Close reading the pope on Martin Luther.

et us do that thing that the blog­ging Catholic must some­times do, which is to parse a dif­fi­cult pas­sage from one of the pope’s innu­mer­able inter­views. This, again, was his inter­view last June as he winged his way back to Rome from Arme­nia. A reporter said, “Hey! That Mar­tin Luther guy. You can reha­bil­i­tate him, right? Per­haps lift his excom­mu­ni­ca­tion? What say you?” It was an insane ques­tion. Mar­tin Luther’s excom­mu­ni­ca­tion end­ed in 1546 when he died.

Now, I have been told, since my last post: “Well, you know, the pope, he only meant to say Luther was not alto­geth­er wrong. Luther was right at first. Espe­cial­ly he was right that jus­ti­fi­ca­tion begins with God’s ini­tia­tive alone.”

So I go through the pope’s words to see. (And here I mean the pope’s words up in the clouds, some­where between Arme­nia and Rome.)

I think that the inten­tions of Mar­tin Luther were not mis­tak­en. He was a reformer. Per­haps some meth­ods were not cor­rect. But in that time, if we read the sto­ry of the Pas­tor, a Ger­man Luther­an who then con­vert­ed when he saw reality—he became Catholic—in that time, the Church was not exact­ly a mod­el to imi­tate. There was cor­rup­tion in the Church, there was world­li­ness, attach­ment to mon­ey, to power…and this he protest­ed.

Okay, fair enough. Yes, there’s always cor­rup­tion some­where. Men are not angels. I imag­ine the pope is think­ing of things like Luther being trou­bled by the abuse of indul­gences. Indul­gences them­selves were not wrong, but in the ful­ness of time indul­gences came to be attached to the giv­ing of alms. That’s a good prac­tice. But the rich, hav­ing more mon­ey to give alms than the poor, were able to obtain more indul­gences. There was an inequity in that. Though not the inten­tion, the effect was that the rich could “buy their way into heav­en,” as it were. And the Church reformed this prac­tice dur­ing the Counter Ref­or­ma­tion.

But if this is where Pope Fran­cis is think­ing, “Mar­tin Luther was ini­tial­ly right and con­cerned with the good,” it has noth­ing to do with the doc­trine of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion.

We read on:

Then he was intel­li­gent and took some steps for­ward jus­ti­fy­ing, and because he did this. [I have no clue. This is inco­her­ent to me.] And today Luther­ans and Catholics, Protes­tants, all of us agree on the doc­trine of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion.

No we don’t. There are no longer any divi­sions to speak of regard­ing jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, among Catholics and “Protes­tants”? Your Holi­ness: Do you real­ize how many sects of Protes­tants there are? One can’t find agree­ment among Protes­tants on jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, let alone between Protes­tants in the aggre­gate and Catholics.

Now, note: The pope does not qual­i­fy these words in the least. He does not say “Catholics and Protes­tants can find some com­mon ground on jus­ti­fi­ca­tion.” To be sure, we do. But “all of us agree”? The pope does not say, “There is com­mon ground to build on.” He says, “all of us agree.” I don’t think so.

We read on:

On this point [i.e., jus­ti­fi­ca­tion], which is very impor­tant, he did not err. [Yes he did.] He made a med­i­cine for the Church, but then this med­i­cine con­sol­i­dat­ed into a state of things, into a state of a dis­ci­pline, into a way of believ­ing, into a way of doing, into a litur­gi­cal way and he wasn’t alone; there was Zwingli, there was Calvin, each one of them dif­fer­ent, and behind them were who?

Again, the pope qual­i­fies noth­ing when he says that Luther “did not err.” Absolute state­ment. He does not say, “Luther got some things right”; he says, “Luther did not err.” Well, no, that’s wrong: The Coun­cil of Trent and Leo X in Exsurge Domine say he did.

And I’m not real­ly sure what the pope is tring to say when he veers back into that long dis­cus­sion about a “med­i­cine for the church” that “con­sol­i­dat­ed into a state of things,” “a way of believ­ing,” a “litur­gi­cal way.” I mean: Say what? Frankly, I think the pope is free asso­ci­at­ing, but I can’t dis­cern any mean­ing.

We read on:

“Prin­ci­pals! We must put our­selves in the sto­ry of that time. It’s a sto­ry that’s not easy to under­stand, not easy. [The pope’s “not easy to under­stand” just now.] Then things went for­ward, and today the dia­logue is very good. That doc­u­ment of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion I think is one of the rich­est ecu­meni­cal doc­u­ments in the world, one in most agree­ment. But there are divi­sions, and these also depend on the Church­es.

