A History of Christian Thought: From its Judaic and Hellenistic Origins to Existentialism
by
Paul Tillich,
Carl E. Braaten (Editor)
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Previously published in two separate volumes entitled
Paperback, 550 pages
Published November 15th 1972 by Touchstone
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URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Tillich
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CHAPTER IV Roman Catholicism from Trent to the Present
BEFORE taking
up the Reformation we are going to discuss the Counter-Reformation from the
Council of Trent to the present time. During the Reformation period there were
many councils which attempted to overcome the split in the church. The demand for
a general council never stopped. When the Council of Trent was convened,
instead of being a universal council, it was a council of the
Counter-Reformation. At Trent sessions of this council were held during several
decades, with many interruptions. The Protestant Reformers were excluded from
it.
A. THE MEANING OF
COUNTER-REFORMATION
The
Counter-Reformation was not simply a reaction, but was real reformation. It was
reformation insofar as the Roman Church after the Council of Trent was not what
it was before. It was a church determined by its self-affirmation against the
great attack of the Reformation. When something is attacked, and then reaffirms
itself, it is not the same. One of the characteristic results is that it
becomes narrowed down. The medieval church should not be seen in the light of
post-Tridentine Catholicism. The medieval church was open in every direction,
and included tremendous contrasts, for example, Franciscans and Dominicans
(Augustin-ians and Aristotelians), realists and nominalists, biblicists and
mystics, etc. In the Counter-Reformation many possibilities which the Roman
Church had previously contained were shut off. The Roman Church tended to
become "counter"—the "counter" of Reformation—just as the
Protestant church, with its prophetic principle, became the principle of
protest against Rome.
Roman Catholicism from Trent to
the Present 211
This
is the unwholesome split of Christianity. The Reformation, instead of becoming
the reformation of the whole church, became the dogma of the protesting group,
the Protestants. The non-Protestants reformed themselves, but in terms of
"counter", in terms of opposition to something, not of immediate
creativity. This is always the historical situation: if a group has to resist,
it narrows down. Take simply the attack of Communism on the Western world, and
you see how the freedoms for which America stands are tremendously narrowed
down in defense of these freedoms. The Reformation itself was very wide open.
But when all kinds of attacks were directed against the Reformation, the result
was a very narrow Protestant Orthodoxy—here we call it
"funda-mentalism"—which represented a narrowing down of the Reformation
in resistance against the attacks.
B. THE DOCTRINE OF AUTHORITIES
This leads us to a presentation
of the doctrine of the authorities which the Council of Trent defined.
(1)The traditional Holy Scriptures
and the Apocrypha of the Old Testament are both Scriptures and of equal
authority. Luther had removed the Apocrypha of the Old Testament from canonic
validity. He would have liked to remove many more books from the biblical
canon, e.g., the Book of Esther, and others. Why is it important that he
removed the Apocrypha? Because they are characterized by legalism, a legalism
in terms of proverbs, to a great extent. This legalistic spirit had been in the
Roman Church for a long time, and now was preserved in terms of the authority
of the apocryphal books. So we have two Bibles, the Roman and the Protestant,
and they are not identical.
(2)Scripture and tradition are equal
in authority; the phrase was "with equal piety and reverence
accepted". This was the form in which the Council of Trent negated the
Scripture principle. What the tradition is, was not defined. Actually the
tradition became identical with the decisions of the Vatican from day to day.
But the tradition was not defined; the fact it was left open made it possible
for the pope to use it in whatever way he pleased. Of course, he was not free
to use it absolutely willfully, because there was an actual tradition deposited
in the councils and former decisions, but the present decision is always
decisive.
212 A History of Christian Thought
And the present decision
about what the tradition is lies in the hands of the pope.
(3)There is only one translation
which has ultimate authority, the Vulgate of St. Jerome. This was a decision
against Erasmus, who had edited a text of the New Testament in terms of higher
criticism. Erasmus' text was used by the Reformers. The pope excluded this kind
of higher criticism for dogmatic purposes by making the Vulgate the only sacred
translation.
