4. Adroitly constructed is the objection: "Faith in the Prot-
The Principle of Protestantism For there still remains always this great distinction, that the principle of righteousness in man as answering to the justifying act of God never flows even in part of his own subjective constitution, but only and altogether from his believing union with the objective Christ, and that the actualization of this principle in his person, is itself conditioned by the declaratory act, creative at the same time, going before.
3. "It is unreasonable to ascribe all justifying and saving power to faith, and to deny such virtue to love, when the apostle Paul nevertheless, who is in such great authority with Protestants, places love above faith—1 Corinthians 13:13.""* We, too, proclaim love to be the highest, the always-abiding; but precisely for this reason it is not to be found in guilty man, immersed in selfishness and sin, but only in God himself, the fountain of all love. So the only way of coming to God, and becoming assured of his love in Christ, through the knowledge and apprehension of which we are made first capable of love in return, is no other than faith itself; which is simply what our doctrine asserts. The fruit is better than the root; and yet this last carries the tree, and not the first.
In this objection moreover, it is forgotten, that all justifying and saving power, causatively considered, is lodged according to our view, neither in human faith, to which we attribute only instrumental efficacy, nor in human love, but exclusively in God's grace, that the glory of this may remain complete.
4. Adroitly constructed is the objection: "Faith in the Protestant view is justifying, not as a dead historical assent, but in the character of inward humility and trust, as a longing after the Redeemer, as love consequently though in its infancy; and thus the theory, to preserve itself, falls back again unwittingly to the Roman Catholic dogma.' Now we may well allow that there is an calore vero illustrari? Hac similitudine nihil ad rem praesentem magis accomodum: sol calore suo terram vegetat ac fecundat, radiis suis illustrat et illuminat: hic mutua est ac individua connexio, transferre tamen quod unius peculiare est, ad alterum, ratio ipsa prohibet.
* In similar style the argument was pressed by an opponent upon Melanchthon: dilectio est maxima virtus; ergo dilectio justificat. Melanchthon, however, draws from the proposition just the opposite conclusion: dilectio est maxima virtus, atqui nos eam minime praestamus; ergo per dilectionem minime justi sumus.
Philip Schaff o7 ultimate point where faith may be regarded as a constituent in the development of love, taken in its broadest sense. But unless all ideas are to lose themselves in one another promiscuously, we must distinguish and separate on the one hand, as closely as we seek connecting relations on the other. Only in the use of such reflective separation is any scientific knowledge possible. We say then that fallen man—sold under the power of selfishness, which is the very opposite of love, in order that he may come to the exercise of this grace in its true Christian, self-renouncing, self-sacrificing form—amust first become conscious of the divine love in its relation to himself personally, must yield himself to Christ's love; and this is itself the exercise of faith. The receptive element must go before the spontaneous; humble apprehension, before selfsubsisting action. We are always brought back accordingly to the Protestant thesis that man is justified and saved, not by the love which he exercises himself, but by the love he receives from abroad, that is, by faith.
THE FORMAL PRINCIPLE OF THE REFORMATION
So much for the material principle of Protestantism, by which direct and full access has been made good for man to the grace of God in Christ. This doctrine was brought to the consciousness of the Reformers in their inward spiritual conflicts, by means of the written word of God. While tradition as it then stood contradicted it entirely, directing men for salvation, not to faith, but to mechanical outward observances and forms; the almost forgotten Bible was felt to preach the glorious truth, distinctly and loudly, from beginning to end.* Thus as Christ became to them all in * This experience is described in a lovely way by Luther himself: "Then
(after coming to a clear sense of justification by faith), at once I felt that I was newborn, and had now found a wide open door to enter paradise itself; saw now moreover the precious Scriptures in a very different light from all they seemed before; ran accordingly soon through the whole Bible, and gathered in other passages also according to this rule all its expositions of what is meant by God's work, God's righteousness, and God's faith. And as before I hated this little word right heartily—God's righteousness—so I began now to hold the same high and dear as the sweetest and most comforting to me of all words, and this same passage in Saint Paul became to me of a truth the very gate of paradise."?7
The Principle of Protestantism all, his word also was taken for the separate and sufficient fountain of their religious knowledge. To the material or life principle of the Reformation accordingly is joined as its necessary complement the formal or knowledge principle, which consists in this, that the word of God, as it has been handed down to us in the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments, is the pure and proper source as well as the only certain measure of all saving truth.
