"Satan is clever . . . Thus, even now, among us, he is quibbling over the worship of saints and what the saints are conscious of in heaven.
Thus, too, I would solve the question about adoring and invoking God dwelling in the saints. It is a matter of liberty, and it is not necessary either to do it or not to do it. To be sure, it is not so certain that God has His dwelling in many men as that He is present in the sacrament, but we do read in I Corinthians [footnote: 1 Cor 14:24-25] that an unbeliever will fall on his face and worship God in the saints, if he hears them prophesying; and Abraham saw three angels, and worshiped one Lord; and (to use your own illustration) what do we do when we “prefer one another in honor,” except honor and adore God in ourselves? Let it be free, then, to call upon God in man or out of man, in creatures or out of them, for “I fill heaven and earth,” saith the Lord. Here faith goes the safest way, for in all things it sees only God, but we cannot say enough of this to unbelievers, or prove it to them, because they are always worshiping themselves." Martin Luther
(
Letter to Paul Speratus, 13 June 1522)
If I am wrong in my defense of the Communion of Saints, I have nothing to lose. If you are wrong in your objections, you have much to lose.
Martin Luther invented sola scriptura (SS), or "Bible Alone Theology". That is a historical fact, not an opinion. He couldn't prove, by the Bible alone, that Tradition and the Magisterium were not necessary for sound teaching. The Bible as "the sole rule of faith" had immediate devastating effects, loathed by Luther, Calvin and other 'reformers'. In the light of the positive things the reformers stood for, the principle of SS could not work without the Catholic Church.
"...Bouyer, then, addresses both Protestants and Catholics. To the Protestants, he says, in effect,
"It is fidelity to our Protestant principles, properly understood, that has led me into the Catholic Church."
To the Catholics, he says,
"Protestantism isn't as antithetical to the Catholic Faith as you suppose. It has positive principles, as well as negative ones.
Its positive principles, properly understood, belong to the Catholic Tradition, which we Catholics can see if we approach Protestantism with a bit of understanding and openness."
Bouyer's argument is that the Reformation's main principle was essentially Catholic: "Luther's basic intuition, on which Protestantism continuously draws for its abiding vitality, so far from being hard to reconcile with Catholic tradition, or inconsistent with the teaching of the Apostles, was a return to the clearest elements of their teaching, and in the most direct line of that tradition..."
...3.
Sola Scriptura. Melanchthon, the colleague of Luther, called justification
sola gratia, sola fide the "Material Principle" of the Reformation. But there was also the Formal Principle, the doctrine of
sola Scriptura or what Bouyer calls the sovereign authority of Scripture. What of that?
Here, too, says Bouyer, the Reformation's core positive principle is correct. The Word of God, rather than a human word, must govern the life of the Christian and of the Church. And the Word of God is found in a unique and supreme form in the Bible, the inspired Word of God. The inspiration of the Bible means that God is the primary author of Scripture. Since we can say that about no other writing or formal expression of the Church's Faith, not even conciliar or papal definitions of faith, the Bible alone is the Word of God in this sense and therefore it possesses a unique authority.
Yet the supremacy of the Bible does not imply an opposition between it and the authority of the Church or Tradition, as certain negative principles adopted by the Reformers implied. Furthermore, the biblical spirituality of Protestantism, properly understood, is in keeping with the best traditions of Catholic spirituality, especially those of the Fathers and the great medieval theologians. Through Scripture, God speaks to us today, offering a living Word to guide our lives in Christ.
Thus, writes Bouyer, "the supreme authority of Scripture, taken in its positive sense, as gradually drawn out and systematized by Protestants themselves, far from setting the Church and Protestantism in opposition, should be the best possible warrant for their return to understanding and unity."
Where does this leave us? If the Reformation was right about
sola gratia and
sola Scriptura, its two key principles, how was it wrong? Bouyer holds that only the positive elements of these Reformation principles are correct.
Unfortunately, these principles were unnecessarily linked by the Reformers to certain negative elements, which the Catholic Church had to reject. Here we consider two of those elements: 1) the doctrine of extrinsic justification and the nature of justifying faith and
2) the authority of the Bible.
1. Extrinsic Justification. Regarding justification by grace alone, it was the doctrine of extrinsic justification and the rejection of the Catholic view of faith formed by charity as "saving faith." Bouyer writes...
2. Sola Scriptura vs. Church and Tradition.
Bouyer also sees a negative principle that the Reformation unnecessarily associated with
sola Scriptura or the sovereignty of the Bible. Yes, the Bible alone is the Word of God in the sense that only the Bible is divinely inspired. And yes the Bible's authority is supreme in the sense that neither the Church nor the Church's Tradition "trumps" Scripture. But that doesn't mean that the Word of God in an authoritative form is found only in the Bible, for the Word of God can be communicated in a non-inspired, yet authoritative form as well. Nor does it mean that there can be no authoritative interpreter of the Bible (the Magisterium) or authoritative interpretation of biblical doctrine (Tradition). Repudiation of the Church's authority and Tradition simply doesn't follow from the premise of Scripture's supremacy as the inspired Word of God.
Furthermore, the Tradition and authority of the Church are required to determine the canon of the Bible.
Luther and Calvin did not follow the Radical Reformation in rejecting any role for Church authority or Tradition altogether.
But they radically truncated such a role. Furthermore, they provided no means by which the Church, as a community of believers, could determine when the Bible was being authentically interpreted or who within the community had the right to make such a determination for the community.
In this way, they ultimately undercut the supremacy of the Bible, for they provided no means by which the supreme authority of the Bible could, in fact, be exercised in the Church as a whole. The Bible's authority extended only so far as the individual believer's interpretation of it allowed.
The Catholic Church and Reformation Principles
As we have seen, Bouyer argues for the Reformation's "positive principles" and against its "negative principles." But how did what was right from one point of view in the Reformation go so wrong from another point of view? Bouyer argues that the under the influence of decadent scholasticism, mainly
Nominalism, the Reformers unnecessarily inserted the negative elements into their ideas along with the positive principles. "Brought up on these lines of thought, identified with them so closely they could not see beyond them," he writes, "the Reformers could only systematize their very valuable insights in a vitiated framework."
The irony is profound. The Reformation sought to recover "genuine Christianity" by hacking through what it regarded as the vast overgrowth of medieval theology. Yet to do so, the Reformers wielded swords forged in the fires of the worst of medieval theology: the decadent scholasticism of
Nominalism.
Why Only Catholicism Can Make Protestantism Work: Louis Bouyer on the Reformation
The question is, "how can Luther's above quote be understood through the lens of his own ss principles???"
