3.6 Theology and Astronomy: Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo

3.6 Theology and Astronomy: Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo

Case Studies

Case Study 3.1 Bible and Tradition in the Reformation Debates

The sixteenth century witnessed a major debate over the authority and interpretation of the Bible, which continues to be both interesting and significant. The Reformation called into question established understandings of the matter and forced a debate over an issue that had hitherto not been considered to be especially significant. The present case study explores this debate and the different positions associated with its three participants: the magisterial, radical, and catholic Reformations respectively.

“The Bible,” wrote William Chillingworth, “I say, the Bible only, is the religion of Protestants.” These famous words of this seventeenth-century English Protestant summarize the Reformation attitude to Scripture. Calvin stated the same principle less memorably, if more fully: “Let this then be a sure axiom: that nothing ought to be admitted in the church as the Word of God, save that which is contained, first in the Law and the Prophets, and secondly in the writings of the Apostles; and that there is no other method of teaching in the church than according to the prescription and rule of his Word.” For Calvin, as we shall see, the institutions and regulations of both church and society were required to be grounded in Scripture: “I approve only of those human institutions that are founded upon the authority of God and derived from Scripture.” Zwingli entitled his 1522 tract on Scripture On the Clarity and Certainty of the Word of God, stating that “the foundation of our religion is the written word, the Scriptures of God.” Such statements indicate the consistently high view of Scripture adopted by the reformers.

This view is not, it must be stressed, a novelty; it represents a major point of continuity with medieval theology, which – certain later Franciscan writers excepted – regarded Scripture as the most important source of Christian doctrine. The difference between the reformers and medieval theology at this point concerns how Scripture is defined and interpreted rather than the status that it is given. We shall explore these points further in what follows.

The Canon of Scripture

Central to any program that treats Scripture as normative is the delimitation of Scripture. In other words, what is Scripture? The term “canon” (a Greek word meaning “rule” or “norm”) came to be used to refer to those Scriptures recognized as authentic by the church. For medieval theologians, “Scripture” meant “those works included in the Vulgate.” The reformers, however, called this judgment into question. While all the New Testament works were accepted as canonical – Luther’s misgivings concerning four of them gaining little support – doubts were raised concerning the canonicity of a group of Old Testament works. A comparison of the contents of the Old Testament in the Hebrew Bible, on the one hand, and the Greek and Latin versions (such as the Vulgate), on the other, shows that the latter contain a number of works not found in the former.

Following the lead of Jerome, the reformers argued that the only Old Testament writings that could be regarded as belonging to the canon of Scripture were those originally included in the Hebrew Bible. A distinction was thus drawn between the “Old Testament” and “Apocrypha”: the former consisted of works found in the Hebrew Bible, while the latter consisted of works found in the Greek and Latin Bibles (such as the Vulgate), but not in the Hebrew Bible. While some reformers allowed that the apocryphal works were edifying reading, there was general agreement that these works could not be used as the basis of doctrine. Medieval theologians, however, to be followed by the Council of Trent in 1546, defined the “Old Testament” as “those Old Testament works contained in the Greek and Latin Bibles,” thus eliminating any distinction between “Old Testament” and “Apocrypha.”

A fundamental distinction thus developed between Roman Catholic and Protestant understandings of what the term “Scripture” actually meant. This distinction persists to the present day. A comparison of Protestant versions of the Bible – the two most important at present being the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) and the New International Version (NIV) – with a Roman Catholic Bible, such as the Jerusalem Bible, will reveal these differences. For the reformers, the slogan scriptura sola (“by Scripture alone”) thus implied not merely one, but two, differences from their Catholic opponents: not only did they attach a different status to Scripture, but they disagreed over what Scripture actually was. But what is the relevance of this dispute?

In practice, it has to be said, the distinction was of little practical importance. It certainly had a bearing on one Catholic practice to which the reformers took particular exception – praying for the dead. To the reformers, this practice rested upon a non-biblical foundation (the doctrine of purgatory) and encouraged popular superstition and ecclesiastical exploitation. Their Catholic opponents, however, were able to meet this objection by pointing out that the practice of praying for the dead was explicitly mentioned in Scripture, at 2 Maccabees 12:40–46. The reformers, having declared that this book was apocryphal (and hence not part of the Bible), were able to respond that, in their view at least, the practice was not scriptural. This merited the obvious riposte from the Catholic side – that the reformers based their theology on Scripture, only after having excluded from the canon of Scripture any works that happened to contradict this theology.

One outcome of this debate was the production and circulation of authorized lists of books that were to be regarded as “scriptural.” The fourth session of the Council of Trent (1546) produced a detailed list, which included the works of the Apocrypha as authentically scriptural, while the Protestant congregations in Switzerland, France, and elsewhere produced lists that deliberately omitted reference to these works, or else indicated that they were of no importance in matters of doctrine.

The Authority of Scripture

The reformers grounded the authority of Scripture in its relation to the Word of God. For some, that relation was an absolute identity: Scripture is the Word of God. For others, the relation was slightly more nuanced: Scripture contains the Word of God. Nevertheless, there was a consensus that Scripture was to be received as if it were God himself speaking. For Calvin, the authority of Scripture was grounded in the fact that the biblical writers were “secretaries of the Holy Spirit.” For the Reformed theologian Heinrich Bullinger – Zwingli’s successor at Zurich – the authority of Scripture was absolute and autonomous: “Because it is the Word of God, the holy biblical Scripture has adequate standing and credibility in itself and of itself.” Here was the gospel itself, able to speak for itself and challenge and correct its inadequate and inaccurate representations in the sixteenth century. Scripture was able both to pass judgment upon the late medieval church (and find it wanting) and also to provide the model for the new Reformed church that would arise in its wake.

The Catholic opponents of the Reformation, however, argued that, in that the church had defined the canon of Scripture and chosen to treat canonical biblical works as possessing authority, it followed that the church took precedence over the Bible – and therefore that the church had the right to interpret the Bible. This point is made clearly by many leading Catholic critics of Protestantism in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, such as Cardinal Roberto Bellarmine (1542–1621):

Our [Protestant] opponents agree with us that the Scriptures ought to be interpreted in the Spirit in which they were written – that is, the Holy Spirit. The apostle Peter teaches this in 2 Peter 1, when he says, “understand this first, that no prophecies are due to individual interpretation. For the prophecies do not result from human effort. Rather, God’s saints spoke as inspired by the Holy Spirit.” By this, Peter shows that the Scriptures ought not to be interpreted by individual minds, but by the Holy Spirit, because they were written by the inspiration of this Holy Spirit, not the human mind.

Therefore, the whole question concerns this: where is that Spirit to be found? We maintain that this Spirit, though often absent from individual people, is most certainly to be found in the church – that is, in a Council of bishops established by the supreme pastor of the whole church, or in the supreme pastor within a Council of the other pastors.

In contrast, the Protestant reformers insisted that the authority of popes, councils, and theologians is subordinate to that of Scripture. This is not necessarily to say that they have no authority: as a matter of fact, the mainline reformers allowed certain councils and theologians of the patristic era a genuine authority in matters of doctrine. Nevertheless, the mainstream reformers argued that such authority is derived from Scripture and is thus subordinate to Scripture. The Bible, as the Word of God, must be regarded as superior to fathers and councils. Yet, as Calvin argued, “the recognition that fathers and councils are of authority only in so far as they agree with the rule of the Word” did not entail denying them any authority or significance for Christian theology. As Calvin remarked, “we still give to councils and fathers such rank and honour as it is appropriate for them to hold under Christ.”

The reformers also argued that authority within the church does not derive from the status of the office-bearers, but from the Word of God that they serve. Traditional Catholic theology tended to ground the authority of the office-bearer in the office itself – for example, the authority of a bishop resides in the fact that he is a bishop – and emphasized the historical continuity of the office of bishop with the apostolic era. The reformers grounded the authority of bishops (or their Protestant equivalent) in their faithfulness to the Word of God. According to Calvin, Catholics believe that “the church presides over the Word of God,” whereas Protestants held that the church “reverently subjects herself to the Word of God.” Historical continuity thus seemed to Calvin to be of lesser importance than the faithful proclamation of the Word of God.

The breakaway churches of the Reformation obviously could not claim direct historical continuity with the institutions of the Catholic church: no Catholic bishop would ordain their clergy, for example. Yet the reformers argued that the authority and functions of a bishop ultimately derived from faithfulness to the Word of God. Similarly, the decisions of bishops (and also of councils and popes) are authoritative and binding to the extent that they are faithful to Scripture. Where the Catholics stressed the importance of institutional or historical continuity, the reformers emphasized equally the importance of doctrinal continuity.

While the Protestant churches could not generally provide historical continuity with the episcopacy (except, as in the case of the English or the Swedish reformations, through defections of Catholic bishops), they could supply the necessary fidelity to Scripture – thus, in their view, legitimizing the Protestant ecclesiastical offices. There might not be an unbroken historical link between the leaders of the Reformation and the bishops of the early church – but, the reformers argued, as they believed and taught the same faith as those early church bishops (rather than what they considered to be the distorted gospel of the medieval church), the necessary continuity was there nonetheless.

The sola scriptura principle thus involved the claim that the authority of the church was grounded in its fidelity to Scripture. The opponents of the Reformation, however, were able to draw upon a dictum of Augustine: “I should not have believed the gospel, unless I was moved by the authority of the Catholic church.” Did not the very existence of the canon of Scripture point to the church having authority over Scripture? After all, as we have seen, it was the church that defined what “Scripture” was – and this would seem to suggest that the church had an authority over, and was independent of, Scripture. Thus John Eck, Luther’s opponent at the famous Leipzig Disputation of 1519, argued that “Scripture is not authentic without the authority of the church.” This clearly raises the question of the relation between Scripture and tradition, to which we may now conveniently turn.

The Role of Tradition

The scriptura sola principle of the Protestant reformers might at first sight seem to eliminate any reference to tradition in the formation of Christian doctrine. In fact, however, the magisterial reformers had a very positive understanding of tradition, as we shall see, although the radical reformers did indeed adopt the more negative attitude toward tradition, which the slogan might seem to imply. It will be helpful if we begin our discussion of this matter by exploring some understandings of the role of tradition found in the Middle Ages; readers might also like to look at Case Study 1.1, which examines these issues as they were debated during the patristic period.