We find here now a similar relation to that which we have already met in the case of the material principle, and a correspondence between the terms on both sides. The word of God answers to faith; and tradition, to love. As the doctrine of justification refers back to the doctrine of sin as its necessary presupposition, so does the doctrine of the authority of the Scriptures also to a corresponding view of the relation of the natural reason to revelation. The more favorable the view that is taken of the will of man in its natural state, the less will be the account made of the blindness of the understanding as going hand in hand with sin, and the higher the consequence attached to the word of man, as well as to his works, in the business of salvation; and so the reverse will hold also in every point. Hence Romanism, as it makes faith and works to be parallel sources of justification, and lays the main stress in fact practically upon the last, is only consistent with itself, when it invests, here also in the sphere of the formal principle, the word of God and human tradition with equal authority as sources of religious knowledge, and gives the second in reality the preference above the first. Protestantism, on the contrary, places both powers in each case in their natural relation to each other, in the relation namely of ground and consequence, cause and effect, origin and process. Faith alone justifies, but produces at the same time good works as its necessary fruit; the word of God is the only fountain and norm of knowledge, but it flows forward in the church, and comes there continually to clearer and deeper consciousness. As moreover, according to this view, the value of works is estimated by the measure of the faith which forms their ground, so the worth of tradition also is determined by its organic connection and agreement with the word of God.
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Inasmuch however as history is ever developed by means of more or less one-sided antagonisms, it was natural that with the Reformation, in opposition to the reigning overvaluation of man's works and man's word, the principal emphasis should be placed upon God's grace and God's word; not with the repudiation indeed, but with some neglect at least of the other side. This was the case particularly with regard to tradition.* The neglect here is the more to be excused, since the Church of Rome under the credit of apostolical tradition had smuggled into her communion the most shocking errors, and brought the word of God almost entirely into oblivion, had repeatedly prohibited it to the laity indeed in express terms. Tradition was in fact, as Chemnitz says in his Examen. Conc. Trid.* the box of Pandora, cujus operculo omne genus corruptelarum, abusuum et superstitionum in ecclesiam invectum futt.
As both principles are thus inwardly connected, being only two different sides indeed of one and the same principle, our exposition of the formal, which is now before us, will be materially assisted by the acquaintance we have formed with the other.
The Council of Trent accepts, according to the first decree of the fourth session, two sources for the knowledge of divine revelation, the word written or the sacred Scriptures, and the word unwritten or tradition; and these she makes coordinate, in the first instance, as the product of the same Holy Spirit (pari pietatis affectu ac reverentia suscipit et veneratur). Such a coordination
* We may notice here incidentally a very important fundamental peculiarity of the Lutheran Church as distinguished from the Reformed. This communion, in its genuine form and life, has more respect for tradition than the Reformed, and its development accordingly has been more historical and gradual, and more largely conservative of what was old; while the Reformed, in Puritanism particularly, proceeded more violently, and by its contempt for history furnished occasion, in part at least, for the multiplication of sects.
However, the Reformed Church is more strenuous than the Lutheran in its view of the necessity of good works, and has always displayed accordingly uncommon practical activity in the Christian life; while the sister body, reveling in free justification, presses hard on the confines of antinomianism; having been carried in the person of one of her principal champions quite over to the maxim "Good works hinder salvation!" An exaggeration, which of course the church soon disowned.
