4. AUGUSTINE'S MISTAKE AND LUTHER'S REDISCOVERY

[5 A4 pages when printed]

Augustine lived way back in the fourth century and has had an enormous influence on theology then and since. He was a young university teacher from Carthage. At the age of 32, through the preaching of Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan, he was converted and eventually became the Bishop of Hippo in North Africa - it would have been in modern Algeria. He was a great scholar with a powerful intellect and he tried to think through many issues of Christian belief. (By the way he is not to be confused with the other Augustine who lived 200 years later and who was the leader of a mission which settled in Canterbury.)

At the time of the first Augustine there were some fairly major controversies around in the church. So Augustine applied his work and writing to defending the Christian faith and building-up understanding of it. In particular, there was a British monk living and teaching in Rome whose name was Pelagius. He was a rigorously ascetic man, seeking holiness through bodily denial, and he was openly challenging essential biblical teaching about salvation. This became known as the 'Pelagian Heresy'.

God's Grace   

Pelagius taught that mankind did not have a corrupted and sinful nature; that man's Free Will was therefore not tainted by sin, and that by using his/her free will a person could reach perfect holiness and thus be acceptable to God. Now apart from the major deviation this teaching had from the message of Scripture, the most serious problem for Augustine was that it denied the need for God's Grace. So it was from this aspect that Augustine opposed this heresy and in so doing built up such teaching on the grace of God that he has been referred to as 'the doctor of grace'.

The meaning of 'justify'  

As we might expect, Augustine's work on grace soon involved him in thinking through the principles of justification. But it was during this work that he made a serious error of interpretation which has had repercussions ever since. Augustine made a great contribution to theology but he did make this mistake which others after him were to repeat.

The problem was that although Augustine was a great Latin scholar he knew hardly any Greek. So he was unable to get to grips with the meaning of the Greek word for 'justify' in Paul's letters. Additionally he only had a Latin version of the Old Testament, not the original Hebrew.  A proper interpretation of the Greek and the story of Abraham,  leads to the conclusion that 'to justify' means 'to declare righteous'. But Augustine rejected that option and mistakenly decided to justify meant 'to make righteous' which is totally different. So although Augustine concluded that the basis of justification is God's grace, he went on to teach that justification is both an event and a process. In other words he included sanctification inside justification. He once said in a sermon "We have been justified; but this justice increases as we advance ...". Accordingly Augustine thought the believer became more and more justified. This is not just a theological nicety, but goes to the very heart of how a person is saved. (See further work on this issue in "Doctrine for Everyone", No.4 'How Roman Catholic belief on justification differs from Protestant belief.' (Click to reach the page)

There is however one thing to make clear. Augustine did not believe in justification by men's works. For him, the life-long process of justification he believed in was the grace of God at work. Saving faith for Augustine would have been faith in God's grace, which although sounding scriptural, actually leads up the wrong path. If Augustine were around to speak to we would want to ask him when a believer might be justified enough to warrant God's acceptance. The need to answer this question led him to believe in purgatory, an extra-ordinarily unscriptural way out of the problem.

The church  

In the fifth century various councils of the church condemned the Pelagian heresy and endorsed Augustine's theology. So his teaching on salvation, and on justification in particular, became the norm for the church in the western Mediterranean. But Augustine's writings were not translated into Greek, so his theology was not understood, let alone accepted, by the church in the eastern Mediterranean. One result is that to this day, the theology of the eastern churches (Greek and Russian Orthodox) has quite a different idea about original sin, which does not require a doctrine of justification before God. (See 'Justification and the Eastern Churches' by Gerald Bray ; chapter 5 in 'Here We Stand' by J.I.Packer and others, Hodder and Stoughton.)

