Column Only Catholics can really be protestant
By ROSEMARY RADFORD
RUETHER
The recent Catholic-Lutheran accord
on justification and the relation of faith and works, signed in Augsburg,
Germany, on Oct. 31, Reformation Sunday, was for me an interesting confirmation
of a long-standing contention.
For years, when teaching the Reformation era to mostly Protestant
students, I have argued that there is not a fundamental difference between
medieval Catholic tradition and the Lutheran on the relationship of faith and
works. The apparent argument between Lutherans and Catholics on this matter was
largely a misunderstanding.
When one looks at the medieval Catholic tradition as a whole, it
is solidly Augustinian in its view that good works are a way of manifesting
Gods grace, not a way of earning it. Gods grace, which we cannot
earn, but which is given to us freely (which is the meaning of the term
grace) is the framework in which we do good works. When one looks at the
writings of Thomas Aquinas, for example, he is as strict in his views of the
priority of grace and even limited election of the saved as Calvin.
Even the late medieval nominalists, who spoke of the ability of
the sinner to repent through doing what is in him, that is,
reclaiming an original pure nature, ultimately base this view of
pure nature on grace, a free gift of God to grant us redeeming
grace through good deeds which in themselves are not commensurate with
redemption. This was pointed out to me 30 years ago when I took a course from
the preeminent Dutch Calvinist scholar of late medieval theology, Heiko
Oberman.
Luther rejected the theology of an accessible pure
nature of late medieval nominalists who were his own teachers. While
theoretically the nominalist view of pure nature rests on a
framework of grace, psychologically it creates the experience of trying to turn
to God and repent solely out of ones own unsullied capacities for purity
and goodness, an effort that Luther in his monastic life experienced as
impossible. Thus Luther turned back to Augustine who held a more radical sense
of Gods grace given to us even in the midst of our unworthiness.
Even though the medieval Catholic tradition remained rooted in the
Augustinian tradition, rejecting all forms of Pelagianism (that is, that we can
win redemption by our good works apart from grace), this has not been the
perception of most Protestants. The typical way that Protestants have learned
about medieval Catholicism (and by implication Catholicism as a whole) is that
it was totally corrupt, oppressive and erred by teaching a doctrine of human
good works as sufficient for salvation apart from grace.
These stereotypes of Catholicism have annoyed me from my
under-graduate days. In 1955 I took my first course in medieval and Reformation
church history at Scripps College in Claremont, Calif. The teacher was a stern
New England Calvinist who trashed the Middle Ages as a corrupt era from which
we were all fortunately delivered by the Reformation. When we came to the
Reformation, he sang the praises of the Protestant recovery of the doctrine of
justification by grace alone without good works.
This position was clearly confusing to my fellow students who had
grown up in a workaholic Protestantism that thought that Christianity was good
works, non-stop. I challenged the professor, pointing out that in Luthers
key treatise on The Freedom of the Christian (1520), he
doesnt say one should not do good works, but that one should do good
works gratuitously; that is, we should do all good works for our fellow humans
to express our gratitude to God for Gods free choice of us regardless of
our sins, rather than doings good works to win Brownie points from
God. I regard this view of Luther as very sound spirituality.
Since I was an upstart 18-year-old, the professor attempted to
crush me with withering contempt. But he confused the issue by claiming that
the Catholics didnt call for genuine good works, but merely ritual acts.
This clarification satisfied the anti-Catholic bigotry and
workaholic ethic of my fellow students, but it was wrong. The dispute was not
just about ritual acts, but the status of morality in relationship to
salvation.
In subsequent years I have encountered this same bigotry in the
Protestant students I have taught. They come to a class on Reformation theology
deeply convinced that Catholics teach a superficial legalism with no sense of
grace. My efforts to correct this view with a fuller sense of the medieval
Catholic tradition seem to fall on deaf ears.
On Oct. 31 Catholics and Lutherans formally declared that this
conflict of false stereotypes is over. Although there may be differences of
emphasis, both traditions are grounded in the same conviction of the priority
of grace. Good works are called for as response to the gift of redemption, not
as a means of earning it.
Yet one wonders if the stereotypes by which Protestants are
socialized and which they take to be the core of what it means to be
Protestant, will really change. It is hard to let go of a polemic that a group
has taken to be the essence of their identity.
For Catholics, however, this accord does little to really relieve
the conflicts we feel with the hierarchy today. Corruption, unjust and
tyrannical use of power, lack of a polity that allows for mutual consultation
are still with us. I suggest that these are the real issues that needed to be
protested in the 16th century and still should be protested by Catholics today
at the end of the 20th century.
To put it another way, only Catholics (in an ecumenical sense) can
really be protestants, that is, those who protest corruption
because they care deeply about the integrity of the whole church.
Rosemary Radford Ruether is a professor of theology at
Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, Evanston, Ill.
National Catholic Reporter, December 10,
1999
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