The Principle of Protestantism serves itself to depreciate the written word.* But this is done still more effectually through the further definitions and restrictions to which it is subjected. In actual practice, the Scriptures fall behind tradition, as in the case of the material principle, faith falls behind works. For under the written word of God, the Church of Rome understands not merely, as we do, the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments, but in open contradiction to the oldest and purest tradition of an Origen, Athanasius, Eusebius, Hilary, and even her otherwise so much respected Jerome, incorporates into it also the Apocrypha; mere human productions, whatever may be their worth.+ The distinction between the divine and human is thus unsettled. This pantheistic feature runs through the whole system, culminating in the respect shown toward the pope, as lawfully holding and exercising the threefold office of Christ himself. Too much again is allowed to human agency in the formation of the sacred Scriptures, by limiting the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to mere assistance and guidance
(assistentia et directio).t Still further, the Latin translation of Jerome, a work of course proceeding from a particular church position and reflecting its image, is not only placed on a par with the original text, but in actual use preferred to it altogether.§
In the fourth place, the charge of darkness and ambiguity is * For it involves the assumption that there is much wanting in the Scriptures that is necessary to salvation, and that they are consequently incomplete; as Bellarmine, de verbo Det, IV, 3, expressly asserts.
+ Conc. Trid., Sess. IV, decr. de can. script., where at the same time the Protestants, for rejecting the Apocrypha, are laid under an anathema.
+ Bellarmine, de verbo div., I, 15. Aliter Deus adfuit prophetis, aliter historicis. Illis revelavit futura et simul adstitit, ne aliquid falsi admiscerent in scribendo; his non semper revelavit ea, quae scripturi erant, sed excitavit duntaxat, ut scriberent ea, quae vel viderant, vel audierant, quorum recordabantur, et simul adstitit, ne quid falsi scriberent; quae assistentia non excludebat laborem. 'The Jesuits proceeded further and admitted without reserve the possibility of error, and even of falsehood outright in the Gospels; as, for example, Alb. Pighius,?° Hierarch. eccles. 1, 2. Matthaeus et Ioannes evangelistae potuerunt et labi memoria et mentiri, etc.
§ Conc. Trid., S. IV, decr. de edit. et usa s. libr., where the Vulgate is pronounced authentica and the rejection of it, that is, all departure from it in interpretation, is prohibited. Comp. Bellarmine (de verbo Dei, II, 10) who with proper consequence maintains that the Vulgate is free from all material error in translation.
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brought against the Scriptures*; whence tradition is held to be necessary for their interpretation; and it is counseled that the laity should not read them, except in cases of special qualification, of which the bishop is to be the judge.+ In short, the whole tendency of the Roman Catholic Church has for its object to subordinate the Bible to tradition, and then to make itself the infallible judge of both, with power to determine at pleasure what is God's word and the doctrine of the church, and to anathematize everything that may go beyond its past decisions, even though, as in the case of the Reformation and Jansenism, it should be an actual deepening of the Christian consciousness itself.
As already remarked, tradition in the Romish sense, is the unwritten portion of divine revelation; by which is meant simply that it was not committed to writing in the beginning by its author, however it may have been reduced to this form since, in the symbolical books and other productions of the church. Its contents are partly expository and partly supplementary to the Bible; it springs in part from Christ himself, and in part from the apostles under the guidance of the Holy Spirit; it is thus of like origin and like dignity with the written word; and has trans- * Comp. Klee's katholische Dogmatik, Vol. I, p. 277, 2d ed. Lindanus
(de opt. script. interpret.)*° is not ashamed to say even that the Scriptures without the aid of tradition have no more value than Aesop's fables: Sacram scripturam, si auctoritas ecclesiae disideratur, non plus per se valere quam Aesopi fabulas. Comp. also the Instruction pastorale 1, of Bossuet, cap. 43.
+ The symbols, it is true, are silent on the point, and in all times there have been Catholics who have earnestly recommended the study of the Bible.
