Protestant view of Trent

[Lenten_ashes]

So you would agree with me that the Vulgate always had the 73 books? I have never seen otherwise.

Yes, the prayer of manasseh that Steido quipped about was a appendix. Nobody less maybe the Greek Churches have considered it inspired.

I have a Greek Orthodox study bible and i dont even see it in there tbh.

 

[Contarini]

Luther had no such power and never claimed it. He made this explicitly clear in his commentaries. I can provide quotes, if you’d like. The power to determine the canon belongs and has always belonged to the church catholic, in general, with doctors of the church, like the men we’ve mentioned, adding useful commentary and guidance. The idea that Luther chose to single-handedly make his own bible is a vicious myth.

I agree that the canon is not the most striking case where he did this.

His redefinition of the Gospel, on the other hand, and his declaration of a “canon within the canon,” were pretty high-handed. His identification of the Word of God with his own brilliant and innovative ideas was presumptuous and disastrous, even though many of the ideas were good and true and powerful.

That is a false dichotomy in the case of Luther and Lutherans, though I’d share your criticism for those odd Protestant groups who do build their churches around their own beliefs.

Not entirely. It’s just that Lutheranism has had 500 years to solidify its claims to the tradition. Also, pretty early on people like Melanchthon began working overtime to relate Luther’s ideas to the broader tradition. But I think it’s ahistorical whitewashing to deny that Lutheran theology is largely based on Luther’s ideas–or rather, on the tradition as brilliantly and drastically reinterpreted by Luther.

 

[Peter_J]

Though I’d agree with you that no single man has any power to determine what Scripture is.

 

[Peter_J]

His redefinition of the Gospel,

That’s pretty strong. Maybe not by Internet standards, if there is such a thing, but still.

 

[Contarini]

That’s pretty strong. Maybe not by Internet standards, if there is such a thing, but still.

I should have qualified, given the echoes of Galatians in the phrase. I meant “redefinition of the term ‘Gospel.’”

Before Luther, the “Gospel” was the narrative of Jesus’ words and deeds for our salvation.

For Luther and those who followed him, the “Gospel” was the proclamation of free forgiveness through the death and resurrection of Jesus, received through faith.

This isn’t “another Gospel” in the sense Paul meant in Galatians, only because the second meaning is a subset of the first. But it is a narrowing of the Gospel.

For instance, by Luther’s definition the Sermon on the Mount is not part of the Gospel.

That’s a pretty radical distortion of the meaning of the term.

Edwin

 

[steido01]

That’s pretty strong. Maybe not by Internet standards, if there is such a thing, but still.

Indeed.

Contarini, I’ve generally found agreement with your posts in the past, and where I haven’t, I’ve at least admired your patience in teaching and understanding. I’ve not known you to attack Luther like that. Perhaps you can explain more about what you mean.

I agree that the canon is not the most striking case where he did this.

I’m not sure what “this” is referring to. I stated that Luther never claimed any individual power to determine the canon for the whole church catholic. This is completely true. Take his own words:

Though this epistle of St. James was rejected by the ancients, I praise it and consider it a good book, because it sets up no doctrines of men but vigorously promulgates the law of God. However, to state my own opinion about it, though without prejudice to anyone, I do not regard it as the writing of an apostle, and my reasons follow…
[Then follow academic reasons not dissimilar to Jerome’s, Erasmus’ and Cardinal Cajetan]
…Therefore, I cannot put him among the chief books,** though I would not thereby prevent anyone from putting him where he pleases and estimating him as he pleases;** for there are many good sayings in him.

His redefinition of the Gospel, on the other hand,

You’ve lost me here. Even non-Lutherans can make an incredibly strong case that Luther’s understanding of Gospel follows an entirely acceptable catholic/Catholic view that traces its linage from Luther to Augustine to Ambrose to Paul to Christ Himself.

and his declaration of a “canon within the canon,” were pretty high-handed.

How so? This is nothing new. All Christians of all times have recognized that certain books held great value than others. The Four Gospels, for example, hold more weight than the Revelation of John or Jude. That’s a given. The ancients made the clear distinction between homologoumena and antilegomena. This is exactly what Luther reiterated.

His identification of the Word of God with his own brilliant and innovative ideas was presumptuous and disastrous, even though many of the ideas were good and true and powerful.

