2. How Did the Church in Rome Become Roman Catholicism?
In the Middle Ages, the focus of theology was on the work of Jesus Christ and how an individual could appropriate it to himself. Anselm laid the foundation by showing how Christ made atonement by taking upon Himself God’s wrath, making propitiation for our sins. But the questions of personal appropriation of that work by faith and repentance proved difficult, being complicated by philosophical questions of how the free grace of God can be understood within any explanation or structure of human thought or behavior. Grace came to be thought of as arbitrary, such that any human attempt to receive it was necessarily uncertain.
At the same time, it was believed that if one did the best he or she could to come to God, God would probably reward that effort. Is that earning salvation? The Augustinians of the late medieval period were sure that it was, so they focused attention on God’s covenantal binding of Himself in His promises as the basis for confident faith. This became the foundation of the Reformation and almost all revivals ever since. That faith that receives forgiveness and justification is the faith that doesn’t look to itself but looks away to the sure promises of a covenant-keeping God.
ESSAY 2
HOW DID THE CHURCH IN ROME BECOME ROMAN CATHOLICISM?
D. Clair Davis
The church of Jesus Christ entered the medieval world with a new beginning and a sharper focus. In the early centuries the church had moved from a persecuted minority to an very active part of the imperial cultural establishment. The church had been victorious in its struggles with a pagan religious culture, so its perception of salvation tended to become one laden with the terminology and thought of victory. Jesus Christ had won the victory over sin and death, over all the powers on earth and in hell. Christus Victor! became the old churcII’s comprehensive concluding summary of the meaning of the gospel. Today on the ceiling of an Orthodox Church you still witness the cosmic Pantokrator, the exalted and reigning Jesus Christ.
Though conditioned by the churcII’s history, this theology of the early church faithfully reflected an important aspect of the biblical teaching of salvation. It stressed redemption—how God delivers His people from their bondage into the freedom of life with Him. As God once said to the Israelites, “I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment” (Exodus 6:6), so throughout the Bible He emphasizes that it is by His power alone that He delivers His people.
THE MEDIEVAL CHURCII’s SHIFT OF EMPHASIS
By the beginning of the medieval period, not only had the world changed radically but so had the place of the church within it. No longer was the world a unified urban empire with an established culture. Since the fall of Rome, northern Europe had turned into a disconnected rural society, where simple literacy, to say nothing of a real knowledge of the old civilization, had become only a distant memory. Horizons had become closer, and relationships with people—and also with God—had become much more personal and direct. The extended-family values of “Germanic” tribal feudalism replaced the anonymous generalities of the old urban ways. The maintenance of friendships and the restoration of damaged alliances became the focus of ordinary life.
This way of perceiving life became the new direction for thinking about an individual’s relationship to his God. More biblical understanding was needed, further recognition of what the Bible meant by salvation. The doctrine of redemption had made a compelling statement of God’s overwhelming power to transform the world. It had objectified the change God accomplished in the cross and resurrection of Christ and had emphasized the all-inclusive nature of His work. But what could that mean for the individual? Though the old churcII’s understanding of grace was comprehensive enough, it could still appear to be impersonal or even mechanical in its subjective application.
So the medieval church welcomed a shift to other, more personal, biblical expressions, such as atonement, propitiation, and justification. Sin could now be seen not just in terms of enslaving forces without, but as something within man himself for which he was personally accountable and radically guilty. God was not just the only possible Savior, but He was a person whose own character and honor had been offended by sin. Whatever cosmic dimensions sin and salvation had, there could never be a satisfying or comforting understanding of salvation without a resolution of the great personal disruption between God and mankind.
Concentrated attention needed to be given to the restoration of personal concord and fellowship between the holy God and His sinful creatures. This is first of all the question of objective atonement for sin. In the old church this had either been discussed much too vaguely in sweeping terms expressing general divine victory, or it had become bogged down in the fruitless exploration of the question, “To whom had the redemption price been paid?” If Satan was the one from whom people need to be liberated, then must not the price be paid to him? But how then could that constitute defeat for him, since he obtains Jesus Christ as his prize? In order for Satan to be both the owner of Christ and also the one defeated by Him, the only resolution appeared to be the infamous “bait” theory of the Atonement: Christ was indeed the price paid, but Satan had overreached himself by claiming that price; thereby Christ was the bait God used to catch the arrogant Satan. Ingenious this theory may have been, but it was so patently artificial and even humorous that it was unworthy of extended consideration.
Obviously only a serious, fresh start could be of any lasting help. That the medieval church did this is the greatest single contribution of the entire period. It radically rethought what the Bible meant by atonement. Today Christians wonder, “How could a doctrine of such pivotal importance for Christian thinking have been so long in emerging?” In an attempt to answer this question, historians have noticed a parallel between the arrangement of topics in a systematic theology textbook and the historical development of doctrine. In a textbook, the work of Christ is not generally touched on until after discussions of the nature of God, His creation and direction, and man in his sin. Interestingly, this is exactly the progression of doctrinal development in the churcII’s history.