(4)When the principle of biblicism
prevails, the question always arises: Who interprets the Bible? Trent's
unambiguous answer was: the Holy Mother Church gives the interpretation of
Scripture. In Protestantism it was the theological faculties. The difference is
that the pope is one man, and his decision is final; there were many
theological faculties in Protestantism, and since they disagreed with each
other so much, their authority in the long run was ineffective.
This
doctrine of authorities in the church was a restatement of what the Reformers
attacked. It makes the position of the pope unimpeachable; he cannot be
attacked or criticized. He is beyond any possibility of being undercut by a
competing authority, even the Bible's, because he alone has the ultimate
decision in the interpretation of the sacred text.
C. THE DOCTRINE OF SIN
The Council of Trent
offers an interpretation of man different from that of the Reformers. For Trent
sin is a transformation of man into something worse—in deterius
commutatum—commuted into something worse, or deteriorization. This was said
against the Reformers who held that man has completely lost his freedom by his
fall. This freedom that is completely lost is the freedom to contribute to
one's relationship to Cod, not the psychological sense of freedom, which no one
denied in these discussions. However, for the theology of Trent man's freedom
is not lost or extinguished, but only weakened. The sins before baptism are
forgiven in the act of baptism, but after baptism concupiscence remains.
However, this concupiscence should not be called sin, according to the Roman
Church. For the Augsburg Confession sin is a lack of faith; the Roman Church says
that although concupiscence comes from sin and inclines to sin, it is not sin
itself,
Roman Catholicism from Trent to
the Present 213
This means that man is
not completely corrupted; even his natural drives are not sin. This had one
important consequence in that Catholicism—.except perhaps in America where from
the beginning it has been influenced by the general climate—is not puritan.
Catholicism can be radically ascetic, but it is not puritan in the ordinary
life. When we Protestants from the northern and eastern sections of Germany
went to Bavaria, we had the feeling that we were then in a gay country in
comparison to the religious and moral climate in the Protestant areas. This
difference had a basis in doctrine. For the Reformers concupiscence is sin in
itself; for the Roman Church it is not. Therefore, it can admit many more
liberties in the daily life, more gaiety, and more expressions of the vital
forces in man, than Protestantism can.
On
the other hand, the doctrine of sin in the Reformers was based on the fact that
sin is unbelief. Against this the Roman Catholic Church says: No, sin is
neither unbelief nor separation from Cod. Sin is understood as acts against the
law of God. This means that the religious understanding of sin was covered over
by the Council of Trent. This is another fundamental difference. From this
point on, sin was understood in the Roman Church in terms of particular acts
which can be forgiven. When Catholics confess their sins to a priest, they
receive absolution and are liberated from them. This again contributes to a
much fuller affirmation of the vital elements of life in predominantly Catholic
countries. By contrast, in Protestantism sin is separation from God;
"sins" are only secondary. Therefore, something fundamental must
happen. A complete conversion, transformation of being, and reunion with God
are necessary. This lays a much greater burden on every Protestant than any
Catholic has to bear. On the other hand, the Catholic position is in principle
legalistic and divides sin into "sins". When Protestants do this, as
they sometimes do, they follow the Catholic and not the Reformation line of
thought.
D. THE DOCTRINE OF JUSTIFICATION
The central inssue
between the Reformers and the Roman Catholic Church was the doctrine of
justification by faith alone (sola fide), the formula which the
Reformers used for polemical purposes. In the Council of Trent the Roman Church
repeated the Thomistic tradition on the doctrine of justification, but with a
214 A History of Christian Thought
diplomatic tendency. The
Catholic Church knew that this was, as the Reformers called it, the articulus
stantis ant cadentis ecclesiae, the article by which the church stands or
falls. Since this was the main point of the Reformation opposition, the Roman
Church felt it had to be as conciliatory as possible. It avoided some of the
distortions of this doctrine in nominalism which the Reformers had attacked.