For most medieval theologians, Scripture was the materially sufficient source of Christian doctrine. In other words, everything that was of essential importance to the Christian faith was contained in Scripture. There was no need to look anywhere else for material relevant to Christian theology. There were certainly matters on which Scripture had nothing to say – for example, who wrote the Apostles’ Creed, at what precise moment during the celebration of the eucharist the bread and wine became the body and blood of Christ, or whether the practice of baptism was intended solely for adult believers. On these matters, the church felt at liberty to attempt to work out what Scripture implied, although their judgments were regarded as subordinate to Scripture itself.

By the end of the Middle Ages, however, the concept of “tradition” had come to be of major importance in relation to the interpretation and authority of Scripture. Scholars such as Heiko A. Oberman (1930–2001) have shown that two quite different concepts of tradition were in circulation in the late Middle Ages, which may be designated as “Tradition 1” and “Tradition 2.” As we noted earlier (see Case Study 1.1), in response to various controversies within the early church, especially the threat from Gnosticism, a “traditional” method of understanding certain passages of Scripture began to develop. Second-century patristic theologians such as Irenaeus of Lyons began to develop the idea of an authorized way of interpreting certain texts of Scripture, which he argued went back to the time of the apostles themselves. Scripture could not be interpreted in any random way: it had to be interpreted within the context of the historical continuity of the Christian church. The parameters of its interpretation were historically fixed and “given.” Oberman designates this understanding of tradition as “Tradition 1.” “Tradition” here means simply “a traditional way of interpreting Scripture within the community of faith.”

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, however, a somewhat different understanding of tradition developed, particularly within Franciscan theological circles. “Tradition” was here understood to be a separate and distinct source of revelation in addition to Scripture. Scripture, it was argued, was silent on a number of points, but God had providentially arranged for a second source of revelation to supplement this deficiency: a stream of unwritten tradition, going back to the apostles themselves. This tradition was passed down from one generation to another within the church. Oberman designates this understanding of tradition as “Tradition 2.”

To summarize this important distinction: “Tradition 1” is a single-source theory of doctrine: doctrine is based upon Scripture and “tradition” refers to a “traditional way of interpreting Scripture.” “Tradition 2” is a dual-source theory of doctrine: doctrine is based upon two quite distinct sources, Scripture and unwritten tradition. A belief that is not to be found in Scripture may thus, on the basis of this dual-source theory, be justified by an appeal to an unwritten tradition. It was primarily against this dual-source theory of doctrine that the reformers directed their criticisms.

During the sixteenth century, the option of totally rejecting tradition was vigorously defended by representatives of the radical Reformation. For radicals such as Thomas Müntzer and Caspar Schwenkfeld, every individual had the right to interpret Scripture as he or she pleased, subject to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. For Sebastian Franck, the Bible “is a book sealed with seven seals which none can open unless he has the key of David, which is the illumination of the Spirit.” The way was thus opened for individualism, with the private judgment of the individual raised above the corporate judgment of the church. Thus, the radicals rejected the practice of infant baptism (to which the magisterial Reformation remained committed) as non-scriptural. (There is no explicit reference to the practice in the New Testament.) Similarly, doctrines such as the Trinity and the divinity of Christ were rejected as resting upon inadequate scriptural foundations. What we might therefore term “Tradition 0” rejects tradition, and in effect places the private judgment of the individual or congregation in the present above the corporate traditional judgment of the Christian church in the past concerning the interpretation of Scripture.

The three main understandings of the relation between Scripture and tradition current in the sixteenth century can thus be summarized as follows:

Tradition 0: The radical Reformation

Tradition 1: The magisterial Reformation

Tradition 2: The Council of Trent

At first, this analysis might seem surprising. Did not the reformers reject tradition in favour of the scriptural witness alone? In fact, however, the reformers were concerned with the elimination of human additions to or distortions of the scriptural witness. The idea of a “traditional interpretation of Scripture” – embodied in the concept of “Tradition 1” – was perfectly acceptable to the magisterial reformers, provided that this traditional interpretation could be justified. This helps us to understand why both Luther and Calvin had such a high estimation of Augustine of Hippo and why he was so influential on both early Lutheran and Reformed theology.

As noted earlier, the magisterial Reformation was theologically conservative. It retained most traditional doctrines of the church – such as the divinity of Jesus Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity – on account of the reformers’ conviction that these traditional interpretations of Scripture were correct. Equally, many traditional practices (such as infant baptism) were retained, on account of the reformers’ belief that they were consistent with Scripture. The magisterial Reformation was painfully aware of the threat of individualism and attempted to avoid this threat by placing emphasis upon the church’s traditional interpretation of Scripture, where this traditional interpretation was regarded as correct. Doctrinal criticism was directed against those areas in which Catholic theology or practice appeared to have gone far beyond, or to have contradicted, Scripture. As most of these developments took place in the Middle Ages, it is not surprising that the reformers spoke of the period 1200–1500 as an “era of decay” or a “period of corruption” which they had a mission to reform. Equally, it is hardly surprising that we find the reformers appealing to the early church fathers as generally reliable interpreters of Scripture.

This point is of particular importance, and has not received the attention it merits. One of the reasons why the reformers valued the writings of the fathers, especially Augustine, was that they regarded them as exponents of a biblical theology. In other words, the reformers believed that the fathers were attempting to develop a theology based upon Scripture alone – which was, of course, precisely what they were also trying to do in the sixteenth century. Of course, the new textual and philological methods available to the reformers meant that they could correct the fathers on points of detail, but the reformers were prepared to accept the “patristic testimony” as generally reliable. As that testimony included such doctrines as the Trinity and the divinity of Christ, and such practices as infant baptism, the reformers were predisposed to accept these as authentically scriptural. This high regard for a traditional interpretation of Scripture (that is, “Tradition 1”) gave the magisterial Reformation a strong bias toward doctrinal conservatism.

The Catholic Position

The Council of Trent, meeting in 1546, responded to the threat of the Reformation by affirming a two-source theory – the position sketched earlier as “Tradition 2.” On this view, the Christian faith reaches every generation through two sources: Scripture and an unwritten tradition. This extra-scriptural (that is, originating from outside the Bible) tradition is to be treated as having equal authority with Scripture. In making this declaration, the Council of Trent appears to have picked up the later, and less influential, of the two main medieval understandings of “tradition” – leaving the more influential understanding to the reformers.

The Fourth Session of the Council, which concluded its deliberations on April 8, 1546, laid down the following challenges to the Protestant position.

To check reckless spirits, this council decrees that no one, relying on his or her own judgement, in matters of faith and morals relating to Christian doctrine (distorting the Holy Scriptures in accordance with their own ideas), shall presume to interpret Scripture contrary to that sense accepted by holy mother Church.

It is interesting to note that in recent years there has been a certain degree of “revisionism” within Roman Catholic circles on this point, with several contemporary theologians arguing that Trent actually excluded the view that “the Gospel is only partly in Scripture and partly in the traditions.”

The Translation of the Bible

One of the leading themes of the Protestant Reformation was that all core religious texts should be available in the vernacular, so that all could read them. Martin Luther, for example, published several of his reforming treatises in both German and Latin, so that both ordinary people and academics could read them. Most importantly of all, however, Protestantism insisted that the Bible was to be translated into the vernacular, so that all could read it and benefit from it.

One of the clearest statements of the reasons for translating the Bible is found in the Preface to one of the most famous biblical translations of all time – the King James Bible of 1611. Miles Smith, Bishop of Gloucester, writing on behalf of the translators, offered an account of the benefits of biblical translation to the people of God. Translation, he declared, allowed them to gain access to the spiritual nourishment found in the Bible. Translation opens a window, to let in the light; breaks the shell, that we may eat the kernel; draws aside the curtain, that we may look into the most Holy place; removes the cover of the well, that we may drink of its water, “even as Jacob rolled away the stone from the mouth of the well, by which means the flocks of Laban were watered (Genesis 29:10).” To translate the Bible was thus to be seen as an act of service to the people of God as a whole.

The Council of Trent, however, did not agree. There was no need for translation; after all, it was the job of the clergy to teach the people what the Bible said and how they were to apply it in their lives. In any case, the Vulgate was a perfectly reliable Latin translation of the biblical text.

[This Council] ordains and declares, that the said old Vulgate edition, which, through extended use over so many years has been approved of in the Church, should be held as authentic in public lectures, disputations, sermons and expositions; and that no one is to dare or presume to reject it under any pretext whatever.

Underlying this declaration lies both a desire to keep things the way they were and a theory of how the laity are to encounter and interpret the Bible – namely, through the intermediary of the church, who is the agent of transmission, translation, and interpretation.

Case Study 3.2 Justification by Faith: Protestantism and the Council of Trent

It is widely agreed that the doctrine of justification by faith was of critical importance to the Reformation. The theological debates of this age frequently referenced this doctrine, which was seen as critically important by both sides. The present case study will focus on two broad understandings of this doctrine to be set out at the time of the Reformation – those adopted by Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon on the one hand and by the Council of Trent on the other.

At the heart of the Christian faith lies the idea that human beings, finite and frail though they are, can enter into a relationship with the living God. The New Testament articulates this fundamental idea through a number of metaphors or images, such as “salvation” and “redemption,” initially in the writings of the New Testament (especially the Pauline letters) and subsequently in Christian theological reflection, based upon these texts. By the late Middle Ages, one image had come to be seen as especially significant: justification.

The term “justification” and the verb “to justify” came to signify “entering into a right relationship with God,” or perhaps “being made righteous in the sight of God.” The doctrine of justification came to be seen as dealing with the question of what an individual had to do in order to be saved. As contemporary sources indicate, this question came to be asked with increasing frequency as the sixteenth century dawned. The rise of humanism brought with it a new emphasis upon individual consciousness and a new awareness of human individuality. In the wake of this dawn of the individual consciousness came a new interest in the doctrine of justification – the question of how human beings, as individuals, could enter into a relationship with God. How could a sinner hope to do this? This question lay at the heart of the theological concerns of Martin Luther and came to dominate the early phase of the Reformation. In view of the importance of the doctrine to this period, we shall consider Luther’s discussion of the doctrine and the response of the Council of Trent.

Martin Luther

In 1545, the year before he died, Luther contributed a preface to the first volume of the complete edition of his Latin writings, in which he described how he came to break with the church of his day. Luther wrote this preface to introduce himself to a readership that probably did not know how Luther came to hold his reforming view. In this “autobiographical fragment” (as it is usually known), Luther aims to provide those readers with background information about the development of his vocation as a reformer. He tells his own story, including his personal difficulties with the problem of the “righteousness of God” that led to his vocation as a reformer. In view of the importance of this passage dealing with Luther’s reflections on the righteousness of God, it is reproduced in full.

