For some time now it has become customary to hear high-ranking prelates of the Church offer acknowledgements and praise for the figure of Luther. Everything has been said: from moderate commendations in which it is admitted that he may have been moved by a good and upright intention, to excessive praise in which he is placed as part of the great Tradition of the Church, or it is even admitted that he was right with regard to the doctrine of justification. From the perspective of a layman, in this article I want to share what I consider right and wrong about these politically correct praises, in our time, of Luther’s figure and doctrine.
On Martin Luther’s good intentions
To know with certainty what Luther’s intentions were in acting as he did in the time of the Protestant Reformation is impossible, for, as we all know, the internal forum is known only to God. What we can do is form an approximate and fallible opinion, avoiding rash judgment, on the basis of what Luther himself admitted and of the objective study of historical facts. From this perspective, in the best of cases, the most that could be admitted, as a mere possibility, is that Luther may have acted with what is known as an upright conscience, although an erroneous one.
As we have traditionally been taught, one acts with an upright conscience when one judges the goodness or malice of an act with grounds and prudence, unlike a false conscience, which judges lightly and without serious foundation. By contrast, one acts with a true conscience when, besides acting with an upright conscience, one is correct in one’s judgment and acts according to the objective moral order. An upright conscience should not be confused with a true conscience. A person can act with an upright conscience when, within his limitations, he has made every effort to act correctly, regardless of whether he is right (true conscience) or mistaken through some speculative error (erroneous conscience). One acts with an invincibly erroneous upright conscience when, after having done everything possible to act correctly, he nevertheless errs while acting according to what his conscience dictates; a conscience which, in that case, would be deficiently formed.
In Luther’s own writings we find him admitting that he suffered an intense inner struggle, in which he was tormented by the thought that he might have acted wrongly, but that he finally became convinced that he was acting for the glory of God. Luther wrote in this regard:
“Once (the devil) tormented me, and almost strangled me with Paul’s words to Timothy; so much so that my heart wanted to dissolve in my breast: ‘You were the cause of so many monks and nuns leaving their monasteries.’ The devil skillfully removed from my sight the texts on justification… I thought: ‘You alone are the one who commands these things; and, if everything were false, you would be responsible for so many souls falling into hell.’ In such temptation I came to suffer infernal torments until God brought me out of it and confirmed to me that my teachings were the word of God and true doctrine” (Martin Luther, Tisch. 141 I 62-63.)
“Before everything else, what we must establish is whether our doctrine is the word of God. If this is clear, we are certain that the cause we defend can and must be maintained, and there is no demon that can overthrow it… In my heart I have already rejected every other religious doctrine, whatever it may be, and I have overcome that most troublesome thought which the heart murmurs: ‘Are you the only one who possesses the word of God? And do the others not have it?’… I find such an argument valid against all the prophets, to whom it was also said: ‘You are few; we are the people of God’” (Martin Luther, Tisch. 130 I 53-54)
It seems that Luther never freed himself from doubt and that, over the years, a persistent remorse of conscience returned to him, which he identified as temptations of the devil. In 1535, at the already advanced age of 52, he admits that he still finds the argument “very specious and robust of the pseudo-apostles,” who challenge him in this way: “The apostles, the Holy Fathers and their successors left us these teachings; such is the mind and faith of the Church. Now, it is impossible that Christ should have allowed his Church to err for so many centuries. You alone do not know more than so many holy men and than the whole Church… Who are you to dare to dissent from all of them and violently impose on us a different dogma? When Satan presses this argument and almost conspires with the flesh and with reason, the conscience is terrified and despairs, and it is necessary continually to enter within oneself and say: Even if Saints Cyprian, Ambrose and Augustine; even if Saint Peter, Saint Paul and Saint John; even if the angels of heaven teach you something else, this is what I know for certain: that I do not teach human things, but divine ones; that is, that (in the matter of salvation) I attribute everything to God, nothing to men” (WA 40,1 p.130-31)
The truth is that, if such a good intention existed, pride little by little led him to move ever farther from the evangelical ideal, filling his heart with hatred and curses, as he himself admitted:
“Since I cannot pray, I have to curse. I will say: Hallowed be thy name, but I will add: Cursed, condemned, dishonored be the name of the papists and of all who blaspheme thy name. I will say: Thy kingdom come, and I will add: Cursed, condemned, destroyed be the papacy with all the kingdoms of the earth that are contrary to thy kingdom. I will say: Thy will be done, and I will add: Cursed, condemned, dishonored and annihilated be all the thoughts and plans of the papists and of all who plot against thy will and counsel. Truly, thus I pray every day, orally and with the heart, without ceasing, and with me all who believe in Christ” (Martin Luther, WA 30,3 p.470).
