Theology Today - Vol 38, No. 3 - October 1981 - ARTICLE - The Reformation: A Catholic Reflection

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The Reformation: A Catholic Reflection
By Richard P. McBrien

"It would be my thesis that, notwithstanding many instances of apparent, not real, conflict, Catholicism and Protestantism are not reducible to one and the same reality . .It is the great value of Professor Pannenberg's essay that he should put his finger so clearly on one such item. "

WOLFHART PANNENBERG'S accompanying essay is characteristically illuminating and profound. He seeks to reinterpret the theological core of the Reformation in a way that does not jeopardize the ecumenical achievements of the last few decades. He acknowledges, for example, that the Roman Catholic Church appears today as an attractive model for the unity of all Christians. He counsels against a chauvinistic Protestant triumphalism, and denominational parochialism. And he reminds us all that the Reformation did not start as a sectarian movement, but was concerned with the reform of the entire catholic church and its restoration to the authentic spirit of its apostolic origins.

But as the official leadership of the Roman Catholic Church has warned us in the past, an authentically ecumenical spirit is inconsistent with a "false irenicism." In other words, we cannot downplay real theological and doctrinal differences for the sake of a more quickly attained unity. Pannenberg's essay, therefore, is an important one because it offers a fresh interpretation of the Reformation without covering over the issues which first contributed to the split within the church.

Pannenberg's thesis is that the central doctrine of the Reformation should be discussed under the heading of liberty rather than of justification. He gives what I take to be persuasive reasons for this judgment. He

Richard P. McBrien is Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. He also taught at Boston College and was Chairman of the Joint Graduate Program with Andover Newton Theological School. Dr. McBrien has served as President of the Catholic Theological Society of America and is the author of numerous books, the most recent being the highly acclaimed two-volume Catholicism (1980). He is responding in this article to the discussion by Wolfhart Pannenberg, "Freedom and the Lutheran Reformation," in this same issue of THEOLOGY TODAY.

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then links the concept of liberty with Luther's new concept of faith. Faith, according to Luther, is an ecstatic experience. We literally leave ourselves to the one to whom we completely entrust ourselves. Through faith we participate in the righteousness of Christ. But this does not happen simply because God declares us righteous in Christ. Christ's righteousness becomes our own, although it remains outside of us, because it is only in faith that the righteousness of Christ becomes our own.

Pannenberg assures us that not even Melanchthon grasped Luther's profound insight that faith is an ecstatic experience. Melanchthon's theology continued to interpret justification in a somewhat wooden and juridical manner, while in Luther's language it had a mystical flavor. For Luther, the justice (justification) that is obtained by faith is equivalent to freedom. It is a freedom from the bondage of sin. Luther was convinced that there can be no true freedom so long as the human person is enslaved by sin. But we remain always sinful creatures. Accordingly, it is only in the act of faith in God and in Christ that we can be liberated, because faith puts us outside ourselves. To remain in ourselves is to remain in sin. For Luther, and evidently for Pannenberg as well, there can be no natural freedom or liberty. The bondage of sin hangs heavily upon all that is human: the will, reason, the imagination, the senses, etc. It is only in going out of ourselves (an ecstatic process) that we participate in the liberating righteousness of Christ.

Pannenberg acknowledges that few Christians, and few Lutherans, have perceived the full consequences of this approach, especially in the social and political order. Luther never really faced the task of restructuring the social system itself on the basis of his theological vision, and his doctrine of the Two Kingdoms seems to have confused rather than clarified the relationship of Christian faith and the world. But Luther's vision, if properly applied, provides us with a perspective within which we can critically measure the modern spirit, with its undue stress on the aspirations of the individual. On the other hand, this emphasis on the radical integrity of every individual is not to lead one to a posture of political indifference. To be united to Christ by faith entails participation in Christ's service to the world. Such service is justified when it promotes social, political, and economic conditions which may contribute to the personal freedom and identity that can be obtained only by faith in Christ.

