I'm not one of those Catholic apologists who is so intent on making a point against Sola Scriptura--not that it needs any help refuting itself--that I'm going to commit myself to the impenetrable opacity of the Bible. I definitely think we should be reading it, and I'd love it if we all knew it better than we do. That being said, the Bible is astounding. No matter how learned one is (and I'm lacking in enough humility at present to say I'm learned) God's word has a depth that can reduce the greatest, most brilliant men to sputtering babble. And I should know.With apologies to Dr. David Twellman of Ave Maria University, I will never fully understand or gain a facility with your 'synthesis' concept. Quite frankly, I'm less fond of outlines now, as well. O the heady days when all I had to do was preach the thing, and to cower in fear at the sight of the Collins Scowl! Er, the arrogant, schismatic days, but joyous they often were. Preaching is easy; thinking is hard. [False dichotomy?--ed.] No. If only because some don't recognize the distinction.
Anyway, I'm glad it's over. This deserves a comment. The author classifies the first part of this as "intellectual," and perhaps it is. But I would say that ecumenism rightly considered is agreement on the truth. It is indeed foolish to pursue unity without the truth. But unity rightly considered means the same thing as ecumenism: agreement on the truth, or better said, in the truth. We might rightly all abhor Ockham's pernicious influence in the truncation of epistemology. But that very truncation masquerades as a humility in the theological system on offer as an alternative. The truth we seek is evident in things; it does not become so by consensus. Rather, we all are conformed to it, not it to us. Is it fitting to accept an abiding hostility to reason, when that hostility is the cause of the ecclesial agnosticism whose truth is the heart of the question? Let me put it more simply with a paragraph break.
The ecclesiastical re-boot that was the great division in the West demands a fidelity to reason and a doctrinal certitude that the project itself cannot supply. The great Church we aim to defend cannot exist only in the theoretical, since the promises given to it are the ground of truth. Christ promised to protect His Church as a part of his character as the Truth. It can no more be unseen as He was, and John's Gospel says plainly, "We have seen his glory." And later--permit me to paraphrase like a Church Father--John says of Christ, "that which we have groped with our hands." The fact that He is mysterious is not germane to the question of whether He came in the flesh. If our commitment to "love" is greater than our desire to know the content of truth, we have a problem. If we cannot know the fullness of truth in Christ, then what is it to know Him?
If roughly 500 years have passed with no agreement in the truth, a truth to which we are all bound, it is reasonable to assume that the manner in which it has been sought is the wrong one. Even without the Catholic Church, it is obvious that we are at an intractable impasse. If we are serious about not sacrificing the truth for the sake of unity, we must come to terms with the fact that the Protestant hermeneutical paradigm prevents us from even a reasonable supposition that we would possess any truth that would be lost.
This is not to say that the Catholic Church, by this argument alone, must be the Church. But if we could go back, knowing that we all separately have held slivers of the truth like shards of a broken window, would you break it again? Does it make sense to deny that it came from the same place?
Anyway, I'm glad it's over. This deserves a comment. The author classifies the first part of this as "intellectual," and perhaps it is. But I would say that ecumenism rightly considered is agreement on the truth. It is indeed foolish to pursue unity without the truth. But unity rightly considered means the same thing as ecumenism: agreement on the truth, or better said, in the truth. We might rightly all abhor Ockham's pernicious influence in the truncation of epistemology. But that very truncation masquerades as a humility in the theological system on offer as an alternative. The truth we seek is evident in things; it does not become so by consensus. Rather, we all are conformed to it, not it to us. Is it fitting to accept an abiding hostility to reason, when that hostility is the cause of the ecclesial agnosticism whose truth is the heart of the question? Let me put it more simply with a paragraph break.
The ecclesiastical re-boot that was the great division in the West demands a fidelity to reason and a doctrinal certitude that the project itself cannot supply. The great Church we aim to defend cannot exist only in the theoretical, since the promises given to it are the ground of truth. Christ promised to protect His Church as a part of his character as the Truth. It can no more be unseen as He was, and John's Gospel says plainly, "We have seen his glory." And later--permit me to paraphrase like a Church Father--John says of Christ, "that which we have groped with our hands." The fact that He is mysterious is not germane to the question of whether He came in the flesh. If our commitment to "love" is greater than our desire to know the content of truth, we have a problem. If we cannot know the fullness of truth in Christ, then what is it to know Him?