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, before becoming Pope, made this point:
“It must be borne in mind not only that there are Catholic anathemas against Luther’s doctrine, but also that there are very explicit disqualifications of Catholicism on the part of the reformer and his companions; reprobations that culminate in Luther’s phrase that we have remained divided for eternity. This is the moment to refer to those words full of rage pronounced by Luther regarding the Council of Trent, in which his rejection of the Catholic Church finally became clear: “The Pope, the cardinals and all that rabble who idolize and sanctify him should be taken prisoner; they should be dragged away as blasphemers and then have their tongues torn out by the roots and all be hanged in a row on the gallows… Then they could be allowed to hold the council or whatever they wanted from the gallows, or in hell with the devils”. (Card. Joseph Ratzinger, Iglesia, Ecumenismo y Política. Nuevos ensayos de eclesiología, Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, Madrid 1987, p. 120).
Once immersed in that spiral of madness, everyone who differed with Luther on any point of doctrine or whom he considered his enemy became the object of the coarsest and most vulgar epithets. He calls Duke George of Saxony “murderer,” “traitor,” “infamous,” “hired killer,” “bloodshedder,” “shameless scoundrel,” “liar,” “accursed,” “dog,” “bloodthirsty,” “demon.” Insults against the Pope were always a constant and are almost impossible to count: “accursed antichrist,” “papal little donkey,” “papal ass,” “bishop of hermaphrodites and pope of sodomites,” “apostle of the devil.” Not only Catholics were the object of his insults; they also reached Protestants themselves. He called Thomas Müntzer an “archdemon who perpetrates nothing but robberies, murders and bloodshed”; his ally Andreas Karlstadt, when he diverged from him, becomes a “sophist, that mad mind,” “much madder than the papists.” The same happens with Ulrich Zwingli, who, when he denies the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, becomes “most worthy of sacred hatred, since he acts so insolently and maliciously in the name of the holy word of God” and a “servant of the devil.”
It is evident that Luther was not exactly the ideal person to try to reform the Church; and now, so many centuries after those events, it is clear that the figure of the Protestant reformer need not continue separating Catholics and Protestants. I myself, who feel no sympathy for so sinister a character, would have no problem admitting that at the beginning he may have had just indignation over abuses in the traffic of indulgences, or that he was sincerely convinced that he was in the truth. Admitting this, I do not see as granting him an ounce of reason.
On the obscuring of the sense of the gratuity of salvation in the Catholic Church
But another of the praises commonly heard regarding Luther’s figure, and one that is already beginning to be worrying, is that in which it is admitted and maintained that for centuries the Catholic Church lost the sense of the gratuity of divine salvation and that it was Luther who had the merit of recovering it. In this regard, one can mention specifically the preaching that Father Raniero Cantalamessa gave in March of the present year in Saint Peter’s Basilica, where he stated the following:
“There is a danger that someone may hear about the justice of God and, not knowing its meaning, instead of being encouraged, become frightened. Saint Augustine had already explained it clearly: “The ‘justice of God,’ he wrote, is that by which he makes us just through his grace; exactly as ‘the salvation of the Lord’ (Ps 3:9) is that by which he saves us” (The Spirit and the Letter, 32,56). In other words, the justice of God is the act by which God makes just, pleasing to him, those who believe in his Son. It is not a matter of doing justice, but of making just. «Luther had the merit of bringing this truth to light, after the sense of it had been lost for centuries, at least in Christian preaching; and this above all is what Christendom owes to the Reformation, which next year marks its fifth centenary. “When I discovered this,” the reformer later wrote, “I felt that I was reborn and it seemed to me that the gates of paradise were opened wide” [Preface to the Latin works, Weimar ed., 54, p.186.]» ”
Although it is possible that in Luther’s time some preachers of indulgences may have left the doctrine of the gratuity of grace in the background (I do not know to what extent), it is not fair to attribute this to the Christian preaching of the Church for centuries. As the priest and doctor of theology José María Iraburu rightly noted in an article published recently, to maintain this is to commit a great injustice against those preachers who had the greatest prestige and influence in the Christendom of their time, both before, during and after Luther’s time, and who always taught the true Catholic doctrine of grace and justification, and were free from every plague of Pelagianism or semi-Pelagianism. Among them he recalled Saint Hildegard of Bingen (+1179), Saint Dominic de Guzmán (+1221), Saint Francis of Assisi (+1226), Saint Anthony of Padua (+1231), Blessed Ricerio of Mucia (+1236), David of Augsburg (+1272), Saint Thomas Aquinas (+1274), Saint Bonaventure (+1274), Saint Gertrude of Helfta (+1302), Saint Angela of Foligno (+1309), Meister Eckhart (+1328), Tauler (+1361), Blessed Henry Suso (+1366), Saint Bridget of Sweden (+1373), Saint Catherine of Siena (+1380), Ruysbroeck (+1381), Blessed Raymond of Capua (+1399), Saint Vincent Ferrer (+1419), Saint Bernardino of Siena (+1444), Saint John of Capistrano (+1456), Thomas à Kempis (+1471), Saint Catherine of Genoa (+1507), Bernabé de Palma (+1532), Francisco de Osuna (+1540), Saint Ignatius of Loyola (+1556), Saint Peter of Alcántara (+1562), Saint John of Ávila (+1569), and so many others.