Either this means, more pessimistically, that the church never reworks what it has once considered (but just keeps tacking on supplemental material at the end of what it has done before), or it means, more optimistically, that there is something reasonable about the development of Christian doctrine— from the basic to the developed—from God to man to sin to atonement. Man’s nature, his sin, and his need had been well defined in the interchanges between Pelagius and Augustine; now it was time, in the progress of dogma, for God’s answer to sin to be clarified decisively. Finally, near the end of the eleventh century, the great theologians Anselm and Abelard took a fresh look at the doctrine.
THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF ANSELM AND ABELARD
Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, is remembered for his theological method and his conviction that we believe in order to understand. That is, we begin with Christian theological certainty and then reason backwards to determine the significance of what we already know. In his signature contribution of the “ontological argument” for the existence of God, he turned away from the old way of reasoning from the existence of a very large and very well-ordered universe to the God who must have made it—someone who must be even greater and better-ordered than the universe (though logically not infinitely great or wise). Instead, Anselm argued, we must begin with God Himself as He really is, considering Him as truly perfect in His being and character, not approximately perfect as other arguments would conclude. And if God is perfect, then He must exist, for anything less than existence would not be perfect! This “argument” is either theological sleight-of-hand or the pinnacle of profundity, and it is not surprising that philosophers and theologians have difficulty even in knowing whether they understand what Anselm was saying. Perhaps he should be understood as saying this: Unless God exists then no thought or meaning is possible; so to even think of God means to think of Him as He is—that is, as existent.
Anselm applied much the same way of thinking to the Atonement1 and reasoned from its existence—its actuality—back to its interpretation. In his classic Cur Deus Homo ( Why the God-Man), he argued from the fact of the Incarnation and the Cross to God’s purpose in sending His Son. What can it mean? God would not have done this astounding thing if providing some lesser remedy for sin had been possible. The uniqueness of the Son of God must involve necessarily a unique work, a work of atonement that could not have been accomplished in any other way. From there Anselm recognized that the effects of sin include not just the cosmic distortion of creation but go deeper, into the character of God Himself. What only Christ can do is to bear the wrath of God, a holy being whose honor has been violated. For that to have been really necessary must mean that God’s honor, and hence His wrath against sin, is at the very heart of the nature of the Atonement. The Atonement was directed, then, not at the cosmos or at man, but at God! It “satisfied” His offended honor or character. Only such a substantial and exceptional necessity could possibly justify God’s giving over of His Son unto death.
This God-directed significance of the Atonement is what made Anselm’s work new and epoch-making. It is likely the greatest legacy of the Christian church from the Middle Ages. Since then, any attempt to understand the death of Christ from the perspective of propitiation for sin, or as the foundation for justification and forgiveness, has been known as the “Anselmic” or “satisfaction” view. Without the new “Germanic” focus on a subjective or personal understanding of the Christian faith, it would have been much more difficult to recognize this biblical emphasis on the personal character of atonement. But Anselm’s concentration upon Christ Himself and why only He could do what needed to be done is what provides the heart of the new breakthrough in understanding the love of God for poor sinners.
It is also possible to have a personal view of the Atonement that is not God-centered but that rather focuses on the way sinners perceive Christ’s death. That was the direction taken by Anselm’s great rival, Peter Abelard. For him the value of the Atonement was in the individual’s personal response to what Christ had done for him. As he came to appreciate and bow in gratitude at the extent of God’s love for him, he would respond in turn with his own love to the God who had loved him so much.
Was Anselm or Abelard closer to the truth? To the present day, Christians have disagreed. A liberal thinks it unworthy of God that He would require satisfaction before He could express His love to sinners. An evangelical is sure that the Cross did much more than persuade sinners that God loved them; limiting its work to that seems to be a trivializing of sin and the full dimensions of God’s work of salvation. An evangelical never questions the power of the Cross to demonstrate the love of God; but to him that love is not merely a generic demonstration but is a very particular action in which God actually did take away His wrath against sinners by directing it toward Christ.
MASS AND PENANCE: AVENUES OF GRACE
The atonement theology, with its realization of the personal character of the work of Jesus Christ, made a good beginning, but it was necessary to think further about what this really means, especially in terms of how that objective work becomes mine—that is, how it becomes subjective. One can not long avoid that next question: “How can I individually lay hold on what Christ has done for me? What must I do to receive what Christ has done for me?”
That question for several centuries had been answered in terras of the grace provided in the sacraments. God Himself had given His own channels of grace, and it was only necessary that the individual make use of them. A causal chain was involved. Christ had died and presented the value of His death to His church. He had chosen its first head, the apostle Peter, and all his successors as bishop of Rome, or pope, to have the same authority He had. That centered particularly around the power of binding and loosing, qualifying and disqualifying for the grace of the sacraments. Concretely, the pope has the power to consecrate bishops, who in turn have the power to ordain priests, who then have the authority to say the Mass—to sacramentally transform the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, to “make the body of the Lord”—which finally is the channel of grace to the church. The theology and scriptural arguments against this understanding are carefully developed in chapter 5 by S. Lewis Johnson.
