John Henry Cardinal Alfred E Newman

First published September 4, 2011; republished in honor of Newman’s canonization as a Roman Catholic saint.

Alister McGrath’s Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, Third Edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ©2005), doesn’t end at the Reformation. He continues to review developments in the various doctrines of justification as they proceeded through the Lutheran, Reformed, and Anglican schools of thought.

McGrath writes about the “seriously and irredeemably inaccurate” historical and theological analyses that John Henry Cardinal Newman did of Luther’s doctrine of Justification. That assessment — “seriously and irredeemably inaccurate” — is based on his review of Newman’s 1837 Lectures on Justification.

Newman, now a Roman Catholic saint, is a hero to many of today’s generation of militant Roman Catholics. Newman’s theory of “the development of doctrine” provides the underpinning for the modern (Vatican II) version of Roman Catholic doctrine. Of course, Roman Catholics expect that Newman was right, or substantially right, about most of the things he said.

But on the contrary, Newman’s Lectures were “seriously and irredeemably inaccurate” in many respects, and McGrath documents this thoroughly.

McGrath says of Newman:

The “Protestant” Reformation

Today, October 31, 2016, is the 499th anniversary of the start of what is known as “the Protestant Reformation”. As Alister McGrath explains, however, the use of the word “Protestant” regarding the events of October 31, 1517 is anachronistic:

The term “Protestant” … requires comment. It derives from the aftermath of the Second Diet of Speyer (February 1529), which voted to end the toleration of Lutheranism in Germany. In April of the same year, six German princes and 14 cities protested against this oppressive measure, defending freedom of conscience and the rights of religious minorities. The term “Protestant” derives from this protest.

It is therefore not strictly correct to apply the term “Protestant” to individuals prior to April 1529 or to speak of events prior to that date as constituting “the Protestant Reformation.” The term “evangelical” is often used in the literature to refer to the reforming factions at Wittenberg and elsewhere (e.g., in France and Switzerland) prior to this date. Although the word “Protestant” is often used to refer to this earlier period, this use is, strictly speaking, an anachronism.

McGrath, Alister E.. Reformation Thought: An Introduction (p. 6). Wiley. Kindle Edition.

Did the Early Church Teach ‘Faith Alone’?

Alister McGrath’s work on justification, Iustitia Dei, provides an exceptional historical overview. He provides a discussion of doctrine from approximately the time of Augustine (and don’t forget “Augustine’s Goof”, which led in the first place to his understanding of justification as “a process”).

McGrath said that the doctrine, in the first 350 years of church history, was “inchohate and ill-defined”. Now in this new work by Thomas Schreiner, Faith Alone: The Doctrine of Justification, provides, among other things, an expansion and clarification of what McGrath had said about this period. Here are several conclusions of that particular segment of his work from a review by Jeremy Bouma:

“In the writings of the earliest Christians we do not find many references to justification,” Schreiner notes, “but the evidence we do have supports the notion that most early church fathers understood justification forensically.” (26)

For instance, he notes Clement emphasized God’s gracious work in the lives of believers; justification is granted by God to those who exercise faith; and good works result from faith, they’re not the grounds for it.

Likewise, “Ignatius emphasizes that believers live according to grace and center on Jesus Christ…Justification for Ignatius centers on Jesus Christ, and the atonement that comes through his blood, so that Christ is understood as a substitute.” (28)

Schreiner quotes the Epistle to Diognetus as an example of an early text where “justification by grace and by the substitutionary work of Christ are clearly taught”:

Divine action

http://www.craigkeener.com/divine-action-presentation-at-oxford-video/

Empirically equivalent

The following is from Alister McGrath's The Dawkins Delusion? Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine (pp 36-37):

[L]et's consider a statement made by Dawkins in his first work, The Selfish Gene.

[Genes] swarm in huge colonies, safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from the outside world, communicating with it by tortuous indirect routes, manipulating it by remote control. They are in you and me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence.