Example, please, of his ‘brilliant and innovative ideas’ that had to do with actual doctrine? I’d agree with that critique if it referred to his well-intentioned but wrongly-justified social welfare programs (the “community chest,” etc.) or his unfortunate counsel of ol’ Prince Philip… but I’ve a feeling you’re hinting at actual doctrine here. I’d like to know where this leads.

Not entirely. It’s just that Lutheranism has had 500 years to solidify its claims to the tradition. Also, pretty early on people like Melanchthon began working overtime to relate Luther’s ideas to the broader tradition. But I think it’s ahistorical whitewashing to deny that Lutheran theology is largely based on Luther’s ideas–or rather, on the tradition as brilliantly and drastically reinterpreted by Luther.

I forget your exact area of expertise, but I know you’re blessed enough to get to study this sort of thing as I could only dream of, but haven’t you read much Chemnitz? I think as he recounts the faults of Trent in his Examination, he makes a rather convincing case that the basics of Lutheranism at least conform *an *historically acceptable expression of the catholic position, if not the preferred one of the ancients.

God bless,

 

[steido01]

I should have qualified, given the echoes of Galatians in the phrase. I meant “redefinition of the term ‘Gospel.’”

Before Luther, the “Gospel” was the narrative of Jesus’ words and deeds for our salvation.

For Luther and those who followed him, the “Gospel” was the proclamation of free forgiveness through the death and resurrection of Jesus, received through faith.

This isn’t “another Gospel” in the sense Paul meant in Galatians, only because the second meaning is a subset of the first. But it is a narrowing of the Gospel.

For instance, by Luther’s definition the Sermon on the Mount is not part of the Gospel.

That’s a pretty radical distortion of the meaning of the term.

Edwin

I think you might misunderstand Luther. The “Third Use of the Law” as it’s commonly called in Lutheran parlance, can only be accomplished as an outpouring of the Gospel.

The Sermon on the Mount is one place where the Lutheran concept of Law and Gospel is brought to its clearest. Christ says, after listing all these commands:
“Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
The Law condemns. In this passage, Christ makes clear that the Law condemns us all, as we could never match, much less surpass, the Pharisees in righteousness. And that’s where we see Gospel shine through the Law: Christ promises that He will fulfill it. And with His Passion, He would.

Even if Luther did “redefine” the term Gospel (and I don’t believe he did), it takes a misunderstanding of the Lutheran Law/Gospel distinction to say that there is no Gospel in the Sermon on the Mount. I’m sure there’s some Walther that would be useful here, but I’ve not got him readily available and I’m at work…

 

[Peter_J]

I should have qualified, given the echoes of Galatians in the phrase. I meant “redefinition of the term ‘Gospel.’”

Well that’s good. You’re criticism “redefinition of the Gospel”, if taken the other way, makes you sound like a Fundie.

 

[Contarini]

I’ve not known you to attack Luther like that.

I tend to sound pro-Luther on this forum because so many people are unfair to him. But I do have some pretty strong disagreements, which have only deepened over the years as I’ve thought about the issues more broadly and have gotten farther away from the compulsory nuance of grad school.

Perhaps you can explain more about what you mean.

I’m not sure what “this” is referring to

You’ve lost me here. Even non-Lutherans can make an incredibly strong case that Luther’s understanding of Gospel follows an entirely acceptable catholic/Catholic view that traces its linage from Luther to Augustine to Ambrose to Paul to Christ Himself.

I don’t find it incredibly strong at all. Augustine and Luther are miles apart, as Melanchthon admitted in this letter to Brenz. Of course it depends on just what factors we are comparing–there is indeed a lot of common ground. But the key claims about the meaning of justification are quite different from Augustine’s (again, Melanchthon’s letter and Luther’s hand-written postscript lays this out very well). More to the immediate point, while Augustine’s On the Spirit and the Letter certainly inspired Luther, Augustine does not use “Law/Gospel” to express the “Spirit/Letter” contrast, as far as I know. Instead, he speaks (as the medieval tradition would after him) of the “old law” and the “new law.” A case can certainly be made that the “newness” of the new law had been lost by Luther’s time, at least in many circles. But again, when Brenz taught soteriology a la Augustine he got slapped down. And Lutheran scholars have accused Martin Bucer of “misunderstanding” Luther at Heidelberg in 1518 because he interpreted him in exactly this way (law being external vs. the power of the spirit working within). In short, Luther did indeed build on the Augustinian tradition that contrasted merit and grace and external “law” and the inner work of the Spirit. But in his mature work–the work that laid the foundation for Lutheranism–he moved on to a rather different view, that contrasted “law” of any kind with “Gospel.”