(Comp. extracts on the necessity and use of Bible reading from the fathers and other Catholic writings by Leander van Ess,*! 2d ed., Sulzbach, 1816). But in strict Roman Catholic lands, such as Italy and Spain, the people are fearfully ignorant of the Bible, and the priests oppose every effort of the Protestants to circulate it, frequently indeed have committed large numbers of Bibles to the flames. It is a fact further that the reading of the Scriptures has been prohibited to the laity by several popes, from Gregory VII down to our own time, and also by several provincial councils; as the C. Tolosanum, 1229°?
(can. 14. Prohibemus etiam, ne libros Vet. T. aut N., laici permittantur habere: nisi forte Psalterium, vel Breviarium pro divinis officiis, aut horas B.
Mariae aliquis ex devotione habere velit. Sed ne praemissos libros habeant in vulgari translatos, arctissime inhibemus); so the C. Tarraconense,
1234.°° In any case, according to the whole system of the church, the reading of the Scriptures is not regarded as necessary, and the people are referred to the priests as a nearer and surer fountain of instruction.
The Principle of Protestantism mitted itself through the church all along, pure and true, under the constant care of God's Spirit.* Articles of tradition are, for example, infant baptism, the worship of the saints, the doctrine of purgatory, the sacrifice of the Mass, the forty-day fast before Easter. Its compass is determined of course by the church, that is, by the Roman Catholic Church, which is taken to be the church universal, and so the rightful bearer of this trust. What she has declared to be apostolical tradition, through her organs, the popes and councils, must be received in this character. She decides in the case however according to a fixed rule, the criterion of catholicity namely presented by Vincentius Lirinensis®: quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est. All valid traditions consequently must have been universally acknowledged by the Christian Church from the beginning.
But just here comes the knot which the Church of Rome is not able to unloose, but only to cut in a violent way. The universality in time and space, which is called for by the criterion now mentioned, cannot be shown in favor of a single one of all her tradi- * The Council of Trent speaks on this difficult subject in its 4th Session, but for reasons easily understood does not go into it minutely. Even to have raised a question here, must have been to put at stake a number of her most important doctrines and usages. Bellarmine, de verbo Dei, IV, 2, divides traditions into Ist traditiones divinae, communicated by Christ to the apostles;
2d traditiones apostolicae, proceeding from the apostles, though not in their writings; and 3d traditiones ecclesiasticae, ancient church usages and customs.
The first stand parallel in value with the Gospels; the second, with the writings of the apostles; and the third, with the written decrees and constitutions of the church. Moehler's*+ view of tradition, on the contrary, is by no means strictly orthodox, but ideal, showing a Protestant tinge. Here, as in his celebrated book also on the unity of the church, the theology of Schleiermacher was evidently felt. Thus he distinguishes in his Symbolik, pp. 362 ff. of the 5th ed., 1838, between a tradition in the subjective and a tradition in the objective sense. The first is nothing more than "the Christian sense belonging to the church, and handing itself down by means of church training, the word continuously living in the hearts of the faithful'; the same thing thus with what Schleiermacher styles the Christian consciousness. Tradition in the objective sense is made to be "the aggregate faith of the church through all ages as exhibited in external historical testimonies." But this is to say nothing characteristic of it as distinguished from the sacred Scriptures, which also belong to the aggregate faith of the church in this form. It is easy enough, in such fashion, to escape the difficulties of the case; which begin precisely where it comes to the question of the concrete contents of tradition as differing from the Bible.
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tions as different from the Bible. This point has been largely handled by Chemnitz, with great learning. Very many dogmas and usages rose clearly in the Middle Ages, or at least after the time of Augustine; and in the best cases, the alleged universality reduces itself to a relative majority of voices merely, which was often very small, and not unfrequently besides the result of outward influences entirely. In the discussion on tradition itself, in the fourth session of the Council of Trent, nothing like absolute unanimity was to be found.*® The bishop of Chiozza maintained that the Gospels contain all that man needs for salvation; and another prelate declared decidedly that God's word consisted not of two parts, that it was a reproach to divine providence to assume that a portion of its revelation had not been committed to writing, and that we must rather follow therefore the example of those fathers, who confined themselves always to the Bible alone. In the discussion on the doctrine of justification a still more considerable want of unity appeared. The archbishop of Sienna, the bishop della Cava, Giulio Contarini, bishop of Belluno, and with them five theologians, joined in declaring faith to be the only ground of justification; love and hope, its attendants; and works, its evidence or proof; while the general of the Augustinians, Seripando, brought forward the view of Gaspar Contarini, which took a middle course between the two systems.
