Reflections on Reformational Theology

Studies in the Theology of the Reformation, Karl Barth, and the Evangelical Tradition

Kimlyn J. Bender

• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780567678270
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

The essays in this volume examine some of the fundamental doctrinal convictions of Martin Luther and the Reformation legacy, as well as the maturation and development of these convictions in the theology of Karl Barth. The broad evangelical vision that spans its various confessional tributaries is presented in the essays of this volume. Together these studies serve as a cumulative argument for the ongoing coherence, meaning, and consequence of that vision, one that at its heart is constructive and ecumenical rather than narrowly polemical. Kimlyn J. Bender examines a variety of topics such as the relation of Christ and the Church as understood in the theology of Luther and Barth, the centrality of Christ to an understanding of all the solas of the Reformation, the place and significance of the Reformers in Barth's own thought, and Barth's theology in conversation with distant descendants of the Reformation often neglected, including Baptists in America, Pietists in Europe, and Barth's own complicated relationship with Kierkegaard. Bender concludes his discussion by presenting constructive proposals for a Church and university "on the way" and thus ever-reforming.

Part I

THE REFORMATION AND ITS LEGACY

Chapter 1

MARTIN LUTHER AND THE BIRTH OF THE PROTESTANT ECCLESIAL VISION

The Reformation of the sixteenth century was a time of great upheaval for the church in the West. The early magisterial Reformers such as Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin called not simply for the church’s moral renewal but for a thorough-going re-formation of some of its central theological convictions, particularly in the area of soteriology.¹ It has been said that in effect what the Reformers did was to trade Augustine’s doctrine of the church for his doctrine of grace.²

Whether or not this oversimplifies a complex movement of reform and renewal, it is nonetheless true that the energy of the Reformers, and Luther particularly, was directed toward soteriology, and that this soteriological concern was no longer simply set within a larger ecclesiological matrix, but in no small part set against it. In short, and lightly skimming over a complex history of Luther’s disputes with Silvester Prierias (1518), Thomas Cajetan (1518), and Johann Eck (1519), Luther came to proffer a new theology not within, but against, a prevailing ecclesiology, providing a nascent formal critical principle (sola Scriptura, i.e., the Scripture principle) and an explicit material norm (justification by faith alone, i.e., sola fide, through grace alone, i.e., sola gratia) that were used to test and criticize an ecclesiology that, in its teaching on indulgences and other meritorious actions had, in Luther’s estimation, twisted the gospel and usurped Christ through papal presumption. Moreover, it had equated obedience to the pope with obedience to Christ such that the voice of the latter was subsumed into the voice of the church itself.³ In the judgment of the Reformers, the conflation of the voice of Christ and the voice of the church, as well as the subsuming of the salvific action of Christ into the sacramental and penitential practices of the church without remainder so that Christ’s action and the church’s vicarious action became indistinguishable, entailed that humanity had joined together and, even worse, confused, what God had carefully distinguished.⁴ Luther’s reform movement opposed such ecclesial presumption and thereby pushed hard against the two pillars of the late medieval church, that is, the mass (with its attendant doctrine of purgatory and correlative understanding of indulgences and meritorious works), and papal primacy (with its incipient understanding of papal supremacy and infallibility).⁵

The Word of God as Critical, Constructive, and Constitutive

What Luther in effect accomplished by setting Scripture over against key components of medieval church tradition and papal primacy was never fully explicated by him in any systematic or comprehensive way, nor did he develop a doctrine of the church in any kind of programmatic and formal manner. Luther’s ecclesiological thought was developed as a response to the concrete events of the time and directed against specific abuses in the church of his day.⁶ Nevertheless, the debate over Scripture and tradition had deep and far-reaching consequences. This debate, itself played out concretely in a two-fold form as a debate between Scripture and the contemporary soteriological practices of indulgences and meritorious works and masses on one hand, and between Scripture and the ecclesiological questions of papal primacy, supremacy, and infallibility on the other hand, was, in fact, the (re-)establishment of a relation between Christ and the church that not only had explicit implications for ecclesiology, but also was predicated upon significant though often implicit convictions that Luther only occasionally and only inchoately articulated. In short, the Reformation discovery as played out in ecclesiology involved a rediscovery of the irreversible relation of Christ and the church (in any sense, i.e., whether defined as hierarchy or people of God), a relation in which Christ could not be subsumed into the church but retained a living voice not only within but also over it. This refusal to equate the authority and voice of Christ with the authority and voice of the papacy was, in turn, the Reformation’s attack upon the second pillar of the medieval church.

