Abstract
Phillip Cary writes about the meaning of Protestant theology because he considers that the various forms of Protestantism that have proliferated in recent decades—not just over earlier centuries—have left many Protestants uncertain as to what it means to be Protestant, when they come up against what he calls the Great Tradition—the rich legacy of liturgy and of holiness and wisdom of the centuries, especially the early ones. Cary’s sense of the situation that now obtains makes it necessary to ask the question, ‘Why be Protestant?’ (p. 2). He sets out to clarify the nature of Protestantism not by the old contrast with Catholicism, or the Great Tradition, but by establishing Luther’s role in identifying its central tenet as ‘the Gospel that gives us Christ.’ Measured against Luther’s insight, uncertainty about identity abounds in Protestantism.
The various terms used in the title and in the subtitle, along with the author’s credentials, all give notice that this work will prove to be both creative and complex. The fact that the author is a well-established authority on Augustine and is not a Lutheran, but an Anglican as distinct from being simply Protestant, reinforces that anticipation. Given the complexity of the discussion, it is helpful that the author gives a summary of the chapters in his Introduction.
A long Part One follows, to introduce the remote origins of Luther’s intellectual and spiritual journey that led him to part company with his master, Augustine, in relation to the fundamental issue of the Christian’s relationship with God. Given the tradition of Augustine’s overwhelming influence on his early years and especially Luther’s appeal to his doctrine of sinful human nature, a close study of Augustine does then seem necessary. It begins with the foundation of Augustine’s Neo-Platonist thought, and leads to the conclusion that his spirituality has an inward directed nature, that faith in Christ leads by a path of love to an intellectual vision of God. This conclusion is based on Cary’s earlier publications about Augustine and here on a close analysis of Part Two of City of God. In discussing the role of Christ as mediator of the soul’s ascent, he holds that, for Augustine, Christ’s humanity becomes ‘our way to God rather God’s way to us.’ Augustine made ‘too neat a distinction between Christ’s divinity and his humanity,’ with the implication that attention can be directed to one nature rather than the other, so that purifying the mind for the ascent to God allows ‘turning one’s gaze away from all sensible and material things, including the flesh and blood of Christ’ (pp. 75–76).
The role of faith arises because the journey is towards a vision not yet achieved. But faith is not enough for Augustine, ‘the motive force that moves us along to our destination is love’ (p. 83). It is worth noting that the concentration on love remained at the centre of theology in the medieval world—fides formata ex caritate—but the concrete expression of the spirituality which had it as its foundation did lead to confusing external works with the work of love. This is not the fault of Augustine, obviously, but what the author sees as a problem that Luther will set out to solve.
In Part Two, the attention turns to Luther. Cary’s discussion of Augustine enabled him to present the spirituality of the Augustinian heritage that Luther encountered as one gripped by the anxieties manifested in the whole apparatus of practices of piety and troubled consciences. From a study of Augustine’s sacramental teaching, but only on baptism, he concludes that by the medieval period, ‘(the) crucial question for all who want to be saved is whether they belong to this community, which is the social body of Christ’ (p. 90).
Cary tracks Luther’s early development in this environment of anxiety and doubt, when his concept of Gospel was undeveloped. Instead, his option for ‘faith alone’ and the futility of works meant putting faith in God’s accusation and agreeing with his condemnation of the sinner. Scripture was not at this stage a gracious word. The chapters on this stage of Luther’s development are very detailed and show how he exaggerated Augustine’s pessimism regarding human nature. However, this could be said to have spurred him on to reach his later views. For Cary, ‘the crucial thing to understand in Luther’s theology is how the Gospel can be a word that gives you a person’ (p. 175). In a detailed analysis of Luther’s Defence of the 95 Theses, Cary shows how Luther reached his understanding of the sacramental character, the efficacy, of God’s word by his reflections on the priest’s words of absolution. But his understanding was soon challenged in his interview with Cardinal Cajetan in 1518, exposing a rift between him and traditional doctrine in the distinction between the certainty of sacramental efficacy and the uncertainty that could exist in the recipient of the sacrament. For Luther this was eliminated by his view of the Gospel as story and the promise ‘that gives us Christ and all that is his, including the righteousness of God for our justification’ (p. 180).
This is where Cary sees the fundamental deviation from Augustine. In effect, instead of Christ’s humanity being the way the soul ascends to God, as Augustine would have it, identification of Christ with the Gospel word is for Luther how God gives himself to us. All that is necessary is faith. Luther was quite clear about the nature of this faith; given his stance on the bondage of the will (in the controversy with Erasmus) he could not allow any role for human will in eliciting an act of faith. God commands that the person believe the truth (of justification) and forbids any doubt. Cary is not uncritical of Luther here. Summarily, he says: ‘My suggestion is that what goes wrong in Luther is not his faith, but his theology, which demands of his faith the wrong kind of certainty, which in fact it never has’ (p. 235).
Apart from describing the divergence from Augustine, Cary does not enter a discussion of what deeper factors, historical, philosophical or personal, might have influenced Luther’s arrival at the concept of the Gospel as the word that gives us Christ, or how indeed that divergence could fit in with Luther’s continuing to belong to the schola Augustiniana moderna. He does give several reasons for accepting it: we can know nothing of Christ apart from the gospels; it is the good news that allows us to look away from our lives and at Christ instead; it teaches us to delight in the goodness and mercy of God; we need a gospel that is not a principle to apply to our lives but an external word addressed to us; Protestants can confuse law and Gospel by depending on hortatory preaching, while Catholic and Orthodox liturgies ‘are full of Gospel’(p. 341). Protestant denominations that have long called on people to make a decision to believe in Christ depart from Luther in a fundamental way (p. 171).
This study is to be commended for the clarity it brings to the nature of Luther’s theological journey, with the major implications this has for ecclesiology and ecumenical convergence. Cary’s expertise also results in a new and fascinating analysis of Luther’s relationship with Augustine. The divergence is very well explained, though it might be asked how total it was. Luther’s sense of having Christ and his word (as he said on his deathbed) could well have had its origin in Augustine’s epistemology, according to which it is the indwelling of Christ that brings all knowledge, all certainty.