The Catholic World, Vol. 13, April to September, 1871

by Various

All Protestant sects hold much of truth, but, like the heathen religions, they hold it in disorder, out of its normal relations and connections, out of its unity and catholicity, and consequently no one of them is strong enough to recover the element of order, and re-establish and maintain the reign of law in any of the several departments of life, spiritual or secular; for the very essence of both consists in rejecting catholicity, the only source of order. We therefore make no account of the principles, truths, or even Catholic dogmas retained by the various Protestant churches or sects from Catholic tradition. Held as they are out of unity, out of their normal relations, and mingled with all sorts of errors and fancies, they lose their virtue, become the basis of false religion and false morality, pervert instead of enlightening reason, and mislead, weaken, and finally destroy conscience. They are insufficient to preserve faith and the worship of God, and naturally tend to revive in a lettered nation the polished heathenism of Greece and Rome. Their impotence is seen in the prevailing disorder in the whole Protestant world, and especially in the singular delusion of modern society, that the loss of Catholic truth, Catholic authority, of spirituality, is a progress in light, liberty, religion, and civilization—a delusion which counts the revolutions, the civil commotions, the wars between the people and the government, between class and class, and capital and labor, the insurrections and terrible social disorders of the last century and the present, only as so many evidences of the marvellous advance of the modern world in freedom, intelligence, religion, and Christian morals. Is not this the delusion that goeth before and leadeth to destruction?

Dr. Krauth has not advanced so far, or rather descended so low, as have some of his Protestant brethren. He has strong conservative instincts, and still retains a conviction that order is necessary, and that without religious faith and conscience order is not possible. He has a dim perception of the truth, that unless there is something in religion fixed, permanent, and authoritative, even religion cannot meet the exigencies of society or the needs of the soul; but, a child of the Reformation, and jealous of the honor of his parentage, he thinks it necessary to maintain that, if religion must be fixed and permanent, it must at the same time be progressive; authoritative, and yet subject to the faithful, who have the right to resist or alter it at will. Hence he tells us, page viii., "The church problem is to attain a Protestant Catholicity, or a Catholic Protestantism," and seeks to establish for Lutheranism the character of being a "conservative reformation." The learned doctor may be a very suitable professor of theology in a Lutheran theological seminary, or a proper professor of intellectual and moral philosophy in the University of Pennsylvania, but he seems either not to have mastered the categories or to have forgotten them. Contradictory predicates cannot be affirmed of the same subject. The Lutheran Reformation and conservatism belong to different categories. That only can be a conservative reform of the church that is effected by the church herself or by her authority, and which leaves her authority and constitution intact, by no means the case with the Lutheran Reformation, which was a total subversion of the constitution of the church and the denial of her authority. In the sense of the author, conservative reformation implies a contradiction in terms.

Logicians, at least those we have had for masters, tell us that of contradictories one must be false. If there were ever two terms each the contradictory of the other, they are Catholic and Protestant. One cannot be a Catholic without denying Protestantism, or a Protestant without denying Catholicity. "Protestant Catholicity" or "Catholic Protestantism" is as plainly a contradiction in terms as a square circle or a circular square. If Catholicity is true, Protestantism is false, for it is simply the denial of Catholicity; and if the Protestant denial of Catholicity is true or warranted, then is there nothing catholic, no catholicity, and consequently no catholic Protestantism. Dr. Krauth has, we doubt not, a truth floating before his mind's eye, but he fails to grasp it, or to consider to what it is applicable. "The history of Christianity," he says, page vii., "in common with all genuine history, moves under the influence of two generic ideas: the conservative, which desires to secure the present by fidelity to the results of the past; the progressive, which looks out in hope to a better future. Reformation is the great harmonizer of the true principles. Corresponding with conservatism, reformation, and progress, are the three generic types of Christianity; and under these genera all the species are but shades, modifications, or combinations, as all hues arise from three primary colors. Conservatism without progress produces the Romish and Greek type of the church; progress without conservatism runs into revolution, radicalism, and sectarianism; reformation is antithetical to both—to passive persistence in wrong or passive endurance of it, and to revolution as a mode of relieving wrong." That is, reformation preserves its subject while correcting its aberrations, and effects its progress without its destruction, which, if the subject is corruptible and reformable, and the reform is effected by the proper authorities and by the proper means, is no doubt true; and in this case reformation would stand opposed alike to immobility and revolution or destruction.

