Abstract
2017 was the 500th anniversary of Luther’s Ninety-five Theses, and many commemorative volumes were published that year. I have read four of these, three being by Roman Catholics. Of the latter, two could be called ecumenical while one was more critical. The present volume falls into the category of what the author calls ‘receptive ecumenism,’ which includes the idea of self-critically learning from other traditions. Paul O’Callaghan is well qualified for this task, having taught at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome since 1990 and being a prolific author.
The book focuses on what is variously called ‘Luther’s five principles’ or ‘the five Protestant principles.’ These are Sola Gratia, Sola Fides, Sola Scriptura, Solus Christus, and Ecclesia Semper Reformanda. There is already a problem with this list. The first three go back a long time. More recently two others have been added: Solus Christus and Soli Deo Gloria. The latter is never mentioned in this book, though there is mention of Luther’s zeal for God’s glory in close proximity to the four solas that are covered (p. 137). What about Ecclesia Semper Reformanda? This does not naturally fit into the list being very different in formulation from the solas, being predominantly a post-War formulation, and being essentially a Reformed rather than Lutheran formulation. So why is it here? The chapter on this topic is the longest of the book and it is clearly there in order to develop the case that the author is building, which concludes with the role of the Church. Since this is a volume of ‘self-critically learning from other traditions,’ the author is entitled to choose his curriculum, but it does make a slightly combination.
The title of each chapter begins with the Protestant slogan and goes on to qualify it. Thus, for example, ‘The Principle of “Sola Gratia” and the Value of Christian Freedom and Good Works’ and ‘“Sola Fides” and the Reasoned Assimilation of Christian Revelation.’ This is a good procedure in that all of the solas are provocative slogans that need qualification, as was recognized already at the time of the Reformation. Thus Melanchthon and Luther, looking at the churches in Saxony, stated that to imagine that faith alone suffices without the fear of God and contrition is arrogance and carnal security worse than all of the earlier errors under the papacy.
Balancing and qualifying the slogans is good. What is not so good is that the author in places does this in such a way that obscures the original meaning of the slogan. Sola Fides was a statement about justification, not about epistemology, but the chapter concerned is overwhelmingly about the latter. The 20 pages have very little to say about justification by faith alone. Instead, there are scattered references to that doctrine in other chapters. Also, despite his clear ecumenical aims the author does not avoid a long-standing caricature of the Protestant position at this point. Later Lutheranism (not Luther) is accused of teaching forensic justification in a manner that implied: ‘If humans were irremediably corrupted by sin, then justification could only be forensic or extrinsic: God would forgive but not transform or sanctify them’ (p. 30), this being the ‘classic Lutheran “forensic” understanding of justification’ (p. 104). I know of no mainstream Protestant theologian who has ever stated that ‘God would forgive but not transform or sanctify them.’ As Reinhard Flogaus put it, the ‘classic Lutheran’ Formula of Concord advocates a purely imputative doctrine of justification, but not a purely imputative understanding of the righteousness of the justified. When the Reformers defined justification in forensic terms, referring to God’s attitude to us, they did not mean to imply that forensic justification exhausts the meaning of Christian salvation. Justification may be limited to our standing before God, but the totality of salvation is most certainly not. Given that the Reformers distinguished between forensic justification and transformative sanctification, to say that justification is forensic amounts to little more than the statement that ‘the forensic side of salvation is forensic.’ This neglect of justification in the chapter on Sola Fides and misrepresentation of the Protestant view are both surprising since O’Callaghan is the author of ‘Fides Christi’: The Justification Debate (Dublin: Four Courts, 1997).
The chapter on Sola Scriptura is much better. The author rightly observes that the principle is there from the earliest years of the Reformation, though the formulation of the slogan is much later. He also, unlike some others, correctly understands it to refer to the final authority of Scripture. He quotes a pithy summary by John Wesley: ‘In all cases, the Church is to be judged by the Scripture, not the Scripture by the Church’ (p. 82). Sola Scriptura is not to be confused with Nuda Scriptura, the idea that the Bible should be read all on its own or, to borrow the words of the chapter heading, in isolation from ‘the Spirit-Guided Transmission of the Faith.’
I should perhaps report that I tried to follow up a number of the Luther quotations from the details given in the footnotes and in most cases was unable to find them at the place indicated.
I enjoyed reading this book and learned from it, in the self-critical approach advocated by receptive ecumenism. There is much of positive value in the book, but it would have been better had it engaged more closely with the Reformation slogans as they were set out by Luther and his contemporaries.