Can it really be fairly affirmed that these saints, doctors, preachers and spiritual masters did not know in their preaching the gratuity of man’s justification by grace, which has its beginning in faith? Did they obscure in their time, “for centuries,” “at least in preaching” to the people, the understanding of salvation as pure grace granted freely by the Lord? The sermons of all these masters and doctors, preserved today, are clear evidence that this is not true; and although we may have the noblest desire to improve relations with our Lutheran brothers, the solution cannot be to throw our ancestors in the faith unjustly under the horses’ hooves.
Differences between Catholic and Lutheran doctrine
To understand what real differences still subsist between Catholic and Lutheran doctrine, we must summarize, however briefly, the errors of the former German monk.
Concupiscence is always sin
Catholics believe that sin is committed by consenting to the sinful impulse, not simply by feeling it. For Luther, by contrast, concupiscence is already sin in itself, formal and imputable. This first error led Luther to a life of torment, because despite all the good works he tried to do, he was unable to attain inner peace, feeling constantly in mortal sin and close to eternal damnation. In this psychological state Luther is led toward his second error: the total denial of human freedom.
Man is not free
As Luther maintains in his work De Servo Arbitrio, original sin has totally destroyed the free will of the human person. For the former German monk, man is already incapable of doing any good work; therefore all his works, even if they are beautiful in appearance, are nevertheless, and probably, mortal sins… and if the works of the just are sin, as his conclusion affirms, still more so will be those of people who are not yet justified.
Catholic doctrine teaches, by contrast, that as a result of original sin free will is weakened but not annihilated, and that although the grace of God is indispensable for performing salutary acts (acts that lead to salvation), one can still perform morally good works without the help of grace.
Man is justified by grace alone through fiducial faith, or faith alone.
Luther’s third error starts from the previous one, for he concludes that if man is not free, those who are saved are saved because God grants them salvation in an absolutely passive and extrinsic way. Man cooperates in nothing toward his salvation; everything is resolved by the subjective certainty of having been justified by faith through the imputation of Christ’s merits. It is enough to accept Christ as savior and trust that one is saved in order to assure salvation, regardless of whether one acts according to the will of God or fails to keep the commandments.
From this perspective, man remains a sinner but is declared just, in a way similar to taking a ragged and tattered man and covering him, without washing him, with a splendidly white robe. Looking at him, the judge would see the white and resplendent robe (which represents Jesus Christ, who died for our sins) instead of the ragged man underneath.
Catholics, by contrast, believe that we can cooperate with our justification, not by our own strength, but because grace inspires us and enables us to do so. We also believe that God not only declares us just, but also makes us just; that he sanctifies and renews us, so that, through grace, we are a new creature. Consequently, we must live as a new creature. Faith must become effective in love, in the keeping of the commandments and in works of charity.
Lutheran doctrine, even when piously varnished, and although it seeks to give grace primacy, in the end presents a deficient notion of grace, believing it powerless to transform man and make him truly holy, contenting itself only with declaring him just, while leaving him filthy and sinful.
The justified cannot lose their salvation
If one erroneously concludes that man is saved by faith alone, it is understandable that one would conclude that the justified believer cannot lose his salvation even if he does not obey the commandments and commits grave sins. Hence in 1521, on the first of August, Luther writes in a letter to Melanchthon:
“If you are a preacher of grace, preach a true and not a fictitious grace; if grace is true, you must bear a true and not a fictitious sin. Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly… while we are here [in this world] we must sin… No sin will separate us from the Lamb, even if we fornicate and murder a thousand times a day”.
Catholics, by contrast, believe that the justified believer can fall from the state of God’s grace if he commits mortal sin. The Gospel is full of warnings in this sense. Christ tells us that the branch (believer) that ceases to bear fruit (to do good works) is cut off and thrown into the fire (John 15), and makes clear that not only the one who confesses faith in him will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of God (Matthew 7:21). When the rich young man asks Jesus what he must do to be saved, He answers that he should keep the commandments (Matthew 19:17). The Epistle of James, in chapter 2, contains practically a formal refutation of Luther’s theses, to the point that he tried by every means to exclude it from Scripture and called it “the epistle of straw.”
