Luther, Newman, and the Punctiliar Church

Neuhaus, Richard John. "Luther, Newman, and the Punctiliar Church." All Theology Is Christology: Essays in Honor of David P. Scaer. Fort Wayne, IN: Concordia Theological Seminary Press.  2000.  153-161.

In this article, Father Neuhaus points out some difficulties in the arguments of Bishop John Henry Newman against Luther as the representative of Protestantism.  Newman's understanding of Luther's view of justification was that it was separated from the Catholic sacramental view of life.  He viewed Luther as having articulated a theology in which the individual spiritual perception of Christ in your heart was more important than the historic facts of Christ's death for sin, his resurrection to new life, and the impartation of new life to you through Word and Sacraments.  Neuhaus suggests that Newman's work does not show a great deal of evidence of having read and considered Luther carefully, as he confuses Luther with the radical reformers, including those of a later date.

Neuhaus does, however, point out in Newman's defense that Luther as a Catholic understood life and godliness through a Catholic lens.  He viewed life sacramentally.  And Neuhaus suggests that Luther would not have been able to sustain his views without the Catholic framework for thinking.  He observes that particularly when believers devalue the historic Church and the reality of the sacraments they very quickly take on a faith which is subjective and weak.

Father Neuhaus closes his article with pleas that believers all together focus on the historic faith and strive for unity in historic orthdoxy.  He manages to come a little short of begging that Lutherans and all Protestants come to join Rome.  Yet his intention is clearly to demonstrate that the Roman view of the sacramental life is a very important feature of the dedicated Christian life.  My observation is that a genuinely sacramental view of life does serve to pull the believer away from subjective and self-centered faith.

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Dave Spotts
blogging at http://capnsaltyslongvoyage.blogspot.com and http://alex-kirk.blogspot.com