Is repentance the second plank after shipwreck?
Is repentance the second plank after shipwreck?
§ 13. It is customary for Jerome to call repentance “the second plank after shipwreck” (Letters 8 and 47; on Isaiah 3). Ambrose does the same (Ad virginem lapsam, ch. 8, vol. 1, p. 137): “You who have entered the agony of repentance, stand bravely, miserable as you are. Cling to a plank like a shipwrecked sailor, and hope that you will thereby be freed from the depths of your sins.” Both of them are imitating Tertullian, who writes in this way (De poenit., p. 553): “You, O sinner, similar to me (and, in fact, no less a sinner than I, for I know how I excel in sins), step onto repentance and embrace it in the same way as a shipwrecked sailor embraces faith in a plank. It will lift you up when you sink in the waves of sins and will carry you into the harbor of the clemency of God.”
But this should not be understood as if the covenant which God has entered with us at Baptism were frail and temporary, as if the ship of Baptism were completely breaking up. Rather, it is an unmoving, constant, and eternal covenant (Hosea 2:[19]; Rom. 11:29; 2 Tim. 2:12) to which a way back is always open to us through repentance, because the power of Baptism lasts throughout life, as will be shown in its own place [On Holy Baptism (Commonplace XXIII), §§ 154–64]. Thus through sins against conscience we leap off the ship of Baptism into the depths of the sea of damnation. Therefore if we do not wish to perish in the deep sea of sins, there is a need for a second plank by means of which to return again to the covenant of grace and the ship of Baptism. In fact, the shipwreck after which we need a second plank is most correctly understood as a reference to the shipwreck of faith and of a good conscience which we lose through sins against conscience but which we recover again through serious repentance. “Some people, by rejecting a good conscience, have made shipwreck of their faith” (1 Tim. 1:19).
2 Read non habet with Cotta instead of habet.
3 I.e., SA III III.
4 Letter to Johann von Staupitz (May 30, 1518), WA 1:525 (cf. AE 48:65–66).
5 Letter to Johann von Staupitz (May 30, 1518), WA 1:525–26 (cf. AE 48:66–67).
6 That is, an intransitive verb.
7 duo termini conversionis hujus, that is, the starting and ending points of the conversion: from what and to what they are being converted.
8 That is, as an intransitive verb, without a direct object.
9 That is, without additional indication of from what or to what.