Several hundred years ago, Martin Luther led a revolt that today we call the Protestant Reformation.
There are several areas of contention to be found between Luther and the Catholic Church. Sadly, Luther made some very astute points about corruption in the Church regarding things like the selling of indulgences. However, he did not focus only on reforming Church corruption. His theology would often be at odds with the established Catholic Faith.
One of the areas where Martin Luther broke from the Catholic Church was in his view of grace. Grace is the encounter with God and the effect that it has on us. It is something transcendent that helps us grow from where we are to where God wants us to be. His grace always comes before our response so that anything we do is a reaction to that grace.
St. Augustine understood the effect of grace in two major ways. The first was that it was a healing we receive which responds to sin and makes us whole. The second is that grace puts our loves in proper order within us. This second point is clearly seen in Augustine’s life. He loved intellectual and sensual pursuits more than God. But when he encountered His grace, Augustine was able to place the love of God first and his other loves in their proper order beneath the Divine.
St. Thomas Aquinas picks up this idea from Augustine. Thomas also emphasizes that grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it. Sometimes, we focus on human sin and frailty as the markers of our humanity. We say, “To err is human…” And in many ways, this is true. But when we err, particularly when we sin, we become less human, not more human. When Thomas says that grace “perfects” nature, he does not mean that we humans must be without flaw before we have grace. We see this reflected in the way we describe horribly violent crimes as “inhuman.” When we receive the grace of God, we do not become less human. We become more like Christ and more whom God has intended us to be. When God brings us His grace, we respond to it by accepting it and letting it transform us.
Luther looked at the tradition that was given from St. Thomas and he thought the Catholic Church was teaching that it was our human response to grace that saves us. Because of Original Sin, Luther thought we were so corrupted that there was nothing in us that was good. Catholics theology says that because of our fallen nature, we all have an attraction to sin which we call concupiscence. It is that thing in us that desires the things that we know are sinful. (Think about how people are enticed to something once they are told that it is “forbidden.”) For Luther, this concupiscence wasn’t just a predisposition or attraction to sin. For him, concupiscence was sin. Because of this, the human being is totally corrupt: we relish sin and have a nausea for the good. This is because Original Sin has completely obliterated human nature.
So for Luther, the only thing that can save us is Christ’s saving power of the cross which we receive through faith alone. None of my works have any merit, because they come from my corrupt human nature. But faith is a gift of God’s grace and it is the only thing that can lead to salvation.
But this makes grace something alien to us. To be sure, Grace comes from God alone, but in Luther’s view, grace is not something we are made for. It is the cure for our disease, which is human nature. For Luther, accepting Christ’s grace through faith makes it so that Jesus covers my sinful human nature. But at my core, I am still sinful and corrupted.
This is at odds with how Catholics view grace. Yes, we are wounded by Original Sin, but we are not beyond repair. We are not saved by faith alone. The one time accepting of Jesus as savior is only part of the process of salvation. The view of Luther is too exterior for the Catholic faith. Salvation is too much of something that happens outside of you. We are not simply covered by Christ’s grace:
We are transformed by Christ’s grace.
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