We see here a powerful and influential interpretation of a basic scientific concept. But are these strongly interpretative statements themselves actually scientific?

To appreciate the issue, consider the following rewriting of this paragraph by the celebrated Oxford physiologist and systems biologist Denis Noble. What is proven empirical fact is retained; what is interpretative has been changed, this time offering a somewhat different reading of things.

[Genes] are trapped in huge colonies, locked inside highly intelligent beings, moulded by the outside world, communicating with it by complex processes, through which, blindly as if by magic, function emerges. They are in you and me; we are the system that allows their code to be read; and their preservation is totally dependent on the joy that we experience in reproducing ourselves. We are the ultimate rationale for their existence.

Dawkins and Noble see things in completely different ways...They simply cannot both be right. Both smuggle in a series of quite different value judgments and metaphysical statements. Yet their statements are "empirically equivalent." In other words, they both have equally good grounding in observation and experimental evidence. So which is right? Which is more scientific? How could we decide which is to be preferred on scientific grounds? As Noble observes — and Dawkins concurs — "no-one seems to be able to think of an experiment that would detect an empirical difference between them."

The Crafting of the 4th Century Roman Church, Doctrine, and Papacy

There is no question that there were “bishops” in Rome, likely beginning in the late second or early third centuries. But these were not “bishops” as we would understand them today.

Roger Collins, in his work “Keepers of the Keys of Heaven: A History of the Papacy”, New York, NY: Basic Books, a Member of the Perseus Books Group, ©2009) wrote:

Not everyone is convinced that what has been called a monarchic bishop, with unquestioned authority over all of the Christian clergy in the city, was to be found in Rome even as early as [155-166], and Fabian (236-250) has been proposed as the first bishop of Rome in the full sense. It is probably not necessary to take so extreme a view. The idea that in principle there should be a single bishop at the head of the whole Christian community of the city existed well before his time. On the other hand, even after 250 the authority of the bishop over all of the Christians in the city could not easily be enforced, as it was impossible to impose uniformity in so large a city when the Christians remained legally proscribed and danger of prosecution by the state (pg 14, emphasis added).

In fact, there were disputes – “street fighting among their followers” – for control long after the 250 date. Collins recounts, “because of the house-church system, such rival bishops could co-exist for as long as they had the backing of some of the city’s many Christian groups. But the divisions usually resulted in violent clashes between the partisans of the two claimants, and in all cases the imperial government intervened to end the bloodshed and to send one or both of the rivals into exile, as happened in 235, and would do so again in 306/7 and 308” (Collins 25-26).

After the conversion of Constantine and the legalization of Christianity in Rome, the bishops of Rome found that they had wealth and splendor, and began building monuments to themselves:

They [bishops of Rome] set about [creating a Christian Rome] by building churches, converting the modest tituli (community church centres) into something grander, and creating new and more public foundations, though to begin with nothing that rivaled the great basilicas at the Lateran and St. Peter’s. Over the next hundred years their churches advanced into the city – Pope Mark’s (336) San Marco within a stone’s throw of the Capitol, Pope Liberius’ massive basilica on the Esquiline (now Santa Maria Maggiore), Pope Damasus’ Santa Anastasia at the foot of the Palatine, Pope Julius’ foundation on the site of the present Santa Maria in Trastevere, Santa Pudenziana near the Baths of Diocletian under Pope Anastasius (399-401), Santa Sabina among the patrician villas on the Aventine under Pope Celestine (422-32).

These churches were a mark of the upbeat confidence of post-Constantinian Christianity in Rome. The popes were potentates, and began to behave like it. Damasus perfectly embodied this growing grandeur. An urbane career cleric like his predecessor Liberius, at home in the wealthy salons of the city, he was also a ruthless power-broker, and he did not he did not hesitate to mobilize both the city police and [a hired mob of gravediggers with pickaxes] to back up his rule…(Eamon Duffy, “Saints and Sinners, A History of the Popes, New Haven and London, Yale Nota Bene, Yale University Press ©1997 and 2001, pgs 37-38). (Eamon Duffy, “Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes”, New Haven and London, Yale Nota Bene, Yale University Press ©1997 and 2001, pgs 37-38).