At first reflection the idea that the church had been given channels of grace by Christ would seem to settle the matter. Do not all those who are present at Mass receive the grace offered automatically (ex opere operate)! Much of the structure of the Mass would seem to indicate this observation when the transformed elements are raised so all can see and the bell is rung to remind all to look (observing the transformation itself may actually convey grace more obviously than the eating of the bread).
Certainly the objective character of sacramental grace is vital to its nature, but to the devout there must be more to it than that. Some sort of religious attitude of heart must be necessary on the part of the worshiper in order for him or her to receive grace worthily. Faith and repentance must be present for the sacrament to be received properly. Does that mean that salvation finally depends on the ability of a frail and sinful individual to come to God with a truly worshipful heart? Surely not, for that would mean that the chain of salvation is only as strong as its weakest link, and the human heart is a very weak and deceitful link indeed. For that reason medieval theologians spoke of a further graceful provision of a way to enable one to receive the grace of the Mass.
That indispensable way became the sacrament of Penance, in many ways the very heart of medieval religion. This new sacrament was seen to provide the means for transforming weak, inadequate, even self-deceiving faith and repentance into the sort acceptable to a holy God. As in the case of any sacrament the transformation was not empirically discernible. In the Mass, for example, the church taught that the elements still taste like bread and wine even though they no longer are; in the language of Aristotelian physics, the accidents (empirical characteristics) have not been changed but the essence has. In Penance, grudging repentance has been changed into heart-felt repentance, and superficial faith into concentrated love for God—even though no one could perceive the difference!
But even if motivations and attitudes could not be evaluated, at least Penance could be made so difficult and time-consuming that only those truly committed to pleasing God would make use of it. Earlier monastic penance had been therapeutic in character: its intention was to enable the individual to substitute godly behavior for sinful actions, for example, by directing the greedy to give to the poor, patterned on the biblical model of “put off and put on.” Within an intimate monastic setting, a personalized penance could be helpful, though even there confessors began to make use of the standardized penances of the penitential manuals. But when an annual confession was required of all the people, it was hardly reasonable that an individual penance would be possible. Further standardization of penances easily led to the perception of Penance as not being intended to alter behavior but rather to serve as punishment for what had already been done.
Previously some had found life-changing significance in traveling to the site with which a great saint was associated, that he might reflect upon the life of one whose example was especially well-suited to his own sins and weaknesses. But when pilgrimages were selected to many sites at great distances and when it seemed that the only point of the expedition was to cover as many miles as possible yet still get back home while something of normal life remained, then what possible personal value could come from all that travel?
When substitute penances were devised, including the payment of money, any remaining therapeutic value could only be nebulous and fragmentary. Penance became even more abstract and meaningless when the church began to offer substitutes that involved even the removal of the penalty for future sins (indulgences). Technically, only the temporal penalty for sin was being dealt with (the punishment due sin this side of eternity, including that endured in purgatory), but for practical purposes that was all that any one knew about anyway. Knowledge that one’s eternal punishment had been dealt with (the assurance of salvation) was available in any case only to those few—the saints—to whom it had been revealed by extraordinary revelation.
Hence the resolution of the most important question of all—“How can I lay hold upon the salvation given by God through the death of Christ?”— was still inaccessible. A clear answer to today’s Evangelism Explosion question—“Why should God let you into His heaven?”—could not really be given by even the greatest theologian. The gap that Penance was devised to bridge was, in the end, still a great chasm: How can a weak sinner come to a holy Christ?
THE REDISCOVERY OF PREVENIENT GRACE
It was obviously time for yet another fresh look at the greatest of life’s questions. Could there yet be a way of seeing the problem that was not in terms of cause and effect? Obviously the supernatural effect of eternal salvation could not come from any natural cause, not even from a life of penance. If salvation required even a slight initial action on our part, then we could never obtain it. Could a new philosophical paradigm, one that avoids causal thinking, be of help?
Throughout the history of Western thought, especially in the ancient and medieval periods, it has seemed that there were really only two options: Platonic idealism or Aristotelian empiricism. What is the better explanation of the world—seeing it in terms of nonempirical entities (those that are grasped by the human mind and not by sense experience) or the other way around? Because Christianity is concerned with supernatural reality (that which transcends what the senses can experience), it seemed to many that Platonic idealism was the most helpful way for a Christian to look at the world. But Christians also knew how harmful it was to suggest that the empirical character of the Christian faith is irrelevant; after all, that includes the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ, as well as His return. It is also terribly misleading to think of the nonphysical aspect of human beings as being somehow closer to God than the physical aspect, as somehow partaking of God’s character in a noncreated and dependent way. Platonic idealism could easily lead to a blurring of the line between God and man and to a trivializing of the historical Jesus.
