Ms. Andrea Solomon, Ms. Mary Edsall
Colloquium F2003x
Assignment #11 – Protestant Reformation
26 October 1999
A New Emphasis
One important distinction that separated Catholics from Protestants, especially in the early years of the Reformation, was whether people are saved primarily through faith, good works, or both. The Catholic church has always maintained that both faith in Christ and doing good works are crucial to salvation, and they use the life events of Christ in the Gospels as a model for doing good works. Requiring good works can be used, however, to justify making offerings to the church or buying indulgences. Martin Luther had a different perspective: Salvation comes through faith alone, and good works are simply the natural by-product of a person who has faith. At the end of his Preface to the German Translation of the New Testament (Hillerbrand page 42), he emphasizes the importance of Christ’s teaching rather than his works. “If I had to do without … the works or the teaching of Christ, I would rather do without the works than without His preaching. For the works do not help me, but His words give life, as He Himself says [John 6:63].”
Therefore, Luther recommends reading the Gospel of John over the other three, because it deals with Christ’s message rather than the events and miracles of his life 1500 years earlier. Catholics traditionally maintain that without the actual miracles (walking on water, curing the blind, etc.) there is no reason to believe the teachings come from God and are thus worthwhile. But Luther focuses on the teachings and morality of Christ (e.g. the letters of Peter and Paul to early Christians) rather than Christ’s life. I think this de-emphasis on miracles and increased attention on the more relevant aspects of Christianity is again found in the Protestant-Catholic debate over whether a transubstantiation miracle actually or symbolically occurs, whether intermediary miracle workers (priests) are necessary for individual salvation, etc.
John Calvin carried the argument further: Not only does God does not judge people by their good works, but all people are predestined to be either saved or damned and nothing they do can change that. Calvin tells Cardinal Jacobo Sadoleto (Hillerbrand page 162) that “Scripture teaches that no hope is left but in the mere goodness of God, by which sin is pardoned, and righteousness imputed to us. It declares both to be gratuitous, and finally concludes that a man is justified without works [Romans 4:7].”
Cardinal Sadoleto, on the other hand, could find other parts of the Bible which do emphasize the necessity of good works. One way of “reinterpreting” the Bible is simply to focus on different sections. Both the Protestants and Catholics relied heavily on direct Biblical quotes to justify their often contradictory points of theology. However, the Bible does not have one particular theology or message: it is more than 1,000 pages of text written in several different languages by different groups over a period of more than 1,000 years. Furthermore, there are many different translations of the Bible. One can justify opposing positions with the Bible simply by choosing to quote different passages, and this is primarily how Christian debaters have always “proven” their arguments.