LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW - Concordia Lutheran Seminary

52 LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW XII
the Roman Pontiff as on the infallible rule of faith from which even Sacred
Scripture draws its strength and authority, is a heretic.” 10 Prierias’ paradigm,
which simply expresses the state of affairs that had existed in Rome at least
since the so-called Cluniac reform of the 11 th century, no longer allows
Sacred Scripture to breathe freely. Instead the written Word of God is
straitjacketed by the solo interpretation of the Roman pontiff, who has
arrogated the whole episcopal office, once shared among many equals, into
his own hands. Roman Catholic scholars have no qualms about admitting the
moral corruption of the Renaissance papacy, but they must hold that the rule
of faith propounded by Alexander, Julius, and Leo was essentially orthodox.
This proposition, and its converse, divide the Lutheran from the Roman
Catholic pattern of 16 th -century Reformation.
According to the church historian Adolf von Harnack (1851-1930),
Luther’s significance consists in the fact that he abolished from the Church’s
life the age-old factor of the rule of faith. This is what is meant by Harnack’s
contention that the Reformer brought about the “end of dogma”. The Berlin
Liberal Protestant got his facts completely wrong, for in his work of
purifying and promulgating the rule of faith Luther gave dogma a fresh lease
on life which lasted until the so-called Enlightenment. Indeed, the whole
Lutheran Reformation is best understood as a multi-dimensional collegial
endeavour of a united ministerium to remove the rust that had corroded the
rule of faith and thus to restore the balance among Scripture, office, and
confession that had seemed so self-evident to Irenaeus. It is no accident that
the Reformer issued his Bible translation with the accompaniment of his
celebrated Prefaces. In these brief documents Luther did not speak as a
private citizen, but as a bearer of the Dominically instituted office instructing
the sheep of Christ in the rule of faith which arises from Scripture and in
terms of which Scripture is rightly understood. His acceptance of the
grammatical sense of Scripture is customarily qualified with the admission
that it cannot stand if it finds itself in conflict with an article of faith. 11 The
Reformer’s devotional writings and his Catechisms, along with his liturgical
reforms and hymn compositions, are all evidence of his aim to promulgate a
purified rule of faith.
From this fivefold root the trunk of the Lutheran Reformation arose as a
distinctive way of teaching and learning Christ in the one holy catholic and
apostolic Church. Chemical analyses of the bark of this tree will yield the
finding that not one article of the Reformer’s faith is, as such, unique to
Lutheran Christendom. Our Christology is shared with Cyril and the
Christian East. Our anthropology and soteriology stand in the succession of
10
See B. J. Kidd, ed., Documents Illustrative of the Continental Reformation (Oxford: At
The Clarendon Press, 1911) 31f.; my trans.
11
AE 40:157 (Against the Heavenly Prophets [1525], Part Two) et passim.