The Failure of the Reformation:
Part I, Merit and Works.
2017 is the 500th year
since the Reformation began. In keeping
with this milestone I have composed a couple of reflections upon how I think
the Reformation failed and or brought about deleterious effects to the practice
of the Christian faith. I have striven
to avoid the typical critiques and hopefully these posts will bring some fresh
perspectives on a long running debate about the Reformation.
500 years ago, the Church in the west
was riven in twain by the Protestant Reformation. From my own reading, I would argue that the
impetus of the reformation was rooted in the erroneous concept of “merit.” “Merit” is the idea that the saints somehow
went above and beyond the call of God and that the pope has access to transfer
these merits to those whom he so chose.
This led to the selling of indulgences because the pope has the power to
transfer the accrued extra credit work of the saints to the account of the
faithful. It was this practice of indulgences built off of a faulty
understanding of merits that started the Reformation.
The most memorable indulgence
salesman was Johann Tetzel. He is most
often remembered for the saying:
“As soon as a coin
in the coffer rings
The soul from
purgatory springs.”
To
the best of my understanding, this is not the official view of the Roman
Catholic Church regarding the effect of indulgences purchased for the dead. Although to the credit of Tetzel, he did
appear to be operating under a Papal Bull which was both ambiguous and later
rejected. It was Tetzel’s selling of
indulgences that provided the impetus for Martin Luther to post his 95 Theses
and begin a debate about indulgences.
Even though the practice of
indulgences was rejected by the Protestants and reworked by the Roman
Catholics, the underlying view of merit did not change. The Catholics continued to affirm a doctrine
of merit as did the Reformers. The
difference was not so much in the underlying concept of merit but in the ability of a Christian to merit grace.
The Reformers were rather univocal
in their refutation of the concept that a human could earn God’s grace. A corollary point was that they circumscribed
any notion of freewill more than their predecessors either patristic of
medieval (with a couple of possible exceptions) had done. Despite the delimiting of the ability of the
human will, the reformers did not roll back the concept of merit. Rather, they moved the locus of merit from
the human to the Godman. Personal merit
is completely replaced by the merits of Christ.
Luther
“That
is why faith alone makes someone just and fulfills the law; faith it is that
brings the Holy Spirit through the merits of Christ.”[1]
Calvin
“By
his obedience, however, Christ truly acquired and merited grace for us with his
Father. Many passages of Scripture
surely and firmly attest to this.”[2]
In these brief statements, the
concept remains that grace was merited, but instead of the human meriting God’s
grace through their activity, Christ is the one who merited God grace for the
human. The difficulty is that Luther and
Calvin moved the locus of the merit instead of going ad fontes (to the fountains) on the concept of merit. If they had gone to the fountains of the
Scriptures and the Fathers, they could have arrived at quite a different
conception of merit altogether.
To the best of my knowledge, the
notion that the Christians is saved by the “work/merit” of Jesus is unbiblical
in that it cannot be found in the Scriptures.
When the Gospels speak about the works of Jesus, they consistently refer
to Jesus’ miracles. Likewise, the
closest one can find in the epistles is that God worked in Christ in his
resurrection (Ephesians 1:20) and how God works through Jesus to complete
Christians (Hebrews 13:20). This makes
the entire discussion about the merit(s) of Christ a type of theologizing that
is not directly connected to the texts of Scripture, nor is it drawn from the
liturgical practices of the Church. This
enters into a realm quite foreign to the theological controversies and debates
of the Patristic era.
Turning to the Patristic era, I have
found the work of Saint Mark the Ascetic (400’s) very helpful to understanding
the relation to works to salvation. The
work is titled, On Those Who Think That
They Are Made Righteous by Works, and provides a break down
St. Mark started off by noting that the
kingdom of heaven cannot be a reward for works:
“Wishing to show that to fulfill
every commandment is a duty, whereas sonship is a gift given to men through His own blood, the Lord said: ‘When you have
done all that is commanded you, say;
“We are useless servants: we have only done what was our duty”’(Luke 17:10). Thus the kingdom of heaven is not a reward
for works, but a gift of grace prepared
by the Master for his faithful servants.”[3]
Because
we can only ever do our duty, there is no room for any concept of merit in that
a person is capable of doing more than God commanded. Further, works cannot actually satisfy God:
“If we are under obligation to perform daily all the good actions of which our
nature is capable, what do we have left over to give to God in repayment for
our past sins?”[4] Because we cannot do more than God has
commanded and because we have not always done what God has commanded, works are
incapable of providing satisfaction for prior sins.
While the reformers would likely
have agreed with Mark’s assessment about the ability of works to merit anything
with God, Mark’s assessment of Christ’s role is quite distinct from the
Reformers. Instead placing the onus of
merits upon Christ, Mark places emphasis upon the divinity of Christ and the
fact He is the savior.