I had certainly wanted to understand Paul in his letter to the Romans. But what prevented me from doing so was not so much cold feet as that one phrase in the first chapter: “the righteousness of God is revealed in it” (Romans 1:17). For I hated that phrase, “the righteousness of God,” which I had been taught to understand as the righteousness by which God is righteous, and punishes unrighteous sinners.

Although I lived a blameless life as a monk, I felt that I was a sinner with an uneasy conscience before God. I also could not believe that I had pleased him with my works. Far from loving that righteous God who punished sinners, I actually hated him. … I was in desperation to know what Paul meant in this passage. At last, as I meditated day and night on the relation of the words “the righteousness of God is revealed in it, as it is written, the righteous person shall live by faith,” I began to understand that “righteousness of God” as that by which the righteous person lives by the gift of God (faith); and this sentence, “the righteousness of God is revealed,” to refer to a passive righteousness, by which the merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written, “the righteous person lives by faith.” This immediately made me feel as though I had been born again, and as though I had entered through open gates into paradise itself. From that moment, I saw the whole face of Scripture in a new light. … And now, where I had once hated the phrase, “the righteousness of God,” I began to love and extol it as the sweetest of phrases, so that this passage in Paul became the very gate of paradise to me.

So what is Luther talking about in this famous passage, which vibrates with the excitement of discovery? It is obvious that his understanding of the phrase “the righteousness of God” has changed radically. But what is the nature of this change? And why was this significant?

Martin Luther (1483–1546). was perhaps the most significant figure in the European Reformation, noted particularly for his doctrine of justification by faith alone and his strongly Christocentric understanding of revelation. His “theology of the cross” has aroused much interest in the late twentieth century. Luther’s posting of the Ninety-Five Theses on October 31, 1517 is generally regarded as marking the beginning of the Reformation.

The basic change is fundamental. Originally Luther regarded the precondition for justification as a human work, something that the sinner had to perform or achieve, before he or she could be justified. His reading of the works of Augustine of Hippo convinced him that this was an impossibility. Since he felt he was unable to achieve this righteousness that was required for salvation, Luther believed that he could only interpret the “righteousness of God” as a punishing righteousness: God demands righteousness from humanity and rightly punishes sinners. However, in this passage, Luther tells his readers how he discovered a “new” meaning of the “righteousness of God” – a righteousness that God gives to the sinner. In other words, God graciously gives sinners what they require if they are to be justified. An analogy (not used by Luther) may help bring out the difference between these two approaches.

Let us suppose that you are in prison and are offered your freedom on condition that you pay a heavy fine. The promise is real – so long as you can meet the precondition, the promise will be fulfilled. As we noted earlier, Pelagius works on the presupposition, initially shared by Luther, that you have the necessary money stacked away somewhere. As your freedom is worth far more, you are being offered a bargain. So you pay the fine. This presents no difficulties, so long as you have the necessary resources. Luther increasingly came to share the view of Augustine – that sinful humanity just does not have the resources needed to meet this precondition. To go back to our analogy, Augustine and Luther work on the assumption that, as you do not have the money, the promise of freedom has little relevance to your situation. For both Augustine and Luther, therefore, the good news of the gospel is that you have been given the necessary money with which to buy your freedom. In other words, the precondition has been met for you by someone else. The precondition still exists, but it has been fulfilled in a new way.

The general consensus among Luther scholars is that his theology of justification underwent a decisive alteration at some point in 1515. Luther’s insight, which he describes in this autobiographical passage, is that the God of the Christian gospel is not a harsh judge who rewards individuals according to their merits, but a merciful and gracious God who bestows righteousness upon sinners as a gift.

Central to Luther’s insights was the doctrine of “justification by faith alone.” The idea of “justification” is already familiar. But what about the phrase “by faith alone”? What is the nature of justifying faith? “The reason why some people do not understand why faith alone justifies is that they do not know what faith is.” In writing these words, Luther draws our attention to the need to inquire more closely concerning that deceptively simple word “faith.”

Three points relating to Luther’s idea of faith may be singled out as having special importance for understanding his doctrine of justification. Each of these points is taken up and developed by later writers, such as John Calvin, indicating that Luther has made a fundamental and widely-accepted contribution to the development of Reformation thought at this point. These three points are:

We shall consider each of these points individually.

The doctrine of “justification by faith” thus does not mean that the sinner is justified because he or she believes, on account of that faith. This would be to treat faith as a human action or work. Luther’s point is that God provides everything necessary for justification, so that all that the sinner needs to do is to receive it. God is active, and humans are passive, in justification. The phrase “justification by grace through faith” brings out the meaning of the doctrine more clearly: the justification of the sinner is based upon the grace of God and is received through faith. The doctrine of justification by faith alone is an affirmation that God does everything necessary for salvation. Even faith itself is a gift of God, rather than a human action. God meets the precondition for justification. Thus, as we saw, the “righteousness of God” is not a righteousness by which God judges whether or not we have met the precondition for justification, but the righteousness that God gives to us so that we may meet that precondition.

One of the central insights of Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone is that the individual sinner is incapable of self-justification. It is God who takes the initiative in justification, providing all the resources necessary to justify that sinner. One of those resources is the “righteousness of God.” In other words, the righteousness on the basis of which sinners are justified is not their own righteousness, but a righteousness that is given to them by God. Augustine had made this point earlier: Luther, however, gives it a subtle new twist, which would lead to the development of the concept of “forensic justification” as the normative understanding of justification within Protestantism.

The point at issue is difficult to explain and centers on the question of the location of justifying righteousness. Both Augustine and Luther are agreed that God graciously gives sinful humans a righteousness that justifies them. But where is that righteousness located within a believer? Augustine argued that this justifying righteousness was located within believers; Luther insisted that it remained outside believers. For Augustine, the righteousness in question is internal; for Luther, it is external.

For Augustine, God bestows justifying righteousness upon the sinner, in such a way that it becomes part of his or her person. As a result, this righteousness, although originating from outside the sinner, becomes part of his or her person. For Luther, the righteousness in question remains outside the sinner: it is an “alien righteousness” (iustitia aliena). God treats, or “reckons,” this righteousness as if it is part of the sinner’s person. In his Romans lectures of 1515–1516, Luther develops the idea of the “alien righteousness of Christ,” imputed – not imparted – to us by faith, as the grounds of justification. His comments on Romans 4:7 are especially important:

Saints are always sinners in their own sight, and therefore always justified outwardly. But hypocrites are always righteous in their own sight, and thus always sinners outwardly. I use the term “inwardly” to show how we are in ourselves, in our own sight, in our own estimation; and the term “outwardly” to indicate how we are before God and in his reckoning. Therefore we are righteous outwardly when we are righteous solely by the imputation of God and not of ourselves or of our own works.

Believers are righteous on account of the alien righteousness of Christ, which is imputed to them – that is, treated as if it were theirs through faith. Earlier, we noted that an essential element of Luther’s concept of faith is that it unites the believer to Christ. Justifying faith thus allows the believer to link up with the righteousness of Christ and be justified on its basis. Christians are thus “righteous by the imputation of a merciful God.”

Through faith, the believer is clothed with the righteousness of Christ, in much the same way, Luther suggests, as Ezekiel 16:8 speaks of God covering our nakedness with a garment. For Luther, sin and righteousness thus coexist in believers; we remain sinners inwardly, but are righteous extrinsically, in the sight of God. By confessing our sins in faith, we stand in a right and righteous relationship with God. From our own perspective we are sinners, but in the perspective of God, we are righteous.

Luther does not necessarily imply that this coexistence of sin and righteousness is a permanent condition. Believers are like people who are ill, but who are recovering under the care of a competent physician: they are unwell as a matter of fact, but are healed as a matter of hope, in that the process of healing has begun and is continuing within them. The Christian life is not static, as if – to use a very loose way of speaking – the relative amounts of sin and righteousness remain constant throughout. Luther is perfectly aware that the Christian life is dynamic, in that the believer grows in righteousness. The existence of sin within believers thus does not negate their status as Christians who are righteous in God’s sight.

God thus shields our sin through the righteousness of Christ, which is like a protective covering, under which we may battle with sin. Luther’s approach accounts for both the persistence of sin in believers and the gradual transformation of the believer and the future elimination of that sin. However, it is not necessary to be perfectly righteous to be a Christian. Sin does not point to unbelief or a failure on the part of God; rather, it points to the continued need for believers to entrust themselves to the gracious healing care of God. Luther thus declares, in a famous phrase, that a believer is “at one and the same time righteous and a sinner (simul iustus et peccator)”; righteous in hope, but a sinner in fact; righteous in the sight and through the promise of God, yet a sinner in reality.

Forensic Justification: Philip Melanchthon and John Calvin

Luther’s ideas on justification were subsequently developed by his follower Philip Melanchthon to give the doctrine now generally known as “forensic justification.” Where Augustine taught that sinners are made righteous in the process of justification, Melanchthon argued that they are reckoned to be righteous or pronounced to be righteous by God. For Augustine, “justifying righteousness” is imparted; for Melanchthon, it is imputed. Melanchthon drew a sharp distinction between the event of being declared righteous and the process of being made righteous, designating the former “justification” and the latter “sanctification” or “regeneration.” For Augustine, both were simply different aspects of the same thing. According to Melanchthon, God pronounces the divine judgment – that the sinner is righteous – in the heavenly court. This legal approach to justification gives rise to the term “forensic justification,” from the Latin word forum (“market place” or “courtyard”) – the place traditionally associated with the dispensing of justice in classical Rome.

Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560). A noted early Lutheran theologian and close personal associate of Martin Luther. He was responsible for the systematization of early Lutheran theology, particularly through his Loci Communes (“Common Places,” the first edition of which was published in 1521) and his “Apology for the Augsburg Confession” (1531).

The importance of this development lies in the fact that it marks a complete break with the teaching of the church up to that point. From the time of Augustine onward, justification had always been understood to refer to both the event of being declared righteous and the process of being made righteous. For Augustine and other western theologians up to this point, the Latin term iustificari (“to be justified”) meant “to be made righteous.” Melanchthon’s concept of forensic justification diverged radically from this. As it was taken up by virtually all the major reformers subsequently, it quickly came to represent a standard difference between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. In addition to their differences on how the sinner was justified, there was now an additional disagreement on what the word “justification” designated in the first place. As we shall see, the Council of Trent, the Roman Catholic church’s definitive response to the Protestant challenge, reaffirmed the views of Augustine on the nature of justification and censured the views of Melanchthon.