How so? This is nothing new. All Christians of all times have recognized that certain books held great value than others. The Four Gospels, for example, hold more weight than the Revelation of John or Jude. That’s a given.

Indeed. The shift was in which parts were seen as central. Luther says that the Gospel of John and the letters of Paul have more “Gospel” in them than, say, the Synoptic Gospels. This radically decenters the Synoptics compared to the place they had held in Christian thought up to that time. (His denigration of James is part and parcel of the same move, since much of James is a reworking of the Sermon on the Mount and other teachings from the Gospels–but James itself had always been rather on the margins of the canon, and people make too much of a fuss about Luther’s ideas about James. The really revolutionary move was his disparaging of the Synoptics.)

Example, please, of his ‘brilliant and innovative ideas’ that had to do with actual doctrine?

The short answer is “sola fide,” but of course that’s made up of a number of parts. Some of those parts, to be sure, are rooted in the tradition. But quite a few are innovative. Here are some of them:
The Law/Gospel dichotomy, as I said above (rooted in Augustine’s letter/spirit dichotomy but going beyond it)
The imputation of Christ’s righteousness to the believer (in contrast to the non-imputation of sin, which is what Augustine and the Catholic tradition had taught)
The distinction between “coram Deo” and “coram hominibus” (itself complex, and I can unpack it if you want me to)
The teaching that the faith that is a gift of God is always accompanied by love, rather than faith needing to be “formed” by love
The reordering of the ordo caritatis so that love of neighbor precedes love of self

These are just a few to start with–by no means an exhaustive list.

 

[Contarini]

I forget your exact area of expertise, but I know you’re blessed enough to get to study this sort of thing as I could only dream of

I was. I got my Ph.D. at Duke with David Steinmetz, and wrote my dissertation on Martin Bucer’s interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount. In the course of working on that I read quite a bit of Lutheran scholarship bashing Bucer on areas where it seemed to me that Bucer was being a good Augustinian (as in the claim that he “misinterpreted” Luther at Heidelberg, or Ernst-Wilhelm Kohls’ claim that pretty much everyone in the Reformation except for Luther was really just a nice Erasmian humanist reformer and didn’t really understand the Gospel). Hence my reference earlier to the Reformed being, on the whole, more Augustinian than the Lutherans (though after 1536 Bucer moved in a more “Wittenberg” direction, and Calvin followed suit at least on justification, though in a much harsher way–Bucer was still willing to try to find common ground with reform-minded “papists” like Sadoleto).

I do not have an academic position at the moment and the closest good theological library (Asbury–not particularly strong in Reformation stuff but with all the basic primary source collections like the WA and the Corpus Reformatorum) is a 45-minute drive away. So you may be in a better position than I am, at least on this topic, if you have the typically well-stocked library of a Lutheran pastor!

but haven’t you read much Chemnitz?

Less than I should have. I read some of the Examen when I was at Duke and was very impressed with it–I think I only read the parts on Scripture and meant to read the whole thing but never got around to it.

I think as he recounts the faults of Trent in his Examination, he makes a rather convincing case that the basics of Lutheranism at least conform *an *historically acceptable expression of the catholic position, if not the preferred one of the ancients.

As I said, I can’t remember if I read Chemnitz on this or not (I may have–it was about 15 years ago), but McGrath says in Iustitia Dei (p. 246) that Chemnitz actually articulates the disagreement between Augustine and the Lutheran tradition on justification, arguing that Augustine misread Paul. That certainly makes sense to me (that Chemnitz would say that–obviously I think it’s more likely that the Lutherans misread Paul).

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

Well that’s good. You’re criticism “redefinition of the Gospel”, if taken the other way, makes you sound like a Fundie.

That doesn’t bother me at all. I think that the fundies really have “redefined the Gospel” in the sense condemned by St. Paul.

Luther is partly responsible for that, but they went way beyond him.

Edwin

 

[Peter_J]

Well that’s good. You’re criticism “redefinition of the Gospel”, if taken the other way, makes you sound like a Fundie.

That doesn’t bother me at all. I think that the fundies really have “redefined the Gospel” in the sense condemned by St. Paul.

Makes sense. Like a certain politician I know: every time I hear an attack from him or her I think “You should look in the mirror”.