If idealism had come to have such serious weaknesses that Christians were beginning to call it into question, the obvious alternative framework for Christian theology was the empiricism of Aristode. It already served that function for Islam, medieval Christianity’s greatest competitor and field for mission. Indeed, the greatest expression of medieval contextualization, the attempt to present the gospel in a meaningful way to a non-Christian culture, is found in the Summa Contra Gentiles of the Aristotelian Thomas Aquinas. Thomas was as aware as any of his critics today of the difficulties of using an empirical model to present transempirical realities. Accordingly, he made use of many corrective procedures intended to preserve Christian theology from being overwhelmed by pagan methodology. He realized that an empirical approach, which argues from the finite universe to God, must be supplemented by revelation, for no amount of finite effects would ever yield an infinite God. Further, an empirical argument is designed to lead to a single cause, never the biblical Trinity. So natural theology always needs supplementary revelation to reach the God of the Bible. What can be known about God empirically only functions analogically, not directly, if the living God is to be reached.
But when all this has been recognized, Thomistic Aristotelianism by its veiy nature was bound to be the theology of the ecclesiastical establishment, of the church and her sacraments. Though Thomas personally was as deeply mystical as any medieval Christian, the function of his teaching was to demonstrate the way God brought salvation through the intermediate causes of the grace offered by the church. Though God’s reason was not an abstraction but rather a compelling expression of his love, still the way He worked was through the institution He had placed in the world for the salvation of sinners. Empirical, causal thinking was almost inevitably ecclesiastical and sacramental.
But the issue was no longer about the effectiveness of the sacraments as such; rather it was about the new question of the personal link between them and the weak, foolish sinner. That was the weakest link in the chain of salvation, and when salvation depended on the sinner’s ability, the assertion of the strength of the links of the sacraments could only be seen as meaningless.
For that reason the entire medieval edifice, with church and sacraments, all given validity by Aristotelian causality, came into serious question. The grand “medieval synthesis” was about to unravel. If ecclesiastical, causal, sacramental grace was not the answer to salvation, where could the answer be found?
Obviously a sinner cannot be saved without the grace of God. If sacramental, objective grace is insufficient, there must be some other kind of grace. That grace must be direct, not mediated by the sacraments. It must be comprehensive, not requiring any other grace to complete it. It must be there at the very beginning of the individual’s turning to God, and it must enable him to lay hold upon whatever other grace that may be there for him. In a word, it must be the grace Augustine had long ago spoken of—“prevenient” grace.
Prevenient grace works in the heart of God’s elect well before sacramental grace does, and it depends on nothing except the saving love of God; it is the grace of predestination and election. Augustine had spoken of the church in two different ways: as the institutional or visible church, and as the true people of God, known only to Him. That construction had become a popular medieval model and could be employed to advance almost any viewpoint. Those with a papal or sacramental agenda could bring institution and election so close together they were virtually identical—God’s purpose to save and the visible church are one and the same. But reforming elements, appalled over the ignorance and corruption of the visible church, could pull election and institution so far apart that the institutional church could be seen as the enemy of the elect, the exact opposite of the true church. This was regularly depicted in the recurring visual aid of the medieval period, a three-panel cartoon. The first panel showed the destitute Christ in shabby clothing, riding on a donkey; the second an affluent bishop in jewels and furs, riding a magnificent war horse; and the third a poor monk, with apparently the same clothing and donkey as Christ had. Christ’s question, was it possible for a rich man to enter heaven, had been rephrased: Could a bishop be saved? The assumed answer was, only if he renounced his office with its wealth and he became a monk. Another cartoon, this time of a ship surrounded by drowning men, featured monks on the ship attempting to pull in the lost from the water. Featured among those drowning in the water were always the clergy and the bishops.
Now approaching the end of the Middle Ages, the sacramental system had come to be preoccupied with Penance, and it in turn upon the high finance of the indulgence system. The “ordinary” means of grace had come to be seen to display the exact opposite of the values for which the true church stood. How long could Christian apologists maintain a position that implied that along with the salvation of God’s people by the sacraments there inevitably came a corrupt ecclesiastical establishment? The same situation had been faced in the ancient period in the Donatist controversy, when some had maintained that only the sacraments of those persecuted for their faith had validity and those of the compromisers did not. Though the orthodox position was that the character of the priest had nothing to do with the value of the sacraments, that position was much more difficult to maintain at the end of the Middle Ages. After all, who is sure that he would not apostatize under the severe, unending torture of a period of persecution? But to voluntarily sell out to wealth and power and lust, how could that be taken as anything but a sordid betrayal of Christ?
Who else could be on the third panel but a poor monk? It could not be a monk of the older establishment orders, with their wealth and corruption. But as always in the churcII’s history, when monasticism went to seed, there could always be a fresh start, this time with the mendicant (begging) orders of Franciscans and Dominicans. These orders had two important goals: the imitation of Christ in His poverty and servanthood, as set forth in the Sermon on the Mount; and serious study and teaching of the Bible, such that the entire church could understand what it meant to follow Christ and capture His example. It became clear that to teach about Christ as He really was would inevitably subvert the church.
But it was not easy to stay poor. Dominicans became university teachers and needed to accumulate books, the most expensive treasures of all. The imitation of Christ was much too threatening to the pope, who commanded the Franciscans to abandon the mendicant principle and to cease living from day to day; the “spiritual” (disobedient) Franciscans found it hard to survive papal persecution. But the vision and memory of the mendicants lived on. The third panel continued to sound a familiar and self-evident note. The practical bottom line was clear: the grace of the sacraments came through the local, ignorant, drunken priest with his housekeeper/mistress; but the prevenient grace that could change hearts to receive sacramental grace came through the itinerant, poor monk, who demonstrated in his life what it was to be a true Christian and who taught Bible stories about Jesus. So the sacrament did not rest on godliness or on the gospel; true grace had precious little to do with the institutional church and her sacraments. Augustine’s invisible church turned out to be the only obviously godly church after all. Election, the theological backbone of the invisible church, could become the most subversive doctrine of all.