But the only changes weren’t architectural changes. During the fourth century, these bishops of Rome sought to put their own doctrinal marks on the church.

Since the mid third century there had been a growing assimilation of Christian and secular culture. It is already in evidence long before Constantine with the art of the Christian burial sites round the city, the catacombs. With the imperial adoption of Christianity, this process accelerated. In Damasus’ Rome, wealthy Christians gave each other gifts in which Christian symbols went alongside images of Venus, nereids and sea-monsters, and representations of pagan-style wedding-processions.

This Romanisation of the Church was not all a matter of worldiness, however. The bishops of the imperial capital had to confront the Roman character of their city and their see. They set about finding a religious dimension to that Romanitias which would have profound implications for the nature of the papacy. Pope Damasus in particular took this task to heart. He set himself to interpret Rome’s past in the light not of paganism, but of Christianity. He would Latinise the Church, and Christianise Latin. He appointed as his secretary the greatest Latin scholar of the day, the Dalmatian presbyter Jerome, and commissioned him to turn the crude dog-Latin of the Bible versions [currently] used in the church into something more urbane and polished. Jerome’s work was never completed, but the Vulgate Bible, as it came to be called, rendered the scriptures of ancient Israel and the early Church into an idiom which Romans could recognize as their own. The covenant legislation of the ancient tribes was now cast in the language of the Roman law-courts [emphasis added], and Jerome’s version of the promises to Peter used familiar Roman legal words for binding and loosing -- ligare and solver -- which underlined the legal character of the Pope’s unique claims (Duffy, 38-39).

It should be noted that this “Latinization” was one of the things that the Reformation worked to undo. It was the focus of the motto, “ad fontes” [“To the sources”].

As Alister McGrath has noted in his “Introduction to Christian Theology,” “the Vulgate translation of several major New Testament texts could not be justified.” Nevertheless, he said, “a number of medieval church practices and beliefs were based upon these texts.”

So in addition to some of the forgeries and works of fiction upon which the papacy aggrandized itself, Roman doctrines themselves were founded upon or expanded with translation errors.

Augustine, Pelagius, and lost councils

Following up with my previous post, “How the early church lost its understanding of grace”, I’m picking up with Bavinck’s discussion of Pelagianism and Semi-Pelagianism, from Chapter 9, “The Order of Salvation”, of Volume 3: Sin and Salvation in Christ.

Pelagius (ca. AD 354 – ca. AD 420/440) strayed much farther from the doctrine of grace than any of his predecessors; he abandoned the Christian foundation on which all of them still based themselves and renewed the self-sufficient principle of pagan philosophy, specifically that of the Stoics. Not only did he sever all connections between Adam’s sin and ours, so that neither guilt nor pollution nor even death was a consequence of the first transgression, but Christianity itself lost its absolute significance. Salvation was not bound to Christ but could also be obtained by following the natural law (lex naturae) and positive law (lex positiva). Hence, in Pelagius’s theology there could be no internal grace, no regenerating grace of the Holy Spirit which not only illumined the mind but also bent the will (508).

Here is where we begin to see some resemblance between Pelagianism and Roman Catholicism. Roman Catholicism holds that human nature “is wounded in the natural powers proper to it”, compared with the Reformed doctrine of “total depravity”. Not that this resemblance with Pelagianism is causation. There is some more history here, and Bavinck captures it well.

Roman Catholic authority and the Soviet propagandistic “correct” understanding of things

Given that Fr Bryan thinks that the Roman Catholic hierarchy is able to “[ponder] the word of God in [its] heart and [hear] the voice of God accurately” in such a way that it can “proclaim the truth of the Gospel to the World”, I asked him, How do you account for something like this?