Nevertheless, it remained clear in the main statement that the remissio
peccatorum, the forgiveness of sins, is not sola gratia, by grace
alone. Othe elements are added. It speaks of a preparation for the divine act
of justification whereby a gratia praeveniens, a prevenient grace, is
effective in mail which can be rejected or accepted, whichever way a man
decides. Thus, man must cooperate with God in his prevenient grace. After grace
is received by man, it is given to him in the degree of his cooperation. The
more man cooperates with God in his prevenient grace the more is the grace of justification
given to him.
Justification
as a gift contains two things: faith on the one hand, and hope and love on the
other. Faith alone is not sufficient. According to the Council's decision, it
is even possible that justification may be lost by a Christian through a
mortal sin, but that faith still remains. Now the Reformers would say: If you
are in faith, you can never lose your justification. But the Roman Church
understood faith in terms of its ancient tradition, which defined faith as an
intellectual and a moral act. Of course, if faith is an intellectual and a
moral act, it can be lost, and nevertheless justification can be there.
However, faith for the Reformers is the act of accepting justification, and
this cannot be lost if there shall be justification.
Nothing
has been more misunderstood in Protestant theology than the term sola fide, by
faith alone. This has been understood not only by the Romans but also by
Protestants themselves as an intellectual act of a man. This act of
"faith" forces God to give his forgiveness. But sola fide means
that in the moment that our sins are forgiven, we can do nothing else than
receive this forgiveness. Anything else would destroy the activity of God, his
exclusive grace. This central position of the Reformers that grace can only be received
by faith alone was first misunderstood and then rejected. This means that
from this moment on the split in the church became final. No reconciliation was
possible between these
Roman Catholicism from Trent to
the Present 215
two forms of
religion—the Reformation doctrine which holds that our act of turning to God
and receiving his grace is unambiguously a receptive act, one in which God
gives something to us and we do not do anything, and the Catholic doctrine
which teaches that we must act and prepare for grace, that we must cooperate
with Cod, and that faith is an intellectual acknowledgment, which may or may
not be there. All the anathemas of the Council of Trent on this point are based
on this misunderstanding of sola fide.
E. THE SACRAMENTS
While the fathers of
Trent tried to approximate the Protestant position on justification to some
degree, they made no such effort at all on the sacraments. Here caution was
unnecessary because every caution would have undercut the very essence of the
Roman Church. So the Council of Trent states: "All true justice starts,
and if it has started, is augmented, and if it has been lost, is restituted, by
the sacraments." This is the function of the sacraments; it is the
religious function altogether.
Not
much was said about the way in which the sacraments are effective nor about the
personal side in the reception of the sacra-inents. The formulation was made
that the sacraments are effective ex opere operato non ponentibus obicem, i.e.,
by their very operation for those who do not resist. If you do not place an
impediment (obicem) within yourselves in the way of the effectiveness of
the sacraments, then no matter what your subjective state, they are effective
by their mere performance (ex opere operato). This was another crucial
point for the Reformers, that there cannot be a relationship to God except in
the actual person-to-person encounter with him in the realm of faith. This is
much more than non-resistance; it is an active turning toward God. Without this
the sacraments are not effective for Protestants as they are for Catholics.
With
respect to the number of the sacraments, which had been reduced by Luther and
Calvin to two sacraments, there are seven, all of them instituted by Christ.
This is de fide, a matter to be accepted on faith for the Catholic. This
means no historical doubt is allowed whether they were really instituted by
Christ or not. When you read the words de fide in connection with
218 A History of Christian Thought
a dogmatic formulation
in a Catholic book, this means that this is a dogma of the Roman Church which
you cannot doubt or deny, except at the risk of being cut off from the Roman
Church.
