One of the most sensitive problems that churches face these days is convergence, and how far to go with it.
Critical moments in history arise when we must ask whether old controversies have to be carried on in their established forms or can be viewed with new understanding. Some people suspect that even to consider redefining old controversies betrays a tendency to compromise, a hint of relativism, or an ecumenism in which the spirit of love stifles the demands of truth. Such people have a fear of the lowest-common-denominator sort of ecumenism that seeks communion at the minimal level of agreement.
But it would be unjust to brand all the efforts to reconsider old controversies with the label of relativism. It seems clear to me at least that some of the ancient conflicts were shaped and formed out of intense polemics, polemics in which distorted images of the opponents were formed and left intact, to be attacked over and over again without serious consideration of whether the image was altogether accurate. To reconsider the controversy is a way of asking whether the old images were indeed true to life.
The Roman Catholic image of Luther is a case in point. For centuries Luther has been seen in the image cast for him by the Council of Trent. Trent saw Luther only as the man who taught an external justification in which the healing power of grace had no part. The believer was, after all, both just and sinner, simul peccator et justus, a person for whom sanctification was basically insignificant. This image of Luther was cast firm and hard, and lasted until our day. Anyone who knows Luther well knows that the image was distorted. And anyone who does not know Luther this well need only read his writings on the law of God and the demand for obedience, as well as his polemics against the antinomians. But the image of the Luther who cared little or nothing for the Christian’s renewal of life was very hard to correct.
Now, happily, a change is in the making. Joseph Lortz, a respected Catholic church historian, has aroused interest in the genuine religious intentions of the Reformer. But Lortz is just a beginning. More and more Catholic scholars are digging into the actual writings of Luther. Hans Küng, in his now famous book on Justification of 1957, cast serious doubt on the traditional Catholic interpretation of Luther by discovering many convergences between Catholic and Lutheran doctrine. I have a letter written to me by Karl Barth in 1957, right after Küng’s book appeared. Barth wrote: “Have you seen Küng’s new book? It will amaze you.”
Since that time, many other Catholic studies on Luther have appeared that have been equally amazing. A prime example is Otto Hermann Persch, a Dominican from Walbersberg in Germany, who wrote a large book (1,000 pages) about justification as understood by Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther. Persch radically refutes the caricatures that Catholics have drawn of Luther. He admits it was a profound discovery for him to get into the real Luther by reading all his works. At the time of Trent and during the post-Trent period there was no thought of looking at the whole Luther; the image of Luther formed at Trent was enough for most people to make their judgments on him. Now Luther himself is allowed to speak. The result has been that Persch’s work has been highly praised by Protestant Luther scholars for its integrity and empathy.
Persch has discovered a profound convergence between Thomas and Luther. Deep differences existed too, of course. Persch calls Luther an existential theologian and Thomas a sapiential theologian. But these two do not oppose each other: they are complementary.
Persch is specially concerned to show that their views on merit are not unalterably opposed. In the past, it was this subject that was fatal to any mutual understanding. On one side we had the notion of merit as a claim on God, and thus an arrogant pretention. But, says Persch, the intention was only this: to see the justified man as personally involved, as given—by God’s grace—a role to play within the work of grace, and to do justice to the biblical connection between the work of the Spirit and the promise of reward.
After his book was out, Persch wrote an article in which he spoke more clearly about the inadequacy of the traditional Catholic doctrine of merit. Here he pointed to the clear teaching of Paul on the absolute gratuity of grace. It is generally understood that Thomas himself stressed the priority of grace, but that post-Thomas Franciscans tended to accent free will and its work of preparation for grace. Conflicts broke out at the Council of Trent between these two theological streams, conflicts that were never very clearly resolved.
How to understand what went on at Trent has, to this day, remained a difficult problem, as is witnessed by the Trent studies of men like W. Joest, H. A. Obermann, and H. Ruckert. Moreover, it is clear that what has influenced the actual faith and life of Catholics has been not the subtle declarations of Trent but the preaching and catechizing about grace after Trent.
Today, more and more Catholics are saying that justification cannot mean a combination of what God does and what man does. They are heard insisting that theology must reflect what the self-aware person confesses in his prayers, that he is wholly dependent on grace. Bavinck once wrote that people who are Pelagians in their theology often become Augustinians the moment they are on their knees before God—that is, when face to face with God they realize their total dependence on his sovereign grace. Many Catholics are saying the same thing these days. And herein they seek convergence. For they sense that, when they recognize this, they have gone beyond Trent without rejecting the deepest intention of Trent.
The new Catholic respect for Luther is important. It goes hand in hand with the new Catholic concern for Paul’s teaching on justification. Trent, of course, quoted Paul’s word in Romans 11:6, “But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace.” But it never clearly rested with this word. Now, Paul has time and again been an explosive ingredient in the life of the Church. And whenever we see the explosive discharging itself, we have reason to rejoice, and to follow the results very carefully.
We must not do this as though we were standing on a pedestal of perfection, of course, as though we had always honored the sovereignty of God’s grace purely. We have to watch what happens in Roman Catholicism in a spirit of humility. For, in any case, this is the only spirit in which we can possibly glory in the grace of God—to say nothing of its being the only spirit in which true ecumenism can exist.
G. C. BERKOUWER