"When Scripture says “He will reward
every man according to his works,” do not imagine that works in themselves merit either hell or heaven. On the contrary, Christ rewards each man according to whether his works are
done with faith or without faith in Himself; He
is not a dealer bound by contract, but God our Creator and Redeemer."[5]
This
quote is important because of the two points he brings up. One, rewards are based upon works, but the
basis for judging works is faith. Two,
we are not to view works in a contractual manner. This lack of a contractual understanding of
salvation leaves no place to imagine that Christ must then perform the deeds
which we were incapable of performing.
It is not the merits, but the grace of Christ which saves us (which is technically the Roman Catholic view) according
to Saint Mark: “Christ is Master by
virtue of His own essence and Master by virtue of His incarnate life. For He creates man from nothing, and through
His own blood redeems him when dead in sin; and to those who believe in Him He
has given His grace.”[6] There is no merit, because grace is not
earned; it is given. It actually seems rather
odd that God would have to merit the thing He gives freely to those who believe
in Him. God is unbound and grace is
free.
St. Mark paints an accurate picture
on the limits of works. However, he does
not fall into the trap of arguing that personal works have no place in our
salvation. Through works we do not deal
with former sins, but through them we make peace with God. [7] Works (i.e. repentance) is the means through
which the Christian experiences the full illumination of the Holy Spirit who
was already indwelling the Christian. In
short, works are the means by which the Christian strives toward theosis. Or, to put it another way, works are the
means by which we become Christ like.
St. Mark’s understanding of God not
being bound by contract is quite helpful for understanding how salvation is
presented in the parable of the landowner and the workers in Matthew 20.[8] In this parable, the landowner hires workers
at different hours of the day. At the
end of the day he pays those who worked just one hour the same wage as those
who worked all day long. This parable is
told as a parable of the Kingdom of Heaven.
At the end of this parable Jesus said that the last will be first and
the first will be last. As a parable of
the kingdom, I am left with a clear impression that recompense for labor (if we
were to imply such a thought into the parable) is not only the same for all the
workers regardless of the length of their labors because it is purely
contingent upon the wishes of the landowner.
I think that within this parable, there is an implicit critique of the
notion that one could somehow work so that God owes them more.
Taking all these things together
(the parable of the landowner, St. Mark’s observations concerning the
impossibility to accomplish more than what God requires, and the biblical
language concerning salvation), the concept of merit is foreign and deleterious
to the discussion of salvation. That the
reformers failed to jettison the notion of merit is problematic and should not
be discounted for how it affected their entire soteriological framework and the
soteriological frameworks of those who followed in their footsteps. This also leaves the issue that grace is
still understood to be something that is merited instead of given without
external constraint by God.
[2] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion,
Book II.17.3
[4]
Saint Mark
the Ascetic, On Those Who Think That They
Are Made Righteous by Works 43.
[6]
Saint Mark
the Ascetic, On Those Who Think That They
Are Made Righteous by Works 21.
[7] “He who repents
rightly does not imagine that it is his own effort which cancels his former
sins; but through this effort he makes his peace with God” (Saint Mark the
Ascetic, On Those Who Think That They Are
Made Righteous by Works 42).
[8] Matthew 20:1-16 NKJV "For the kingdom of
heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers
for his vineyard. 2 "Now
when he had agreed with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them into
his vineyard. 3 "And he
went out about the third hour and saw others standing idle in the
marketplace, 4 "and said
to them, 'You also go into the vineyard, and whatever is right I will give
you.' So they went. 5
"Again he went out about the sixth and the ninth hour, and did
likewise. 6 "And about
the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing idle, and said to them,
'Why have you been standing here idle all day?'
7 "They said to him, 'Because no one hired us.' He said
to them, 'You also go into the vineyard, and whatever is right you will receive.' 8 "So when evening had come,
the owner of the vineyard said to his steward, 'Call the laborers and give them
their wages, beginning with the last to the first.' 9 "And when those came who were
hired about the eleventh hour, they each received a denarius. 10 "But when the first came,
they supposed that they would receive more; and they likewise received each a
denarius. 11 "And when
they had received it, they complained against the landowner, 12 "saying, 'These last men
have worked only one hour, and you made them equal to us who have
borne the burden and the heat of the day.'
13 "But he answered one of them and said, 'Friend, I am
doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? 14 'Take what is yours and
go your way. I wish to give to this last man the same as to you. 15 'Is it not lawful for me to do
what I wish with my own things? Or is your eye evil because I am good?' 16 "So the last will be
first, and the first last. For many are called, but few chosen."
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