So the pope acknowl­edges “divi­sions,” but he seems to have in mind (when we read what is next) eccle­sial divi­sions in Chris­t­ian com­mu­nion, not divi­sions in doc­trine.

In Buenos Aires there were two Luther­an church­es, and one thought in one way and the other…even in the same Luther­an church there was no uni­ty; but they respect­ed each oth­er, they loved each oth­er, and the dif­fer­ence is per­haps what hurt all of us so bad­ly and today we seek to take up the path of encoun­ter­ing each oth­er after 500 years.

So the pope has shift­ed ideas again, and is now speak­ing in very gen­er­al terms about the prob­lem of Chris­t­ian divi­sion. Again, this is eccle­sial divi­sion, not doc­tri­nal divi­sion, so one can not point to these words and claim that the pope does con­cede dis­agree­ment on jus­ti­fi­ca­tion.

The pope ends with a gen­er­al injunc­tion that we all pray for one anoth­er. That’s a good idea, but it does­n’t take away his two errors: (1) That Catholics and Protes­tants agree on jus­ti­fi­ca­tion; (2) That Mar­tin Luther was “not in error.”

•••

The pope spoke about Luther again on Octo­ber 31. Here’s the key para­graph:

The spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ence of Mar­tin Luther chal­lenges us to remem­ber that apart from God we can do noth­ing. “How can I get a pro­pi­tious God?” This is the ques­tion that haunt­ed Luther. In effect, the ques­tion of a just rela­tion­ship with God is the deci­sive ques­tion for our lives. As we know, Luther encoun­tered that pro­pi­tious God in the Good News of Jesus, incar­nate, dead and risen. With the con­cept “by grace alone”, he reminds us that God always takes the ini­tia­tive, pri­or to any human response, even as he seeks to awak­en that response. The doc­trine of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion thus express­es the essence of human exis­tence before God.

For­tu­nate­ly there are no errors in what the pope says here. But I must point out that the prob­lem with Luther is not “by grace alone” but “through faith alone.” That was the prob­lem. “By grace alone” is not all that Luther said, and if you miss the rest then you miss what made Luther Luther, and a key (false) doc­trine that drove the Ref­or­ma­tion 500 years ago.

It is true that “God always takes the ini­tia­tive, pri­or to any human response,” but why do I need Mar­tin Luther to remind me of this? The Armini­ans call it “pre­ve­nient grace” (I was raised Unit­ed Methodist and still love that term), but the con­cept is also in the Bible.

• John 6:44: “No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.
• 1 John 4:19: “We love him, because he first loved us.

It is taught by the Coun­cil of Trent. (Not because Trent was con­ced­ing any­thing to Luther, but because it was affirm­ing what the Church had always taught.)

It is fur­ther­more declared that in adults the begin­ning of that jus­ti­fi­ca­tion must pro­ceed from the pre­dis­pos­ing grace of God through Jesus Christ, that is, from His voca­tion, where­by, with­out any mer­its on their part, they are called; that they who by sin had been cut off from God, may be dis­posed through His quick­en­ing and help­ing grace to con­vert them­selves to their own jus­ti­fi­ca­tion [But now watch what fol­lows.] by freely assent­ing to and coop­er­at­ing with that grace; so that, while God touch­es the heart of man through the illu­mi­na­tion of the Holy Ghost, man him­self nei­ther does absolute­ly noth­ing while receiv­ing that inspi­ra­tion, since he can also reject it, nor yet is he able by his own free will and with­out the grace of God to move him­self to jus­tice in His sight.

The key thing about Luther is not that he affirmed the first but that he denied the sec­ond. Luther taught the bondage of the will, even after ini­tial jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. He taught that it was by faith alone, even after pre­ve­nient grace.

More­over, pre­ve­nient grace is taught by Aquinas and by Augus­tine. So I don’t need Luther to remind me of what I can read in Trent and Augus­tine and Aquinas. Luther was Luther not because of where he agreed with Catholi­cism but because of where he dis­agreed.

I do sym­pa­thize with the pope’s desire for Chris­t­ian unity—I have that same desire. But uni­ty can not come at the expense of truth or of cov­er­ing over real dif­fer­ences between Catholics and Protes­tants. While there is much com­mon ground, and while our view of Luther per­son­al­ly should right­ly be char­i­ta­ble and for­giv­ing, we can not deny his errors, which Protes­tants today still accept.