THE CONFLICT BETWEEN MEDIATED AND CAUSAL GRACE
Philosophically, the issue between immediate causal grace (sacramental) and mediated grace (through reflection on the monk’s teaching and mirroring of Christ) is closely related to the question of the suitability of Thomas’s Aristotelianism as a framework for Christian thinking. If natural theology can yield rally descriptions of God by listing His “attributes” but can say nothing about who He is, His personal being as Trinitarian Father and Son and Spirit, what kind of God is being spoken of? Is not the God of Thomism little more than an abstract scientific principle of purpose and regularity? Will not the inadequacy of this understanding of God’s being lead inevitably to serious weaknesses in understanding His deeds? If God’s grace is merely His (dan for achieving a goal, is it still possible to see it as a expression of election, dependent upon nothing but His will and love? If by definition the grace that we need more than anything else is not sacramental, then Tho-mism’s grand causal scheme is in the end worth very little. What was needed was a paradigm for understanding the personal, direct grace of God.
One would perhaps have anticipated a reversion from the Aristotelian experiment back to the old Platonic or neo-Platonic philosophy of Augustine. That would have also meant a return to unadulterated theological Augustin-ianism, with its limited or personal atonement, where all of God’s grace came through Christ and His work. But too many centuries had gone by and too many theologians had been unwilling to think of grace in such a thoroughgoing way. They had preferred a milder Augustinianism, one that affirmed that sinners cannot be saved without the grace of God, but unwilling to draw Augustine’s own conclusion: that the only grace there is comes through the death of Christ; that consequently those who are saved are those for whom He died. Medieval theologians considered their theology semi-Augustinianism or just Augustinianism, but a much more accurate label is the old churcII’s designation of semi-Pelagianism. When the question is, to what extent does a miserable sinner need the crucified Christ, the halfhearted Augustinian answer yields a glass half empty, not one half full.
But if not Augustinianism, what philosophy is available as a foundation for nonsacramental, prevenient grace? What is there besides Platonism and Aristotelianism? The victor (but more by default) is nominalism.
THE RISE OF NOMINALISM
Nominalism is hardly a full-fledged world-and-life view; it is more a technical methodology for coordinating different perspectives. Much of medieval thinking, especially in its more basic phase, was concerned with the nature of language and logic. What does it mean when we say that two individual things belong to the same class of being and may have the same predicate attached to them both? (This appears to be an especially important question when much of medieval thought is patterned after Aristotelian biology, with its divisions and subdivisions of reality into genus, species, and individual.) Is the common classification the important thing, or is it the individual identity? That is, is the classification simply a convenient linguistic handle, just a name, or is it more than that, something real? Those who say “real” are called “realists,” while those who say “name” are “nominalists.”
Perhaps a nominalist does not inherently believe in arbitrary classification, but one who says “name” is likely to be heard as saying “just a name.” Are linguistic classifications arbitrary, necessary, or something else? Nominalists wisely considered not just statements concerning the past and present but also those concerning the future, and that complicated the question considerably. Is such a statement true or false, or something else? When one is asked whether he believes a future statement, he might well say, “I don’t know.” Nominalists then have a three-value logic: right, wrong, and undetermined. This discussion begins to sound theoretical and impractical until one realizes that Christianity is all about future statements, which Christians call “the promises of God,” or even “covenant promises.” Finally the issue becomes existentially straightforward: What is the value of God’s promises to me, those that promise eternal life if I do certain things, especially if I am uncertain how to do them, and how I would ever know if I had? If Nominalism can really help with those questions, it deserves serious attention.2
The most basic question of all—What must I do to be saved?—has come into its own. The original answer was, receive God’s grace in the Mass. But if I’m not sure I’m approaching the Mass in true faith and repentance, what then? The next answer was, make use of the sacramental grace of Penance to prepare for the Mass. But if I’m not sure I’m coming to Penance with proper— even minimally proper—faith and repentance, what then? What if proper faith and repentance is not a quantitative matter, of needing more than I now have, but a question of having from the outset a qualitatively opposite—a holy kind—of faith, what should I do? And what if the right kind of faith is the kind that looks to God’s glory alone and not at all to my selfish wish to avoid hell?
If, after all, what I desperately need is to receive prevenient, electing grace, how is that done? Is election not, by definition, something mysterious and ineffable, utterly out of my influence and control? Nominalism’s primary answer to this final question was that, whereas there was absolutely no causal relation between what people do and God’s grace and whereas no one could in any way deserve God’s grace (de condigno), still it was only fitting or congruous (de congruo) that God give His grace to those who sincerely desired it and expressed that desire by seeking to please God the best they could. Though whoever does this has no certainty or assurance of salvation (which no one in the Middle Ages had anyway), at least it was probable. And, though doing the best you can does not guarantee the gift of God’s grace, not doing it makes it highly unlikely that you will receive grace.
