A Living, Busy, Mighty Thing

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Luther, Preface to The Epistle to the Romans:

Faith is not that human notion and dream that some hold for faith. Because they see that no betterment of life and no good works follow it, and yet they can hear and say much about faith, they fall into error and say, “Faith is not enough; one must do works in order to be righteous and be saved.” This is one reason that when they hear the gospel they fall-to and make for themselves, by their own powers, an idea in their hearts which says, “I believe.” This they hold for true faith. But it is a human imagination and idea that never reaches the depths of the heart, and so nothing comes of it and no betterment follows it.

Faith, however, is a divine work in us. It changes us and makes us to be born anew of God; it kills the old Adam and makes altogether different men, in heart and spirit and mind and powers, and brings with it the Holy Ghost. Oh, it is a living, busy, mighty thing, this faith; and so it is impossible for it not to do good works incessantly. It does not ask whether there are any good works to do, but before the question rises; it has already done them, and is always at the doing of them. He who does not these works is a faithless man. He gropes and looks about after faith and good works, and knows neither what faith is nor what good works are, though he talks and talks, with many words, about faith and good works.

Faith is a living, daring confidence on God’s grace, so sure and certain that a man would stake his life on it a thousand times. This confidence in God’s grace and knowledge of it makes men glad and bold and happy in dealing with God and all His creatures; and this is the work of the Holy Ghost in faith. Hence a man is ready and glad, without compulsion, to do good to everyone, to serve everyone, to suffer everything, in love and praise to God, who has shown him this grace; and thus it is impossible to separate works from faith, quite as impossible as to separate heat and light from fire. Beware, therefore, of your own false notions and of the idle talkers, who would be wise enough to make decisions about faith and good works, and yet are the greatest fools. Pray God to work faith in you; else you will remain forever without faith, whatever you think or do.

Whether Idols Ought to be Destroyed by Magistrates

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The following is a passage I translated from Peter Martyr Vermigli’s massive Commentary on 1 & 2 Kings, published in 1571. Only it is not, it turns out, written by Vermigli, but by his colleague in Zurich, Johannes Wolff, who completed the Commentary after Vermigli died, since it was left unfinished after the first few chapters of 2 Kings. The substance, however, is very similar to what Vermigli wrote elsewhere. It is a fascinating example of how the Reformers argued for the magistrate’s cura religionis—responsibility for overseeing the good order and right teaching of the church in his realm—within the terms of their two-kingdoms distinction between the realm of faith and that of practice. Moreover, although Wolff is convinced that the Old Testament laws provide a rule to direct magistrates in this work, we can see also the idea, one particularly prominent in Vermigli’s work, that the care for religion is a natural duty, since there is a natural knowledge of God to which commonwealths are accountable. Read More

Church Discipline in the Reformation

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Longtime readers of this blog may recall that for a brief spell last summer, I was churning out a number of posts related to Reformed views of church discipline in the sixteenth century.  Those were, as it were, the scraps on the cutting room floor from an article I was helping my friend Jordan Ballor write for the online journal EGO: European History Online.  After nine months of peer review and such, the article is finally up here.

While the topic may sound a bit arcane, it is in fact crucial to understanding the development of Reformed ecclesiology and political theology, topics near and dear to my heart, as they should be near and dear to yours.  Although our article is largely encyclopedic in intent (that is to say, to provide a broad overview of the whole topic, rather than advance a particular new argument), we do seek to challenge entrenched misconceptions at a couple points.

First, we argue that it is dangerous to do history too much in hindsight, starting from the fact of later rifts and reading those back into earlier periods.  Accordingly, we suggest that the  Zurich/Geneva dichotomy (Erastian vs. Calvinist models of church/state relations), a firm fixture of Reformation scholarship, while a clear reality of the post-1570 world, should not be overstated when we are talking about earlier periods.  The two models shared a number of key similarities amidst their differences, and neither side (particularly the Zurichers) insisted that theirs was the only right way of doing things.  Indeed, there were a number of hybrid forms in other Reformed cities and principalities, which combined elements of each vision.  Moreover, inasmuch as there were two models, it is somewhat inaccurate to see the second as the creation of Calvin and Geneva; to a large extent, Calvin developed his approach from those used in Basel and Strasbourg. Read More