The errors derived from Luther’s doctrine
But Luther’s errors did not end there, and like a row of falling cards, they continued multiplying. In this sense Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger pointed out:
“Luther, after the definitive rupture, not only categorically rejected the papacy, but described the Catholic doctrine of the Mass as idolatrous, because he saw in it a relapse into the Law, with the consequent denial of the Gospel. To reduce all these confrontations to simple misunderstandings is, in my view, an Enlightenment pretension that does not give the true measure of what those passionate struggles were, nor the weight of reality present in their claims. The true question, therefore, can only consist in asking ourselves to what extent today it is possible to overcome the positions of that time and reach a consensus that goes beyond that time. In other words: unity requires new steps and is not achieved through interpretive artifices. If at that time [the division] took place through opposed religious experiences that could find no space in the vital field of the transmitted ecclesial doctrine, neither today is unity forged only through varied discussions, but through the power of religious experience. Indifference is a means of union only in appearance.”
(Card. Joseph Ratzinger, Iglesia, Ecumenismo y Política. Nuevos ensayos de eclesiología, Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, Madrid 1987, pp. 120-121).
In simple language, the differences exist, and ignoring them will not make them disappear, a point I will address next.
Are Catholics and Protestants today in agreement regarding the doctrine of justification?
Pope Francis, alluding to the Catholic-Lutheran agreement regarding justification of 1999, declared in an interview that “today, Protestants and Catholics are in agreement on the doctrine of justification.”
With all the respect the Pope deserves, and understanding that this kind of statement may be motivated by the good intention of seeking rapprochement between Catholics and Protestants, I believe that, if we are realistic, we must accept that the situation is very different. First, it should be qualified that this declaration was signed only by the Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation. That Federation represents only a group of Lutheran churches, which do not include even 7% of Protestantism and not even the whole of Lutheranism. It is a regrettable but certain fact that rejection of the agreement was practically total among the rest of the Christian denominations, including Baptists, Methodists, Calvinists, Pentecostals, etc.
And, as Luis Fernando Pérez rightly noted in an article published in Infocatólica, even within Lutheranism itself that agreement was widely rejected by hundreds of theologians and by the Evangelical Church of Denmark (Lutheran), with an argument full of common sense: it is a text that Luther himself would have rejected, since it comes close to Catholic doctrine on justification and moves away from the sola fide of the former German Augustinian monk.
The Protestant theologian José Grau explained it as follows:
“The so-called agreement on justification of 1999, like the conversations that served as prolegomena in the last two decades of the twentieth century, does with the doctrine of justification the same thing Trent did with Augustinianism: they move semantically closer to Luther (although without condemning him by name, specifically, nor lifting the Vatican excommunication that weighs upon him). And just as at Trent the Roman church decaffeinated Augustine (our note: this is false), now these Lutherans, arm in arm with the Catholics, decaffeinate Luther.
The practical result is none other than the neutralization of the “dynamite” of the Reformed, Lutheran, Protestant and above all biblical message (the Gospel is the power (dynamite) of God for salvation to everyone who believes…” Romans 1:16), disabling the detonator of the doctrines of grace through a theological terminology that seems to please everyone if read straight through, without going deeply into the concepts. Some affirmations balance others of a different sign, almost never entering into the fundamental core of the question.
As Pedro Puigvert writes in a letter to “La Vanguardia” (5-11-99): “Catholics have yielded nothing. Because this matter of confessing that justification is the work of God’s grace they have always believed, together with human cooperation which now turns out also to be the fruit of grace, although Scripture denies it when it says: ‘Now to one who works, wages are not credited as a gift but as something due; but to one who does not work but believes in the one who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness’ (Romans 4:5-6). Rome has won the doctrinal battle. If Luther were to raise his head! ”
Personally, I would like to share the Pope’s assessment and believe that Catholics and Evangelicals have truly come to profess one and the same faith regarding the issue of justification; but the harsh reality is otherwise, namely that not even Protestants themselves agree among themselves on this topic.
Was Luther right with regard to the doctrine of justification?
Today it is fashionable to say Luther was right; it is politically correct. Do Catholics and Evangelicals now believe that man is justified through the grace of God? Yes, but we have always believed the same. The problem arises when it is affirmed, with regard to the real doctrinal differences that existed and exist between Catholic and Lutheran doctrine, that Luther was the one who was right.
If Luther’s doctrine, which was dogmatically condemned by an Ecumenical and dogmatic Council, turns out to have been the true doctrine, then we may as well turn out the lights and go home, because then the Protestants will be right that we need neither Popes nor Councils, if, as they maintain, they can be mistaken when defining what is a dogma of faith.
And if it is all a diplomatic gesture, it is necessary to remember, as we have always been taught, that an ecumenism not based on truth is not true ecumenism; and however much we pose together and smiling for the photo, we will not be any closer to one another than we were 500 years ago.
Author: José Miguel Arráiz