It is sometimes assumed nowadays that every new interpretation of the Reformation, particularly by a theologian of Wolfhart Parmenberg's stature, must inevitably lead to a kind of blurring of the Catholic/ Protestant distinction, as if every theological and doctrinal conflict in the past was more apparent than real. To be sure, this is frequently the case. Many theological and doctrinal positions which were traditionally perceived to be in conflict with one another are now

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seen to be products of honest misunderstanding or of a legitimate diversity in expression. It would be my thesis that, notwithstanding many instances of apparent, not real, conflict, Catholicism and Protestantism are not reducible to one and the same reality. There are important differences between the two major expressions of Christian faith and ecclesial life, and these differences emerged already at the time of the Reformation itself. It is the great value of Professor Pannenberg's essay that he should put his finger so clearly on one such item.

Catholics and Protestants historically have not agreed on the manner in which God redemptively encounters us in Jesus Christ, nor have they agreed on the effects of that encounter. Protestantism has always been suspicious of any theological view which seems to exaggerate the power of the natural, the finite, the fleshly, the tangible, the concrete, the historical. To insist that these are, or can be, the bearers of God's presence, as Catholicism does, is to run the risk of falling into idolatry. And to insist that such finite objects can also be effective instruments of God's saving activity, as Catholicism also does, is, for the Protestant, to run the risk of lapsing into a magical view of salvation. And to insist, finally, as Catholicism does, on the essentially social and communal character of the divine-human encounter is to run the risk of depreciating for the Protestant, the sovereign freedom of the individual and the immediacy of the individual's access to Christ. I suggest that each of those Protestant concerns inform Wolfhart Pannenberg's essay and shape the explanation and defense of his central thesis.

But at least we agree on what is fundamentally at issue. The first theological question we ask ourselves is "Who am I?" or "Who are we?" It is precisely in our attempt to come to terms with the meaning of our own lives that we raise the question of God, of Christ, of church, and of Christian moral behavior. We raise the question of God because we seek the deepest and surest foundation of meaning that we can find. We raise the question of Christ because we seek some concrete, personal, historical expression of that foundation of meaning. Christ is our way of getting in touch with God. And we raise the question of Christian existence because we seek some experiential verification of the meaning we embrace. Christian living is the way we -express our relationship with the church, with Christ, and ultimately with God.

But we start with the question of ourselves, with the question of human existence. It is, after all, we who have come to a belief in God, in Christ as the Word of God, and in the church as the Body of Christ. It is we who seek to find meaning and order in our lives and in our world. Since all theological questions. begin with us, as the ones who raise them in the first place, theology cannot afford to take for granted the questioner if it really hopes to understand both the questions we ask and the answers we have been fashioning in response.

A theological anthropology sums up the whole of theology, for in our understanding of human existence we progressively articulate our

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understanding of God, of Christ of redemption, of church, of the moral life. No aspect of theology is untouched by our anthropology. Therefore, no theology can begin without immediate attention to the question of human existence.

III

Nowhere is the anthropological question more sharply focused than in the problem of the interrelationship of nature and grace. The problem of the relationship between nature and grace is as fundamental a problem as one will ever come upon in all of Christian theology. The nature-grace issue underlies the following relationships: creation and incarnation, reason and faith, law and gospel, human freedom and divine sovereignty, the history of the world and the history of salvation, human progress and the Kingdom of God, natural law and the law of Christ, humanity and the church, and so forth. The Catholic theological tradition works its way through two extreme positions: the extreme left of Pelagianism, which emphasizes so much the superiority of nature over grace that it effectively submerges the transcendental, supernatural dimension of salvation; and the extreme right of Protestantism (at least Protestantism as perceived and condemned by the Council of Trent), which emphasizes so much the superiority of grace over nature that it effectively submerges the dimension of human freedom and cooperation in salvation. The parenthetical qualification is necessary because subsequent historical studies have shown that the positions of Luther, Calvin, and Melanchthon were more nuanced than first appeared to counter Reformation theologians and ecclesiastical officials.