Melanchthon’s understanding of justification as the event of God declaring someone to be righteous – and to be distinguished sharply from sanctification, the process by which God makes someone righteous – became widely accepted in Protestantism. Calvin’s formulation of the concept of justification is widely regarded as definitive for the Reformed tradition and deserves close study.

To be justified in God’s sight is to be reckoned as righteous in God’s judgment, and to be accepted on account of that righteousness. […] The person who is justified by faith is someone who, apart from the righteousness of works, has taken hold of the righteousness of Christ through faith, and having been clothed with it, appears in the sight of God not as a sinner, but as a righteous person. Therefore, justification is to be understood simply as the acceptance by which God receives us into his favor as righteous people. We say that it consists of the remission of sins and the imputation of the righteousness of Christ. … There is no doubt that we obtain justification in the sight of God only by the intercession of the righteousness of Christ. This is equivalent to saying that believers are not righteous in themselves, but on account of the communication of the righteousness of Christ through imputation, something to be noted carefully. … Our righteousness is not in us, but in Christ. We possess it only because we participate in Christ; in fact, with him, we possess all his riches.

Justification is here defined forensically as being “reckoned as righteous” in the judgment of God. It defines the beginning of the Christian life, in which the believer enters into a right relation with God. The concept of the “imputation of the righteousness of Christ” plays a central role in this approach. For Calvin, the righteousness that God requires in justification is not achieved internally by human beings through good works but externally, through the “imputation” or “reckoning” of the righteousness of Christ to the believer. The Christian life is subsequently defined in terms of sanctification, which concerns growth in holiness. For Augustine, in contrast, “justification” means both the beginnings of the Christian life and the ongoing process of “being made righteous” – an understanding that is developed by the Council of Trent, to which we now turn.

The Council of Trent

It was obvious that the church needed to make an official and definitive response to Luther, clearing up any misunderstandings about what justification meant and how justification took place. By 1540, Luther had become something of a household name throughout Europe. His writings were being read and digested with various degrees of enthusiasm, even in the highest ecclesiastical circles in Italy. Something had to be done. The Council of Trent, summoned in 1545, began the long process of formulating a comprehensive response to Luther. High on its agenda was the doctrine of justification.

The sixth session of the Council of Trent came to a close on January 13, 1547. The Tridentine Decree on Justification, as the document resulting from this session has generally come to be known, probably represents the most significant achievement of this council. Its sixteen chapters set out the Roman Catholic teaching on justification with a considerable degree of clarity, distinguishing Catholic understandings of justification from its Protestant alternatives. A series of 33 “canons” – a technical term meaning formal judgments – condemn specific opinions attributed to opponents of the Roman Catholic church, including Luther. Interestingly, the council seems to have been unaware of the threat posed by Calvin and directs the vast bulk of its criticisms against views that were known to be held by Luther himself. Calvin’s impact, although significant in the 1540s, really dates from the 1550s.

Trent’s critique of Luther’s doctrine of justification can be broken down into four main sections, dealing with the four main points of dispute.

We shall consider each of these four matters individually.

Case Study 3.3 The Nature of the Real Presence: Luther, Zwingli, and the Council of Trent

The Reformation debates of the sixteenth century often focussed on the sacraments. So what happens at the Lord’s Supper or eucharist? In what way do the eucharistic bread and wine change, if any, as a result of being used in this service? On this point, Catholicism, Lutheranism, and the Reformed churches took quite different positions. We shall explore them individually in this Case Study, beginning with the traditional Catholic concept of transubstantiation, which affirms that the inward reality of the eucharistic bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of Christ.

Transubstantiation: The Council of Trent

The doctrine of transubstantiation, formally defined by the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), rests upon Aristotelian foundations – specifically, on Aristotle’s distinction between “substance” and “accident.” The substance of something is its essential nature, whereas its accidents are its outward appearances (for example, its colour, shape, smell, and so forth). As we noted in the previous chapter, Aristotle was widely adopted as a philosophical support by medieval theologians and this distinction between “substance” and “accident” proved particularly helpful in developing a theology of the “real presence.”

The classic medieval statement of this belief, as already noted, was set out by the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) as follows:

There is one universal church of the faithful, outside of which nobody at all is saved, in which Jesus Christ is both priest and sacrifice. His body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the forms of bread and wine, the bread and wine having been changed in substance (transsubstantiatio), by God’s power, into his body and blood.

The Latin technical term “transsubstantiatio” literally means “a change of substance.” The theory of transubstantiation affirms that the accidents of the bread and wine remain unchanged at the moment of consecration, while their inner substance changes from that of bread and wine to that of the body and blood of Christ.

As we shall see, this understanding of the nature of the real presence was contested during the early sixteenth century. Martin Luther put forward an approach, often referred to as “consubstantiation,” which differed from this view at points (although there are significant similarities, as we shall see). More radically, Huldrych Zwingli adopted a purely symbolic or “memorialist” approach to the issue. The traditional viewpoint was, however, vigorously defended by the Council of Trent.

The Council of Trent. A major gathering of Catholic bishops and theologians, which aimed to reform the church in the face of Protestant criticisms and clarify and defend Catholic doctrine. The Sixth Session, focusing on the doctrine of justification, concluded in 1547; the Thirteenth Session, dealing with the question of the real presence, ended in 1551.

During the course of its Thirteenth Session, which ended on October 11, 1551, the Council of Trent set out a definitive statement on its understanding of the nature of the real presence of Christ in the eucharist, affirming that the term “transubstantiation” was appropriate to refer to the change in the substance of the bread and wine resulting from their consecration. The Decree opens with a vigorous affirmation of the real substantial presence of Christ: “After the consecration of the bread and wine, our Lord Jesus Christ is truly, really and substantially contained in the venerable sacrament of the holy eucharist under the appearance of those physical things.” The Council thus vigorously defended both the doctrine and the terminology of transubstantiation:

Because Christ our Redeemer declared that it was truly his body that he was offering under the species of bread, it has always been the belief of the Church of God, which this sacred council reaffirms, that by the consecration of the bread and wine a change takes place in which the entire substance of the bread becomes the substance of the body of Christ our Lord, and the whole substance of the wine becomes the substance of his blood. This change the holy Catholic Church has fittingly and correctly called “transubstantiation.”

Note especially the vigorous defense of the change of the substance of the bread and wine into that of the body and blood of Christ, which can be regarded as the real theological heart of this doctrine.

Luther: Consubstantiation

This view, especially associated with Martin Luther, insists upon the simultaneous presence of both the bread and the body of Christ at one and the same time. There is no change in the substance of the bread (or wine); the substance of both the bread and the body of Christ are present together. The doctrine of transubstantiation seemed to Luther to be an absurdity, an attempt to rationalize a mystery. For Luther, the crucial point was that Christ was really present at the eucharist, rather than some specific theory of the nature of his presence.

Luther uses an image borrowed from the early church theologian Origen to make his point clearer: if iron is placed in a fire and heated, it glows – and both the iron and heat are present in that glowing iron. Why not use some simple everyday analogy such as this to illustrate the mystery of the presence of Christ at the eucharist, instead of rationalizing it using some scholastic subtlety?

For my part, if I cannot fathom how the bread is the body of Christ, yet I will take my reason captive to the obedience of Christ, and clinging simply to his words, firmly believe not only that the body of Christ is in the bread, but that the bread is the body of Christ. My warrant for this is the words which say: “He took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, Take, eat, this [that is, this bread, which he had taken and broken] is my body.”(1 Corinthians 11:23–4)

It is not the doctrine of transubstantiation that is to be believed, but simply that Christ really is present at the eucharist. This fact is more important than any theory or explanation.

These points can be seen clearly from his 1520 treatise The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, in which Luther set out a fundamental criticism of the teachings of the medieval church concerning the sacraments and argues that the concept of “transubstantiation” is untenable. While Luther maintains a doctrine of the real presence of Christ in the eucharist, he refuses to accept the specifically Aristotelian interpretation of it associated with transubstantiation.

For more than twelve hundred years the church believed rightly, during which time the holy fathers never, at any time or place, mentioned this “transubstantiation” (a pretentious word and idea) until the pseudo-philosophy of Aristotle began to make its inroads into the church in these last three hundred years, in which many things have been incorrectly defined, as for example, that the divine essence is neither begotten nor begets; or that the soul is the substantial form of the human body. … But why could not Christ include his body in the substance of the bread just as well as in the accidents? In red-hot iron, for example, the two substances, fire and iron, are so mingled that every part is both iron and fire. Why should it not be even more possible that the glorious body of Christ be contained in every part of the substance of the bread? … What is true concerning Christ is also true concerning the sacrament. In order for the divinity to dwell in a human body, it is not necessary for the human nature to be transubstantiated and the divinity contained under the accidents of the human nature. Both natures are simply there in their entirety.

Zwingli: Memorialism

The background to Zwingli’s views on the real presence of Christ can be traced back to some seemingly insignificant events of the year 1509. In November of that year, a change of personnel at a small library in the Lowlands took place, necessitating the cataloguing of its holdings. The work was entrusted to Cornelius Hoen, who discovered that the library contained a significant collection of the writings of the noted humanist Wessel Gansfort (c.1420–1489). One of these was entitled On the Sacrament of the Eucharist. Although Gansfort did not actually deny the doctrine of transubstantiation, he developed the idea of a spiritual communion between Christ and the believer. Hoen, apparently attracted by this idea, reworked it into a radical critique of the doctrine of transubstantiation, which he wrote up in the form of a letter. It seems that this letter found its way to Luther at some point in 1521 (although the evidence is not entirely conclusive). By 1523, the letter had reached Zurich, where it was read by Zwingli.

In this letter, Hoen suggested that the word est in hoc est corpus meum should not be interpreted literally as meaning “is” or “is identical with,” but rather as significat, “signifies.” For example, when Christ says “I am the bread of life” (John 6:48), he is clearly not identifying himself with a loaf of bread or bread in general. The word “is” here must be taken in a metaphorical, or non-literal, sense. The Old Testament prophets may indeed have foretold that Christ would “become flesh (incarnatus)” – but this was to happen once, and only once. “At no point did the prophets foretell or the apostles preach that Christ would, so to speak, become bread (impanatus) every day through the actions of any priest offering the sacrifice of the Mass.”

