by side with other Catholic reform initiatives, such as that of Archbishop of Toledo Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, who also used the print industry to great effect. For Schilling, the polarization between both sets of reforms is no longer adequate for a transconfessional evaluation of the events of the early sixteenth century, for they shared common roots. He also reminds us that Luther’s Roman Catholic contemporaries, including the Pope himself, had much more on their minds than the issues that precipitated events in Wittenberg in 1517, pointing out that the public debates in Latin Christendom that year were not about indulgences or institutional reform of the church but the threat from the Ottoman Empire.

Peter Marshall examines Roman Catholic attitudes towards Luther over the longue durée, in this case 1520–2015. In such surveys, Marshall explains, we can tend to pass quickly, and with no little embarrassment, over some of the more unseemly exchanges of diatribe in order to reach the more irenic period of improved ecumenical relations in the twentieth century. And yet Marshall suggests that it is nevertheless useful to pause over these periods of invective against Luther in order to understand their often overlooked nuances. In this he wonders whether Otto Hermann Pesch’s suggestion that the results of the post-war Catholic research on Luther rendered that of earlier decades a prelude or aberration is actually helpful. Older Roman Catholic views on Luther, however distasteful to modern sensibilities, nevertheless represented the particular situation of national and local churches and Marshall argues that this inherited historical memory needs to be acknowledged and understood.

In an essay on the influence of Augustine on Martin Luther’s thought, Phillip Cary focuses on the difference in Luther between two types of discourse—law and gospel—and he notes that this is a development of the legacy of Augustine. But, more provocatively, Cary argues for a sacramental notion of the gospel in Luther that is closer to that of Peter Lombard and Thomas Aquinas than it is to Augustine, thus suggesting that, in this, Luther might actually be regarded as a more Catholic thinker than the fourth/fifth-century North African. He sees the essential difference between Augustine and the mature Luther as residing in the following: instead of a prayer for grace (in Augustine), we have a promise of grace (in Luther). This promise of grace is something external to which Luther can cling in moments of fearfulness and anxiety. For Cary, the key to understanding the difference between the two is the development of medieval sacramental theology, which allows Luther to conceive of an external word that gives what it signifies.

Theodor Dieter’s essay examines more fully the relationship between Luther’s thought and scholasticism, but in doing so Dieter calls for a much more nuanced approach to this topic that recognises scholasticism as a multifaceted reality. He proposes that there may be a difference between what precisely Luther considers himself to be criticising and what actually gets caught in the theological crossfire, as it were. Focusing on Luther’s Disputatio against Scholastic Theology, he cautions against an approach that develops its own speculative ideas of possible scholastic objects of Luther’s criticism, recommending instead one that closely follows Luther’s arguments (allowing for his use of hyperbolic and polemical statements) and defines the range of his criticism from the range of his arguments.

Continuing the theme of Luther’s complex relationship with the medieval world, Charlotte Methuen explores Luther’s attitudes towards women, examining to what extent previous generations of medieval thinkers, particularly scholastic thinkers, informed his views and how his views on the subordination of women in marriage relationships sit with his reckoning of women as spiritual equals of men. She also asks how Luther’s own subsequent married state influenced his thoughts on women. Methuen argues that Luther clearly drew on Aristotelian views of women’s inferiority, supplementing and supporting these views through his reading of Scripture. However, he also modifies this tradition in certain important ways and his theology profoundly shapes a growing sense of the household as the locus of a life of piety.

Moving to a discussion of Luther’s influence and modern Catholic thought, Peter De Mey explores the reaction of Lutheran observers to the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium) and the Decree on Ecumenism (Unitatis Redintegratio) of the Second Vatican Council. While the observers had much to praise, there were also some difficult moments; especially poignant was the hurt felt at some late amendments that Pope Paul VI made to the text of the Decree on Ecumenism, which changed an earlier wording that stated that Protestant Christians find God in the Scriptures to the less certain they seek God in the Scriptures. Likewise, Danish professor Kristen Skydsgaard was disappointed that the final text of Lumen Gentium had not acknowledged more clearly and honestly the sins of the church, which, he contended, would have constituted a more meaningful communication, not just to the Catholic Church itself, but also to the other churches. One wonders what Skydsgaard would have made of more recent documents such as the International Theological Commission’s Memory and Reconciliation: The Church and the Faults of the Past (December 1999), which might be identified as one response to this observation.

