Today, February 18, some Christian communities celebrate the feast of the great reformer Martin Luther. If we are to take Pope Benedict as our guide (Luther might warn us against this) even we Catholic Christians can consider it a day worth celebrating.
In a 2011 address to Lutheran leaders in Erfurt, Germany, Pope Benedict said that Catholics recognize in the beliefs of their Lutheran brothers “a truly shared faith, a longing for unity.” Benedict applauded Luther’s great Christocentric faith and his hatred for evil:
“How do I receive the grace of God?” The fact that this question was the driving force of his whole life never ceases to make a deep impression on me. For who is actually concerned about this today – even among Christians? What does the question of God mean in our lives? In our preaching?
Most people today, even Christians, set out from the presupposition that God is not fundamentally interested in our sins and virtues. He knows that we are all mere flesh. And insofar as people believe in an afterlife and a divine judgement at all, nearly everyone presumes for all practical purposes that God is bound to be magnanimous and that ultimately he mercifully overlooks our small failings. The question no longer troubles us. But are they really so small, our failings? Is not the world laid waste through the corruption of the great, but also of the small, who think only of their own advantage? . . .
No, evil is no small matter. Were we truly to place God at the centre of our lives, it could not be so powerful. The question: what is God’s position towards me, where do I stand before God? – Luther’s burning question must once more, doubtless in a new form, become our question too, not an academic question, but a real one. In my view, this is the first summons we should attend to in our encounter with Martin Luther.
Another important point: God, the one God, creator of heaven and earth, is no mere philosophical hypothesis regarding the origins of the universe. This God has a face, and he has spoken to us. He became one of us in the man Jesus Christ – who is both true God and true man. Luther’s thinking, his whole spirituality, was thoroughly Christocentric: “What promotes Christ’s cause” was for Luther the decisive hermeneutical criterion for the exegesis of sacred Scripture. This presupposes, however, that Christ is at the heart of our spirituality and that love for him, living in communion with him, is what guides our life.
Benedict is able to applaud the unique insights of Luther because they are insights into a common “deposit of sacred Scripture and the early Christian creeds”:
Now perhaps one might say: all well and good, but what has this to do with our ecumenical situation? Could this just be an attempt to talk our way past the urgent problems that are still waiting for practical progress, for concrete results?
I would respond by saying that the first and most important thing for ecumenism is that we keep in view just how much we have in common, not losing sight of it amid the pressure towards secularization – everything that makes us Christian in the first place and continues to be our gift and our task. It was the error of the Reformation period that for the most part we could only see what divided us and we failed to grasp existentially what we have in common in terms of the great deposit of sacred Scripture and the early Christian creeds.
For me, the great ecumenical step forward of recent decades is that we have become aware of all this common ground, that we acknowledge it as we pray and sing together, as we make our joint commitment to the Christian ethos in our dealings with the world, as we bear common witness to the God of Jesus Christ in this world as our inalienable, shared foundation.
Benedict spoke in the Augustinian monastery in Erfurt, where Luther defied his father’s wishes (it was a habit, it seems) and studied theology instead of law, where he celebrated his first mass, from which he set out on a pilgrimage to Rome recently reenacted by former First Things junior fellow Sarah Wilson and her husband Andrew. At the time, Matthew Milliner asked if any Catholics would return the Wilsons’ heartfelt ecumenical gesture by traveling from Rome to Erfurt. Benedict is one Catholic Christian who has been very ready to do so.
February 18th, 2013 | 12:51 pm
Wonderful words from His Holiness. The great event I am longing for will be when the Reformation insight of justification by utter trust
is fully integrated into Catholic thought.
February 18th, 2013 | 1:22 pm
One of my favorite memories from seminary involves the trip to Villanova because their library contained the only copy in the greater Philadelphia of the Bridlington Dialogue, a medieval commentary on the Rule of St. Augustine for the Canons Regular. A Lutheran at the time, I traveled into the wilds of the Main Line to obtain the volume. Paperwork was filled out, IDs were copied, and the tome was liberated from its dusty imprisonment. Just before sliding the book across the desk, Brother Librarian looked briefly right, then left. He leaned closer to me and whispered with a mischievous grin, “We’re all really proud of Br. Martin here. It shows how far you can go with an Augustinian education.”