In the link provided, I note that “Augustine's understanding/translation of iustitificare, a Latin term which he held to mean “to make righteous” was “a permissible interpretation of the Latin word”, was “unacceptable as an interpretation of the Hebrew concept which underlies it” – and that this mistranslation became the foundation for the whole Roman Catholic teaching on “justification”.

That is, Augustine missed quite thoroughly the concept of what the Old Testament meant when it said that God was going to “justify” Israel and bring salvation.

I noted further, “This isn’t the only case in which a mistranslation gets made into [Roman Catholic] dogma”.

Fr Bryan did not respond, but this exchanged followed:

Someone named Dennis said:

John,

Regarding #957, your argument goes under the assumption that McGrath is correct and Augustine is wrong. So, it all depends on whom you take as your authority. You implicitly trust McGrath more than Augustine. I disagree. As a matter of fact, I think most people would trust Augustine much more than they would trust McGrath.

I replied:

Dennis, your appeal to authority is very revealing.

There’s no assumption at all, in the whole piece. We know that words have actual meanings, and we know what those meanings are, and that Augustine didn’t now Hebrew. We know where his understanding of iustitificare came from, and how, precisely, things went wrong. There’s not an assumption in the whole piece.

Dennis replied:

What I’m saying is we all have an authority. Mine is the Church who has decided on this. Yours is your understanding of McGrath. I think your reading of McGrath is biased on your understanding of Scripture and your disposition on the Catholic Church.

My authority, Dennis, happens to be “what’s true”. What’s really going on there. Your appeal to “authority” to decide a translation issue reminds me of something that Václav Havel wrote in The Power of the Powerless, when he was locked in the deepest bowels of the Soviet system of propaganda:

For even though our dictatorship has long since alienated itself completely from the social movements that give birth to it, the authenticity of these movements (and I am thinking of the proletarian and socialist movements of the nineteenth century) gives it undeniable historicity. These origins provided a solid foundation of sorts on which it could build until it became the utterly new social and political reality it is today, which has become so inextricably a part of the structure of the modern world. A feature of those historical origins was the “correct” understanding of social conflicts in the period from which those original movements emerged. The fact that at the very core of this “correct” understanding there was a genetic disposition toward the monstrous alienation characteristic of its subsequence development is not essential here.

Rome provides the “correct” understanding authoritatively, even if the underlying facts are all wrong. Just like the brutal Soviet regime.

Which came first, however? Which learned this tactic from the other?

It’s true, correlation is not causation. But if its “genetic disposition” looks like a duck, and walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, you have to ask yourself at some point, is it related?

Augustine goofs on justification; the whole medieval world followed him in his goof, and the Council of Trent ratified this error infallibly.

Since the Reformation, there have been a couple of major issues that have never been resolved. The issue of “justification” is an instance in which Roman Catholic “Tradition” clearly got something wrong – it turned a mistranslation into a dogma – and yet, the entire history of the Christian church since that time has been unable to resolve this issue. Rome claimed that it had the proper authority to define this dogma, and once defined by a council (Trent) and ratified by a pope, its dogma was “infallible”. The Reformers and their succeeding generations refused to accept the error.

The error started with the fifth-century theologian Augustine. The Hebrew Scriptures were written in Hebrew. Later they were translated into Greek. Augustine knew only a little Greek, and he worked primarily in Latin. It was Augustine’s misunderstanding of a Hebrew (Old Testament) concept that led to 1000 years of medieval speculation, and finally the codification of Augustine’s mistake at the Council of Trent.

The following article goes into some detail on this entire process.

* * *

Historically, according to Alister McGrath (professor of Historical Theology at Oxford), “it will be clear that he medieval period was astonishingly faithful to the teaching of Augustine on the question of the nature of justification, where the Reformers departed from it” (“Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification ”, Third edition, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, ©2005, pg 216). However, the key to this was that Augustine's understanding/translation of iustitificare, a Latin term which he held to mean “to make righteous” was “a permissible interpretation of the Latin word”, it was “unacceptable as an interpretation of the Hebrew concept which underlies it.”

