CHAPTER III

THE REACTION AGAINST AUTHORITY

PROTESTANTISM, historically considered, was not primarily a revolt against the idea of authority in religion as such. It aimed rather at being a substitution of the authority of God for that of men. Actually it was a substitution of the authority of the Bible, as interpreted by reforming theologians, for that of the mediaeval Catholic tradition, as interpreted by the later schoolmen and as administered by contemporary Rome. The neo-Protestantism of to-day, which opposes to the 'Religions of Authority' the 'Religion of the Spirit,' may make its appeal indeed to one side of the teaching of the Reformers, namely to their emphasis upon inner individual experience, upon what they described as the testimonium spiritus sancti within the breast. But that is a concentration only upon one side of historical Protestantism, albeit in some ways the most characteristic side.

Historical Protestantism was an exceedingly complex movement, of which it is commonly held that the starting-point was in the religious experience of Luther, who appears to have been what is technically known to Catholicism as a scrupulous penitent.

Aspiring to sanctity and failing to attain it, hyperconscious of sin and obsessed by scruples, such souls derive no comfort from absolution, because they are unable to persuade themselves of the sufficiency of their contrition. Thus Luther became preoccupied by what to him was the all-important, the agonising question, By what means is a sinful man to gain assurance of salvation ? The practice of Catholic asceticism and the use of the recognised means of grace' had failed to result, in the case of Luther, in the desired 'assurance.' In the writings of S. Paul it appeared to him that he was confronted with the self-utterance of a soul that had found such assurance, and that upon the basis of 'faith' as opposed to 'works.' The Biblical saying, 'The just shall live by faith,' touched, as it were, a psychological spring in the soul of Luther, and the result was the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith, which involved, in the judgment of Lutherans, a reinterpretation of the nature of piety, and therewith of such Catholic institutions as Lutheranism retained. The whole emphasis is thrown henceforward upon the Biblical Word, as containing the promises of God: salvation consists in whole-hearted assurance or confidence in the Divine Will to forgive sinners freely in Christ Jesus. The Church and its sacraments became secondary, the Bible primary. The latter was the pure Word of God: it contained the authoritative doctrine. It became for Protestantism, in Troeltsch's phrase, 'the instrument and source of the cultus': the professional knowledge of it became the basis of the sacred office of the preacher, the Bible itself

in a sense took the place of the hierarchy and sacraments. Such sacraments as were retained were retained on the ground that they were enjoined in the New Testament, but they tended among Protestants generally to be interpreted as being only particular ways of confirming men's confidence in the Biblical Word-though of course there were differences of doctrine, particularly in regard to the Eucharist, between Luther and Calvin and Zwingli.

Nevertheless, it is important to recognise that Protestantism was, at the outset, only a modification of Catholicism, in which, as Troeltsch has pointed out, the Catholic formulation of the problems was retained, though a different answer was given to them. The whole of the presuppositions of the Catholic theology of salvation were accepted, and Luther's problem was essentially the ancient problem of Catholicism as it confronts the individual from this particular point of view, viz.: What must I do to be saved? In so far as Luther went beyond the point of view of Catholicism here, it was in desiring absolute assurance, a guarantee of the eternal salvation of his soul. Strictly speaking, for Catholicism there can be no such guarantee. The faithful Catholic may know, or may be justified in humbly believing, that he is 'in a state of grace,' that he has present access, as a child of God, to the heart of the eternal Father in Christ Jesus; but he can have no guarantee of his own final perseverance.' Salvation must be worked out (in the phrase of S. Paul) 'with fear and trembling,' though in the faith that it is God which worketh in you.'1 The 1 Philippians ii. 12–13.

Church and the sacraments are for Catholicism at most the objective sphere of Christian salvation, mediating a grace which (though dependent for its efficacy upon a right disposition of the soul) is objectively real and assured. For Luther, who desired a guarantee, the ' external' authority of the Church and the sacraments appeared, because external, to be precarious and uncertain: moreover, in his own experience they had brought with them no' assurance.' He had found certitude, or believed that he had done so, in the 'internal' assurance of faith, aroused and stimulated by the reading of the Scriptures. That this assurance was itself mediated by an 'external' means of grace, viz., the Scriptures themselves, did not disturb him. The Scriptures became, in effect, the great sacrament of Protestantism, its great 'objective' means of grace.

But can any assurance or subjective conviction of certitude really be trusted? Is not the human heart known to be deceitful above all things and desperately wicked'? How then can any given individual be certain that his 'faith' is really justifying faith'? Nay, is not the very act of faith itself-the initial decision to believe-if it is regarded as being an act of the believer himself, in the last resort a' meritorious work'? It was to meet this difficulty, and to guarantee salvation to the elect by representing it as being from first to last wholly and exclusively the work of God, and not an achievement on the part of man, that the doctrine of Predestination was adopted by Protestant theologians, and became characteristic,

in varying degrees, of Calvinism, Lutheranism, and Zwinglianism alike. Calvinism, of course, made the doctrine of Predestination the corner-stone of its whole theological system, deriving from this grim faith a certain rugged strength and austere forcefulness of character, though at the cost of the sacrifice of rationality and universal love as integral elements in the character of God. 'The consciously elect man,' writes Troeltsch, 'feels himself to be the destined lord of the world, who in the power of God and for the honour of God has it laid on him to grasp and shape the world.' The modern financier,' it has been remarked, 'when he is not the child of the Ghetto, is usually the grandchild of Geneva.' That curious document, the XXXIX Articles of the Church of England, steers as usual a skilfully non-committal course amidst the controversies of the period, when after drawing attention to the 'sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort' derived by godly persons from the consideration of Predestination, and of their Election in Christ, it proceeds to draw equal attention to the dangerous downfall' which may result if the sentence of God's Predestination' is held continually before the eyes of 'curious and carnal persons, lacking the Spirit of Christ': it is liable to 'thrust them either into desperation, or into wretchlessness of most unclean living, no less perilous than desperation.'1 The Lutheran Church refused to make the necessary theological sacrifices at the altar of Predestination,

1 Article XVII of the Articles agreed upon by the Archbishops and Bishops of both Provinces, and the whole Clergy, in the Convocation holden at London in the year 1562.