Wouldn’t it be great to be able to assert the great doctrines of the Church without having actually to violate one’s ontological scruples about there being states of affairs referred to by these doctrines? What if one were to claim that the Lutherans and the Catholics actually pretty much agree on justification, as the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification declared, without either party actually having to change its very different understanding of the notion, an understanding that has separated the two groups for almost five centuries? What if one were to claim that there is an identity in difference, an identity sufficient for ecumenical agreement even when the groups have understood themselves in the difference? What if one could claim a unity without a change in the interpretation either side gives to its language? Would this not be too good to be true for proponents of contemporary ecumenicity?
Take the following sentence: ‘We are justified by grace alone through faith.” As it stands, it has an everyday meaning due to inchoate interpretations used both by Catholics and Lutherans. For Lutherans, the sentence has been regarded as true; for Catholics, it is false. It is true for Lutherans because God is the agent by which grace is given to the believer in faith. The Christian who is justified in faith automatically acts out of that faith, for a good tree must bear good fruit. In the Catholic tradition, faith must be formed by love; one is justified by grace through faith issuing in works of love. Catholics and Lutherans could disagree about how ‘faith’ connects to love. Lutherans tend to regard love as analytically entailed by faith, while Catholics deny this. (I am being very general here.)
One could, I suppose, count agreement between Lutherans and Catholics if the same sentence were uttered by each in relevant contexts with suitable linguistic cues. In other words, one could understand the sentence behaviorally. The sentence has the same meaning for two users if and only if the proclivity to utter it is similar given suitably similar linguistic cues. One might even claim that because the sentence is used the same way by the two different communities, thus the two theological communities assign to it the same meaning.
But this is, of course, a deeply unsatisfactory way for two different linguistic communities to affirm the same statement. After all, it is not the use to which it is put that gives the sentence the same meaning, but it is rather that both have a common meaning, and thus the sentences are used in similar ways. Clearly, in order for Catholics and Lutherans to agree on the statement, something more than merely uttering the statement in similar linguistic contexts is necessary.
It is standard in logic and semantics that an interpretation be assigned individuals and predicates of the language (non-logical terms) so that it can be determined what models of a sentence or groups of sentences satisfy them. See how this clarifies statements like ‘S is justified by grace through faith’ and ‘S is justified by grace through faith issuing in acts of love’. The first could be rendered as follows ‘(some x)(some y)[(Gx & Fy) & Jsxy]’ read as ‘there is something which is grace, and something which is faith, such that s is justified by that which is grace through that which is faith’. However, given that love issues from faith, we might add, ‘(some x)(some y){(Gx & Fy) & (Ly & Jsxy)]’ read as ‘there is something that is grace, and something that is faith issuing in love, such that s is justified by that which is grace through that which is faith’. Now notice that the same string can be used to capture the Catholic view, that we are justified by grace, through faith issuing in love. Clearly, both have the same model, {(some x) is a member of {x : x has G}, (some y) is a member of [{y : y has faith} intersects {y : y issues in love}], (s, some x, some y) is a member of {(x, y, z) : x is justified by y through z}}. The two sentences are not only compatible by having a common model, they are equivalent because they are satisfied by exactly the same set of models. They have a common model-structure.
Ecumenical conversations would be greatly improved, in my opinion, if the dialogue partners were to pay profound attention to what is meant by the phrases they use. If both sides were disciplined in providing formal interpretations for their statements, it would become quite clear what, if anything, are the significant differences of meaning between the two.
From a Lutheran standpoint you're very right Dennis. If we think back to controversies in Lutheran history for example the 17th century debate over Christology or the election controversy in the 19th century, the parties involved were trying to find out what the Reformer really meant and adhere to it.
ReplyDeleteAfter spending the last 3 years at a Roman Catholic theology department I've come to realize that Catholics don't think about things like that. Verbal agree is simply good enough, since they've been able to keep a vast denomination together for a very long time by saying that as long as you adhere to the letter its ok. My first class here was on justification and my prof. David Coffey thought JDDJ was just fine because he thought it could get Lutheran and Catholics to be in one visible church, even if they disagreed about what it meant. Eventually, he suggested, Lutherans would get over their over reaction to the Via Moderna (a common narrative) and come to something closer to Trent, but they wouldn't need directly adhere to it.
I think it comes down to different ways of thinking about the church. For Roman Catholics, it's rather like the American constitution, which Democrats and Republicans can disagree about, yet still claim loyalty to. Since the church is a society as 'visible as the republic of Venice' one's 'doing' in the form of adhering to it is what is most important. For Lutherans, the actual 'receiving' of the gospel defines the church and therefore the how people actual understand the gospel is the more important. Therefore merely verbal agreements are pointless, something the signer should have known.
Jack,
ReplyDeleteThis is a helpful comment. It is true that if Lutherans understand the diachronic extension of church as a succession of faith then it is important to have identity conditions for that faith. This demands, as Luther says repeatedly, an agreement in the "sensus," not merely in the words.
If visible synchronic and diachronic structural unity signs the presence of church, then one must do what one can to have such synchronic and diachronic unity.
For most of the history of Catholicism, however, the specifics of what is to be believed was important. So what can we make of it not being so important anymore? What does this tell us about how modern Catholicism implicitly understands the semantics of theological statements?
Thanks again for the conversation.