As McGrath (“Luther’s Theology of the Cross,” Oxford, UK: and Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, ©1985, 1990) pointed out elsewhere:

There are two aspects to Luther’s discovery of ‘the righteousness of God’. The first relates to the nature of this righteousness: Luther discovered a ‘wonderful new definition of righteousness’ which stood in diametrical opposition to human understandings of iustitia. The second relates to the mode by which this righteousness comes to the individual: man cannot perform good works which are capable of earning justification on a quid pro quo basis, but he can totally abase himself, and cry out to God for grace.

This is one of those McGrath statements that has been picked out of his various works and used by Roman Catholics with some glee, noting that, “the Protestant understanding of the nature of justification thus represents a theological novum.” It is a novum because, after Augustine got it wrong, Luther was the first one to get it right. The “infallible” Roman church had gotten it wrong for a thousand years and counting.

One Roman Catholic blogger specifically asked,

The Christian’s most precious treasure

John Calvin famously began his Institutes of the Christian Religion stating, “Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.” Before Calvin wrote these words, Martin Luther wrestled with the first of those concepts, “the knowledge of God”.

Then Moses said, “Now show me your glory.”

And the LORD said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.”

Then the LORD said, “There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen” (Exodus 33:18-23).

* * *

For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel—not with wisdom and eloquence, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written:

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”

Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength (1 Corinthians 1:18-25).

* * *

For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power (1 Cor 2:2-5).

Yesterday I noted that while Martin Luther’s posting of his 95 theses is the traditional and probably the best known event as the start of the Protestant Reformation, they didn’t contain the bulk of his theology. Rather, “Luther came gradually to understand the great themes and doctrines of the Reformation between 1513-21, as he taught the Scriptures.” And he introduced the heart of his theology, his theologia crucis, his “Theology of the Cross” at an event known as the Heidelberg Disputation in 1518.

I started looking at this Theology of the Cross because I thought it might have something to say to my wife and me in the light of her current suffering. But I found as I studied it that it was really Luther’s response to the Medieval Church. It contained the heart and soul of his message. I’ve written about it in bits and pieces over the last month or so. Beginning today, and over the next several days, as we get closer to the “anniversary” of the Reformation, I’d like to go into a bit of detail about it more directly:

For Luther, the sole authentic locus of man’s knowledge of God is the cross of Christ, in which God is to be found revealed, and yet paradoxically hidden in that revelation.…

God is revealed in the passions et crucem – and yet he is hidden in this very revelation. In the very things which human wisdom regards as the antithesis of deity – such as weakness, foolishness, and humility, God stands revealed in the ‘humility and shame of the cross’. We may summarise the leading features of the theologia crucis as follows:

(1) The theologia crucis is a theology of revelation, which stands in sharp contrast to speculation. Those who speculate on the created order have, in effect, forfeited their right to be called ‘theologians’. God has revealed himself, and it is the task of the theologian to concern himself with God as he has chosen to reveal himself, instead of constructing preconceived notions of God which ultimately must be destroyed.

(2) This revelation must be regarded as indirect and concealed. This is one of the most difficult aspects of the theologia crucis to grasp: how can one speak of a concealed revelation? Luther’s allusion to Exodus 33:23 in Thesis 20 is the key to understanding this fundamental point: although it is indeed God who is revealed in the passion and the cross of Christ, he is not immediately recognizable as God. Those who expect a direct revelation of the face of God are unable to discern him in his revelation, precisely because it is the posteriora Dei (“back of God”) which [is] made visible in this revelation. In that it is God who is made known in the passion and cross of Christ, it is revelation; in that this revelation can only be discerned by the eye of faith, it is concealed. The ‘friends of the cross’ know that beneath the humility and shame of the cross lie concealed the power and the glory of God – but to others, this insight is denied.