Several decades later, that journey would lead me to the Catholic Church. Brother Librarian was right.
February 18th, 2013 | 2:51 pm
And yet, Luther’s heresies are still grave sins against unity and charity. “A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, avoid:” — St. Paul, Titus 3:10
According to Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger:
“Catholicism appeared to Luther as the sacrilegious reinstatement of the cult, of sacrifice, priesthood and law. He therefore saw it as the negation of grace, as apostasy from the gospel, as a return behind Christ to Moses” (Ratzinger, J., Called to Communion)
“At the disputation in Leipzig, Luther’s opponents demonstrated irrefutably that his ‘new teaching’ went not only against the papacy but also against tradition, expressed clearly by the Fathers and the Councils. Luther was compelled to admit this and then declared that even ecumenical councils had erred. This means that the authority of the exegete is put over the authority of the Church and her tradition…. Thus the relationship between the Church and the individual, between the Church and the Bible, is fundamentally altered…. Catholic theology interprets THE CHURCH’S FAITH (emphasis added); where it departs from the interpretation and becomes autonomous reconstruction, something entirely different is being done.” (Ratzinger, J., The Ratzinger Report).
I would just as likely celebrate the “great reformer” Arius as I would celebrate Luther. Both refused “to listen even to the church” (Matt 18:17), preferring to teach something entirely different than the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church of Christ.
February 18th, 2013 | 3:16 pm
I suspect that Benedict XVI had been the pope Luther faced, things might have turned out differently. So perhaps Doctor Martin would have no problem with taking Pope Benedict as our guide …
February 18th, 2013 | 6:40 pm
“The great event I am longing for will be when the Reformation insight of justification by utter trust
is fully integrated into Catholic thought.”
But Catholics have always trusted in God’s grace. Both Luther and Ratzinger are Augustinians. Until there is a Thomist again on the Throne of St Peter and/or at the CDF, I do not hope for much.
February 18th, 2013 | 9:55 pm
As the son of a Lutheran and a Catholic, I can only say I am pleased when the Pontiff (Benedict XVI and JohnPaul II before him) praise Luther’s fervor for God. It is a shame, however, that this disobedient priest forged the plowshare of Paul into a sword to pierce Peter and the pruning hook of St. Augustine into a spear to lance St. Thomas Aquinas.
February 21st, 2013 | 8:29 am
As a serious Lutheran, I appreciated this article, particularly these words from the Pope:
“…nearly everyone presumes for all practical purposes that God is bound to be magnanimous and that ultimately he mercifully overlooks our small failings. The question no longer troubles us. But are they really so small, our failings? . . .”
I submit that Luther’s awareness of the sinfulness of human sin had to do not so much with the fact that he was overly scrupulous – rather he understood what God demands of us. In other words, man perpetually underestimates the depth and seriousness of original sin – and his sins to boot. That a “Great Divorce” on God’s part would actually be justice does not even seem to occur for many modern persons claiming Christ.
More from the Pope:
“No, evil is no small matter. Were we truly to place God at the centre of our lives, it could not be so powerful. The question: what is God’s position towards me, where do I stand before God? – Luther’s burning question must once more, doubtless in a new form, become our question too, not an academic question, but a real one…….”
I wonder what the Pope means by “a new form”. For Luther, this question was at the heart of all theology. The desire to be at peace with God is what ultimately drove Luther to the cross alone for certainty of salvation.
“Luther’s thinking, his whole spirituality, was thoroughly Christocentric: “What promotes Christ’s cause” was for Luther the decisive hermeneutical criterion for the exegesis of sacred Scripture.”
Indeed. It is good to see the Pope saying these things. There have been many misconceptions of Martin Luther perpetrated since the Reformation. I’d say that has happened with some of the commenters here as well. I look forward to more light – more truth – coming from future Popes about this prophetic voice that still haunts…
February 25th, 2013 | 9:02 pm
Wonderful post, Nathan.
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