I
IowaJay
Guest
No, I think Pope Benedict, being a scholar who studied Luther, and who taught with Lutheran scholars at Tubingen, knew exactly what Luther meant:
From Luther’s Preface to to the Book of Romans:
Instead, faith is God’s work in us, that changes us and gives
new birth from God. (John 1:13). It kills the Old Adam and makes us
completely different people. It changes our hearts, our spirits,
our thoughts and all our powers. It brings the Holy Spirit with
it. Yes, it is a living, creative, active and powerful thing, this
faith. Faith cannot help doing good works constantly. It doesn’t
stop to ask if good works ought to be done, but before anyone
asks, it already has done them and continues to do them without
ceasing. Anyone who does not do good works in this manner is an
unbeliever.
iclnet.org/pub/resources/…ther-faith.txt
The characterization of the debate as being one about “faith” versus “faith and works” is wrong. Please read Catholic apologist/philosopher Peter Kreeft’s article:
"The Protestant Reformation began when a Catholic monk rediscovered a Catholic doctrine in a Catholic book. The monk, of course, was Luther; the doctrine was justification by faith; and the book was the Bible. One of the tragic ironies of Christian history is that the deepest split in the history of the Church, and the one that has occasioned the most persecution, hatred, and bloody wars on both sides, from the Peasants’ War of Luther’s day through the Thirty Years’ War, which claimed a larger percentage of the population of many parts of central Europe than any other war in history, including the two world wars, to the present-day agony in Northern Ireland — this split between Protestant and Catholic originated in a misunderstanding. And to this day many Catholics and many Protestants still do not realize that fact.
Luther’s story is well known. Passionate, impetuous, demanding, sensitive, and pessimistic in temperament, Luther had never been able to find inner peace. He could not overcome his sense of guilt despite all his good works, prayers, penances, and alms. His confessor advised him to read Romans. No more historically momentous advice was ever given by a confessor. In Romans Luther discovered the simple bombshell truth that God had forgiven his sins freely, not because of Luther’s works in Germany but because of Christ’s work on Calvary. That discovery freed Luther’s spirit and ignited a fire that swept over Europe. The watchword of the Reformation became Saint Paul’s summary of the gospel: “The just (justified, saved) shall live [have eternal life] by faith [in Christ]” (Rom 1: 17)
Where then do good works come in? In Christian Liberty, Luther explains that after the great liberation about faith — that we are saved by faith in Christ’s work, not by our works — comes a great liberation about works: they need not be done slavishly, to buy our way into heaven, to pile up merits or Brownie points with God, but can be done freely and spontaneously and naturally, out of gratitude to God — not to get to heaven but because heaven has already gotten to us. Thus they can be done for the sake of our neighbor, not for our own sake, to purchase salvation. And this is winsome. No one wants to be loved as someone else’s good deed for the day. "
catholiceducation.org/articles/apologetics/ap0027.html
The differences between Luther and the Catholic scholars of his time were more related to the role of man’s free will in salvation, as shown by Luther’s exchanges with Erasmus.
I thought the last few Popes encouraged ecumenism within Christendom?