Autor: Crowe, Frederich E., S.J.

Buch: Theology of the Christian Word

Titel: Theology of the Christian Word

Stichwort: Lutzer: Begründung d Wahrheit; sola scriptura; Melchior Cano: De locis theologicis

Kurzinhalt: Luther stood for the principle that truth must be grounded; ...everywhere in the world begin to ask not what but why this and that was said...;

Textausschnitt: 76a Full polarization will come with the Reformation and the rebellion against the magisterium. Perhaps the Greek-Roman split a few centuries earlier should have precipitated the debate, and in a measure it did contribute: There was the Greek challenge to the "Apostles' " creed of the West, there were the arguments over scriptural and patristic sources on the Filioque, and there was the role of the pope; all these were factors dividing the two sides. But the Greeks were farther away and spoke a different language; their withers were not wrung by the absurdities of late scholasticism. And so it was the Reformation that effectively polarized the positions, not so much in Luther's lifetime as later on in the opposition between Tridentine theologians and the Formula of Concord. (Fs)
76b To find one's way through the literature on Luther nowadays is so arduous a task that a layman in the matter may be forgiven if he boldly states his case without deferring overmuch to the experts. I would say then that Luther stood for the principle that truth must be grounded, and that his lasting importance in this question lies there rather than in his particular attitude toward scripture. A more familiar way of putting it is to say that he reacted against mere arbitrary assertion and decree. Thus I find the following quotation significant; it is from a letter to Frederick, elector of Saxony, on Pope Leo's decretal, and was written about mid-January of 1519: (Fs) (notabene)

Since in our day Holy Scriptures and the old teachers are reappearing and people everywhere in the world begin to ask not what but why this and that was said, were I to accept these mere words [of the decretal] and recant, my recantation would find no belief but would be looked upon as a mockery. [...] For what it [the decretal] says without any basis would not be established by my recantation. (Fs) (notabene)

76c What impresses me in this passage is not the particular sources Luther refers to, scripture and the old teachers, but the idea itself of requiring an authority for one's statements, and the remark that this is the spirit of the times. On the further question, Where is that authority to be found? Luther seems to have been originally more flexible than his followers of half a century later. The very letter I quoted expresses astonishment that Leo's pronouncement was not based on a single sentence from scripture or the fathers or canon law. Sola scriptura seems, in fact, to have become strict Lutheran doctrine only with the Formula of Concord in 1577. One may consult Tappert's collection of early Lutheran confessions and find several references in the index for the heading "Scriptures [...] the only judge, rule, and norm of doctrine," but not one of these references is to the Augsburg Confession, or the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, or to The Smalcald Articles, or to The Small Catechism, or to The Large Catechism. The first reference is to the Formula of Concord. (Fs) (notabene)

77a Meanwhile the Catholic position was hardening in the opposite direction, though Trent itself, like Luther, retained a certain flexibility. Its famous decree on the sources traces the gospel through the prophetic promises, the preaching of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the apostles, through whom finally it was to be preached to everyone as the source of every salutary truth and of every directive of conduct. Only in this context of the supremacy of the gospel as it was first preached do we meet the phrase that has been found so provocative, that this truth and these directives are contained in the written books and the unwritten traditions that the apostles received from the Lord himself or through the word of the Holy Spirit, and transmitted to us as if from hand to hand. Even then, the phrase originally proposed for the decree, partly in scriptures and partly in tradition, was rejected in favor of the more open formula we now have. However, communications were not then what they are today. Roman Catholic theologians needed a slogan to counter the emerging sola scriptura, they thought to find it in the Tridentine "scripture and tradition," and the two sides were soon at loggerheads on the question. History now began to be written with great diligence, but the diligence was exercised less on investigating the facts than on finding texts to prove the adversary wrong. The painful centuries that followed are familiar to all. (Fs) (notabene)
77b It is here in these early decades of Lutheran-Catholic polarization that I place the full focusing of the loci question, and it happens that just then a work appears, called De locis theologicis and destined for long lasting influence. It is the composition of Melchior Cano, Dominican theologian and bishop, who died in 1560, leaving behind him for posthumous publication a work in twelve parts with the title quoted. The idea of loci went back to Cicero, but Cano's immediate source was a Cologne work of 1527, De inventione dialectica, by Rudolph Agricola. The scope in Agricola was to find sources for arguments, but Cano rose above this debater's viewpoint: He was looking for grounds on which to base a judgment. Further, his range was liberating. He found seven sources for the judgments proper to theology, a discipline that is based on authority; they are scripture, the tradition of Christ and the apostles, the church (for Cano it is the "collectio omnium fidelium"), the councils, the popes, the fathers of the church, and finally the scholastic theologians and canonists. There are also three sources that constitute a "borrowed" set in theology: human reason, the philosophers and jurists, and finally history and human tradition. (Fs) (notabene)
78a The proliferation of "sources" in Cano suggest some concluding remarks for this chapter. We could say his range of sources harks back to what we saw of the real breadth of the New Testament. Now the New Testament was already hinting at a factor we shall have to study in chapter seven, the inner resources of judgment in the believer himself, collectively manifested in the sensus fidelium we are talking of more and more today. But Cano's range suggests another approach through analogy with Kant's categories. Kant found twelve a priori forms in the human mind with which he categorized all the materials delivered through the two channels of space and time. Then Lonergan came along to clear away the twelve categories and replace them with the single a priori of the heuristic nature of human spirit, the notion of being. Is there an analogy with the sensus fidelium that will replace all the categories of loci? (Fs) (notabene)

78b One thing at least I would hope, that the scripture/tradition controversy, which I have moved well out on the margins, will stay there permanently. Not that, with many today, I regard the question as meaningless; I think it has a meaning, but I do not regard it as the crucial area for inquiry and thought. That area I find much more broadly based. The whole effort to fix the locus or set of loci is a continually recurring manifestation of the pious longing to wrap the faith up in careful parcels. In the beginning there was just the good news along with the treasured words of the Lord. Soon the credentials of the apostles who bore the good news had to be established, and this was further specified by establishing their right to be witnesses, chosen in advance and appointed for the task. But as the living memory of the apostles became only a tradition the effort was to get a document from them or from their times that would possess their authority and be a kind of permanent presence in the church of those favored agents of the word. When the documents are found to present their own problem, there is a shift to the church as the owner of the documents, and the church in turn is successively epitomized in the fathers, in the great council, in the series of councils, and finally in the present church that here and now has authority to teach the word of God and interpret his meaning. There was over and over again the effort to wrap up the faith in neat packages so that it could be delivered by registered mail. The basic oversight in it all was that the faith is a living thing and keeps growing. Just when you think you have it all wrapped up, something sticks out and you have to begin the process all over again. This was true in all the respecifications leading up to the church herself as the one immediate and sufficient source of doctrine. But it is true also of the reaction; when excessive attention to the subject preaching the word led to a rejection of the magisterium, the tearing off of all the later wrappings and going back to what seemed an original wrapping, the problem was not solved at all. You are still wrapping it up, and the wrapping is even more constrictive than before. This is roughly the situation with which we are left at the end of the loci era, and it leads directly to the next theme in the ongoing history of the word. (Fs) (notabene)