There
is no salvation without the sacraments. The sacraments are saving powers, not
merely strengthening powers, as in Protestantism. They have a hidden force of
their own, mediated to all those who do not resist the grace. Baptism,
confirmation, and ordination have an indelible character—another statement
against the Reformers' position. One is baptized for life; this had the
practical consequence in the Middle Ages that all the baptized fell under the
law of heresy. Those who belonged to other religions, such as Jews and Muslims,
fell under another law which limits alien religions, but were not persecuted
for heresy, as Christians were. The indelible character of a sacrament was a
life-Sand-death matter in the practice of the Roman Church. The same is true of
the indelible character of ordination. This meant that the excommunicated
priest could perform valid marriages in prison. The sacramental power in him
overcomes his state of excommunication as an individual. This stands against
the Protestant doctrine of the universal priesthood. In Catholic doctrine not
every Christian has the power to preach and to administer the sacraments, but
only those who are ordained; being ordained means having received sacramental
power. The sacramental power is even embodied in the ritual form of the
sacraments. If there is a given ritual formula, no priest, no bishop, can
change it or omit something from it without sinning. The sacramental power is
communicated from its origin in the actuality of the church to the forms which
are used; no arbitrariness is possible.
Infant
baptism is valid; the water of baptism washes away the contamination of
original sin. To have faith during one's later life in the power of baptism as
the divine act which initiates all Christian being, as Luther demanded, is not
sufficient for the forgiveness of sins. This means that baptism loses,
religiously speaking, its actual power for the later life. It is not a point to
which one religiously returns; its meaning lies in the fact of the character
indelebilis.
The
doctrine of transubstantiation was preserved, and wherever it is preserved you
always find a clear test of it, namely, the demand to adore the Host. For
Protestants the bread is not the
Roman Catholicism from Trent to
the Present 217
body of Christ except in
the act of performance. For Catholics the bread and the wine are the body and
blood of Christ after they
have been consecrated. So when
you enter an empty Catholic
church—as you do when you travel
in European countries, because they are the objects of greatest interest—you
come into
a sacred atmosphere. You
are not coming into a house which is used on Sundays, and sometimes during the
week, but a house in which Cod himself is present twenty-four hours a day, in
the holiest of holies, on the altar, in the shrine. This determines the whole
mood which prevails in such a church. Cod is always there in a definite way on
the altar. I believe that the reason the attempts of some Protestant churches
to remain open for prayer and meditation during the day have a very limited
effect on people is that nothing is happening in them. If, however, you go into
a Roman Church, something has happened, the effects of which are still
there—the presence of Cod himself, of the body of Christ, on the altar.
On
this basis the Roman Church also preserved the Mass against the criticism of
the Reformers, not only the Mass for the living, but the Mass—the sacrifice of
the body of Christ—for those who have died and are in purgatory. In these
respects the Council of Trent made practically no reform at all, nor did it
provide a better theclogical foundation. It simply confirmed and consecrated
the tradition.
The
attitude toward the sacrament of penance was a little different. This was
another point against which Protestantism directed an attack. The sacrament of
penance was, generally speaking, maintained as a sacrament, and even the
weakest aspect of this sacrament, the doctrine of attrition, which Luther
ironically called the repentance evoked by the gallows, the kind of repentance
induced by fear, was retained as a necessary preparation. Contrition, the real
repentance, metanoia in the New Testament, is not sufficient. It is
fulfilled only in connection with the sacrament and with the word of
absolution. This word does not simply declare that God has forgiven, but itself
gives the forgiveness. It is not that the priest gives the forgiveness, but
through the priest, and only through the priest, does God grant forgiveness.
Moreover, Christians need more than the word of absolution from the priest.
They also need satisfactions, because the punishment is not removed with
the guilt. Therefore, some punishments must be
218 A History of Christian Thought
imposed on the people
even after they have taken part in the sacrament. The satisfactions are such
things as praying the "Our Father" a hundred times, or giving money,
or making a pilgrimage, etc. This was the point with which the Reformers disagreed
the most.