Hoen developed a number of ideas that eventually found their way into the eucharistic thought of Zwingli. Two may be noted here. The first is the idea of the eucharist being like a ring given by a groom to his bride as a pledge of his love for her. Zwingli often uses this image of a marriage ring as a pledge of love and it is not impossible that it was Hoen who planted this powerful image in his mind. The second notion that Hoen explores is that of commemorating Christ in his absence. Noting that Christ’s phrase “this is my body” is immediately followed by the words “Do this in remembrance of me,” Hoen argues that the second set of words clearly points to commemoration of “a person who is absent (or at least, physically absent).”

Where Luther showed a notable lack of enthusiasm for Hoen’s ideas, Zwingli was considerably more positive in his reaction. By November and December of 1524, he was promoting Hoen’s ideas with some vigor and the following year he arranged for the letter to be published. In the summer of 1525, Johannes Oecolampadius of Basle joined in the discussion, producing a book in which he argued that the writers of the patristic period knew nothing of either transubstantiation or Luther’s views on the real presence, but tended toward the view now increasingly being associated with Zwingli.

Zwingli argued that Scripture employed many figures of speech. Thus, the word “is” might at one point mean “is absolutely identical with” and at another mean “represents” or “signifies.” For example, in his treatise, On the Lord’s Supper (1526), Zwingli wrote:

Throughout the Bible, we find figures of speech, called in the Greek tropos, that is, something that is metaphorical, or to be understood in another sense. For example, in John 15 Christ says “I am the vine.” This means that Christ is like a vine when considered in relation to us, who are sustained and grow in him in the same way as branches grow on a vine. … Similarly, in John 1 we read “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” The first part of this verse is a figure of speech, for Christ is not literally a lamb.

After a detailed exploration of relevant biblical texts, Zwingli concluded that “there are innumerable passages in Scripture where the word ‘is’ means ‘signifies’.” He therefore argues that this is also true for Christ’s words in Matthew 26, “this is my body,” which is meant to be understood metaphorically. A good theologian, Zwingli argues, can work out when a biblical passage is meant to be interpreted literally, and when non-literally.

A further argument used by Zwingli against Luther’s position concerns the location of the risen Christ. For Luther, Christ is present in the eucharist. Whoever receives the bread and the wine receives Christ. Zwingli, however, pointed out that both Scripture and the creeds affirm that Christ is now “seated at the right hand of God.” Now Zwingli had no idea where this might be and thought it was pointless to speculate about its location – but, he argued, it did mean that wherever Christ is now, he is not present in the eucharist. He cannot be in two places at once.

From this brief analysis, it will be clear that there were substantial disagreements within Christianity during the sixteenth century over this important issue, which remain to this day. This same conclusion is also true over the question of infant baptism, to which we now turn. This proved to be especially contentious within Protestantism and became a major cause of division in the 1530s.

Case Study 3.4 The Debate over Infant Baptism

One important controversy of the Reformation era concerned whether it is legitimate to baptize infants – and if so, what theological justification may be provided for the practice. The New Testament includes no specific references to the baptism of infants. However, it does not explicitly forbid the practice and there are also a number of passages (such as Acts 16:15, 33; 1 Corinthians 1:16) that could be interpreted as condoning or implying it – for example, references to the baptizing of entire households (which would probably have included infants). Paul treats baptism as a spiritual counterpart to circumcision (Colossians 2:11–12), suggesting that the parallel may extend to its application to infants.

The practice of baptizing infants of Christian parents – often referred to as “paedobaptism” – appears to have been a response to a number of pressures. It is possible that the parallel with the Jewish rite of circumcision led Christians to devise an equivalent rite of passage for Christian infants. More generally, there seems to have been a pastoral need for Christian parents to celebrate the birth of a child within a believing household. Infant baptism may well have had its origins partly in response to this concern. However, it must be stressed that there is genuine uncertainty concerning both the historical origins and the social or theological causes of the practice. What can be said is that the practice had become normal, if not universal, by the second or third century. However, is it a tradition that ought to be continued?

This question was debated within the Protestant Reformation. The reforming factions that traced their origins back to Luther and Zwingli both affirmed infant baptism as an authentically biblical practice; the Anabaptists, however, argued that this practice could not be justified by an appeal to the Bible and urged the exclusive use of adult baptism. At no point, Anabaptist writers such as Conrad Grebel argued, did the New Testament explicitly endorse or require infant baptism. If the church was to reform itself properly according to the Word of God, it ought therefore to abandon this practice and baptize only consenting adults. Baptism presupposes faith on the part of an individual. How, then, can an infant be baptized? We shall consider Anabaptist concerns about this practice later in this Case Study, focusing on the important theologian Menno Simons.

Martin Luther

In common with all the magisterial reformers, Luther retained the traditional practice of infant baptism. Luther argued that the early church was right to baptize infants, in that this rests on a sound biblical foundation. Infant baptism is clearly consistent with the New Testament. But what about the argument that baptism requires faith? Luther insists that the emphasis in baptism falls, not on the faith or worthiness of the one being baptized, but the grace and generosity of the one who bestows grace and commands that we are baptized.

Everything depends upon the Word and command of God. This now is perhaps somewhat acute but it rests entirely upon what I have said, that Baptism is nothing else than water and the Word of God in and with each other – that is, when the Word is added to the water, Baptism is valid, even though faith be wanting.

It might seem at first sight that Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone contradicts the practice of infant baptism. After all, infants could not meaningfully be said to have faith, if faith is understood as a conscious, deliberate response to the promises of God. Yet Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith does not mean that the individual who has faith is justified for that reason: rather, it means that God graciously gives faith as a gift. In a paradoxical way, infant baptism is totally consistent with the doctrine of justification by faith, because it emphasizes that faith is not something we can achieve, but something that is given to us graciously.

For Luther, the sacraments do not merely strengthen the faith of believers – they are capable of generating that faith in the first place. The sacrament mediates the Word of God, which is capable of evoking faith. For this reason, Luther finds no difficulty with the practice of infant baptism. Baptism does not presuppose faith: rather, it generates faith. “A child becomes a believer if Christ in baptism speaks to him through the mouth of the one who baptizes, since it is his Word, his commandment, and his Word cannot be without fruit.” Baptism effects what it signifies.

So we can see what a great and excellent thing Baptism is, in that it delivers us from the jaws of the devil and makes us God’s own, suppresses and takes away sin, and then daily strengthens the new person, and is (and will always remain) efficacious until we pass from this state of misery to eternal glory.

Huldrych Zwingli

Zwingli also defended infant baptism, but for quite different reasons. So why did Zwingli justify baptizing infants, when these had no faith that they could publicly demonstrate? The traditional answer to this dilemma rested with original sin. Baptism purged the guilt of original sin. The argument in question went back to Augustine in the early fifth century and was used by Luther in his defense of the practice of infant baptism.

Yet Zwingli had hesitations here. Zwingli had no difficulty in the idea of individuals committing acts of sin. His problem lay with the notion of a state of original sin, which he regarded as an unbiblical idea. Following Erasmus rather than Luther, Zwingli inclined toward the view that infants had no inherent original sinfulness that needed to be forgiven. Zwingli clearly had misgivings in the late 1510s and early 1520s about continuing the practice of infant baptism in the light of his rejection of the notion of original sin. By 1524, however, he appears to have developed a theory of infant baptism that got round this difficulty altogether.

Zwingli pointed out that the Old Testament required that infant males should be circumcised within days of their birth as a sign of their membership of the people of Israel. Circumcision was the rite of the old covenant, which demonstrated that the circumcised child belonged to the covenant community. The child had been born into a community, to which it now belonged – and circumcision was a sign of belonging to this community.

There had been a long-standing tradition within Christian theology of seeing baptism as the Christian equivalent of circumcision. Zwingli developed this idea, pointing out that baptism is gentler than circumcision, in that it involves no pain or shedding of blood, and is more inclusive, in that it can be applied to both male and female infants. It too was a sign of belonging to a community – in this case, the Christian church. The fact that the child was not conscious of belonging to the church was irrelevant: it was a member of the Christian community and baptism was the public demonstration of this membership. The contrast with Luther on this point will be obvious.

Zwingli subsequently took this argument a stage further. Beginning with the assumption that “Baptism is a sign which pledges us to the Lord Jesus Christ,” Zwingli then argues that to be a Christian in Zurich is to be a loyal citizen of the city of Zurich. This argument may seem surprising, so I will explain Zwingli’s point in more detail. Cities were seen as organic communities in the late Middle Ages, a factor that appears to have been significant for many cities as they considered whether to accept the Reformation. This helps explain why Zwingli treats “state” and “church” as virtually equivalent: “A Christian city is nothing other than a Christian church.” The sacraments thus signified not merely loyalty to the church but also loyalty to the city community, in this case Zurich. To refuse to allow one’s child to be baptized, therefore, was an act of disloyalty to the Zurich city community. The magistrates were thus entitled to expel from Zurich all who refused to allow their children to be baptized. Baptism had become politicized. The target of Zwingli’s understanding of infant baptism was the Anabaptists, who he sought to portray as politically seditious and unreliable.

Anabaptism: Menno Simons

The Anabaptists, as we have seen, regarded infant baptism as unjustifiable. As the radical Reformation posed a major threat to the Reformation at Zurich in the 1520s, on account of both its religious and political views, Zwingli’s understanding of baptism as both an ecclesial and a civic event provided an excellent means of enforcing conformity.

Baptism thus became of central importance to Zwingli, in that it provided a criterion by which two totally different concepts of the church might be distinguished. Zwingli’s concept of a state or city church was increasingly challenged by the Anabaptists, whose vision of the church involved a return to the simplicities of the apostolic church. For the radicals, the purity of that church had been totally destroyed through the conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine in the early fourth century, which had led to a close alliance of church and state. The Anabaptists wished to sever this link, whereas Zwingli wished to continue it in the specific form found at Zurich. Thus, Zwingli felt justified in declaring that “the issue here is not baptism, but revolt, faction and heresy.” Baptism, as we noted in the previous section, represented the criterion that determined whether an individual was a loyal citizen of Zurich or a traitor to that city. This point reminds us of how closely theology and politics, church and city, were linked in the first era of the Reformation.