In his essay, James Corkery, SJ, explores Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s appreciation of the theology of Martin Luther, drawing attention to some notable affinities between the thought of both men. In particular, when still Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Benedict could express admiration for the fact that Luther’s theology was something that rested on a personal encounter with the living God and not merely on ideas that were worked out at his desk. Corkery also mentions some nuances of difference between these two thinkers before proceeding to discuss some significant ecclesiological differences between them that have a wider import in the area of Catholic-Lutheran ecumenical discussion. These differences, for instance, are what would lead Ratzinger in a 1983 interview to caution against a hectic chase after reunion and to advocate the setting of realistic intermediate goals in order to avoid disappointment or, worse, embitterment. And yet Ratzinger would have an important, if understated, role in rescuing the dialogue process at a particularly delicate juncture in the run up to the 1999 Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification. This leads Corkery to pose the question: should Ratzinger/Benedict be regarded as someone who has acted to slow down the journey towards Christian unity (even being blamed for precipitating an ecumenical winter), or might he, instead, be regarded as an effective, if cautious, ecumenist?

In his contribution, Pieter De Witte explores the reception of a key theological idea of Luther (simul iustus et peccator) by two giants of twentieth-century Roman Catholic theology, namely Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar. De Witte is keen to emphasise, however, that this is not merely a study of the Catholic reception of a contentious theologoumenon but also an exploration of the theme of ecumenical learning in the context of Lutheran–Roman Catholic dialogue on justification by faith, which led to the joint declaration of 1999. This presupposes, of course, that there is an analogy between theological learning and ecumenical learning. One of the elements of ecumenical learning on the Catholic side, for instance, is that many of the traditional Catholic objections to simul iustus et peccator are, in fact, objections to theological straw men given that within the respective grammars of faith of Lutheran and Catholic theology, key terms such as faith and sin actually mean quite different things. What the dialogue on justification has achieved, moreover, is for the languages in each tradition not merely to have acknowledged each other but, indeed, to have influenced each other. This is a point that we have already encountered in the 2013 document From Conflict to Communion: Lutheran-Catholic Common Commemoration of the Reformation in 2017 above.

Gesa E. Thiessen’s essay examines the attitude of Martin Luther to religious imagery and reminds us that Luther’s concern was principally with the freedom of the Christian: he would attack not the presence of images in churches per se but some of the reasons behind their installation—the idea, for instance, that the faithful, in so doing, are performing a good work. However, this would also lead Luther to condemn the self-righteousness of the iconoclasts who, themselves, could sometimes fall into the mentality of performing a good work. Thiessen proceeds to discuss the contribution of painters, including the Elder and Younger Lucas Cranach and their influence on the dissemination of Luther’s ideas. She concludes with a discussion of what Catholics and Lutherans might learn together about the use of religious images in a world that is, in so many ways, overloaded by visual messages.

In an essay on Luther and the reading of Scripture, Risto Saarinen argues that Luther’s reading of Scripture is at once both traditional and distinctive. For instance, Luther’s insistence (beyond literalist and Humanist readings of the Bible) on the subjective involvement of the believer was not his own invention, of course, being already present in the Western Christian tradition; it is also evidenced, for example, in Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises. And yet, Saarinen continues, Luther’s reading of Scripture is also distinctive. He explores this point with reference to Luther’s debate with Erasmus on the subject of free will. This has a particular application in Luther’s reading of biblical phrases such as my works or your wages in heaven. For Erasmus, these imply the contribution of the individual to these works/wages. For Luther, however, these are instances of attribution: the works are not mine in the sense of me being the effective agent in bringing them about; rather, they are only mine because the biblical word has appropriated them to me as pure gift. Saarinen points out that Luther is to be regarded as neither a biblical fundamentalist nor a typical Humanist in his approach to Scripture. What Luther’s reformation does is to provide an original variant on the Humanist view of textual interpretation.

In the final essay in the volume, Christine Helmer examines one of the key ideas associated with Luther’s thought: that of the priesthood of all believers. She begins by asserting that the universal priesthood of all believers is the one topic that can be regarded as capturing the opposition between Lutheranism and Roman Catholicism. And yet, she adds, the term itself cannot be traced to Luther, appearing in none of his writings. Rather, the idea first appears in a Pietist context in Philipp Jakob Spener’s Pia Desideria of 1675, in which he urges the laity to exercise its spiritual priesthood, something that departs somewhat from Luther’s claim that all baptised Christians participate in Christ’s priestly office. Tracing the development of the idea of the common priesthood from Spener to Friedrich Schleiermacher, Helmer shows how it becomes an identity marker for Protestantism. This leads her to return to Luther himself and ask whether Luther’s notion of the common priesthood represents an alternative ecclesiastical authority to the Catholic priesthood. Her answer is no. If, therefore, Luther’s thought precedes the later opposition between the common and sacerdotal priesthoods, then Luther’s own views on the papacy and the priesthood might be regarded as constitutive of his Catholic reforms. For Helmer, this has important consequences for the issue of church reform today. The common priesthood becomes the theological justification for the criticism of clerics who fall short of the mark and, in turn, Christian political leaders can call the church to reform.