But the voice of history, with its thousand tongues, is overwhelmed, not answered, by the Church of Rome, with the declaration that she is absolutely infallible, the unerring organ of the Holy Spirit, to which all private judgment, all historical inquiry, must yield implicit submission.* To this point in the end the * The Council of Trent of course takes this position everywhere for granted, and utters all its decisions accordingly. In the nature of the case, at the same time, it could not be subjected to particular investigation and proof. This would have been nothing less than a petitio principii; since to be able to show its divine authority, the Synod must have assumed the fact as already given.
The Cat. Rom., I, 10, 18, ascribes to the Roman Church, and to this exclusively, freedom from all error in fidei ac morum disciplina tradenda; and so likewise Bellarmine, eccl. milit., c. 14. Nostra igitur sententia est ecclesiam absolute non posse errare, nec in rebus absolute necessariis, nec in aliis, quae credenda vel facienda nobis proponit, sive habeantur expresse in scripturis, sive non: et quum dicimus, ecclesiam non posse errare, id intelligimus tam de universitate fidelium quam de universitate episcoporum.
The Principle of Protestantism whole controversy of right comes; with it the entire Roman Catholic system stands or falls. But this highest principle precisely of the infallibility of the papal hierarchy, like the highest principle of most philosophical systems, is merely asserted, never proved.
It forms the proton pseudos, the grand falsehood, on which the whole system rests; and at the same time its central sin, creature deification, making itself identical with the universal church, yea, with the absolute kingdom of God, out of which all are heretics only and children of perdition.
Protestantism has shaken this foundation from its place. It plants itself on the principle that infallibility belongs to Christ and his word alone, and to all else so far only as it may be joined to him in living union. This union however, in the present world, is progressive, and so always incomplete. In the case of the single
Christian, this is as clear as day. As in the best works of the regenerate, sin still continues to work with more or less power so that they can never become the ground of justification; so also error still cleaves to his knowledge, as long as he tabernacles in the body, and on this account the truth which is unto salvation can never be built on human tradition. For error and sin are ever inseparably related, like the understanding and the will. Sin is practical error, and error is theoretic sin. If this holds in the case of the individual, it is hard to see why the same should not be true of the church also, since this is nothing else than the organic complex of individual Christians.
A bishop does not become another man, in appearing as the member of a synod, made free as by a magic wand from error and sin. As little is this the case with the whole body. Many sinners make no saint, many blind make no seer, as little as a quantity of wood can yield iron, or a quantity of stones, bread. Error and truth differ not gradually, but specifically.
If the church militant then be not free from sin, which no one in the face of history will maintain, so neither is she free from error. True, she has the unerring word of God, and is styled by Paul "the pillar and ground of the truth." The truth accordingly can never disappear from her communion; and this is the right and sound side of the Roman Catholic dogma. But this by no means involves the idea of a positive infallibility. Rather, the
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church has error along with the truth, by which this may be corrupted and obscured, though never absolutely lost. She bears the golden treasure in earthern vessels; along with her ideal, divine nature, she possesses also a real, human existence, which is subject to the conditions of the finite, and thus also to the laws of process and growth. In the church herself, as well as in her members singly taken, we must distinguish different periods of life.
She is not made perfect at once, but is engaged in a gradual process of development, which holds just in this, that she is ever extricating herself more and more from the Judaism and paganism, sin and error, that still cleave to her by nature; by entering always more deeply into the word of God, in her hands but not for this reason fully understood from the beginning; and by incorporating it more fully always with her thinking, feeling, and acting; till in the end she shall appear the full-grown body of Christ, without spot or wrinkle, infirmity or disease, thus ceasing at the same time to be a militant church, and passing over into the kingdom of God triumphant.