But is the learned and able professor aware of what he does when he assumes that Christianity is corruptible and reformable, that it is or can be the subject either of corruption or of reformation? Intentionally or not, by so assuming, he places it in the category of human institutions, or natural productions, left to the action of the natural laws or of second causes, and withdraws it from the direct and immediate government and protection of God. Not otherwise could its history be subject to the laws that govern the movement of all genuine history, be either perfectible or corruptible, or ever stand in need of being reformed, or of intrinsically advancing. Christianity itself is a revelation from God, the expression of his eternal reason and will, and therefore his law, which like himself is perfect and unalterable. The terms the professor applies, can apply, then, only to men's views, theories, or judgments of Christianity, not to Christianity itself, either as a doctrine or an institution, either as the faith to be believed, or as the law to be obeyed—a fact which, in the judgment of some, Dr. Newman's theory of development overlooks Christianity embodied in the church is the kingdom of God on earth, founded immediately by the Incarnate Word to manifest the divine love and mercy in the redemption and salvation of souls, and to introduce and maintain the authority of God and the supremacy of his law in human affairs. It is not an abstraction, and did not come into the world as a "naked idea," as Guizot maintains, nor is it left to men's wisdom and virtue to embody it; but it came into the world embodied in an institution, concreted in the church, which the blessed apostle assures us is "the body of Christ," who is himself Christianity, since he says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." Neither as the end nor as the divine institution, neither as the law nor as the authority to keep, declare, and apply it, then is the church imperfect, therefore progressive or corruptible, and therefore reformable. This is the Catholic doctrine, which must be retained by Protestantism if Protestantism is to be Catholic.

The learned professor either overlooks or virtually denies the divine origin, character, and authority of the church, or else he supposes that the divine founder failed to adapt his means to his end, and left his work incomplete, imperfect, to be finished by men. From first to last, he treats the church not as the kingdom of God on earth, but as an institution formed by men to realize or embody their conceptions or views of his kingdom, its principles, laws, and authority. He thus makes it a human institution, subject to all the vicissitudes of time and space. As men can never embody in their institutions the entire kingdom of God, the church must be progressive; as whatever is defective may be corrupted by the errors and corruptions of the faithful, as what is subject to growth must also be subject to decay, the church may from time to time become corrupt, and men must be free, as she has need, to reform her. This manifestly supposes the church is not divine, but simply an attempt, as is every false religion of men, to realize or embody their variable conceptions of the divine. If this were not the professor's view, he could not talk of conservatism, progress, and reformation in connection with Christianity, nor the correspondence of these with "the three generic types of Christianity," for these terms are inapplicable to anything divine and perfect, and can be logically applied only to what is imperfect and human, to what is perfectible, corruptible, and reformable. As there is but one God, one Christ, the mediator of God and men, there can be but one Christianity, and that must be catholic, one and the same in all times and places. To suppose three generic types of Christianity is as absurd as to suppose three Christs or three Gods, generically distinguished one from another, that is—three Christs or three Gods of three different types or genera.

Supposing the professor understands at all the meaning of the scholastic terms he uses, it is clear that he understands by Christianity the history of which moves under the influence of two generic ideas—nothing divine, nothing fixed, permanent, and immutable, the law alike for intellect and will, but the views and theories or judgments which men form of the works of God, his word, his law, or his kingdom. Christianity resolved into these may, we concede, not improperly be arranged under the three heads of conservatism, progress, and reformation, but never Christianity as the truth to be believed and obeyed. We do not, however, blame the Lutheran professor for his mistake; for, assuming his position as a Protestant to be at all tenable, he could not avoid it, since Protestants have no other Christianity. They have only their views or judgments of Christianity, not Christianity itself as the objective reality.