The volume concludes with an epilogue by David Bagchi, who reminds us that historical reflection can both challenge and comfort us. His thoughts on how far we have come from the centuries of conflict are consoling, but he also draws attention to the fact that despite the hugely significant progress made since the quater-centenary of the Reformation (1917), there is still some way to go. Nevertheless, the ecumenical study of Luther provides us with the opportunity for mutual learning and a genuine appropriation of new insights, not merely a formal recognition of the validity of our respective positions. It is our hope as editors that this volume will contribute in some way to the furthering of that mutual learning.

Finally, we would like to sincerely thank all who were involved in making this volume possible, most notably the various sponsors of our International Conference on Martin Luther and Catholic Theology at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, County Kildare, in May 2015: The Scholastic Trust, St Patrick’s College, Maynooth; the Society of Mary in Ireland (Marists); Irish Theological Quarterly; the Lutheran Church in Ireland; and the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany, Dublin. We would also like to thank the staff at Fortress Press for seeing this volume through to publication with their customary courtesy and professionalism.

Declan Marmion, Salvador Ryan, and Gesa E. Thiessen (editors)

31 October 2016

Historical Foundations

1

1517—A Landmark in World History?

Heinz Schilling

1.1

For centuries, the year 1517 has been regarded as a decisive landmark within the development of western society. The reason for such an assessment is, of course, Luther’s publication of the ninety-five theses on indulgences on 31 October of that year.

Celebrating Luther and the Reformation as a landmark in world history started during the Reformation period itself and soon became the heart of Protestant identity. But only during the nineteenth century did its significance in world affairs (as the subtitle of the Archive for Reformation History puts it) take on the quality of a universal, transconfessional axiom, propagated by German academic mandarins—at that time, the opinion leaders of the learned world. The tone was set by the head of German Idealism, the Berlin philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel identified Luther and the Reformation as the breaking through of Innerlichkeit und Individualität (inwardness and individuality), which in his eyes were constitutive for the modern world—in contrast to the Middle Ages, when persons could not act according to their inwardness and individuality but were subordinated to forces outside of their personality.[1]

At the end of the century, this assessment was attributed by Max Weber and Georg Jellinek to a monopoly of Protestantism in the rise of capitalism and democracy. Even at the end of the 1920s and with Nazi barbarism at hand, Adolf von Harnack, professor of theology and the most influential agent in cultural and educational policy during the Weimar period that modernity . . . was initiated by the hammer blows to the doors of the castle church in Wittenberg.[2]

In the meantime, the mandarins of the German academic world have all gone and with them their big picture of a Europe-based world history as well. Gone also is the powerful symbol of Luther hammering a copy of his ninety-five theses to the door of Wittenberg’s castle church, replaced by a less heroic but a more realistic version of the beginning of his protest against Rome: the Augustinian monk sending, without fuss or ceremony,[3] but with respect, copies of the ninety-five theses to his superiors, the Bishop of Brandenburg and the Archbishop of Mainz.

1.2

Not least with regard to the five-hundredth anniversary in 2017, which is already being discussed actively in Germany and in the Protestant world in general, the time has come to widen this Europe- and Protestant-centric perspective by a comparative view. Focusing on the year 1517,[4] this will be done in the following by two steps: first, with regard to reforms within the Papal church and their meaning for early modern and modern societies and civilization; second, with regard to the wider world, the world beyond Europe.

1.2.1 Reform Impulses Parallel to Luther and Wittenberg

It is well known that Luther’s plea for reform, which ended in a breach with Rome, was part of an ongoing dispute about spiritual and institutional reforms within Latin Christianity. Parallel to Luther’s Protestant model, other concepts of reform were developed in different parts of Europe. Due to the Protestant self-interpretation of 1517 as a radical universal change in world history, all these other efforts were discredited because they generated only modifications within the given system, whereas only Luther and his followers established a new ecclesiological and spiritual basis.

However, if we stand back from those antagonistic interpretations we will find a common ground for the Roman and Wittenberg types of reform. In my Luther biography this is exemplified by some crucial parallels between Luther and Emperor Charles V, most impressively at Charles’s death in 1557 at Yuste, when Charles found his last consolation in a Christ piety very close to Luther’s "solus Christus" theology.