For every unprejudiced person, history confirms this by incontrovertible facts. Even the most celebrated councils have been sufhciently characterized by contention and strife, contradictory feelings and views; and human passions and errors have come into play in their proceedings, as fully as in other places. Add to this, that popes and councils have not unfrequently appeared in direct contradiction; a circumstance fatal at once to the claim of infallibility. Thus, in the Arian controversy, several synods, just as large and constitutional as those afterward acknowledged to be orthodox, declared in favor of this heresy; and while the Council of Constantinople (754), by imperial will the Seventh Ecumenical," composed of 338 bishops, fanatically damned all religious images, the next universal synod, held at Nicaea in 787, proclaimed the whole proceeding to be wind. More frequent still have been the cases of contradiction, [partly by the popes among themselves, partly between the popes and] the great reformatory synods of Constance and Basel; so that with regard to this point, the Roman theologians themselves have not been able to agree.
The Protestant Church however can appeal, in favor of her view, not simply to the history of councils and popes, but also
The Principle of Protestantism to the express testimony of the most ancient church fathers; as Athanasius and Augustine, for example, without qualification allow the possibility of error even in the highest administration of the church.* The idea of a positive infallibility, excluding all and every error, and clothing the decisions of councils with the character of divine oracles, was first uttered by the Council of Chalcedon, a.p. 451, with reference to that of Nicaea; whose decrees it was directly affirmed, were given not by the fathers of the synod themselves, but by the Holy Spirit speaking through their persons.
If there be then any unerring fountain of truth needed to satisfy religious want, it can be found only in the word of God, who is himself the truth; and this becomes thus consequently the highest norm and rule by which to measure all human truth, all ecclesiastical tradition, and all synodical decrees.t Having in this way no rival at their side, the sacred Scriptures must take a far higher place in the Protestant system than they are allowed to hold in that of Rome, similarly to the view taken of faith also in the two
* Thus [Augustine says in] de baptismo contra Donatist, I, 3: Quis autem nesciat S. Scripturam ... omnibus episcoporum litteris ita praeponi, ut de illa omnino dubitari et disceptari non possit, .
. episcoporum autem litteras, .
. per sermonem forte sapientiorem cujuslibet in ea re peritioris, et per aliorum episcoporum graviorem auctoritatem doctioremque prudentiam et per concilia licere reprehendi, si quid in eis forte a veritate deviatum est: et ipsa concilia, quae per singulas .
. provincias fiunt, plenariorum conciliorum auctoritati, quae fiunt ex wniverso orbe christiano, sine ullis ambagibus cedere, ipsaque plenaria saepe priora a posterioribus emendarit, cum aliquo experimento rerum aperitur quod clausum erat et cognoscitur quod latebat.
If the general councils themselves admit and require thus improvement and correction from those that follow, they cannot be infallible.
+ Artic. Smalc., 1, 2, 15, p. 308: Ex Patrum enim verbis et factis non sunt exstruendi articuli fidei.
. Regulam autem aliam habemus, ut videlicet verbum Dei condat articulos fidei, et praeterea nemo, ne Angelus quidem.
Luther, as early as the conference at Augsburg would be '"'confuted only from the Scriptures"; and at Worms, as is known, he put forward the testimonia scripturarum, and declared his conscience bound by God's word. Form. Conf. praef., p. 570, where the Bible is styled unica regula et norma of all doctrines; also sol. decl., p. 632.98 The Reformed Church proclaims this formal principle throughout with still more distinctness and decision, so that it is almost superfluous to refer to proof passages. Conf. Helv., II, Art. 1-2, pp. 467 ff;
Artic. Anglic., Art. 6; Conf. Belg., Art. 3-5, pp. 361 1; Conj, Gallic., Art. 2%: pp. 329 f.; Conf. Westmonast., c. 1, § 1—10.