If roughly 500 years have passed with no agreement in the truth, a truth to which we are all bound, it is reasonable to assume that the manner in which it has been sought is the wrong one. Even without the Catholic Church, it is obvious that we are at an intractable impasse. If we are serious about not sacrificing the truth for the sake of unity, we must come to terms with the fact that the Protestant hermeneutical paradigm prevents us from even a reasonable supposition that we would possess any truth that would be lost.
This is not to say that the Catholic Church, by this argument alone, must be the Church. But if we could go back, knowing that we all separately have held slivers of the truth like shards of a broken window, would you break it again? Does it make sense to deny that it came from the same place?
Comments
This is part of the problem to the call for reunification. Many Protestants would have a far easier time reunifying with the best strands of pre-Trent Catholicism than they would post-Trent Catholicism. (Admittedly, Vatican II was a major step in the right direction.) All that to say, I think the question is intriguing and it makes me wonder what a unified Western Church might look like had the Reformation never occurred.
Would we even recognize the Western World?
Moreover, we must remember that in 1510, the Church was facing a situation in which the German Catholics were desirous of as much independence from Rome as possible. Much of German Catholicism appears to have been colored by the via moderna's mystical wing (Meister Eckhart, etc.). The conciliar movement was still fermenting in Germany and the wreckage of the papal schisms and Babylonian captivity of the papacy were still strong in Germany. Lortz suggests that the unity apparent in the time immediately before the Reformation was actually a facade covering long building disunity.
In this situation, we must also keep in mind that the Humanists -- and not just Erasmus, mind you -- were busy attempting a Reform against the late medieval stagnation and corruption for sometime before Luther showed up on the scene.
This is an incomplete overview, but paints the messy historical picture of the late medieval picture. Heiko Oberman's magnum opus on Biel helps show some of this, incidentally. But, for now, I'll leave off with a quote from Cardinal Newman that Cardinal Dulles included in a piece he wrote arguing for the need for Catholic appreciation of the Reformation: “It could never be that so large a portion of Christendom should have split off from the communion of Rome and kept up a protest for 300 years for nothing …. All aberrations are founded on, and have their life in some truth or other – and Protestantism, so widely spread and so long enduring, must have in it, and must be witness for, a great truth and much truth” (Apologia Pro Vita Sui, 188 qtd. in Dulles 32).
In sum, what you see is a Church that has significant fissures, has not been terribly concerned with theological uniformity and is teaching nominalists in lieu of Thomas and Augustine prior to Luther. Post-Trent, you see a supercharged, Renaissance-era Thomism set as the official standard of the church and doctrines which had been debated during the middle ages officially cast outside the bounds of orthodoxy.
Incidentally, as an aside, you want to see just how messy the period is -- compared to the nice, clean pictures both Protestants and Catholics like to paint -- Colin Morris's magisterial "the Papal Monarchy: the Western Church from 1050 to 1250" helps paint a fascinating picture of the period that would set the tone for the later papal schisms and, beyond that, the Reformation. He helps build up a thesis that points to the inevitability of the later problems even in the work of some of the most praiseworthy, reform minded popes during the Gregorian reform period.
When we come at history from a systematics standpoint, things look simple. When we look at it as historical theologians, things aren't nearly so simple. Well, there, I gave my answer to the complications I mentioned in my questioning in the other post. If I appeal to the Church teachings of the pre-Reformation, which Church do I appeal to? This becomes vastly clearer post-Trent than it was pre-Trent.
But all of this is essentially an aside to my comment's larger point, which you are corroborating. The fact that Luther is responding to Biel and not Thomas shows how different the ecclesial context Luther is trained in is from the post-Trent context of a few decades later.
In any case, going back to the topic you asked me to prove: if the church didn't change, how did its view of nominalism change so much?
The greater question is your use of the term "return." How did one know the church's opinion was firmly on the side of the realists when the nominalists seemed to be favored? It isn't at all clear that the church "returned" so much as "finally decided." Keep in mind Thomas's theology wasn't an instant success (he even looked like he was at risk of going down in history as a heretic for awhile). Also keep in mind that we're looking back to a period when heresy often had more to do with one's support for or opposition to hierarchy than it did with theological dogma. So people really didn't know if a lot of these new teachings coming out of the via moderna were kosher or not. The Reformation forced the Catholic Church to clarify what its dogmatic positions were in an age when they were anything but clear cut.
I think this is the difference between systematic and historical theology. Systematics makes all of this sound really simple. The fact of the matter is that Biel, Gerson, etc., all show just how muddy the waters were. (And that doesn't even include how muddy even the hierarchy was when you had gone through periods with significant antipopes that made hierarchy as unclear as dogma.)