This Catholic theological understanding of the nature-grace relationship is grounded, first of all, in the New Testament's perspective of a Christocentric universe (I Cor. 8:6; 15:24-28, 44-49; Rom. 8:19-23, 29, 30; Eph. 1:9-10, 19-23; 3:11; Col. 1: 15-20, 3:4; Phil. 3:2 1; Heb. 1:2-3; John 1:3, 12:32). All creation is oriented toward the covenant between God and the people of God, and the covenant, in turn, toward the New Covenant grounded in the incarnation of the Son of God in Jesus Christ. The human community and the entire world in which the human community exists is oriented toward Christ and is sustained by him. Although hypothetically it could have been otherwise, in fact it has not been otherwise. There is no creation except in view of Christ. There is no human existence, therefore, except in view of Christ and of our New Covenant in Christ.

This intrinsic orientation of the human person and of the entire human community in Christ radically excludes any dualism, or sharp separation, between nature and grace. Although in principle we could know God apart from revelation and apart specifically from the revelation of God in Christ, in fact we cannot and do not know God apart from this revelation (Rom. 1: 18-28; Acts 17:24-27).

By ourselves, therefore, we could never go beyond the knowledge of

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the limited and the created. Such knowledge, on the other hand, is consonant with human existence. We would not thereby be less than human because we could know only the limited and the created. In fact, however, God gives us the radical capacity to transcend the limited and the created. There is now a radical capacity in nature itself, and not merely super-added to nature, by which we are ordained to the knowledge of God. Thus, all dualism between nature and grace is eliminated. There are not in the human person two separate finalities, the one oriented toward the vision of God, and the other oriented toward human fulfillment apart from the vision of God. Human existence is already graced existence. There is no merely natural end of human existence. Human existence in its natural condition is radically oriented toward God.

This means, too, that the whole universe is oriented to the glory of God (Rom. 8:19- 23). The history of the world is, at the same time, the history of salvation. It means also that authentic human progress in the struggle for justice, peace, freedom, human rights, and so forth, is part of the movement of, and toward, the Kingdom of God (Vatican II, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, n.39). It means as well that human freedom is never to be conceived totally apart from grace, because it is always modified and qualified by grace; so, too, the grace of God is operative only insofar as it interacts with, and radically transforms, the natural order of the human person. The movement and dynamism of human freedom, on the one hand, and divine sovereignty, on the other, will converge perfectly at the end, in the vision of God and the final realization of the Kingdom. Each person and all of history will then achieve their definitive meaning.

For Catholicism freedom is indeed more than the effect of trusting faith. It is the relatively limited capacity to decide who we shall be. In that sense, freedom is the capacity for the eternal, for God. It is that which allows us to orient ourselves beyond ourselves, to recognize who we are ultimately and to shape our entire life according to that new self-consciousness of who we are in the presence of God.

And this is precisely what contemporary Catholic moral theologians, such as Joseph Fuchs and others, mean by the "fundamental option." In being truly converted to the Kingdom of God, everything we do assumes its direction, purpose, and meaning in light of the Kingdom, that is, in light of God's will. This does not rule out the possibility, indeed the probability, that we shall occasionally act against this fundamental choice for God. But only a fundamental reversal of that choice (what the traditional textbooks call aversio a Deo) is sufficient to cancel out the original decision to understand oneself in relation to God and to orient one's whole life in view of that new self- understanding.

Freedom, then, is a transcendental capacity. It is a capacity which allows a person to go beyond self, to become something other, and not simply to do this or avoid that. But because it is a transcendental

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capacity, we can never be directly conscious of it. It is impossible for us to answer completely the question "Who are we?" because we are. at one and the same time the questioner and the one questioned. Only God has a view of human existence which is objective and comprehensive. Indeed, as soon as we begin reflecting on our freedom, we are already exercising it. We experience ourselves as free, but there is no scientific way of verifying our freedom as we verify, for example, the existence of the lungs or the kidneys. We argue to freedom not only on the basis of our experience, which in any case can be distorted by external and internal forces, but on the basis of the implications of its denial. If we are not free, we are not responsible. And if we are not responsible, human existence is reduced to mechanical existence. Without freedom and responsibility there is no love, no faith, no hope, no trust, no compassion, no friendship, no justice. Everything is calculated, predetermined, subject only to accident and/or miscalculation.

