An event that occurred on the 31st of October 1517 had a
major consequence on the Christian world and its effects were to be felt even
to the current day. This was the day that the Augustinian priest Martin Luther
(not to be confused with Martin Luther King) nailed his 95 theses at the church
in Wittenberg, Germany attacking what he perceived to be the so called ‘evils’
of the Catholic Church. Whilst there was good cause for Luther to attack as it
were the practices of various priests through the selling of Indulgences
and the general mood of the populace, at the same time as the old American
adage goes “do not throw the baby out with the bathwater.”
The purpose of this examination as such is to highlight as what
Aristotle had said centuries earlier “a small error in the beginning leads to a
big one in the end”[1]
and in the case of Martin Luther, his philosophy certainly shows how one small
error could have such devastating consequences. Fr. Vidmar states that “At the root of all his (Luther’s) reforms was his philosophic
background as a nominalist”[2]
Nominalism is a philosophy of thought that is attributed to William
of Ockham (1287 – 1347), an English Franciscan Friar and scholastic theologian
who taught that essences are unknowable. As stated by Professor Weaver, Ockham
“propounded the fateful doctrine of nominalism, which denies that universals
have a real existence. His triumph tended to leave universal terms mere names
serving our convenience”[3]
It was precisely this idea that affected the thinking of Martin
Luther who centuries later was led to divorce faith from reason. It was this
rupture that was the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. As stated by
Oslen:
Ockham and his disciples, as it turned out,
influenced the thinking of both Martin Luther and John Calvin, the most influential
thinkers among the first Protestants. Nominalism shaped how both viewed faith
and also affected how they understood divine revelation and Scripture. Put
simply, early Protestantism insisted that the sole sufficiency of Scripture
must be accepted on faith — a faith divorced from the authority of the Church
and the Magisterium[4]
Whilst Nominalism, in the speculative order, teaches that only the
singular is real and the universal is just a mere concept of mind, it also, in
the practical order leads to subjectivism and skepticism. This is because as
stated by Dr. Woodbury
Ockham by his teaching opened up the way from
two sources for skepticism. From an empiristic foundation, that naturally we
can know only that which we know immediately and intuitively. From this, that
the act of knowledge is considered as merely subjective…but also in the moral
order he prepared the way of subjectivism and skepticism because he taught that
nothing is by its nature good or evil, but that good and evil are such only
through the divine will so that by the absolute omnipotence of God the moral
order could be substituted for by any other[5]
In other words nominalism can be described as a ‘gutter’ philosophy.
This is because it uses the intellect to deny that it has an intellect. Thus
Nominalism, Empiricism and Materialism, whilst they have different names, express
the same denial of knowing universals and therefore knowing the natures of things.[6]
This misunderstood concept of nature is then allied as it were to
Luther’s understanding of faith. What is of importance to note is that Luther
was not the ‘inventor’ of the Protestant understanding of divorcing faith from
reason, grace from nature. The pioneer of this was the Englishman in John
Wycliffe (1330 – 1384) who claimed that faith was solely based on scripture
alone. As stated by Fr. Vidmar
Wycliffe denied the supremacy of the papacy
and the divine authority of the church. The only certain rule of faith, he
claimed, was Scripture, which everyone must interpret for himself, and which
much be made available in the vernacular. Furthermore, transubstantiation and
the Mass were not scriptural.[7]
Coupled
with a false understanding of nature (as a Nominalist) and coupled with being
influenced by false thinking in the order of grace (under the influence of
Wycliffe) Luther therefore had great difficulty in holding onto Catholic
principles in areas of theology, of keeping faith and reason together. One
example of this is the idea of the one sacrifice of the Mass on Calvary. As
highlighted by Fr. Vidmar:
Nominalism, once again, played a role here. If, as
Scripture says, there is only one sacrifice, how then can a Mass be regarded as
a sacrifice as well? Is not the church multiplying sacrifices? His (Luther’s)
philosophy could not encompass a sacramental ‘sharing’ in the one sacrifice of
Calvary[8]
Thus the
divorce of grace from nature (faith from reason) led Luther into further grave
errors. But from a philosophical basis, because Protestantism is based on
Nominalism, it means that it has lost contact with reality as such. Since for
Luther nature is unknowable it means that the whole focus is therefore based on
materialism and logically, if holding onto materialism it leads to atheism.
As the
Benedictine monk and historian David Knowles rightly points out because the
philosophical basis of Protestantism is that of nominalism, it means that
scepticism plays a role precisely because nature is unknowable. And if
scepticism plays a role it ultimately leads to atheism:
…Since classical Protestantism regarded revelation
as something arbitrary, to be accepted with unreasonable submission and left
without comment or explanation, nominalism, under the guise of a devout
humility, left the door open for agnosticism or incredulity as well as for a
fideistic acceptance of religious teaching. This resulted in a severing from
the history and tradition of the Church, and required an appeal to “sola scriptura…
the void left by the disappearance of rational arguments was filled by a recourse
to mystical certainty.[9]
And as Olsen notes at the end:
And when that certainty slipped away, scepticism
grew, which in turn nurtured agnosticism and then overt atheism.[10]
Thus the whole point of this small treatise
was to show that the teleological principle of Protestantism, that is the end
or purpose of Protestantism, from a philosophical perspective leads to Atheism.
[1] Aristotle,
Nichomachean Ethics
[3] Oslen, Carl E,
‘Bad Ideas Have Bad Consequences’, Catholic Answer Journal Jan/Feb2014,
Vol. 27 Issue 6, p34-34. 1p.
[4] Oslen, Carl E,
‘Bad Ideas Have Bad Consequences’, Catholic Answer Journal Jan/Feb2014, Vol. 27 Issue 6, p34-34. 1p.
[5] Dr. A Woodbury
“Defensive Metaphysics” Centre for Catholic Studies Inc De Aquino Press 2014,
Page 11
[6] As we shall see, it is precisely by
denying that we can know the essences or natures of things that nominalism
leads to atheism.
[7] Vidmar, The Catholic Church Through the
Ages, Paulist Press 2005, Page 161
[9] Oslen, Carl E, ‘Bad Ideas Have Bad Consequences’, Catholic Answer
Journal Jan/Feb2014, Vol. 27 Issue 6, p34-34. 1p.
[10] Oslen, Carl E, ‘Bad Ideas Have Bad Consequences’, Catholic Answer
Journal Jan/Feb2014, Vol. 27 Issue 6, p34-34. 1p.
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