Posted on by Kurt Bodling

one Catholic view of Martin Luther

“We must see the decisive point here: more than anyone before him in the fifteen hundred years of church history, Luther had found a direct existential access to the apostle Paul’s doctrine of justification of the sinner by faith alone, and not through works. This had been completely distorted by the promotion of indulgences in the Catholic Church, which claimed that the sinner could be saved by performing set penances and even making payment of money. This rediscovery of Paul’s message of justification – among the shifts, obscurities, cover-ups, and overpaintings – is an epoch-making and astounding theological achievement, which the Reformer himself always recognized as the special grace of God. Simply in the light of this central point, a formal rehabilitation of Luther and the repeal of his excommunication by Rome is overdue. It is one of those acts of reparation which should follow the pope’s confession of guilt today.”

Küng, Hans. The Catholic Church: a Short History. New York: The Modern Library, 2003, p. 126

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

dogma promulgation

“The time lag between developments in the church and modern society was striking: in the very decade that Charles Darwin announced his theory of evolution to the public, Pius IX for the first time had the idea, as a demonstration of his own fullness of power and de facto infallibility, of promulgating a dogma entirely by himself. Promulgating a dogma is an action which traditionally has always been taken as a council in a situation of conflict to ward off heresy. Pius IX’s intention was to further traditional piety and to reinforce the Roman system. The dogma that he had in mind was that strange dogma of the immaculate conception of Mary (Mary conceived in her mother’s body without original sin), dated 1854. We do not find a word in the Bible and in the Catholic tradition of the first millennium about this, and it hardly makes any sense in the light of the theory of evolution.”

Küng, Hans. The Catholic Church: a Short History. New York: The Modern Library, 2003, p. 162

A certain kind of Protestant will snigger at this and say “See? I told you so!” A certain kind of Roman Catholic will explain, “Küng was a renegade who lost his license to teach as a Catholic theologian; his opinions are all suspect!”

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

the path to Christian doctrine

"The church’s official ‘doctrine of the Trinity’ was not fully formulated until three or four centuries after the time of Paul. Yet when the later theologians eventually worked it all through, it turned out to consist, in effect, of detailed footnotes to Paul, John, Hebrews and the other New Testament books, with explanations designed to help later generations grasp what was already there in principle in the earliest writings.

“But it would be a mistake to give the impression that the Christian doctrine of God is a matter of clever intellectual word-games or mind-games. For Christians it’s always a love-game.”

Wright, Tom. Simply Christian. London: SPCK, 2006, p. 118.

Comment: It’s clear, according to N.T. Wright, that Christian doctrine is more than simply a slow development of simple statements recorded in the Bible. He says here that doctrine is basically footnotes to the Scriptural text. At least when it (the Bible) is expounded properly.

It would seem, then, that Tradition must in this light be measured against Scripture. If the teachings of Tradition are not apparent in Scripture, then they aren’t footnoting anything. Which makes no sense. Pay attention to Wright’s idea of the “love-game” in tension with the “word-game”. If a doctrinal exposition and explanation is not growing out of the love-game, there’s reason to suspect it.