This critical principle for testing doctrine and the church’s tradition, as well as papal claims, also had soteriological significance, again tied up with christological convictions. Luther’s understanding of Christ and the Word of Scripture entailed that the work of salvation could not be seen as extending from Christ to the church in a straightforward manner such that the salvific agency of the former was simply extended and assimilated within the latter, the church seen as a steward, administrator, and mediator of the grace of Christ in the world, a continuation of his own salvific agency and activity. Luther’s discovery of justification within Scripture was constituted by the conviction that this justification came by faith alone through grace alone, and this itself was predicated upon the fact that salvation came from Christ alone (sola Christus) and his finished work that could only be received in faith as a gift of God’s gracious action, who alone was to be credited with its accomplishment (sola Deo gloria). And if all this was so, the authority over the salvation of souls could not be seen as vested in the papacy, for as Luther consistently maintained, Christ alone is the head of the church, and this christological conviction had significant implications for the church’s soteriological teaching and sacramental practice. This was Luther’s attack upon the first pillar of the mass and its attendant sacramental, sacerdotal, and soteriological convictions.⁷

Against, and in place of, both of these pillars—that of the mass and its attendant convictions and practices of indulgences and penitential excess, and that of papal primacy and supremacy—Luther set the Word of God, the dynamic and unhindered reality of God’s voice expressed in law and in gospel, in conviction and assurance, both of these framed by and constitutive of the message of the justice and mercy of God demonstrated in the cross of Christ. This reality of God’s Word was found definitively in Scripture but could not be flatly or unqualifiedly identified with Scripture itself, and it was best understood as arising from and discerned within its written form but quintessentially and properly identified and located in its public proclamation.⁸ Indeed, when Luther thought of the Word of God, he prioritized the form of proclamation, though this was never separated from and always implicitly included its grounding in Scripture, its written form. Therefore, to sum up this point: against and in place of a sacramental and penitential system entrusted to the stewardship of the church, which, as the practice of indulgences and the interdict demonstrated, was seen as invested within the jurisdiction of papal authority and dispensation, Luther set the Word of God in Scripture and proclamation, placing this Word at the center of the church’s liturgical life and doctrinal confession.

The Word of God, and particularly its existence as Scripture, thus served a critical function for Luther’s ecclesiological thought. The critical function of Scripture is readily evident in how it was wielded to criticize and correct what Luther took to be abuses and indeed heresies in the Roman church. So Luther could assert: “Scripture alone is the true lord and master of all writings and doctrine on earth.”⁹ In light of their deep forays into Scripture, Luther, along with Zwingli and Calvin, had a very dim view of the predominant image of the church as the steward of a treasury of merits to be dispensed at papal and priestly discretion. Everything that undergirded such a conception of the church—whether the practice of dispensing indulgences, or the administration of a sacramental system that gave intelligibility to a portrayal of the Eucharist as a meritorious sacrifice and that granted credibility to the practice of masses for the dead, or any other meritorious actions on the part of the church as a whole or individuals within it—was, for the Reformers, anathema. Furthermore, Scripture also came to be the critical principle not only to evaluate and condemn specific papal claims and traditions, but to call into question the very notion of a divinely instituted papacy, as well as any strong forms of ecclesial hierarchy, sacerdotalism, and separation of clergy from the laity. So Luther stated in his treatise The Sacrament of Penance (1519) that all Christians, and not only bishops and priests, are authorized to pronounce the assurance of pardon.¹⁰ In this sense, all are in principle able to proclaim the Word of God. Such an understanding had far-reaching effects for conceptions of the ordained ministry.

