Thursday, February 16, 2023

Paul O’Callaghan on Luther's Doctrine of "homo simul iustus et peccator"

  

. . . Luther also states that the Christian cannot sin no matter how he behaves. In his 1520 work On the Babylonian Captivity, for example, he affirmed that one baptized, even if he sins, cannot lose grace as long as he does not renounce faith. (De captivitate Babylonica Ecclesiae [WA 6:529]) Some years later, in the Smalcald Articles (1537), he clarified his position, rejecting the mistaken interpretation of the Schwärmer gave to his words: ‘once the Spirit and the pardon of sins has been received, or once one had become a believer, one perseveres in the faith even when sinning afterwards, in such a way that such a sin harms them no longer.’ (idem., Artic. Smalcaldae III, 3 [1537-8: WA 50:225f.))

 

In spite of these clarifications, the impression does linger in some of his writings that concrete sin is no longer possible or meaningful, and, understandably, the teaching was taken up at the Council of Trent in its 1547 decree on justification, and rejected. (cf. DH 1540; 1573)

 

This paradoxical and at times contradictory way of speaking about sin and grace, very characteristic of Luther, must be understood in its context. In fact it reflects a living or existential dialectic at the very heart of his teachings, that may be expressed succinctly in his famous phrases pecca, et pacca fortiter and, in particular, homo simul iustus et peccator. It brings us to reflect on a decisive aspect of Luther’s anthropology, according to which he considers man’s sinfulness (or concupiscentia) as inherent, intrinsic, unhealable; sin is what most authentically defines ‘on his own’. (Cf. M. Luther, Heidelberg Disputation [WA 1:374]; Dicata super Psalterium: PS CVI [WA 4:207]) ‘What then is original sin?’, he asked. ‘According to the subtleties of the scholastic theologians, it is the privation or lack of original justice . . . But according to the Apostle and the simplicity of Christian discourse, it is the privation, total, complete and universal of the rectitude and of the power for good in all the energies of body and soul, in the whole of man, interior and exterior.’ (Idem., Die Vorlesung über den Römerbrief [WA 56:312f.]) (Paul O’Callaghan, Fides Christi: The Justification Debate [Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1997], 35)