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50 LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW XII Luther thanked Erasmus for attacking him on this very point rather than focusing on some minor issue. In this conviction, which took him back to the Augustinian root of mediaeval Christendom in the West, Luther did not stand alone, but had many sympathizers in Calvin, the theologians of the English Reformation, and even in some Fathers of the Council of Trent. (3) Luther was above all a theologian of the means of grace, which he may not have become had not the media salutis been so terribly clogged up in his own day. Indulgences were a phenomenon that stood not at the heart but more towards the margin of the mediaeval Sacrament of Penance, whose “form” was Absolution but whose “matter” consisted of three works demanded of each penitent soul. In order for Absolution to be yours you must be contrite in heart, you must confess with your lips, and with body and soul you must discharge the satisfaction imposed on you by the priest who heard your confession. Even though Calvin in one of his better moments advocated pastorally administered private Absolution, 9 and even though the classic Anglican Books of Common Prayer retained private priestly Absolution in the Order for the Visitation of the Sick, Lutheranism is the only non-Roman pattern of 16 th -century reformation which dramatically highlighted private pastoral Absolution as the very heart of the Gospel. Two decades after the 95 Theses, Luther lamented in the Smalcald Articles that back in those days we had no appreciation of the power of Absolution (SA III.iii:20). The reformation discovery was that, even though our contrition and confession and getting our lives together after reconciliation are marred by many defects, nevertheless the soul that despairs of its own works can trust in Absolution. Unclogged, the means of grace were experienced in the early Reformation as a majestic, doxology-producing cataract of divine love. In the closing theses of 31 October 1517 Luther despises indulgences as a cowardly running away from confronting the scarred tissue that remains after Absolution. In the peace and pardon of God, the Christian should bear all crosses and thus be conformed to Christ his head. (4) A fourth root of the Lutheran Reformation can be discerned in Luther’s recovery of the Christology of Cyril of Alexandria, which began no later than 1519 and which was complete by the mid-1520s. While all mainline Western theologians accepted the Chalcedonian Definition of 451, most of the scholastics had interpreted this dogma from a moderately Antiochene standpoint. This tendency would be carried much further by Calvin and the Reformed Church, which viewed Chalcedon through radically Antiochene, nay veritably Nestorian spectacles. The view, advocated in the 16 th century and widespread today, that Lutheran and 9 See John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, two vols., ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1977) III.iv.14; Library of Christian Classics 20:638f.
STEPHENSON: THE ROOTS OF THE REFORMATION 51 Reformed Christianity agree on the essentials and differ only on minor matters, is refuted already when one discerns the unique quality of Luther’s Christology which, as Tom Hardt put it, unfurled the Cyrilline flag on the territory of Western Christendom. The truth pinpointed in the phrase genus majestaticum has been consistently rejected by the Reformed, indicating that the differences between the second and third patterns of reformation go all the way down, all the way up, and all the way across. (5) The fifth root of the Lutheran Reformation takes us all the way back to the second century of our era, thus almost to the dawn of Christendom. As he engaged in life and death battle with the Gnostics, St Irenaeus of Lyons pointed his readers and hearers to three visible marks of the true Church. Bishops standing in succession from the Apostles taught the Holy Scriptures in accordance with the “canon of truth” handed down from Christ through the Apostles. Irenaeus’ contemporary Tertullian would label the “canon of truth” by a term more familiar to our eyes and ears by speaking of the regula fidei, the rule of faith. Once in the Apology (Ap XXVII:60) and once at the outset of the Solid Declaration, the word regula is used in its ancient sense. The selfsame content is communicated among us under the heading of “confession”, confessio, Bekenntnis. The rule of faith is both the summary core of Christian truth derived from Holy Scripture and also the coherent paradigm according to which Holy Scripture is properly interpreted. Irenaeus’ summaries of the rule of faith are usually roughly congruous with the Apostles’ Creed, though it included also such articles as the presence of the Lord’s true flesh and blood in the Eucharist. In our present context it is vital to note that Irenaeus could not imagine the day when the successors of the Apostles would no longer interpret Sacred Scripture according to the orthodox rule of faith. For him, Scripture, office, and confession belonged inextricably together, each harmonizing smoothly with the other. In the 95 Theses Luther asked for a discussion on the nature of the Gospel and received in response the threats of an entrenched power structure thrust onto the defensive. The first official curial response to the Theses of 31 October 1517 took the shape of an oddly named “Dialogue” On the Power of the Pope authored by Sylvester Mazzolini of Prierio (1456-1523), who as master of the sacred palace occupied roughly the same position in the administration of Leo X as the one filled by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger in our own day. The Dominican Prierias formulated four ecclesiological maxims whose net effect was to rule the Reformer out of order even before his voice was heard. The third maxim, or fundamentum, bears witness to a longstanding imbalance between the three Dominically founded factors of Scripture, office, and rule/confession which Irenaeus had never envisaged. According to Prierias, “Whoever does not take his stand on the doctrine of
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