Marriage
is retained as a sacrament, although in contradiction to this, virginity is
evaluated more highly than marriage. This is still the situation in the Roman
Church. Now what was still somewhat in flux before the Reformation became
fixed. It was fixed against the Reformation. This shows how the Roman Church
lost its dynamic creativity. You can sense this when you read the systematic
theologies written by Catholic theologians; they deal with very secondary
problems, because all the fundamental problems are solved.
The
basic doctrine behind all of them is the sacrament of ordination. Here is the
point in which all the others are united. The priest does what constitutes the
Roman Church as such; he exercises the sacramental power. Preaching is often
secondary and even omitted. Sacrifice and priesthood are by divine
ordination—sacrifice in the sense of offering up the body of Christ in the
Mass. Both are implied in every ecclesiastical law. Both are presupposed; this
church of the sacramental sacrifice is the hierarchical church, and the
hierarchical church is the church of the sacramental sacrifice. This is
Catholicism in the Roman sense.
F. PAPAL INFALLIBILITY
These decisions
confirmed the split in Christianity. Rome actually had accepted only external
remedies against abuses, But many problems were left. The first was the problem
of the pope in relation to councils. This leads us to the development from
Trent to the Vatican Council in 1870. At Trent two opinions were fighting
against each other. The first was that the pope is the universal bishop, the
vicar of Christ. This means that every episcopal power is derived from the
power of the pope; every bishop participates in the pope and the pope
participates in him, because he is the vicar of Christ. The other opinion was
that the pope is the first among equals, representing the unity and the order
of the church. This is the point of view of coriciliarism; the councils
finally have the
Roman Catholicism from Trent to
the Present 219
power to make the
ultimate decisions. The former is the point of view of curialism; the Curia,
the court of the pope, is the central power of decision. This question was not
decided at Trent. It took a few more centuries.
One
of the presuppositions for the decision that was to be made at the Vatican
Council was that the historical development more and more destroyed those
groups which were most dangerous for the pope in the Roman Church; these groups
were the national churches. For example, the movement for an independent French
church—called Gallicanism—was a real threat to Rome. There were similar
movements in Germany, Austria, and other places, where the national churches
under the leadership of their bishops resisted many papal aspirations.
The civil rulers formed alliances with the national bishops against the pope.
But this was undermined by the historical development. One of the reasons was
that the rulers, such as the leaders of the French revolution (Napoleon), or
the German princes, used the pope against the local ecclesiastical powers.
Diplomacy always plays the one side off against the other. The national princes
used their own bishops against the encroachments by the pope, and they used the
pope against the power of their own bishops. The result of these oscillations
was that finally the pope prevailed. In 1870 the Vatican Council made the
statement on the infallibility of the pope. This decision has many
presuppositions. First, it was necessary to give a definite meaning to the term
"tradition". One distinguished now between ecclesiastical and
apostolic tradition. The apostolic tradition is composed of the ancient
traditions which came into the church through ways which are not given in the
Bible. The ecclesiastical tradition is the tradition about which the pope has
to decide in the course of the church's history. The ecclesiastical tradition,
which was the only living tradition, was identical with the papal decisions.
This is the positive statement.
And
now its negative side: The Jesuits more and more undercut all other
authorities. In contrast to Thomas Aquinas, they undercut conscience and made
themselves leaders of the consciences of the princes, and of the other people
too. Most of the decisive political personalities surrounded themselves with
Jesuits to advise them, as leaders of their conscience. Now if you guide the
conscience of a prince, you can apply this guidance to all political decisions,
because in all political decisions there are moral
220 A History of Christian Thought
elements. This is what
the Jesuits did. They turned the consciences of the Catholic princes toward all
the cruelties of the Counter-Reformation. Thus, the conscience could no longer
serve as an authority.