There followed centuries, commonly known as the 'dark ages', in which the church was too engaged in the politics of the Mediterranean area for further theological progress. It was not until a further 600 years had passed that theologians saw the need to bring the beliefs of the church into some sort of order. So where did they turn for guidance?  - of course to the writings of Augustine. So it is that the church, centred on Rome and under the jurisdiction of the Pope, re-affirmed Augustine's doctrine of justification as God's work for and within the believer. At this time Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) was the chief 'doctor of the the church' and he worked on the theology of salvation. He again re-affirmed Augustine's belief that justification was both an event and a process, and developed it further. For example, he dealt with the problem of sin in the life of a person who 'is being justified' by introducing the practice of the sacrament of penance and absolution by a priest. A person could therefore be restored to the justifying process of God's grace through an action involving the church - a very significant development.

The doctrine of justification that Augustine originally worked out did not include any element of justification by men's works. But it is not difficult to see that if not carefully taught it could sound very much like that. There is a very fine line between justification by works and Augustine's justification as a process of God's grace.  Let's clarify it:

With our natural tendency to human pride it is easy to see how men and women can so easily confuse these two. 

So it was that in the Catholic Church of that time, belief in salvation by works and the observance of Church practices (eg masses for the dead) became widespread. Close on the heels of this came other practices such as the sale of indulgences which promised years off purgatory. Into this unhappy situation in Germany in 1483 was born Martin Luther, the son of a poor miner.

The Reformation  

Luther became a sincere seeker after God and at the age of 22 entered an Augustinian monastery. Ironically (in view of the connection with Augustine) his spiritual teachers were Pelagian in outlook. They urged him to seek salvation by fasting, penance and prayers. 

But Luther was not satisfied by that and searched the Scriptures seeking an answer. Over the years, he went through various stages of understanding as he tried to sort out precisely what the Bible taught.  (That is why it is so important to be careful about the way people quote Luther, especially from his earlier years.)

But to cut a long story short, Luther's concern was how he, a sinner, could stand before a holy God. 'How can I be forgiven?' was his constant anxiety. When in his studies he came to Rom.3:21 "now a righteousness from God has been made known" he trembled with fear. How could he stand before a righteous God especially now that His righteousness had been demonstrated in His Son? It took a long time of searching and studying and it was only through Paul's letter to the Galatians that Luther came to understand the answer. He realised that this revealed righteousness was not a threat at all, but a gift to the believer!

Luther later wrote of what had happened when he realised for the first time that the 'righteousness from God' was God's credited gift to the believer so that he could be acceptable. He said

"At last, by the mercy of God, meditating day and night, I gave heed to the context of the words, namely 'In it the righteousness of God is revealed' as it is written, 'he who through faith is righteous shall live'. There I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives by a gift of God, namely by faith. And this is the meaning: the righteousness of God is revealed by the Gospel, namely the passive righteousness with which merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written 'he who through faith is righteous, shall live.' Here I felt that I was altogether born again and and entered paradise through open gates. The whole Scripture took on a new meaning" (quoted by Alister McGrath in Justification  by Faith; Marshall Pickering UK 1988, p.51)

After this, with the door of his understanding wide open Luther began to expound his new discovery and the Reformation really began. It was Luther who first described credited righteousness as 'alien righteousness' to emphasise that it did not come in any way from us. He was a very passionate man and argued fiercely for the truth with those who challenged it. He came to believe that justification was so important that he called it 'the article of the standing or falling church'. These days it is not uncommon to believe that doctrine is not important; that so-called 'head knowledge' is the enemy of 'heart knowledge'. Well, no such charge could be brought against Luther. He was no dry academic theorist. His discovery led to a life of ever greater devotion and joy in his faith, and he taught  that justification by faith should lead to a life of love and service.

Because of what he had found in Scripture, Luther was obliged to stand against the teaching the Church and eventually to leave it, although he would not have wanted to that. This break brought 'protestantism' into being. The word 'protestant' is not primarily to do with protesting against something (as is commonly thought) but coming from the Latin and French means 'to bear witness before' or 'to testify'. Luther had a great ally in Philipp Melancthon, a Professor of Greek at Wittenberg, who helped Luther enormously to formulate reformed biblical thinking. Melancthon made the major contribution to the famous Ausburg Confession of 1530 in which the reformed belief was presented in an orderly form to the Emperor Charles V.