As has been hinted at throughout this Case Study, the theory and practice of infant baptism was rejected totally by Anabaptists on the radical wing of the Reformation. Indeed, one of the most distinctive theological characteristics of the Anabaptist movement was its rejection of the traditional practice of infant baptism. The main reason for this was its lack of biblical warrant. Menno Simons (1496–1561) argued that the practice of infant baptism was a non-biblical tradition, which ought to be abandoned by all concerned with returning to a more authentic apostolic Christianity. “In all the New Testament there is not a word said or commanded about baptizing infants, by Christ nor by the apostles.”

Yet the Anabaptist critique of the practice of infant baptism went beyond its lack of biblical warrant. As we noted earlier, Anabaptist writers argued that the New Testament clearly presupposed that those who were to be baptised already possessed faith. Simons argued that Christ “commanded that the gospel should be preached and that those who believe should be baptized.” It was, he insisted, a distortion of the true faith to allow infants to be baptised, since these showed no signs of faith, knowledge of the truth, or inner regeneration.

Simons, like most Anabaptist writers, held that baptism was a ceremony or rite that was performed in recognition that an individual showed clear signs of faith, repentance, and regeneration. This general principle, and its consequences for infant baptism, is clearly set out in the Schleitheim Confession (1527), one of the most important Anabaptist confessions of faith.

Baptism shall be given to all those who have learned repentance and amendment of life, and who believe truly that their sins are taken away by Christ, and to all those who walk in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and wish to be buried with Him in death, so that they may be raised with him. ... This excludes all infant baptism, the highest and chief abomination of the Pope.

Baptism is thus clearly seen as an outward physical sign of an inward spiritual reality, which it signifies but does not cause. As Simons pointed out, “we are baptized because we are regenerated by faith in God’s word, since regeneration is not the result of baptism, but baptism is the result of regeneration.” Infant baptism was thus clearly inconsistent with this general theology of baptism. Simons, however, was clear that his rejection of infant baptism did not entail excluding children from the Kingdom of God. Baptism was a sign, not the cause, of such membership. “Christ has promised the kingdom to little children without baptism.”

This theology of baptism is completely consistent with Anabaptist ecclesiology, which is generally Donatist in character (see Case Study 1.6). The practice of believers’ baptism both defines and safeguards the doctrine of a believers’ church. As Balthasar Hubmaier put it, “no baptism, no church; no baptism, no discipleship.” Baptism defined the point of entry to full membership of the church, representing a public declaration that an individual was considered to possess the spiritual qualities that were considered to be necessary for admittance and acceptance.

Case Study 3.5 The Doctrine of the Church: Trends Within Protestantism

The Reformation arose within an intellectual context that placed new emphasis upon the importance of Augustine of Hippo, reflected in the publication of the eleven-volume Amerbach edition of Augustine’s works in 1506. Two themes of major importance for Augutsine were his doctrine of grace, on the one hand, and his doctrine of the church, on the other. The difficulty that Luther faced was that he found that he could only uphold Augustine’s doctrine of grace by rejecting Augustine’s doctrine of the church. Why? Because Augustine’s emphasis on the unity of the church seemed unable to cope with a situation where the church had lost sight of the doctrine of grace.

Luther, as we noted earlier, was convinced that the church of his day had lost sight of the doctrine of grace, which Luther regarded as the center and foundation of the Christian gospel. Convinced that the Catholic church had lost sight of this doctrine, he concluded (with some reluctance, it would seem) that it had lost its claim to be considered as the authentic Christian church. Luther therefore had to choose whether to uphold Augustine’s views on grace or the church. It seemed to him he could not do both. As Benjamin B. Warfield perceptively remarked, “The Reformation, inwardly considered, was just the ultimate triumph of Augustine’s doctrine of grace over Augustine’s doctrine of the church.”

To their critics, the reformers’ views on the church represented a point of vulnerability. The reformers were confronted with two rival views of the church that seemed more consistent and rigorous than their own – namely, the views of their opponents within the Catholic and Radical Reformations. For Catholics, the church was a visible, historic institution, possessing historical continuity with the apostolic church; for the Radicals, the true church was in heaven, and no institution of any kind on earth merited the name “church of God.” The magisterial reformers attempted to position themselves in the middle ground somewhere between these two rival views and found themselves accused of serious inconsistencies as a result.

Catholics argued that Luther was simply creating a breakaway faction that had no connection with the church. In other words, he was a schismatic – and had not Augustine himself condemned schism? Had not he placed enormous emphasis upon the unity of the church, which Luther now threatened to disrupt? Radical Reformers argued that Luther ought to be consistent and adopt a radically biblical view of the church, which was not entangled in worldly politics.

In the present case study, we will explore the various views on the doctrine of the church found within the Protestant Reformation, noting the remarkable parallels that exist with the Donatist controversy (on which see Case Study 1.6). For some scholars, the sixteenth-century debates over the church can, at least in some respects, be seen as a replay of the Donatist controversy of the fourth century.

Luther was a reluctant schismatic. In his period as an academic reformer, Luther shared a profound distaste for schism. Even the row over the Ninety-Five Theses on indulgences of October 31, 1517 did not persuade Luther to break away from the church. In the twentieth century, we have become used to the phenomenon of “denominationalism” – but the very idea of the western church breaking up into smaller parts was completely alien to the medieval period. Schism, to put it bluntly, was unthinkable. As Luther himself wrote in early 1519: “If, unfortunately, there are things in Rome which cannot be improved, there is not – and cannot be – any reason for tearing oneself away from the church in schism. Rather, the worse things become, the more one should help her and stand by her, for by schism and contempt nothing can be mended.” Luther’s views here parallel those of other reforming groups throughout Europe: the church must be reformed from within.

The assumption that the growing alienation of the Wittenberg Reformation from the Catholic church was purely temporary seems to underlie much of the thinking of Lutheran writers in the period 1520–1541. It seems that the evangelical faction at Wittenberg believed that the Catholic church would indeed reform itself, perhaps through convening a reforming council, within a matter of years, thus allowing the Lutherans to rejoin a renewed and reformed church. Thus, the Augsburg Confession (1530), setting out the main lines of Lutheran belief, is actually remarkably conciliatory toward Catholicism. Such hopes of reunion were, however, dashed in the 1540s. In 1541, the Colloquy of Regensburg (sometimes also known as Ratisbon) seemed to offer the hope of reconciliation, as a group of Protestant and Catholic theologians met to discuss their differences. Those discussions ended in failure.

In 1545, the Council of Trent finally met to hammer out the response of the Catholic church to the Reformation and to institute a major program of reform within that church. Some present at that Council, such as Cardinal Reginald Pole, had hoped that it would prove to be conciliatory toward the Protestants: in the event, however, the Council identified and condemned the leading ideas of Protestantism. Any hopes of reconciliation had been dashed. The Protestant churches now had to recognize that their existence as separate entities was permanent, rather than temporary. They had to justify their existence as Christian “churches” alongside a body that seemed to have a much stronger claim to that title – the Roman Catholic church itself.

On the basis of this brief historical introduction, it will be obvious that the reformers’ concern with the theory of the church dates mainly from the 1540s. It is a question that preoccupied the second, rather than the first, generation of reformers. If Luther was concerned with the question – “How may I find a gracious God?” – his successors were obliged to deal with the question that arose out of this – “Where can I find the true church?” Theoretical justification had to be given for the separate existence of the evangelical churches. Most influential among second-generation reformers, of course, is John Calvin, and it is in his writings that we find perhaps the most important contributions to this debate. In what follows, we shall explore some seminal sixteenth-century discussions of the nature of the church.

Martin Luther

As we have seen, the early reformers were convinced that the medieval church had become corrupted and its doctrine distorted by a departure from Scripture on the one hand and by human additions to Scripture on the other. Luther’s early views on the nature of the church reflect his emphasis on the Word of God: the Word of God goes forth conquering, and wherever it conquers and gains true obedience to God is the church.

This holy Christian people is to be recognized as having possession of the holy word of God, even if all do not possess it in equal measure, as St. Paul says (1 Corinthians 3:12–14). Some possess it completely purely, others not so purely. … But we are speaking of the external word, preached orally by people like you and me, for this is what Christ left behind as an external sign, by which his church, or his Christian people in the world, should be recognized. … Now, anywhere you hear or see such a word preached, believed, confessed, and acted upon, do not doubt that the true ecclesia sancta catholica, a “holy Christian people,” must be there, even though there are very few of them.

Note that Luther’s views here stress the central role of the word of God in constituting a true church. An episcopally ordained ministry is therefore not necessary to safeguard the existence of the church, whereas the preaching of the gospel is essential to the identity of that church. “Where the word is, there is faith; and where faith is, there is the true church.” The visible church is constituted by the preaching of the Word of God: no human assembly may claim to be the “church of God” unless it is founded on this gospel. Historical continuity with the early church is not sufficient to establish its credentials in this matter. Luther’s understanding of the church is thus functional, rather than historical: what legitimates a church or its office-bearers is not historical continuity with the apostolic church, but theological continuity. It is more important to preach the same gospel as the apostles than to be a member of an institution that is historically derived from them.

The Radical Reformation

For the radicals, such as Sebastian Franck, the apostolic church had been totally compromised through its close links with the state, dating back to the conversion of the Emperor Constantine. Franck here sets out the characteristic radical view that the true church ceased to exist after the apostles. His frequent reference to “external things (externa)” is a reference to external ceremonies, including the sacraments, which he regards as being “fallen (lapsus).” The true church will only come into being at the end of time, when Christ returns in glory to gather the scattered people of his church into his kingdom. Until then, the true church will remain concealed.

I maintain, against all the doctors, that all external things which were in use in the church of the apostles have been abolished, and none of them are to be restored or reinstituted, even though they have gone beyond their authorization or calling and attempted to restore these fallen sacraments. For the church will remain scattered among the heathen until the end of the world. Indeed, the Antichrist and his church will only be defeated and swept away at the coming of Christ, who will gather together in his kingdom Israel, which has been scattered to the four corners of the world. … The works [of those who understood this] have been suppressed as godless heresies and rantings, and pride of place has instead been given to foolish Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, Gregory – of whom not even one knew Christ, nor was sent by God to teach. But rather all were and shall remain the apostles of Antichrist.

Just as most of the radicals were utterly consistent in their application of the scriptura sola principle, so they were equally consistent in their views on the institutional church. The true church was in heaven and its institutional parodies were on earth.