Focusing on the year 1517, another striking example can be given: from the beginning, Protestant identity was based on high esteem for the Bible. Luther’s widely admired knowledge of the Bible and his academic position as Bible professor at the young University of Wittenberg were the foundations of his prestige and supported the legitimacy of his theology. Soon it became part of Protestant identity that the new and professional way of reading and interpreting the Bible started with Luther. The same is true with regard to the translation of the Bible into the vernacular.

Neither claims do not match the reality of 1517: the high esteem of vernacular translation before Luther is documented in the Libellus ad Leonem, written by the Camaldolese priests Paolo Giustiniani and Vincenzo Quirini to Pope Leo at the moment of his succession to the cathedra Petri in 1513. These two reform theologians recommended to the new pope that the Bible should be translated and read in the vernacular during services. This would be the only way to make the Christian religion understandable not only to the congregation but also to many priests, who, it was their impression, often read the Latin without having understood the meaning.[5] And with regard to biblical studies in general, the most up-to-date professional project in 1517 was based not in Wittenberg but in the Spanish city of Alcala in Castile.

Due to the famous "legendra negra"—the very successful anti-Spanish propaganda of the Protestant Dutch and English competitors—late medieval and early modern Spain is regarded as a backward country with no vision for reform and modernity. The reality was quite different: Spain (mainly Castile) during the decades around 1500 experienced the strongest efforts for reform in Latin Christendom. The leading figure here was the Archbishop of Toledo, Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, influential Councillor at the Castilian Court, who was regent for the young Archduke Charles, the later Emperor, for several months in 1517. Born in 1436, Cisneros became an adherent of mystical spirituality and of the religious reforms expressed in the teachings of Catherine of Siena, Girolamo Savonarola, and especially Erasmus of Rotterdam. Cisneros promoted the print industry to increase the spread of reform books. In 1499 he established a new University at Alcalá—the soon-to-be famous Complutense, after Complutum, the Roman name of Alcalá. Alcalá immediately became the intellectual and spiritual centre for Humanistic and philological studies in Christian religion and theology, very similar to the Saxon University of Wittenberg, which was founded three years later.

Cisneros’s reform project reached its apogee in spring 1517, when the editorial work on a new Bible edition, started fifteen years previously, came to fruition. A group of high ranking scholars had finished the manuscript of the Old Testament, the New Testament having been printed already in 1514. The Complutensian Polyglot Bible was an impressive document of the Spanish impetus for reform—the first complete Bible in polyglot versions. The Old Testament was arranged with each page in three columns—Hebrew on the outer part, Latin in the middle, and Greek on the inner part of the pages—with Aramaic texts and their translation into Latin at the bottom of the page in annotated form.

The impact of the Complutensian Polyglot Bible was very limited, not so much because of the fact that due to diplomatic and academic quarrels, especially with Erasmus, the manuscript only went into print in the 1520s. Rather, it was in consequence of the completely new framework, which the reform discussions had meanwhile got to by Luther’s intervention in late October 1517. As time went on, the antagonism between Luther’s programme and the anti-Luther policy of Rome grew, an antagonism that soon affected the use of the Bible too.

This polarization set the tone for centuries for the respective interpretations of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation. But this is no longer adequate for a transconfessional evaluation of the events of the early sixteenth century and their impact on European and world history. As the biblicism of Cisneros, Emperor Charles’s Christ piety, and many other examples verify, the Reformation and the reforms of the Roman church had the same roots (Wurzelballen). From this perspective, it seems inadequate to impute to 31 October 1517 the quality of a radical universal change, let alone a change of paradigm in the meaning of Thomas S. Kuhn.

1.2.2 The Wider World

Now to the second widening of perspective: into the world beyond Latin/Western Europe. I hesitate to call it global history because I am not quite convinced that this new paradigm, rightly dominant in the history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, is theoretically and methodologically applicable to the early sixteenth century. In a less ambiguous approach, however, it would be possible to qualify October 1517 and the Reformation by contextualizing the event in a global perspective.

There were several events in 1517 with long-lasting significance in world affairs similar to the ninety-five theses. This is true for the new discoveries of that year, namely with the first contact of Christians in Yucatán with the Mayan civilization of Central America and in the far east by a Portuguese mission to the Imperial Court of China. These encounters with alien civilization, which we cannot discuss here in detail, became fundamental for the emergence of a new world view and self-understanding for Europeans, at least for the educated and the intellectuals. Luther and his Reformation, however, were barely touched by the information about the newly discovered worlds—an observation that should be kept in mind if we are to have a nuanced view of events in the early sixteenth century.

Another event of 1517 deserves our attention in more detail here, though it concerns military history and the history of international affairs, something not highly esteemed in present-day historiography. In 1517, the public debates in Latin Christendom were not at all