There is progress by Christianity; and that is one great purpose for which it is instituted; but none in Christianity, because it is divine and perfect from the beginning. There may be reformation in individuals, nations, and society, for these are all corruptible, but none of Christianity itself, either as the creed or as the body of Christ, for it is indefectible, above and independent of men and nations, and therefore neither corruptible nor reformable by them. Not being corruptible or capable of deterioration, the term conservative, however applicable it may be to states and empires in the natural order or to human institutions and laws subject to the natural laws, has no application to Christianity or the kingdom of Christ, which is supernatural, under the direct and immediate government and protection of God, an eternal and therefore an ever-present kingdom, universal and unalterable, and not subject to the natural laws of growth and decay. Dr. Krauth forgets the law of mechanics, that there is no motion without a mover at rest. The movable cannot originate motion, nor the progressive be the cause of progress, or corruption purify and reform itself. If Christianity or the church were itself movable, or in itself progressive, it could effect no progress in men or nations, individuals or society; and if it could ever become itself corrupt, it could be no principle of reform in the world, or in any department of life.

The office of Christianity is to maintain on earth amidst all the vicissitudes of this world the immutable divine order, to recover men from the effects of the fall, to elevate them above the world, above their natural powers, and to carry them forward, their will consenting and concurring, to a blissful and indissoluble union with God as their supreme good, as their last end or final cause. How could it fulfil this office and effect its divine purpose, if not itself free from all the changes, alterations, and accidents of time and space? Does not the learned professor of theology perceive that its very efficiency depends on its independence, immovableness, and immutability? Then the conceptions of conservatism, progress, and reformation cannot be applied to the church of God, any more than to God himself, and are applicable only to what is human connected with her. In applying these ideas to her, the professor, as every Protestant is obliged to do in principle at least, divests her of her divinity, of her supernatural origin and office, and places her in the natural and human order, and subjects her to the laws which govern the history of all men and nations deprived of the supernatural and remaining under the ordinary providence of God manifested through second causes. The professor's doctrine places Christianity in the same category with all pagan and false religions, and subjects it to the same laws to which they are subjected.

This being the case, Dr. Krauth, who is a genuine Lutheran, has no right to call Luther's Reformation a conservative Reformation. It may or may not be conservative in relation to some other Protestant church or sect, but in relation to the church of God, or to Christianity as the word or the law of God, it is not conservative, but undeniably destructive; for it subverts the very idea and principle on which the church as the kingdom of God on earth is founded and sustained. The church on the principles of Luther's reformation is subject to the authority of men and nations, and, instead of teaching and governing them, is taught and governed by them, and instead of elevating and perfecting them, they perfect, corrupt, or reform it. This is manifestly a radical denial, a subversion of the church of God, of Christ's kingdom on earth if it means anything more than a temperance society or a social club. In this respect, the principle of the Lutheran reformation was the common principle of all the Protestant reformers, as we may see in the fact that Protestantism, under any or all of its multitudinous forms, wherever not restrained by influences foreign to itself, tends incessantly to eliminate the supernatural, and to run into pure rationalism or naturalism. How absurd, then, to talk of "Protestant Catholicity, or of Catholic Protestantism"! The two ideas are as mutually repellent as are Christ and Belial.

The church has, indeed, her human side, and on that side she may at times be corrupt and in need of reform, that is to say, the heavenly treasure is received in earthen vessels, and those earthen vessels, though unable to corrupt or sully the divine treasure itself, may be unclean and impure themselves. Churchmen may become relaxed in their virtue and neglect to maintain sound doctrine and necessary discipline, and leave the people to suffer for the want of proper spiritual nourishment and care, even to fall into errors and vices more in accordance with the heathenism of their ancestors than with the faith and sanctity of the Christian. Moreover, in a world where all changes under the very eye of the spectator, and new forms of error and vice are constantly springing up, the disciplinary canons of the church, and those which regulate the relations of secular society with the spiritual, good and adequate when first enacted, may become insufficient or impracticable in view of the changes always going on in everything human, and fail to repress the growing evil of the times and to maintain the necessary discipline both of clerics and laics, and therefore need amending, or to be aided by new and additional canons. In this legislative and administrative office of the church, not in her dogmas, precepts, constitution, or authority, which, as expressing the eternal reason and will of God, are unalterable, reforms are not only permissible but often necessary. The councils, general, national, provincial, and diocesan, have always had for their only object to assist the Papacy in suppressing errors against faith in enforcing discipline, maintaining Christian morality, and promoting the purity and sanctity of the Christian community.