(3) This revelation is to be recognized in the sufferings of the cross of Christ, rather than in human moral activity or the created order. Both the moralist and the rationalist expect to find God through intelligent reflection upon the nature of man’s moral sense or the pattern of the created order: for Luther, ‘true theology and knowledge of God are found in Christ crucified’. The cross shatters human illusions concerning the capacity of human reason to discern God in this manner.

(4) This knowledge of God who is hidden in his revelation is a matter of faith. Revelation of the posteriora Dei is addressed to faith, which alone recognizes it as a revelation of God Luther illustrates this point with reference to John 14:8. Philip here asks Jesus to show him the Father – which, according to Luther, makes him a ‘theologian of glory’, in that he considers that God may be found and known apart from Christ. Jesus then explains to him that there is no knowledge of God other than that which may be found in his own person: ‘Whoever has seen me, has seen the Father’ (John 14:9). For the presence of the hidden God in his revelation in Christ and his passion and cross – and who is thus able to acknowledge the truth of Isaiah’s dictum: ‘Truly you are a hidden God!’ The concept of a hidden God (absconditus Deus) lies at the center of the theology of the cross. For Luther, Philip represents the tendency of the theologia gloriae to seek for God apart from Christ, unaware that God is revealed in him, although concealed in that revelation.

(5) God is particularly known through suffering. Although this is essentially a reference to the passiones Christi, a far deeper spiritual truth is involved: a fundamental contention of the theologia crucis is not merely that God is known through suffering (whether that of Christ or of the individual), but that God makes himself known through suffering. For Luther, God is active in this manner, rather than passive, in that suffering and temptation are seen as means by which man is brought to God. This brings us to the dialectic between the opus proprium Dei [“the proper work of God”] and the opus alienum Dei [“the work alien to God”], which Luther introduces in his explanation of Thesis 16 [from the Heidelberg Disputation].

The basic paradox involved is illustrated with reference to the justification of an individual. In order that a man may be justified, he must first recognise that he is a sinner, and humble himself before God. Before man can be justified, he must be utterly humiliated – and it is God who both humiliates and justifies. ‘Thus an action which is alien to God’s nature (opus alienum Dei) results in an action which belongs to his very nature (opus proprium Dei): God makes a person a sinner in order that he may make him righteous.’ The opus alienum is a means to the end of the opus proprium. The significance of suffering, whether this is understood as passiones Christi or human Anfechtung [“challenge” or “temptation”], is that it represents the opus alienum through which God works out his opus proprium. In his important study on Anfechtung, Beintker demonstrated that Luther regards God himself as the source of Anfechtung: God assaults man in order to break him down and thus to justify him. Similarly, studies on Luther’s understanding of the role of the Devil in the Christian life have demonstrated that he regarded the Devil as God’s instrument, who performs the opus alienum Dei on his behalf in order that the opus proprium may be realized.

Far from regarding suffering or evil as a nonsensical intrusion into the world (which Luther regards as the opinion of a ‘theologian of glory’), the “theologian of the cross’ regards such suffering as his most precious treasure, for revealed and yet hidden in precisely such suffering is none other that the living God working out the salvation of those whom he loves.

Alister E. McGrath, “Luther’s Theology of the Cross,” Oxford, UK: and Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, ©1985, 1990, pgs 149-151 (Italics is in the original; bold face emphasis supplied).

Note this statement, for it shows well the God that I have come to know and love: “Similarly, studies on Luther’s understanding of the role of the Devil in the Christian life have demonstrated that he regarded the Devil as God’s instrument, who performs the opus alienum Dei on his behalf in order that the opus proprium may be realized.”

The Devil works on God’s behalf. God has created a universe such that, the more that the Devil “devils”, the harder he works on God’s behalf. He is caught in his own net. He works his own mischief in a mighty way, [and he certainly has the free will to do this], but this very mischief is turned to God’s service. “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).

“If God is for us, who can be against us? In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”