Sacramental grace was efficacious for those who sought it sincerely— efficacious because it was rooted in the objective, atoning work of Christ, mediated through His church and its sacraments. But “sincerity” was so nebulous and tantalizingly unobtainable that even the work of Christ became only theoretically efficacious. Truly effective grace consequently had nothing to do with the sacramental system—but also nothing to do with that which gave it its foundation, the saving work of Christ. Nominalist grace was so immediate and direct that it evaded not only the church, but Christ Himself. Election could not be God’s purpose carried out and revealed through His Son but was instead the naked will of God who saved as He chose, with or without Christ. The Jesus Christ that the monks presented was not the God-man who made atonement. Rather, their Jesus could be meditated upon, and that meditation could be the occasion of salvation through the naked will of God. Perhaps. At bottom, the monks’ preaching of the simple Jesus who showed us the loving heart of God turned out to be only a front for the unknown God.
This medieval denouement was far more than the “dissolution of the medieval synthesis”; it was simply the dissolution of the Christian faith itself. The Cross had been rejected as irrelevant to the most basic question of all: “How can I be forgiven by God?” All that remained after this was the unknown God and the value of morality. This was the religion of pre-Reforma-tion Renaissance Christianity, which was to surface later as the religion of the Enlightenment.
PRE-REFORMATION DEVELOPMENTS
Enlightenment religion could be expressed as the Christian humanism of Erasmus: Christianity is reduced to trying to do the best one can. Theology is essentially unknowable, and it is foolish to waste time on its irrelevant puzzles. Instead, one must emphasize what can be known, the simple ethics of the Sermon on the Mount. Those who occupy themselves with organized religion are fools or scoundrels. Never again should it be taken seriously, except as it advances basic morality.
Enlightenment religion could also express itself much more directly, a humanism without Christian veneer. It affirmed that eSoneric theology and philosophy had proven their worthlessness. There were much simpler guides for life—the revived practical philosophies of the declining days of the Roman empire, fitting enough for the declining days of medieval Christendom. These old philosophies were counsels of desperation and negation, of resignation and cynicism: Skepticism, Epicureanism, Stoicism. All philosophies and theologies were of equal value or lack of value. There was no absolute truth, and the role of humankind in its last days was to learn to live without striving foolishly for meaning in life. That could mean living lives either of noble suffering or of pleasure in the face of a meaningless future.
Or the call to doing the best you could with the goal of pleasing God could be taken painfully seriously. Remember Martin Luther with his perpetual confessions until finally his confessor charged him with the sin of overscrupulosity! Think of his endeavoring to please his father by studying law and to please God instead by becoming a monk, and of therefore being radically disobedient either way. Think of him at the brink of despair, and then coming to understand that the righteous never live by sincerity or by trying harder, but by faith in the God who justifies the ungodly.
But before Luther there came a revival of consistent, homogeneous Au-gustinianism—from the pens of the monk Gregory of Rimini and another Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Bradwardine. Bradwardine wrote a book with the offensive title The Cause of God against the Pelagians, as if his opponents really were Pelagians, in an age when all felt quite certain of their allegiance to Augustine. But he meant it nevertheless: if one relies on his own attempts to please God with the purpose of motivating God to give him grace by earning it (whether or not he thinks de condigno or de congruo), then at bottom he relies on his own efforts for salvation, which is standard Pelagianism. However piously it may be expressed, any thought of preparing oneself for grace is idolatrous trusting in the flesh.
Constructively, the new Augustinians concentrated on God’s covenant promises. Later the covenant emphasis came to be thought of with a narrower focus, in terms of the continuity between Old and New Testament, between circumcision and baptism. But at the end of the medieval period the issues were more basic: When I trust in God’s promises, it is His promise that is the central issue, not my trust. Further, God’s election, His plan from eternity, may not be separated from His covenant, His revelation of that plan in time. Election is not a mysterious unknowable black hole that may swallow up or subvert God’s revealed covenant to His people. Rather, it is the reflection of the integrity of a God who stands behind His promises.
At this point the Reformation could not be far away. The new focus on election, and the immediate grace of God, had pointed both Wycliffe and Huss away from a papal and sacramental church to a church based on the Word—preached, heard, and followed. That biblical church committed itself to obedience, to correcting what God’s people had not done, where the church described in the Bible was patently and strikingly entirely different from the church of Rome. Though the pre-Reformation forerunners did not go all the way to arrive at justification, they did prepare God’s people to receive with faith whatever God’s Word said; when they came to see that the Bible taught justification, they would accept it with joy and enthusiasm. With the formal principle (the sole authority of God’s Word) now in place, the material principle (justification) could not be far away.3
Understanding justification would come inexorably, when the bankruptcy of nominalistic preparatory grace become clear. Article by article the gospel in all its richness became clear: Without the grace of God, a sinner can do nothing to save himself. He can do nothing to prepare for grace, for without it he is still just a sinner. God does not receive a foolish sinner tiying to do his best but, rather, the one who knows the truth about his sin and who trusts only in the righteousness of Christ. He knows his trust is not a “virtue,” to be evaluated in terms of its strength or consistency; instead its value comes only through its object, the faithful Savior Jesus Christ. To give us that Savior is not something God does piecemeal or by measure; for us to know and trust Christ is to know and trust the “whole” Christ, “in all of his offices.”