Freedom is the capacity to say either "Yes" or "No" to God, to see ourselves either as having ultimate worth because we are alive by a principle which transcends us, or, on the other hand, to see ourselves as merely a constellation and network of biological responses and of psychological and sociological conditioning. Evidence (not overwhelming proof) of our capacity to say "Yes" to God appears in various acts of heroism and of extraordinary generosity where self-interest is clearly subordinated to the interests of others. One need only reflect on the obscenity of Auschwitz and Buchenwald to find similar evidence of our radical capacity to say "No" to God. What is to be said, finally, of God's sovereignty? If we have the capacity to say a final and definitive "No" to God, does not that limit God's power over us? It is God who Created us as free beings and who witted and established our freedom. Subjectivity, therefore, must exist without limiting the sovereignty of God. If that seems too simple, consider the alternatives: (a) we are not free, and, therefore, not really human; or (b) God is essentially limited, and, therefore, not really God.

But it all comes back again to the fundamental theological question. How, and to what effect, does God encounter us in Jesus Christ? Is God present in the human, the finite, the concrete, the historical? Does God actually work through these instruments? Are they, and we, intrinsically transformed and elevated by the redemptive presence of God? Catholicism answers unhesitatingly "Yes" to each of these questions. Catholicism's vision is an essentially sacramental one. The Catholic sees God in and through all things, other people, communities, movements, events, places, objects, the world at large, the whole cosmos. The visible, the tangible, the finite, the historical-all these are actual or potential carriers of the divine presence. Indeed, it is only in and through these material realities that we can even encounter the invisible God. The great sacrament of our encounter with God and of God's encounter with us is Jesus Christ. The church, in turn, is the sacrament of our

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encounter with Christ and of Christ's, with us, and the sacraments, in turn, are the signs and instruments by which that ecclesial encounter with Christ is expressed, celebrated, and made effective for the glory of God and human salvation.

A corollary of the principle of sacramentality is the principle of mediation. A sacrament not only signifies; it also causes what it signifies. Thus, created realities not only contain, reflect, or embody the presence of God. They make that presence effective for those who avail themselves of these realities. The universe of grace is a mediated reality; mediated principally by Christ, and secondarily by the church and by other signs and instruments of salvation outside and beyond the church.

Finally, Catholicism affirms the principle of communion, that our way to God and God's way to us is not only a mediated way but a communal way. And even when the divine-human encounter is most personal and individual, it is still communal in that the encounter is made possible by the mediation of the community. Thus, there is not simply an individual personal relationship with God or Jesus Christ that is established and sustained by meditative reflection on sacred Scripture, for the Bible itself is the church's book and is the testimony of the church's original faith. The mystic (even in the narrow sense of the word) relies on language, ideas, concepts, and presuppositions when contemplatively entering into, or reflecting upon, an intimate relationship with God. We are radically social beings; our sexuality and our use of language are clear evidence of that. There is no relationship with God, however intense, profound, and unique, which dispenses entirely with the communal context of every human relationship with God.

And this is why, for Catholicism, the mystery of the church has so significant a place in theology, doctrine, pastoral practice, moral vision, commitment, and devotion. Catholics have always emphasized the place of the church as both the sacrament of Christ, mediating salvation through sacraments, ministries, and other institutional elements and forms, and as the Communion of Saints, the preview or foretaste, as it were, of the perfect communion to which the whole of humankind is destined in the final Kingdom of God.

And so it is with the mystery of the church that we come at last to the point at which the distinctively Catholic understanding and practice of Christian faith most clearly emerges. For here we find the convergence of those principles which have always been so characteristic of Catholicism: sacramentality, mediation, and communion.

This is not to argue that Catholic and Protestant approaches to the divine-human encounter are inalterably opposed to one another. Nor should one want to deny that such approaches are, for the most part, complementary. But neither should the differences be overlooked. Once again, it is the genius of Wolfhart Pannenberg's essay that he can stimulate us all to a fresh interpretation of a very old problem while, at the same time, bringing us to appreciate anew what it was that set our predecessors in the faith at adds with one another in the first place.