Luther, vol. 6 of 6

by Hartmann Grisar

Bellarmine, the sharp-witted controversialist, and other polemics even earlier, dealt with these marks and showed their inadequacy. As regards the last mark Bellarmine, not unnaturally, expressed his wonder that Luther should have spoken of it, seeing that inward suffering, sadness and apprehension are of their very nature hidden things. Luther, however, hit upon this mark because he was accustomed to regard his “temptations” as a witness to the truth of his doctrine, and was convinced that the devil was causing them solely out of hatred for the truth.[1102] He thus carried his fancied experiences[1103] into his teaching on the Church, a fresh proof that his theology was the outcome rather of his inner life than of revealed doctrine. The idea that the Church was ever to be sick, weak, foolish and despised appealed to him all the more because his Evangel had not brought forth the good moral fruits he desiderated, and because he had vainly to struggle against the dissensions within his congregations and their abuse of the freedom of the Gospel.

It was this experience of his which led him to the fantastic plan already described of forming an “assembly of earnest Christians,” i.e. a Church-apart enrolled from the true believers who would then realise the idea of a Church even to the extent of having the power of excommunicating.

The seven marks of the Church were reduced to two in the Augsburg Confession of 1530, viz. pure doctrine, and true sacraments, and it is thus that they appear in the “Symbolic Books” of Lutheranism. On the other hand, Luther makes no appeal to the marks of the Church as given in the olden so-called Nicene Creed, “though all the olden Councils had insisted that it was these marks, particularly the attribute of ‘Apostolicity,’ which distinguished the Church from the sects.”[1104]

As a matter of fact the marks on which Catholic theologians laid stress, viz. the Church’s “oneness, holiness, Catholicity” and apostolicity furnished a striking answer to the question: Where is the Church? She is Apostolic because her connection with the Apostles has never been broken; Catholic because of her universal existence throughout the world; holy in her aims and means and in the practice of Christian virtue by the generality of her followers, and also on account of the special gifts of grace which have ever brightened her path through the ages; lastly, she is one, outwardly in being alone, and also inwardly, in the unity of her faith and belief, liturgy and sacraments, and in her character as a society in which a divinely appointed spiritual authority rules which the rest obey. In the latter respect the Church, to the Catholic mind, is even a “societas perfecta,” visible, moreover, to the whole world like the “city set on a hill” (Matt. v. 12) in which the Fathers of the Church indeed always saw an image of the Church;[1105] she is as a building built upon a rock, as a flock gathered round the shepherd, both of them comparisons which we owe to the Church’s Divine Founder.

It was not without reason that Luther was averse to any appeal to the four marks of the Church just referred to. What unity had he wherewith to confront that of Catholicism under its Pope? Apostolicity, as an historical union with Christ’s Apostles was so evidently wanting in his case that he declared that the doctrine he had come to preach had died out shortly after Apostolic times. Any claim to Catholicity in the usual sense of the word was not to be thought of for a moment. The only olden marks which he does not throw over is that of holiness. He here relies on the existence of holiness in the case of a few as being sufficient for his purpose.

Nevertheless, due justice must be done to the stress he is ever disposed to lay on the holiness of the Church. He practically makes all the other marks to centre in this, for he speaks of the seven marks mentioned above as the sevenfold “sanctuary whereby the Holy Ghost sanctifies Christ’s holy nation.”[1106]

“Even though it was impossible for him,” remarks Johann Adam Möhler, “to teach that the Church was to be regarded as a living institution in which men become holy, yet he sticks fast to the idea that she ought by rights to be composed of saints.… The inner Church [called by theologians the “soul” to distinguish it from the outward “body” of the Church] is everywhere in evidence, and the fact that no one is a true citizen of the heavenly kingdom if he belongs only outwardly to the Church and has not entered into the spirit of Christ and felt within himself its vivifying power, is pointed out [by Luther] in a way which merits all praise.”[1107]

Such true believers, according to Luther’s teaching, are so much the sole representatives of the visible Church that the wicked, the unbelieving, the hypocritical Christians who only expose her to the scorn and derision of her foes, do not really belong to the Church at all.[1108] They are members of the Church merely in name, but, in reality, are not Christians at all.[1109]

It was not, however, easy for him to shake off the true feeling he had inherited from youthful days, viz. that whoever wished to be pious and pleasing to God, must become so through the true Church. “Let us therefore pray in the Church,” so we hear him say, “let us pray with the Church and for her.”[1110] According to him the Church was the ghostly Eve taken from the side of Christ, a pure virgin and one body with Christ, great and splendid in God’s sight, the chief of His works, dear to Him, precious and highly esteemed in His sight, etc.[1111] Hence we find him re-echoing the beautiful words in which Catholic mystics had been wont to extol the Church and her “soul.”