June 17, 2017 headlines
PewSitter
Canon212.com
To say I am shocked is an understatement - that the man who produced and wrote the outstanding video and film series CATHOLICISM
can now says these things about Martin Luther in a fit of misplaced wrong-headed 'ecstasy'!
Looking at Luther with fresh eyes
by Bishop Robert Barron
June 17, 2017
With great profit and pleasure I’m currently reading Alec Ryrie’s new book
Protestants: The Faith that Made the Modern World. Among the many texts appearing in this year of the five hundredth anniversary of the Reformation, Ryrie’s stands out for its verve, clarity, and historical sweep. In some ways, it is an answer to Brad Gregory’s
The Unintended Reformation, though it lacks the intellectual depth and thoroughness of Gregory’s magisterial study.
What has so far intrigued me most of all in Ryrie’s book is his portrait of the undisputed father of the Reformation, Martin Luther.
I will confess to a certain fascination with Luther. I have been reading his books, speeches, and sermons for many years, and for about ten years, when I was professor of theology at Mundelein Seminary, I taught a graduate level course in the Christian theology of the sixteenth century, which included, naturally, lots of Luther.
Cantankerous, pious, very funny, shockingly anti-Semitic, deeply insightful, and utterly exasperating, Luther was one of the most beguiling personalities of his time. ['Beguiling'? Hardly an adjective I would associate with Luther! Nor that someone like Mons. Barron would be 'beguiled' by someo0ne like Luther! It's like saying Screwtape aka Satan is beguiling!]
And say what you want about his writings (I disagree with lots and lots of his ideas), they crackle with life and intensity, even in Latin! Though I’ve read and thought and talked about the founder of Protestantism for a long time, Ryrie has prompted me to squint at him in a fresh way.
It is obvious to everyone, Ryrie argues, that Luther was a fighter, taking on not only fellow intellectuals, but the curia, the Pope, and the Emperor himself. And it is equally clear that he bequeathed this feistiness to his followers over these past five centuries: Zwingli, Calvin, Wilberforce, Lloyd Garrison, Billy Sunday, Karl Barth, etc.
There is always something protesting about Protestantism. But to see this dimension alone is to miss the heart of the matter. For at the core of Luther’s life and theology was an overwhelming experience of grace. After years of trying in vain to please God through heroic moral and spiritual effort,
Luther realized that, despite his unworthiness, he was loved by a God who had died to save him. [C'mon, Mons. Barron! That is an achievement? Are we not, as Catholics, taught that with our ABCs???]
In the famous Turmerlebnis (Tower Experience) in the Augustinian monastery in Wittenberg,
Luther felt justified through the sheer mercy of God. Though many others before him had sensed this amazing grace, Luther’s passion, in Ryrie’s words, “had
a reckless extravagance that set it apart and which has echoed down Protestant history.”
[No wonder Jorge Martin Bergluther preaches the 'mercy' that he does! In fact, he takes off precisely from the famous three sola's of Protestantism, the foundational principles of its doctrine of salvation - sola scriptura, sola fide, sola gratia, i.e., scripture over tradition, faith over works, and grace over merit, each intended to represent an important distinction compared with Catholic doctrine. Bergluther differs somewhat in that he is very fixated on good works (take an immigrant into your home, recycle your garbage and the like) as being more important than faith. Catholicism is, of course, distinguished by its 'et-et' principle - Scripture plus tradition and Magisterium, faith plus good works, grace plus merit, all as equivalent essentials in living life according to the Gospel.]
It is easy enough to see this ecstatic element in any number of prominent Protestant figures, from John Wesley to Friedrich Schleiermacher to John Newton.
Luther was an ecstatic, and the religious movement he launched was “a love affair.” [Mons. Barron forgets that ecstasy is not limited to a fit of grace, but also to a fit of any other overpowering emotion, e.g., rage, akin to mania.]
This is why I say Ryrie has caused me to look at Luther in a new light. One of the standard matrices for understanding religion is the distinction between the mystical and the prophetic, or between the experiential and the rational.
On the standard reading, Luther would fall clearly on the latter side of this divide.
He is, it would seem, the theologian of the word par excellence. And indeed, we can find throughout his writings many critiques of priestcraft, sacramentalism, and what he called Schwarmerei or pious enthusiasm.
Nevertheless, if Ryrie is right, this is to get only part, indeed a small part, of the story.
At bottom, Luther was a mystic of grace, someone who had fallen completely in love — which helps enormously to explain what makes his theological ideas both so fascinating and so frustrating. People in love do and say extravagant things. So overwhelmed are they by the experience of the beloved that they are given to words such as “only” and “never” and “forever.” [Yeah, right! Luther was so 'in love' with Christ he rejected the reality of of Trans-Substantiation! What Christ did he love? In your newfound ecstasy over Luther, Mons. Barron, have you forgotten that?] If you doubt me, read any of the great romantic poets, or for that matter, listen to a teenager speak about his first crush.
After a lifetime of scrupulosity and interior struggle, Luther sensed the breakthrough of the divine grace through the mediation of the Bible. Hence, are we surprised that he would express his ecstasy in exaggerated, over the top language: “By grace alone! By faith alone! By the Scriptures alone!” [Who cares? 'Over the top' does not make Luther's conviction right in any way. Where is Logos in all this???]
I think here of a distant spiritual descendant of Martin Luther, the Nobel laureate Bob Dylan. After his conversion to evangelical Christianity, Dylan wrote a lovely song called Saving Grace, which includes the lines, “I look around this old world/ And all that I’m finding/ Is the saving grace that’s over me.” Mind you, this is the same Dylan who, just a few years earlier, had sung of “guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children” and who had pulled the masks off of “masters of war” and who had complained of “Desolation Row.”
But now — and this is the mark of the ecstatic — all that he sees is saving grace. In a more Catholic expression of the same experience, Georges Bernanos’s country priest could cry, “Toute est grace!” (Everything is grace!).
Beautiful? Poetically expressive? Spiritually evocative? Yes! But does it stand up to strict rational scrutiny? Of course not. What Ryrie’s characterization of Luther has helped me to see is
how the great Solas of the Reformation can be both celebrated and legitimately criticized. [How can any rational Catholic celebrate these one-sided sola's???]
Was Luther right to express his ecstatic experience of the divine love in just this distinctive way? And was, say, the Council of Trent right in offering
a sharp theological corrective to Luther’s manner of formulating the relationship between faith and works and between the Bible and reason?
I realize that it might annoy both my Catholic and Protestant friends even to pose the issue this way, but would answering “yes” to both those question perhaps show a way forward in the ecumenical conversation?
[Again, Mons. Barron: what price 'ecumenism' at the cost of Catholic doctrine? Luther's expression of his 'ecstatic experience of divine love' does not make his apostasy and heresies any less wrong and sinful!]
Barron's CATHOLICISM film and video series were described as "an intimate journey, capturing 'The Catholic Thing' in all its depth and beauty. Eclectic, unique, and inspiring, Barron brings the faith to life for a new generation, in a style that is both faithful to timeless truths, while simultaneously speaking in the language of contemporary life." Let him fit his new Luthermania into that!
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 18/06/2017 04:00]