In responding to this radical approach Luther was forced to deal with two difficulties. If the church was not institutional, but was defined by the preaching of the gospel, how could he distinguish his views from those of the radicals? He himself had conceded that “the church is holy even where the fanatics (Luther’s term for the radicals) are dominant, so long as they do not deny the word and the sacraments.” Alert to the political realities of his situation, he countered by asserting the need for an institutional church. Just as Luther tempered the radical implications of the scriptura sola principle by an appeal to tradition (see Case Study 3.1), so he tempered his potentially radical views on the nature of the true church by insisting that the institution of the church was a divinely ordained means of grace.

Luther’s difficulty was that, in countering the radicals by asserting that the church was indeed visible and institutional, he seemed to concede some important points to his Catholic opponents. Luther himself fully appreciated this problem:

We on our part confess that there is much that is Christian and good under the papacy; indeed, everything that is Christian and is good is to be found there and has come to us from this source. For instance, we confess that in the papal church there are the true Holy Scriptures, true baptism, the true sacrament of the altar, the true keys to the forgiveness of sins, the true office of the ministry, the true catechism in the form of the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments and the articles of the Creed.

Luther is thus obliged to assert that “the false church has only the appearance, although it also possesses the Christian offices.” In other words, the medieval church may have looked like the real thing, but it was really something rather different.

It will be helpful to bring out the parallel with the Donatist controversy (see Case Study 1.6). The Donatists were a breakaway movement in the North African church, who insisted that the Catholic church of their day had become compromised through its attitude to the Roman authorities during a period of persecution. Only those who had not compromised their personal religious integrity could be recognized as members of the true church. Augustine argued the Catholic case: the church must be recognized as having a mixed membership, both saints and sinners. The righteous and the wicked coexisted within the same church, and no human had the authority to weed out the wicked from the church.

Augustine drew upon the parable of the “wheat and the weeds” (Matthew 13:24–31) to support this point. In this parable, the owner of a field arrives one morning to find both wheat and weeds (“tares,” in older English translations of the Bible) growing side by side. Selective herbicides being unknown, he is reluctant to try to remove the weeds: by doing so, he would inevitably damage some of the wheat as well. His solution to the problem is to wait until the wheat is ready to harvest, and then separate them. According to Augustine, this parable applies to the church. Like the field in the parable, the church contains both wheat and weeds, the just and the wicked, which coexist until the day of judgment. On that day, God will judge between them – and no human is permitted to pre-empt God’s judgment. The church will thus contain both good and evil until the end of time. Augustine argues that the term “catholic” (which literally means “whole”), as applied to the church, describes its mixed membership of saints and sinners.

The “Donatist” and “Augustinian” views of the church are thus very different. Luther accepted Augustine’s view of the church as a “mixed” body, whereas the radicals developed a Donatist view of the church as a body of the just, and the just alone. Like the Donatists, the radicals demanded moral perfection of their members. The church and the world were opposed to one another as light and darkness, and they had no time for what they regarded as the political compromises of Luther and Zwingli. For Luther, however, corrupt churchmen are found in the church “just as mouse droppings are found among peppercorns, or tares among the grain.” It is one of the ecclesiastical facts of life, recognized by Augustine, that Luther endorses.

The magisterial Reformation thus leads to the establishment of a church, whereas the radical Reformation leads to the formation of sects. The sociological distinction between the two movements reflects their different understandings of the nature of the church. Theology and sociology are closely linked at this point. (Earlier, we noted the famous maxim that represents the Reformation as the triumph of Augustine’s doctrine of grace over his doctrine of the church: it is necessary at this point to note that Luther and the other magisterial reformers retained at least this aspect of Augustine’s theory of the church.) But what basis does Luther then have for breaking away from the Catholic church? Does not this aspect of his theory of the church necessarily imply that there will always be corruption in the true church? On the basis of Augustine’s theory, corruption in the Catholic church does not necessarily mean that it is a “false church.”

John Calvin

If any reformer wrestled with the problem posed by the doctrine of the church, it was Calvin. The first major discussion of the theory of the church is to be found in the second edition of his Institutes of the Christian Religion, published in 1539. Although Calvin deals with the subject in the first edition of the Institutes (1536), he was then quite innocent of any experience of ecclesiastical management or responsibility, which accounts for the curiously unfocused nature of his discussion. By the time of the second edition of this work, Calvin had gained more experience of the problems presented to the new evangelical churches.

For Calvin, the marks of the true church were that the Word of God should be preached and that the sacraments be rightly administered. Since the Roman Catholic church did not conform even to this minimalist definition of the church, the evangelicals were perfectly justified in leaving it. As the evangelical churches conformed to this definition of a church, there was no justification for further division within them. This point is of particular importance, reflecting Calvin’s political judgment that further fragmentation of the evangelical congregations would be disastrous to the cause of the Reformation.

By 1543, Calvin had gained considerably more experience of ecclesiastical responsibility, particularly during his period at Strasbourg. Martin Bucer, the intellectual force behind the Reformation at Strasbourg, had a considerable reputation as an ecclesiastical administrator and it is probable that Calvin’s later theory of the church reflects his personal influence. The fourfold office of pastor, doctor (or teacher), elder, and deacon owes its origins to Bucer, as does the distinction between the visible and the invisible church (explored below). Nevertheless, Bucer’s suggestion that ecclesiastical discipline was an essential feature (technically, a “note” or “mark”) of the church is not echoed by Calvin. Although Calvin includes “example of life” among the “certain sure marks” of the church in the 1536 edition of the Institutes, later editions lay stress upon the proper preaching of the word of God and the administration of the sacraments. Discipline strengthens the nerve of the church – but the saving doctrine of Christ establishes its heart and soul.

Calvin draws an important distinction between the visible and invisible church. At one level, the church is the community of Christian believers, a visible group. It is also, however, the fellowship of saints and the company of the elect – an invisible entity. In its invisible aspect, the church is the assembly of the elect, known only to God; in its visible aspect, it is the community of believers on earth. The former consists only of the elect; the latter includes both good and evil, elect and reprobate. The former is an object of faith and hope, the latter of present experience. Calvin stresses that all believers are obliged to honor and to remain committed to the visible church, despite its weaknesses, on account of the invisible church, the true body of Christ. Despite this, there is only one church, a single entity with Jesus Christ as its head.

The distinction between the visible and invisible churches has two important consequences. In the first place, it is to be expected that the visible church will include both the elect and the reprobate. Augustine of Hippo had made this point against the Donatists, using the parable of the tares (Matthew 13:24–31) as his basis. It lies beyond human competence to discern their difference, correlating human qualities with divine favor (in any case, Calvin’s doctrine of predestination precludes such grounds of election). In the second, however, it is necessary to ask which of the various visible churches corresponds to the invisible church. Calvin thus recognizes the need to articulate objective criteria by which the authenticity of a given church may be judged. So what does he suggest?

Calvin identifies two such criteria: “Wherever we see the Word of God preached purely and listened to, and the sacraments administered according to the institution of Christ, we cannot doubt that a church exists.” It is thus not the quality of its members but the presence of the authorized means of grace that constitutes a true church. This can be seen clearly in Calvin’s classic statement of the mainline Protestant view concerning the identifying features of a church:

Wherever we see the Word of God purely preached and listened to, and the sacraments administered according to Christ’s institution, it is in no way to be doubted that a church of God exists. … If the ministry has the Word and honors it, if it has the administration of the sacraments, it deserves without doubt to be held and considered a church. … When we say that the pure ministry of the Word and pure mode of celebrating the sacraments are a sufficient pledge and guarantee by which we may recognize as a church any society, we mean where both these marks exist, it is not to be rejected, even if it is riddled with faults in other respects.

Note especially Calvin’s constant emphasis on the central role played by the preaching of the word of God and the right administration of the sacraments. In that Calvin regards there being a close link between the word of God and its embodiment or representation in the sacraments, it is understandable why he chose to link these two matters together. It may also be noted that Calvin makes no reference to bishops, or historical continuity with the early church, in his definition of a church. For Calvin, such matters may be useful, but they are not definitive. What really matters is that the church should believe and preach the teachings of the apostles, which are contained in the New Testament.

Case Study 3.6 Theology and Astronomy: Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo

One of the most important developments during the period under study is the growing importance of the natural sciences and the recognition of the potential implications of the new insights and methods for Christian theology. In the present case study, we shall examine the controversy that centered on the astronomical theories of Nicholas Copernicus (1473–1543), Johann Kepler (1571–1630), and Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), which placed the sun rather than the earth at the centre of what we now call “the solar system.”

Copernicus’ De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (“On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies”) was published in May 1543. The book set out a heliocentric view of the solar system, which proposed that the earth and the other planets rotated around the sun, which stood at the center of the solar system. (The moon, of course, was agreed to revolve around the earth.) This marked a significant departure from the older view, set out by Ptolomy of Alexandria in the second century, which held that all heavenly bodies – including both the sun and the planets – rotated around the earth. At the time, this theory was widely agreed to explain the known observations of the movements of the planets. It was not until the sixteenth century that more precise observational evidence called the reliability of this “geocentric” model of the solar system into question.

This older model was widely accepted by theologians of the Middle Ages, who had become so familiar with reading the text of the Bible through geocentric spectacles that they had some difficulty coping with Copernicus’s new approach. Early published defenses of the Copernican theory thus had to deal with two issues. First, they had to set out the observational evidence that led to the conclusion that the earth and other planets rotated around the sun. Second, they had to demonstrate that this viewpoint was consistent with the Bible, which had long been read as endorsing a geocentric view of the Universe.

The first point was problematic. Copernicus’ geocentric theory did not offer a better explanation of the movements of the planets, mainly because Copernicus mistakenly assumed that the planets rotated around the sun in circular orbits. In fact, as Johannes Kepler demonstrated in the early seventeenth century, the orbits of planets were elliptical, not circular. The general scientific acceptance of the heliocentric model rested largely on the work of Kepler and Galileo in the early seventeenth century. Up to that point, the heliocentric theory did not offer a superior account of the astronomical observations that were then available.

Kepler was deeply influenced by the forms of natural philosophy developed by the Lutheran theologian Philip Melanchthon, which he encountered while studying at the University of Tübingen. Melanchthon made a critically important distinction between the truths of revelation and truths that resulted from natural inquiry. Yet Kepler argued that theology was able to explain why the human mind was so successful in identifying and interpreting the deep structures of nature. In his Harmonices Mundi (“The Harmony of the World,” 1619), Kepler argued that, since geometry had its origins in the mind of God, it was only to be expected that the created order would conform to its patterns and that humanity was endowed with faculties intended to allow these archetypal patterns to be discerned.