The theological work of the Reformation was further continued in Switzerland by John Calvin who had great theological insight. He understood Latin, Greek, Hebrew and French and was skilled at interpreting the Bible. In contesting opposition he once wrote "Whenever the knowledge of it [justification by faith] is taken away the glory of Christ is extinguished, religion abolished, the church destroyed and the hope of salvation utterly overthrown" (J.C.Olin, ed. A Reformation Debate, Harper and Row, New York, 1966, p.66).

Attempts at Compromise   

Naturally, there was a strong reaction to Luther's teaching from the Roman Catholic Church. There was much controversy. But after the Diet (Conference) of Ausburg in 1530 there was a marked change in the attitude of the Catholic theologians. There seemed to be a willingness not to condemn the new reformed belief. They played down the differences and even put the view that it was really part of what the Church had always taught. Attempting to find a compromise, the Emperor convened a joint Diet at Ratisbon (sometimes called 'Regensburg') in 1541. He invited three Protestant and three Catholic theologians to debate the issues, and to draft a theological statement which could be acceptable to both sides.

In the discussion that followed the Catholic theologians made considerable concessions to the Protestant doctrine and a statement was produced which included phrases such as .."men ... cannot be reconciled to God, nor redeemed from the bondage of sin, but by Jesus Christ, our only mediator  ... their mind is raised to God, by faith in the promises made to them, that their sins are freely forgiven them ... that faith justifies not, but as it leads to mercy and forgiveness, which is imputed to us through Jesus Christ and his merits, and not by any perfection of righteousness which is inherent in us  .... that we are not just, or accepted by God, on account of our own works or righteousness, but we are reputed just on account of the merits of Jesus Christ only." (quoted by James Buchanan, The Doctrine of Justification, Banner of Truth, 1961, London, pp.131,132.)

At first the Protestant theologians accepted this statement, but what happened next demonstrated just how sharp it is necessary to be. In any attempt at compromise it is imperative that both sides know exactly what the other side means by certain words or phrases. It is not a matter of nit-picking but of avoiding ambiguity.

The problem with the Ratisbon statement was that it did not go far enough to clear up the central issue. Knowing that the Roman Catholic Church believed that a person could add to their justification by Spirit-inspired good works, Luther spotted that the big question remained ...

Who is the statement talking about, a believer or a non-believer? 

It does not specifically say that the works and righteousness of the converted believer  play no part in their acceptance by God, thus leaving a door open to Catholic belief in justification as a process that can be added to. The fine line had not been drawn.

But in addition the Cardinals of Rome insisted that 'faith' in the statement retained its Catholic meaning. To them faith works in the believer making him increasingly righteous so that he may become acceptable to God. For the Reformers, faith was the means of justification because it rested on Christ alone. So this attempt at compromise was unacceptable to both sides. It shows that ambiguity solves nothing! Remember the issue is how a person is acceptable to God - not a trivial matter.

The Catholic Church clarifies its belief

In 1545 the Pope called a Council to meet in Trent in Northern Italy to clarify what the Church believed. Its main discussions took four years,  and seven months of that were spent on justification. The final statements are referred to as "Tridentine" which simply means 'of Trent'.

The Tridentine statement on justification was in the form of sixteen decrees positively explaining Catholic belief and thirty-three canons condemning the errors which opposed it. Suffice it to say that while proclaiming utter dependence on God's grace, the decrees confirmed the heart of Catholic belief to be, that God imparts righteousness to believers to make them righteous  and acceptable to God within themselves. 

They confirmed justification as 'the renewal of the inward man' ie. a process by which a believer becomes gradually more acceptable to God. (Chap.7 of the decrees)

Moreover, on the issue of assurance of salvation,  they also stated 'no one can know with the certainty of faith, which cannot be subject to error, that he has obtained the grace of God'. (Chap.9 of the decrees)

The 33 canons (especially nos.11,12 and 24) finally and emphatically drew a line between Catholic and Protestant belief. 

(A copy of the canons can be supplied upon application.)

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