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FIRST THINGS: On the Square » Blog Archive » Are Protestants Heretics?

To see what I am driving at, let me use two extreme examples: docetism and Martin Luther’s views on justification.

Docetism was a heresy that arose in the late first century and lasted for a while into the second. It claimed that Jesus had only an apparent body (the word docetic comes from the Greek word meaning “to appear”). Now, on that issue, no agreement is possible between the orthodox party and the “choosers.” For Jesus either has a real body, made of flesh and bones, that will die someday, or he doesn’t. Furthermore, to assert that his body was merely apparent, a diaphanous vesture and nothing more, would be to alter the whole schema of salvation as proposed by the Christian gospel. Everything in Christian dogmatics changes if we are allowed to hold that Jesus had no real body. A proper evaluation of the flesh would be lost, for starters, as would the meaning of what we have been saved from: not from the body as such but from sin, which condemns the body to corruption and death. Which is why St. Ignatius of Antioch in the late first century fought so vigorously against docetism in his letters: There’d hardly be anything left of the gospel if that view had won out. And which is also why, if there were still any docetists living today, you would never see a group sponsored by Religion and Public Life called “Docetists and Catholics Together,” or one by Wheaton College called “Evangelicals and Docetists Together.”

But such is not the case with Luther on justification. This issue is notoriously complex, and to cite it for my purposes I will need to call upon the indulgence, so to speak, of my readers. For my rough-and-ready purposes, let’s just say that Luther stressed the forensic side of justification, while the Council of Trent insisted that justification brought about a real transformation in the soul of the incipient Christian–justification in the literal sense, a making just. Luther, however, insisted that Paul’s Greek word for justification was drawn from the law courts (true enough) and thus can never lose its forensic dimension. By that he meant–drawing on the obvious fact that Christians continue to sin–that the most central meaning of justification is God’s acquittal of the sinner in spite of and still in view of the Christian’s status as mired in sin, the verdict notwithstanding.
Luther’s point can be easily satirized and misconstrued–and by Catholic polemicists was–as if he were saying that behavior doesn’t matter, and that God was “letting us off the hook.” To take a modern analogy, the Catholic controversialists were in effect comparing Luther’s view of God to the California jury that acquitted O.J. Simpson of charges of murdering his wife even though he was obviously guilty–and here he is now living the high life and playing golf in Florida! Is that really the kind of justice we want to ascribe to God? But such a charge abuses Luther’s position, for he was more than willing to insist that a Christian’s justification must be reflected in the transformation of his behavior if a genuine faith were really the material cause of his justification.

Similarly, the Council of Trent was extremely nuanced in its decree on justification. For one thing, it had Paul’s letters to consider, which could hardly be made to say the opposite of what they do say. Additionally, the overpowering authority of St. Augustine on the matter could not be gainsaid. Thus the path to a superficial works-righteousness was blocked from the outset. No doubt, later Protestant polemicists claimed that Catholics were taught that they could “earn” salvation by going on pilgrimages, doing works of charity, and the like. But if Catholics believed that (and maybe a lot did on the popular level), they had no support in Trent’s carefully crafted decree.

This is not the venue for outlining the complicated nuances of Lutheran and Catholic teaching on justification. So please indulge me again (if you will allow the Tridentine pun for the last time) and let me assert my conclusion without all the attendant footnotes to establish my case (this blog entry, after all, is not my Habilitationsschrift).

I do hereby conclude: When the Western Church fissiparated in the sixteen century, the Reformers took a portion of the essential patrimony of the Church with them, and they thereby left both the Roman Church and themselves the poorer for it.

Did I just read that right, a Roman Catholic who doesn’t think Lutherans should be called heretics? What he recognizes is that words and their definitions are a serious barrier to real conversation. He says justification and we mean sanctification. His “making just” is our “making holy.” I’m not sure that we really see a big difference there. Of course Lutherans have criticized themselves and continue to over the proper place and expectations of the Christian life.

He recognizes a difference on justification as not prohibiting some degree of Christian fellowship. What I think he might miss is that Luther’s attack on the justification by works “heresy” (!) was intended to point a false Christology. The Doctrine of Christ is the doctrine by which the church stands or falls. A false understanding of justification corrupts the doctrine of Christ. Again, definitional challenges plague us from having a real discussion even 425 years later.

Read the whole article. It’s extremely well written and a fascinating journey/opinion on church fellowship.

FIRST THINGS: On the Square » Blog Archive » Are Protestants Heretics?

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