The
authority of the bishops was undercut by the Jesuits. Episcopal power in the
councils was undercut by the interpretation given by the Jesuits. The councils
themselves and their decisions have to be confirmed by the pope. This meant the
complete victory of the pope over the councils. The pope was accepted by the
majority of the bishops at Trent as the one who has to confirm the Council of
Trent. The result is that no council which is not confirmed by the pope can
have validity any more. The pope is removed beyond criticism.
Even
the church fathers were undercut by the Jesuits. The Jesuits were especially
anti-Augustinian. There is only one father of the church, namely, the living
pope. All earlier church fathers are full of heretical statements, of errors,
even of falsifications. As you see from this, the Jesuits were very modern
people. They knew about the historical problems and used them to undermine the
authority of the church fathers. Protestant historiography did the same thing,
to make possible the prophetic authority of the Reformers. So both sides used
criticism, the Jesuits to give absolute power to the pope, and the Protestants
to liberalize the authority of the Bible.
The
constitution of 1870, Pastor Aeternus, declared the pope to be the
universal power of jurisdiction over every other power in the church. There is
no legal body which is not subject to the pope. Secondly, he is declared
universal bishop. This means practically that through the local bishop he has
power over every Catholic, and if this does not work he can exercise direct
episcopal power and bring the subjects of a bishop into revolt against him.
Thirdly, the pope is infallible when he speaks ex cathedra. This is the
most conspicuous decision of the Vatican Council, one which brought about the
separation of some Catholics, who called themselves the "Old
Catholics", from the Roman Church. They remained a small group in Western
Germany, and never succeeded in taking over the Roman Church.
The
first ex cathedra decision since 1870 was made in our generation, in
1950, about the bodily assumption of the Virgin Mary. Before he made this
decision the pope asked most of the
Roman Catholicism from Trent to
the Present 221
bishops. The majority
was on his side; a minority was opposed to it. The tradition on this point is
more than a thousand years old. We have pictures from many periods in church
history of Mary being elevated into heaven and crowned by Christ, or received
by God. Now the question was: Is this a pious opinion in the church which is to
be tolerated, or is it a matter de fide? As long as it is a pious
opinion, any Catholic can disagree with it, without losing the salvation of his
soul. The moment that it is declared de fide, as it was done in 1950 by
the pope, every Catholic is bound to accept it as truth, and nothing can relieve
him of this necessity. Many Catholics were deeply shaken by this, but they
subjected themselves to it.
Infallibility
of the pope does not mean that there exists a man whose every word is
infallible. For eighty years, from 1870 to 1950, no pope had said anything
which is infallible in the strictest sense. But then in 1950 he did, which
reminded us that this dogma about the infallibility of the pope is taken
absolutely seriously, without restriction. From a Protestant or humanist point
of view there can be no approach to this doctrine and its implications.
This
was finally confirmed in the fourth point of Pastor Aeternus: The pope
is irreformable by an action of the church. You must compare this with the
impeachment proceedings which are possible against any president of the United
States; they are rare, but they have happened and can happen again. This sort
of thing happened against the popes in the Middle Ages; some were removed and
others were put in their place. All this came to an end in 1870, because there
is no power which can remove a pope. The pope is in this sense absolute and
irremovable. No impeachment is possible. In this way every dogma formulated by
the pope is implicitly valid. This means, for instance, that the doctrine of
the Immaculate Conception of Mary the Virgin in the birth of Christ, which had
been formulated before 1870, now became de fide. Prior to this time the
Dominicans, who were against the Franciscans on this matter, could say that it
is not a valid dogma. It became a valid dogma because of the implication that
the pope has accepted it ex cathedra.
C. JANSENISM
There was a strong
movement in the Roman Church back to the original Augustinianism of the church.
This movement is called
222 A History
of Christian Thought
Jansenism, named after
Cornelius Jansen. The Jesuit, Molina, wrote against the Thomistic Dominicans
who taught the doctrine of predestination. The Jesuits opposed this doctrine
and fought for human freedom. Now Jansen and the Jansenists, the most important
of whom was Blaise Pascal, arose and fought against the Jesuits. But the
Jesuits prevailed and the popes followed them. The Jesuit was the modern man in
the Roman Church. He was disciplined, very similiar to the totalitarian form of
subjection we see today. He was completely devoted to the power of the church,
and at the same time nourished on much intellectual education and modern ideas,
deciding for freedom and reason.