The doctrine of election may sometimes seem like a peripheral dogmatic fossil from a long-distant past. In the late Middle Ages and in the Reformation, however, it meant personal relationship with God, one not dependent on the offices of the church. It meant the grace of God, resting on nothing other than His love and kindness to His people. In the midst of suffering and doubt, it meant the persistent, continuing love of the Father of Jesus Christ to His children. This is seen clearly in the organization of John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. There election is taken up as was usual in the older theological outlines, under the doctrine of God: God has made the world and is in complete control of it, including the actions and thoughts of people, and their relationships to Himself. But that is a comparatively brief treatment compared to the later extended discussion under how God’s people receive the blessings of the Cross, particularly how they continue to trust in God in the midst of suffering and doubt. For Calvin takes up election primarily under the topic of the perseverance of the saints, following substantially the outline of Paul’s letter to the Romans. There, chapters 6-8 discuss the believer’s struggles with sin, temptation, persecution, and suffering; and at the end Paul asks the most basic question of all, “What shall separate us from the love of Christ?” The triumphant answer, that “nothing shall,” is set within the eternal plan of God. The God who chose us from the beginning will surely continue His work in us to the end. This biblical understanding of divine election is not some dark cloud behind which the inscrutable God hides Himself, keeping His mysterious foreboding plan to Himself, while He reveals only a tantalizing, possible salvation. Rather, it is the election revealed in Christ, who is the mirror of election.4
No wonder the Reformation was so exhilarating and promising. Instead of terrifying doubt, there was the sure promise of God’s favor, instead of fluctuating introspection, there was a clear look at the faithful Savior Jesus Christ; instead of a life of fearful cynicism, there was a heart full of gratitude over the full forgiveness of sin.
THE LEGACY OF NOMINALISM
But major questions still remain. Was nominalism only a momentary aberration in Catholic thought? Though Luther and others were right in rejecting it, were they wrong in thinking that they were rejecting the teaching of the church? Certainly the nominalists did not carry the day forever in the church; ultimately the older Thomism was to become its official theology. But one must consider the later conclusions of the Catholic Council of Trent—its rejections of justification and assurance—well after the obvious dangers of nominalist constructions should have been seen. It is very hard to see why the Roman church would have stood so vigorously against the Reformation if it were not at least extremely sympathetic to nominalism. At that time there were hardly any real alternatives.
At least as basic is the Protestant question, how much did the children of the Reformation value their heritage, forged as it had been out of the abyss of medieval confusion and doubt? Would they ever regress, if not to the name of Rome, then to its kind of theology? One of the most astonishing developments in Protestant church history is the recurring pattern of return back to moralism and away from Christ. The accounts of historic evangelical revivals or awakenings are very instructive. The revival preacher would present the old Reformation message, that sinners are saved by trust in the work of Christ, that justification is of the ungodly by faith alone. When that gospel was clearly heard, over and over again many would came to faith in Christ, rejoicing in finally hearing a message they had never heard before. But when they spoke to their pastors about their new faith, the pastors said that they also believed in justification in the same way. “Then why didn’t you ever tell us?” was the skeptical reply. Why not indeed?
The answer may be as simple as pastors thinking that every one knew it and that it could be presupposed. But it may have been more complex. The Church of England forbade local pastors or elders to exercise church discipline, since membership in the church had civil implications; they reserved that discipline for bishops or probably their lay chancellors. These men could exact fines for various offenses, but they knew nothing about the spiritual counsel that should accompany rebuke for sin. In that case it would be easy for a pastor to seek to reach the disobedient or lax in the congregation by preaching on the danger of a dead faith, or that many believe they are converted but really aren’t, and the like. The outcome might well be that many had their attention diverted from the objective saving work of Christ toward the subjective quality of their faith. The rifle that church discipline should use toward specific offenders could easily turn into the shotgun that would wound those for whom it was not intended—and so attack and ultimately remove their assurance of salvation.
From a more theological point of view, one’s understanding of the nature of faith has much to do with whether it is being seen from the perspective of regeneration (spiritual change) or justification (forgiveness). In older theological vocabulary, from justification’s side faith is “passive” (not considering itself but instead looking to Christ); but from regeneration’s side faith is “lively” (coming from a heart radically changed by the Spirit of God). In ordinary language it would be hard to think of something as both passive and lively, but what was meant was something like this: “God has so radically changed my heart that I no longer trust in myself but only in Christ.” Historically not many have been able to grasp that. Either they were convinced that the sinner’s great need was change and the consequent commitment to obeying Christ (seen in the “Anabaptist” lively direction) or sure that people are so inherently self-righteous that they need to be told to recognize that their forgiveness does not rest upon their changed lives, but only on Christ (the “Lutheran” passive direction).
