Question 1: A Catholic View of Luther

Luke asks:

I’m looking for a well-written book on the story of Martin Luther and his theology, written

from a Catholic point of view. Preferably, I’d like to read something that attempts to be

fair and charitable. Do you know of any good books written for laymen?

According to Aristotle, humans are unique among beings in that they are possessed of a rational and social nature. Among other things, this means that the full realization of human nature––its final end––necessitates a form of social-unity-in-truth, in which, as a community, the truth of human nature becomes manifest in a shared form of life together. While for Aristotle this community ramified around the Greek polity, Christians understood a theological truth beyond it. Taking up this view of the needs of human nature, Ss Augustine and Aquinas argued that the Church names that spiritual community on earth whose final end is union with God, the source and truth of all things, whose very being is a divine community. Thus, as it unifies around the truth of the Son’s co-eternal being and salvific mission, the Church is meant to imitate the union of Father, Son, and Spirit––which together constitute Eternal Beatitude––in its own public embodiment.

Perhaps the greatest threat to the mission of the Church, therefore, remains Christian discord. A Church which cannot be seen to express a concrete unity fails to embody a foretaste of the heavenly Kingdom it preaches in its gospel. It is arguably the case, therefore, that the desire to overcome discord in ecumenical dialog is the greatest task of Christian witness today.

But for this very reason it is also one of the most vexed of enterprises. Anyone who undertakes ecumenical understanding is immediately confronted with a problem: 500 years of vitriol, vituperation, and apologetic invective to work back against for adequate historical discernment. The basis for any future (re-)union between Christian denominations thus requires sympathetic attention to past theological conflicts and abuses, patient recognition of sins and misunderstandings, and the desire to heal the wounds of sin by learning to tell the truth about the past collectively.

One of the great things about the Catholic tradition is it makes a habit of confession in its sacramental life. Thus, what is required for the future of Christian unity is nothing other than an extension of Catholic practice. Ecumenism need not consist in a watering-down of beliefs for the purposes of merely ‘getting along’, but is rather seeking greater truth and clarity within, rather than apart from, tradition.

Those, like our petitioner, who are interested in doing the right kind of historical work to better understand that crucial moment of dissolution known as the Protestant Reformation (or Reformations) are first recommended to read the documents of the Reformers and Counter-Reformers themselves. While Luther's Bondage of the Will is central, personally I recommend Luther’s On An Open Translation as getting at the heart of the conflict from the Protestant side. On the Catholic side, ecclesial documents at Trent, Vatican I and II are essential reading.

But the consensus pick for telling the Catholic story about the Reformation among the friends at The Fellows of St. Columbanus is Catholic historian Brad Gregory’s The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society. The book is a work of historical understanding which has the virtue of being what Ètienne Gilson called a “philosophical history of philosophy”, i.e. it does not limit itself to the historical-critical perspective, but traces the effects of the Reformation genealogically into the present, so that the roots may be known by the fruits, so to speak.

Because it challenges many of the secular commonplaces present in modern self-conciousness, Gregory’s account is certainly contested. Those who have rejected the Catholic view of things in particular will find much to disagree with. (Anyone wanting a sampling of the relevant criticisms of Gregory’s genealogical account of modernity should view the responses and his counter-responses on the blog The Immanent Frame). Yet, we find his account convincing, even if, no doubt only partial, as all historical understanding must be short of final glory.

[Runners up: The influential Catholic account of the Reformation in England, Eamon Duffy’s The Striping of the Altars. This edited volume also comes recommended.]

About the Author: Jared Schumacher is associate professor of Theology and Catholic Studies at the University of Mary in Bismark, ND. He specializes in political theology.

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