The
Jansenist movement attempted to return to a genuine Augustinian tradition, but
was opposed and finally destroyed by the Jesuits. In the process, however, the
Jesuits lost a lot of their standing in the public eye, and in the eighteenth
century were thrown out of many Catholic countries. One interesting point in
the discussion was that if the sentences of Cornelius Jansen are condemned,
then this condemnation covers not only the matter of content, but also the
question of fact (question de fait), whether he really said what he was
accused of saying. This seems very foolish, but the important point behind it
is that when the pope inquires into someone's text, and then condemns it, he is
right not only in rejecting its ideas, but also in his statement that these
ideas are really in the text. This means that the pope is the interpreter of
every text. If the pope says that this is what the text means, no philological
defense in the face of that is possible. Here we see the natural extension of
the totalitarian and authoritarian principle even to historical facts. The
pope decides what is a historical fact, not only what is true in theological
terms.
Jansenism
produced other writings. There was a man, Quesnel, who tried to introduce
Augustinian principles again and to defend them against the Jesuits. But again
the pope took the side of the Jesuits and Augustine was removed from
Counter-Reformation Catholicism to a large extent. In the bull Unigenitus the
pope drove out the best in the Roman tradition. He drove out Augustine's
doctrine of grace, of faith, and of love. For instance, it is anathema if
someone says with Augustine: "In vain, Lord, thou commandest if thou dost
not give what thou orderest." For Augustinianism the commandments of God
can be fulfilled only
Roman Catholicism from Trent to
the Present 223
if God gives what he commands.
Now, after the Jansenist controversy, somebody who says this in the Roman
Church is condemned, and implicitly this means that Augustine is condemned.
When
you meet modern progressive Catholics—.there are more of them in Europe than in
America, where Catholicism, with a few exceptions, has lost its spiritual
power—you will find that they always fall back upon Augustine and are always on
the verge of being thrown out, of being excommunicated or forbidden to express
themselves. In my recent trips to Germany I had discussions several times with
Catholic groups and became astonished at how near we were to each other. But
these people feel that if they agree with me on Augustinian principles, they
are in danger. And they are! This means that the condemnation of Augustinianism
in the Jansenist struggle is like a sword which hangs over every form of
spiritualized Catholicism.
H. PROBABILISM
The last problem I want
to discuss is probabilism. Opinion given by authorities in the Roman Church on
ethical questions are probable. The Jesuits said: If an opinion is probable,
one is allowed to follow it even though the opposite opinion should be more
probable. This means that on ethical matters one has no autonomy; that is
something the church would radically deny. One must always follow the guidance
of the Roman priest, especially of the confessor. But the confessor himself has
many possibilities. Since he must talk to a person, not in the power of his
spirit, but on the basis of authorities, and since these authorities always
contradict each other, or are at least different, he can advise a person to do
something which is probably right, even though other courses of ethical action
are more probable. If he can find an acknowledged authority of the church who
has said something about a problem, one can follow it, even if it is not safe,
even if other things seem to be better. The result of this doctrine was a
tremendous ethical relativism, laxity, and chaos. This, of course, was most
advantageous in the eighteenth century when the church was following the new
morals of an emerging bourgeois society. This was so abused that finally a
reaction arose in the Roman Church.
224 A History of Christian Thought
Alfonso
Maria di Liguori reacted against it, but did not really overcome it, because he
also said that it is not I who can decide, but my confessor. And how can the
confessor decide? Finally the principle of the probable triumphed. Another
development connected with this was that now every sin becomes a venial sin.
Here again Jesuitism and the bourgeoisie—the greatest enemies—joined together
to remove the radical seriousness of sin which the Jansen-ists and the early
Protestants maintained.