In that geometry is part of the divine mind from the origins of time, even from before the origins of time (for what is there in God that is not also from God?) has provided God with the patterns for the creation of the world and has been transferred to humanity with the image of God.

Galileo developed this point later in the seventeenth century through the metaphor of “God’s Two Books” – nature and the Christian Bible – which share the same author but take different forms. To read either of these books requires knowledge of the languages in which it is written and the appropriate hermeneutical tools to make sense of it. The Bible was written in Hebrew and Greek; the natural order, however, is written in the “language of mathematics.”

Yet theologians pointed out that it was not enough to merely be able to translate biblical texts; these texts had to be interpreted. The rise of the heliocentric theory of the solar system in the later sixteenth century caused theologians to re-examine the manner in which certain biblical passages were interpreted. Three broad approaches can be identified in the Christian tradition of biblical interpretation.

This third approach proved to be of especial importance during the debates over the relation between theology and astronomy during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In an early intervention, dating from the 1560s, the Lutheran mathematician and theologian Georg Joachim Rheticus (1514–1574) drew on the works of Augustine of Hippo to argue for an “accommodated” reading of the Bible. Although this was influential, particularly in Lutheran circles, the most significant application of this approach is due to the influential Reformed theologian John Calvin (1509–1564).

Calvin made two major positive contributions to the appreciation and development of the natural sciences within Protestantism. First, he encouraged the scientific study of nature as a celebration of the beauty and ordering of creation; second, he eliminated a major obstacle to the development of that study, through his understanding of the way in which the Bible was to be interpreted in terms of “accommodation” (as explained above). His first contribution is specifically linked with his stress upon the orderliness of creation; both the physical world and the human body testify to the wisdom and character of God. Calvin thus commends the study of both astronomy and medicine. They are able to probe more deeply than theology into the natural world and thus uncover further evidence of the orderliness of the creation and the wisdom of its creator. It may thus be argued that Calvin gave a new religious motivation to the scientific investigation of nature. This was now seen as a means of discerning the wise hand of God in creation.

This is particularly well illustrated by the Confessio Belgica (1561), a Calvinist statement of faith that was particularly influential in the Lowlands (an area that would become particularly noted for its botanists and physicists), which declared that nature is “before our eyes as a most beautiful book in which all created things, whether great or small, are as letters showing the invisible things of God to us.” God can thus be discerned in the detailed study of the creation through the natural sciences.

Calvin’s second major contribution lay in the interpretation of the Bible. Calvin pointed out that the Bible is primarily concerned with the knowledge of Jesus Christ and should not be seen as an astronomical, geographical, or biological textbook. When the Bible is interpreted, it must be borne in mind that God “adjusts” to the capacities of the human mind and heart. God has to come down to our level if revelation is to take place. Revelation thus presents a scaled-down or “accommodated” version of God to us, in order to meet our limited abilities. Just as a human mother stoops down to reach her children, speaking in a language they can understand, so God stoops down to come to our level using language and imagery that we can grasp. Revelation is thus an act of divine condescension.

In the case of the biblical accounts of the creation (Genesis 1), Calvin argues that they are accommodated to the abilities and horizons of a relatively simple and unsophisticated people; they are not intended to be taken as literal representations of reality. The author of Genesis, he declares, “was ordained to be a teacher of the unlearned and primitive, as well as the learned; and so could not achieve his goal without descending to such crude means of instruction.” The phrase “six days of creation” does not designate six periods of 24 hours, but is simply an accommodation to human ways of thinking to designate an extended period of time. The “water above the firmament” is simply an accommodated way of speaking about clouds.

The impact of both these ideas upon scientific theorizing, especially during the seventeenth century, was considerable. For example, the English writer Edward Wright defended Copernicus’s heliocentric theory of the solar system against biblical literalists by arguing, in the first place, that Scripture was not concerned with physics, and, in the second, that its manner of speaking was “accommodated to the understanding and way of speech of the common people, like nurses to little children.” Both these arguments, and many of their core phrases, derive directly from Calvin, who may be argued to have made a fundamental contribution to the emergence of the natural sciences in this respect.

Similar arguments emerged in Italy during the early decades of the seventeenth century, as fresh controversy broke out over the heliocentric model of the solar system. This eventually led to the Roman Catholic church condemning Galilei, in what is now widely regarded as a clear error of judgment on the part of some ecclesiastical bureaucrats. Galileo mounted a major defense of the Copernican theory of the solar system. Galileo’s views were initially received sympathetically within senior church circles, partly on account of the fact that he was held in high regard by a papal favorite, Giovanni Ciampoli. Ciampoli’s fall from power led to Galileo losing support within papal circles and is widely regarded as opening the way to Galileo’s condemnation by his enemies.

Although the controversy centering on Galileo is often portrayed as science versus religion, or libertarianism versus authoritarianism, the real issue concerned the correct interpretation of the Bible. Appreciation of this point is thought to have been hindered in the past on account of the failure of historians to engage with the theological (and, more precisely, the hermeneutical) issues attending the debate. In part, this can be seen as reflecting the fact that many of the scholars interested in this particular controversy were scientists or historians of science, who were not familiar with the intricacies of the debates on biblical interpretation of this remarkably complex period. Nevertheless, it is clear that the issue that dominated the discussion between Galileo and his critics was that of how to interpret certain biblical passages. The issue of accommodation was of major importance to that debate, as we shall see.

To explore this point, we may turn to a significant work published in January 1615. In his Letter on the Opinion of the Pythagoreans and Copernicus, the Carmelite friar Paolo Antonio Foscarini argued that the heliocentric model of the solar system was not incompatible with the Bible. Foscarini did not introduce any new principles of biblical interpretation in his analysis; rather, he sets out and applies traditional rules of interpretation:

When Holy Scripture attributes something to God or to any other creature which would otherwise be improper and incommensurate, then it should be interpreted and explained in one or more of the following ways. First, it is said to pertain metaphorically and proportionally, or by similitude. Second, it is said … according to our mode of consideration, apprehension, understanding, knowing, etc. Thirdly, it is said according to vulgar opinion and the common way of speaking.

The second and third ways that Foscarini identifies are generally regarded as types of “accommodation,” the third model of biblical interpretation noted above. As we have seen, this approach to biblical interpretation can be traced back to the first Christian centuries and was not regarded as controversial.

Foscarini’s innovation did not lie in the interpretive method he adopted, but in the biblical passages to which he applied it. In other words, Foscarini suggested that certain passages, which many within the Catholic church had interpreted literally up to this point, were to be interpreted in an accommodated manner. The passages to which he applied this approach were those that seemed to suggest that the earth remained stationary and the sun moved. Foscarini argued as follows:

Scripture speaks according to our mode of understanding, and according to appearances, and in respect to us. For thus it is that these bodies appear to be related to us and are described by the common and vulgar mode of human thinking, namely, the earth seems to stand still and to be immobile, and the sun seems to rotate around it. And hence Scripture serves us by speaking in the vulgar and common manner; for from our point of view it does seem that the earth stands firmly in the center and that the sun revolves around it, rather than the contrary.

Galileo’s growing commitment to the Copernican position led him to adopt an approach to biblical interpretation similar to Foscarini’s.

The real issue was how to interpret the Bible. Galileo’s critics argued that some biblical passages contradicted him. For example, they argued, Joshua 10:12 spoke of the sun standing still at Joshua’s command. Did not that prove beyond reasonable doubt that it was the sun that moved around the earth? In his Letter to the Grand Countess Christina, Galileo countered with an argument that this was simply a common way of speaking. Joshua could not be expected to know the intricacies of celestial mechanics and therefore used an “accommodated” way of speaking.

The official condemnation of this viewpoint was based on two considerations:

The views of both Foscarini and Galileo were thus rejected as innovations, without any precedent in Christian thought.

This second point is of major importance and needs to be examined more carefully, in that it is to be set against the long-standing debate, which became increasingly polarized during the seventeenth century by the Thirty Years War (1618–1648) between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism over whether the former was to be seen as an innovation or as a recovery of a more authentic form of Christianity. The idea of the unchangeability of the Catholic tradition became an integral element of Roman Catholic polemic against Protestantism during the seventeenth century. Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627–1704), one of the most formidable apologists for Roman Catholicism of this age, made this point forcefully in 1688:

The teaching of the church is always the same. … The gospel is never different from what it was before. Hence, if at any time someone says that the faith includes something which yesterday was not said to be of the faith, it is always heterodoxy, which is any doctrine different from orthodoxy. There is no difficulty about recognizing false doctrine; there is no argument about it. It is recognized at once, whenever it appears, simply because it is new.

These same arguments were widely used at the opening of the seventeenth century and are clearly reflected and embodied in the official critique of Foscarini. The interpretation that Foscarini offered for some biblical passages had never been developed before by a respectable theologian – and it was therefore wrong.

It will therefore be clear that this critical debate over the interpretation of the Bible must be set against a complex background. The highly charged and politicized atmosphere at the time within the Catholic church seriously prejudiced theological debate, for fear that the concession of any new approach might be seen as an indirect concession of the Protestant claim to legitimacy. To allow that Catholic teaching on any matter of significance had “changed” was potentially to open the floodgates, which would inevitably lead to demands for recognition of the orthodoxy of central Protestant teachings – teachings that the Catholic church had been able to reject as “innovations” up to this point.

It was thus inevitable that Galileo’s views would meet with resistance within his own church. The key factor was that of theological innovation: to concede Galileo’s interpretation of certain biblical passages would seriously undermine the Catholic criticisms of Protestantism, which involved the assertion that Protestantism introduced new (and therefore erroneous) interpretations of certain biblical passages. It was only a matter of time before his views would be rejected. It is generally agreed that Galileo’s positive reputation in ecclesiastical circles until a surprisingly late date was linked to his close relationship with the papal favourite, Giovanni Ciampoli. When Ciampoli fell from grace in the spring of 1632, Galileo found his position seriously weakened, perhaps to the point of being fatally compromised. Without the protection of Ciampoli, Galileo was vulnerable to the charges of “heresy through innovation,” which were levelled against him by his critics.

The controversy that focused on Galileo is often presented in a highly simplified form in textbooks, typically as an example of “science versus religion.” As this case study will have made clear, the issues were much more complex than this. The controversy has to be set against a background of court politics, personality clashes, and a ferocious struggle on the part of the Catholic church to defend itself against Protestantism – as well as a genuine attempt to understand the Bible correctly!

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