Calvinists thought they could avoid that dilemma and be committed to both directions. They taught that Christ was to be taken as Savior and as Lord, as the fountain of both forgiveness and change. But when one looks at the histoiy of Reformed theology, most of what he sees is the history of the tension of those who were “antinomian” (the danger of the Lutheran, passive side) or those who were “neonomian” (the danger of the Anabaptist, lively side). Is the danger to the church greater from those who are lazy and indifferent to radical obedience to Christ? Then teach them that a Christian needs much more than mere faith. Or is the danger greater from those who are consumed with doubt and unbelief, convinced that they dare not come to Christ until they have made significant change in their lives? Then teach them that salvation is only from the Lord. In a personal, pastoral or disci-pling relationship, counseling could be directed so that the answer would depend on the individual’s need or particular idol. The Protestant church has been at its best when such individual pastoral work was practiced, either by a pastor like Richard Baxter, who constantly visited everyone in his small congregation, or more likely by elder-directed, small pastoral groups (proph-esyings, conventicles, classes). When lazy people can be presented with a different biblical emphasis than fearful people, then there is no need for either neo- or antinomian overemphasis or reductionism.
Still, the neonomian option seemed to be fostered much more frequently. Though the creeds said that no one is able to prepare himself for grace, it could still be argued that it’s not the “plan of salvation” that is being presented, but only the “way of salvation.” That distinction is either very profound or completely unintelligible. The alleged difference is, God doesn’t require that people go through a preparatory process of conviction of sin and despair over never being saved, as a kind of prerequisite for salvation. But on the other hand, that is the way almost everyone ever came to Christ. It’s at least the way all the testimonies before the congregation sound: if you’ve heard one you’ve heard them all. It could be stated that since no one can control the work of the Holy Spirit, at least he can place himself where the Holy Spirit works best, in the way of grace. No one can know how the Spirit works, but he can be aware of the usual circumstances through which He works. He cannot control grace, but he can arrange to be where grace is usually to be found. More people are converted in churches than in bars, and more people are converted while praying than while getting drunk. The doctrine of the “means of grace,” which was intended to describe what Christians should do in order to grow spiritually, came to be applied to how non-Christians are converted.
The nominalist three-value logic had reemerged. According to this variety of theological thought, not only were there regenerate and unregenerate people, Christians and non-Christians, but also great varieties of the people in between, falling into the general category of the quickened or awakened. The cutting edge of the gospel could be blunted, for no longer could the great alternatives of life or death, Christ or self, be maintained. Instead, preaching could be turned away from the presenting of the gospel into describing how God frequently works. The sure promise of God could be diffused into vague probabilities. Indeed, it would be hard to tell the difference between the probability God of Enlightenment moralism and Protestant neonomianism.5
Revivals did come—and still come—and the Reformation was recapitulated again and again, with its great signatures of justification and assurance. But, more often than not, nominalist election was confused with biblical election, and the new revivals frequently went without that great theological backbone, a theme that will be developed as the heart of John Armstrong’s appeal in chapter 13 in his call for a new reformation of evangelical Christianity that understands and preaches the gospel more faithfully.
CONCLUSION
Without understanding the struggles of the medieval church it will be hard to understand the weakness of modern conservative Catholicism’s interest in questions regarding personal salvation. By the same token, it will also be hard to understand the weaknesses of modern Protestantism. Its liberalism did come, after all, from the Enlightenment. Its evangelical weaknesses come from continual neonomian influences. Both Catholic and Protestant churches need to take up again a serious reevaluation of the great questions of the relation between Christ as Savior and as Lord; is it forgiveness or is it change people need? Or both? It still needs to be said to all, Don’t just describe the gospel; preach it! The apostle of the cross did say, “Woe is me if I do not preach the gospel” (1 Corinthians 9:16). Without these perspectives gained from the medieval background, the pursuit of comprehending the need and state of our twentieth century churches, and thus the need of our time, will take much longer than it should. With the help gleaned from such study both Catholics and Protestants should learn more quickly what personal faith in Christ really means and how to preach the gospel more faithfully. Only this discovery will bring the reformation most needed in our time.
Notes
1. For the significance of Anselm’s understanding of the Atonement, especially as compared with other views, see B. B. Warfield, “Atonement,” in Studies in Theology (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1988), 261-80.
2. See my “Nominalism,” in New Dictionary of Theology (Downers Grove, 111.: Inter-Varsity, 1988), 471-72.
3. For further help on the great philosophical and theological shift at the end of the period and its significance for the Reformation, the work of Heiko Oberman is the most rewarding. In order of easiest to read to most technical, see Forerunners of the Reformation (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1966); Dawn of the Reformation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 1-154, 204-33, 269-98; Harvest of Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967); Archbishop Thomas Bradwardine (Utrecht: Ke-mink & Zoon, 1957); Gregor von Rimini (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1981).
4. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book Three, XXI-XXIV (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960).
5. On preparatory grace in evangelical theology, see (in favor) W. G. T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1959), 11:511-28; (balanced and cautious) Herman Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek (Kampen: Kok, 1976), IV:7-13.