I. RECENT DEVELOPMENTS
Much more can be said
about present-day Catholicism. I have already said a few things about more
recent decisions of the pope. Let me refer to one decision which is not so well
known as the decision about the bodily assumption of the holy Virgin. This was
the papal encyclical Humani generis in which the pope said things which
went beyond what was said in the Vatican Council about the infallibility of the
pope. In the Vaticanum the infallibility referred only to statements
made ex cathedra, when the pope speaks officially on matters of dogma or
ethics. But in the Humani generis of 1950 he made statements about
philosophies, directing a sharp attack against existentialism. This means that
if the pope has decided that a philosophy is unsound, no faithful Catholic can
work in line with it any more. This goes far beyond anything which the pope has
said before. Thomas Aquinas is then placed in the role of the Catholic
philosopher. This meant that some of the French existentialists—de Lubac and
others—had to give up their teaching positions because philosophically they
were existentialists, although they answered the existentialist questions in
religious terms.
I
recall asking Reinhold Niebuhr in March, 1950: "What do you think? Will
the pope make this declaration about the assumption of the Holy Virgin ex
cathedra?" Then he answered: "I don't think so; he is too clever
for that; it would be a slap in the face of the whole modern world and it would
be dangerous for the Roman Church to do that today." Only a few months
later it was done! This means that even such a keen observer as Reinhold
Niebuhr could not imagine that the pope would dare to do such a thing today.
But he did it. This means that an authoritarian system has to become more and
more narrow in order to fix itself.
Roman Catholicism from Trent to
the Present 225
It has to do what other
totalitarian systems do; they exclude step by step one danger after the other.
They try to prevent their subjects from meeting other traditions. The Roman
Church had done this right along by means of the "Index of Prohibited
Books". These books are forbidden not for the scholars, but for the populace.
People are not allowed to read any of the books which appear on the Index, and
students have to obtain special permission to read them. But there is another
connotation to this papal decision. It meant that the liberal world had become
so weak that the pope had no need to fear it. This was our error—Niebuhr's and
mine—khat we thought the pope would respect the Protestants and the humanists—perhaps
even the Communists—all over the world, and not put himself in the position of
having almost everybody speak of the superstitious attitude of the Roman
Church in making such a dogma. But the pope was not afraid, and probably he was
right, because the very weak Protestant resistance against this and similar
things cannot hurt the Catholic Church any more. And the humanist opposition is
almost nonexistent because it is in a process of self-disintegration. The
greatness of the existentialists is that they describe this disintegration, but
they themselves are in the midst of it.
Totalitarianism
and authoritarianism must be distinguished. Rome is not totalitarian; only a
state can be that. But Rome is authoritarian, and it exercises many functions
which totalitarian states have exercised. The question which the existence of
Catholicism puts before us is whether, with the end of the liberal era,
liberalism altogether will come to an end. This leads me to the question, which
is very near to my heart, whether with the end of the Protestant era, the
Protestant principle will also come to an end. With this we are led to the
problem of the Reformation.
We
shall have to deal with the Reformation in a brief survey, after having agreed
with Professor Handy that in view of the fact that you come from Protestant
traditions and are nourished on Protestant ideas, you do not need this as much
as you need a knowledge of the ancient and medieval church. But I am not so
sure that you do not need it! For the kind of Protestantism which has developed
in America is not so much an expression of the Reformation, but has more to do
with the so-called Evangelical Radicals. There are the Lutheran and Calvinist
groups, and they are strong, but they have adapted themselves to an astonishing
226 A History of Christian Thought
degree to the climate of
American Protestantism. This climate has been made not by them but by the
sectarian movements. Thus, when I came to America twenty years ago, the
theology of the Reformation was almost unknown in Union Theological Seminary
Reformation was almost unknown in Union Theological Seminary [New York],
because of the different traditions, and the reduction of the Protestant
tradition nearer to the non-Reformation traditions.