Richard Hooker and Anglican Moral Theology Review, Pt. 6: Moral Theology Applied

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In this sixth and final installment of my review of A.J. Joyce’s Richard Hooker and Anglican Moral Theology (I salute you faithful few who have followed me all the way through this hopefully engaging but occasionally exhausting exercise), I shall look at her last two chapters, which are both quite brief and have to do, essentially, with the concrete application of Hooker’s moral theology.  Chapter Seven considers the relationship of the “exceptional case” to moral norms, the all-important balance between unchanging general norms and the demands of particular circumstances.  Chapter Eight seeks to bring together, or rather to illustrate, the themes outlined in all the previous chapters by consideration of one particular example, the understanding of marriage in Hooker’s thought.

Both are on the whole helpful chapters, though the first suffers from a frustrating vagueness as to which moral norms are exceptionable and which are not, and the difference between particular injunctions that specify general principles and those that contradict them; the second, perhaps more seriously, suffers from Joyce’s very un-Hookerian determination to try and drive a wedge between reason and Scripture.

Chapter 7 begins with an extended consideration of the Aristotelian ethical tradition, and its understanding that it was the nature of the moral life to be concerned with particulars, and general principles cannot adequately describe moral duties without exception: “for Arristotle, whatever is promulgated by the moral philosopher, political scientist, or lawgiver will only ever take into consideration the majority of cases.  It takes a wise man, whose perception has been developed through experience, to discern what it is that constitutes right action in a concrete situation.” (197-98) Read More

Vermigli on the Natural Duty of Magistrates to Promote Religion

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From his Commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics:

It is also shown here that the magistrate’s main duty (for when Aristotle mentions the political faculty, he is speaking of him) is to produce good citizens.  It is doubtless important for him to enrich his subjects, to extend the limits of empire, and to fortify the city with defenses and ramparts; but the magistrate’s main job is to produce good citizens.  Those who hold the reins of government should think nothing that contributes to this irrelevant to their duty.  They will not, as some do, regard the pure and chaste observation of religion as beyond their purview.  This being so, the best view is that a very close connection between the magistrate and the ministers of the church is beneficial for states. (Peter Martyr Library Edition, p. 227)

We should now add to this that it ought to be a magistrate’s concern that his people behave virtuously and that their prime virtue be piety.  So it will be a good magistrate’s responsibility to do everything possible to see that pure and sincere religion prevails in his territory.  Those who do not do this do not keep the true way of governing a state.  It is easy to understand how the application of virtue follows from a design to make the citizens good, since the virtues are the causes of goodness. . . .

We see here very clearly which virtues are excluded from this consideration, namely, those of the body.  These are commonly said to be four in number—health, shape, clarity of the senses, and strength. . . . Only those located in the soul are to be treated. . . .

Since the soul is the subject of the virtues, he must find out some things about it before discussing its accidents.  Aristotle confirms this procedure with a comparison: a doctor acts in exactly the same way, for he studies the nature of the body and the ey before turning his hand to cure them. . . . For medical science is considered far inferior to political science; if therefore the doctor is not ignorant of the limbs he is about to treat and heal, it will be much more important for the politician to learn about the soul in which the virtues are located.  This comparison between doctor and politician is quite apposite and appropriate.  For just as the former heals the body, the latter seeks to care for the soul with good customs.  It is almost as if we were saying that the two principal parts of man are to be governed and restored by a twofold faculty: the soul is entrusted to the statesman and the body to the doctor.  Before everything, the doctor wants to know what is proper to each part of the body in its own particular nature, then he observes what thing contrary to its nature is brought on by disease; once he has understood this, he looks for remedies that will bring those parts of the body back to the proper state of their nature. (pp. 266-67)

It is striking in particular how in this latter passage, by appearing to say that the politician’s task is chiefly concerned with the good of the soul, rather than with the body, Vermigli almost perfectly inverts the consensus of modern liberal politics (in both its right-wing and left-wing forms).