Reformation & Idolatry
Rethinking the doctrine of God is always a background task for me. Not everyone appreciates the fact that changes in doctrine or even in Christian living will almost always involve some root change in our conception of God.
Back in the 20th century I had a graduate seminar class at Concordia with Dr. Norman Nagel on Luther's early theological development. In that class, he made some very suggestive comments about the differences between Scholastic and Reformation theology. I can't hope to relate the whole discussion, which took several weeks, but I can give you the gist.
Scholastic theologians work out their theology according to God's attributes. For both via moderna and via antiqua flavors of scholasticism the nature & attributes of God are (is) the "starting point." On the whole, Scholastics make a monumental attempt to devise theological propositions "deduced" from one or the other of God's attributes.
The aim of theology is then to construct one dialectically concatenated system that accounts for everything, one that is logically consistent with God's attributes.
Now, this kind of enterprise leads immediately to problems. You can't even get very far in your explication of the attributes of God before you realize that logical dilemmas are surfacing all over the place. How do we reconcile God's justice and mercy? How does God's absolute power and irresistible will harmonize with his moral goodness? And so on.
If you are committed to this kind of methodology, which begins with the attributes of God, then something must give. In other words, some attribute of God must give. Since you can't change your methodology (because it's an "invisible" presupposition to you), you've got to work the attributes of God such that a satisfying resolution can be found. The result? One or more of the attributes of God end up swallowing up the others. Certain attributes become more ultimate than others.
This way of doing theology has some unfortunate ramifications. Notice how this works out in the realm of soteriology. Since God's attribute of justice is perfect and his nature is immutable, therefore in order for fallen (unjust) man to be acceptable to God, man must change. Man must change or be changed into something that God will accept. It is impossible that God would or could change his absolute justice; so in order for man to be saved, man must be changed (by God, if you are an Augustinian like Aquinas or Cajetan, or by man himself, if you are a "semi-Pelagian" like Gabriel Biel and many of the nominalist theologians). This is a simplification, but it is nevertheless accurate.
The significance of all this is that medieval scholastic soteriology not only gets salvation wrong, but the reason it gets it wrong runs deeper than one might expect. It might be argued that the broad Scholastic doctrine of "justification by means of the ethical transformation of the sinner" is not merely heresy; it is also a kind of "idolatry" (as Calvin maintained for other reasons). It doesn’t just get the way of salvation wrong; it gets God wrong.
When Scholasticism took one or two attributes of God and used it [them] to negate His other attributes this led to a false, ultimately idolatrous understanding of God. Absolutize the moral attributes of God, sync them with the immutability of God and—voila!—you have idolatry with all the attendant soteriological heresies.
It has indeed been argued that the Reformation was all about articulating a radically different conception of God. The God of the Scholastics was changeless, immutable, and in some sense static. (I know that these words are all loaded, but I don't have time to nuance this as well as I'd like.) His relationship with historical events and people was at best problematic.
Contrast this with the God which the Reformers discovered in the Scriptures. This God changed from a disposition of wrath to grace in history because of his own work on the cross and his own application of that work to fallen humanity. The Reformers abandoned the Scholastic methodology of dialectical reasoning from the nature and attributes of God and in so doing they worshipped and served a “different” God.
This is not to say that Scholasticism was high idolatry. It was idolatry with a small “i.” Obviously there were elements of truth in Scholasticism's theology proper. The God they worshipped, served, and about whom they theologized was not totally other than the true God. I am not suggesting that all the scholastics were damned or that the Christian people of their day and age are all going to hell. But the distortion was serious enough that the Reformation was experienced as a seismic event.
God used the "idolatry" of Scholasticism as a wedge to bring the church to a fuller, saving knowledge of the true God. The whole late medieval church needed the fullness of the Gospel, which does not necessarily imply that they were all damned. Once again, I wonder if it may not be a bit anachronistic and therefore improper to judge the Scholastics for not possessing the theological fullness that God waited to bestow upon the church by means of Luther and Calvin.
Scholastic Theology
Friday, September 22, 2006
