|
S i d e b a r
Where Luther Got It Wrong
By Mike Sullivan
The idea that we’re bound by an unavoidable law of sin led Luther to develop his thinking about "human depravity." He believed that even sin couldn’t separate us from Christ. To defend this view, his followers often cite Romans 8:38–39, where Paul asks what can separate us from the love of Christ. But Paul lists a number of trials, not sins.
The belief in "total depravity" is based on a few Bible passages, most notably in Romans 7. Paul describes in detail how his flesh and spirit wrestle. For him, as for Augustine (and, in fact, for all faithful Christians), there is a struggle going on within him. His spirit and flesh are battling:
So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I of my self serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin (Rom. 7:21–25).
Some Protestants maintain that we are free in our thoughts and therefore able to say yes to God through an act of faith, but we’re not free to carry out this act of faith through our works. Thus we aren’t responsible when we fall short of living a moral life.
In The Bondage of the Will, Luther takes a more radical view. He depicts the human will as a beast that is ridden either by God or the devil and that it is not in the beast’s power to choose who rides it.
This view is far from a Catholic understanding, which maintains that, while everything is grace, we nevertheless are called to cooperate with God’s grace. Still, with Luther, we can hear Paul’s anguish when he says, "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" Paul himself answers this question in the next paragraph of his letter to the Romans: "For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death" (Rom. 8:2).
What Luther missed was that to break free from the law of sin, we must embrace the "spirit of life in Christ." In other words, we must embrace the Christian moral life.
In Galatians, Paul affirms that it is possible for us to do this, but we are responsible for doing it. Paul first notes that only "faith working through love" (Gal. 5:6) is availing, for it is through our actions that we say yes or no to God and his free gift of salvation. Paul then elaborates on this point:
For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." . . . But I say, walk by the Spirit, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you would. But if you are led by the Spirit you are not under the law. . . . And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit (Gal. 5:13–14, 16–18, 24–25). In other words, when we live the Christian life we are transformed, and Christ’s indwelling builds upon our fallen nature. It is not possible to be "good" by our own will power. But grace builds on nature, and our nature is strengthened by practicing virtue. That is much tougher than just accepting the precepts of the faith. We are called to assent with conviction and commitment to follow the person of Jesus Christ and to obey his will in our lives.
|
C A T H O L I C A N S W E R S :
[TOP]