While Luther traced back his thought on the general priesthood of all believers to the fact that all Christians are priests based upon the external sign of baptism and their inner faith, it is important to see that such a view can take on significance only in light of an understanding of the church where Christ’s agency is not seen to be transferred to a select agent or group of agents in terms of a papal vicar or episcopal or priestly hierarchy. Hence even the strong notions of the common spiritual priesthood of all believers in Luther’s thought can be traced back, even if not directly, to particular christological convictions that Christ alone is the head of the church, and that this voice of Christ is heard in the proclamation of the Word of God as found in Holy Scripture. Luther thus could equate the voice of God, the voice of Christ, and the testimony of the authors of Scripture.¹¹

With Luther we therefore see for the first time in church history a significant and far-reaching movement that concedes that Scripture and church authority cannot, in some cases, be reconciled. In this event, the first must take precedence and correct the second.¹² A corollary of this conviction was that Luther rejected late medieval Catholic conceptions of papal and ecclesial authority and infallibility. In turn, the elevation of the Scripture principle in Protestantism explicitly set forth the positive affirmation that Scripture is the ultimate authority for the church, over not only present papal authority but also past councils. But it also included the negative affirmation that the church itself can err, and when it does so, it must be corrected by Scripture. The discovery of the Scripture principle for Luther was predicated upon both sides of this equation, both the positive affirmation and its negative connotations. It was this negative side of the equation, this critical function of Scripture, this admission that Scripture and tradition may at times irreconcilably conflict rather than exist in a harmonious peace, that was new with the Reformation and Luther’s theology specifically.¹³

As Luther’s works progressed, this principle was accompanied by an increasing criticism of the papacy and limitations placed upon its power and authority. While Luther could end his 1517 treatise Disputation against Scholastic Theology with the appeal that in it “we wanted to say and believe we have said nothing that is not in agreement with the Catholic church and the teachers of the church,” this conciliatory and submissive tone would lessen and give way to invective as Scripture and the church’s tradition and magisterial office were no longer seen as in harmonious agreement but in frequent opposition.¹⁴ When considering the abuses of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper and the attacks of his opponents in the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520), Luther retorted: “Why do they flaunt the authority of the church and the power of the pope in my face? These do not annul the words of God and the testimony of the truth.”¹⁵

The differing views regarding Scripture, tradition, and papal authority during this time can readily be witnessed when Luther is compared to his Roman opponent Silvester Prierias. Prierias opposed Luther and his theology with four basic propositions, the third being the following: “Whoever does not hold to the doctrine of the Roman church and to the pope as the infallible rule of faith, from which also Holy Scripture derives its power and authority, is a heretic.”¹⁶ Luther would effectively reverse the place that Scripture takes in this statement with those of the Roman church and the pope. Heresy, for Luther, was not based upon failure to adhere to the church and the papacy but upon failure to follow Scripture. In effect, and contrary to Prierias, it was not the papacy that established the authority of Scripture, but Scripture that was the only normative rule of faith and which established the power and authority of the papacy. In time Luther came to doubt whether it did this at all.

This is not to say that Luther quickly dismissed the papacy en toto, but as time wore on, he came to deny its divine ordination, even if he continued to appeal to its specific authority as a representative of the church.¹⁷ Moreover, no longer could Christian faith be equated with membership within the Catholic Church. Luther’s reevaluation of the Hussites required that he reconsider the meaning of salvation and ecclesiology, as well as the relationship between them. As Lohse states: “Though some outside the Western church were excommunicated, in some respects they could more properly be called Christian than members of the Catholic church. What is ‘Christian’ could not flatly be judged by membership in a church, but rather by Holy Scripture and faith.”¹⁸ For Luther this truth deepened as he came to conclude that not only the papacy, but councils as well, could err and contradict one another.¹⁹

Hence, for both soteriology and ecclesiology, the most accurate statement of Luther’s position (and one echoed by the Reformation at large) was that Christ was Lord of the church, and that this entailed that the church was not the steward but the servant of the gospel, not Christ’s vicar upon the earth in his absence but the gathered fellowship brought into existence through his presence in Word and sacrament. In Luther’s terms, sola Christus, Christ alone, was the head of the church, its only agent of salvation, and the ultimate voice of authority it must heed. Furthermore, Christ’s voice was not to be found today in the magisterium, but in Scripture and in its proclamation through the power of the Spirit. Therefore, while Luther never entirely renounced the papacy as a human institution, he came to renounce its claim to divine right as a presumption that in effect set it against rather than under the authority of Christ and Scripture.²⁰

The Word of God in Scripture was for Luther not only the critical principle for testing the contemporary church’s teaching and practices, but also the foundation for establishing and reforming the church’s faith, worship, and conduct along proper lines. As such, Scripture served as the constructive norm for laying down the pattern for the church’s confession, liturgy, and life. Indeed, it was the ultimate norm for such things, and this is another aspect of how Scripture shaped not only Luther’s soteriological but ecclesiological thought.²¹ To Luther’s mind, it was...