Luther on Mary’s sinlessness and perpetual virginity

The following quotes from Luther’s Works indicate that he did believe in sinlessness of Mary and her perpetual virginity: 

Mary also freely ascribes all to God’s grace, not to her merit. For though she was without sin, yet that grace was far too great for her to deserve it in any way. How should a creature deserve to become the Mother of God? Though certain scribblers make much ado about her worthiness for such motherhood, I prefer to believe her rather than them. She says her low estate was regarded by God, not thereby rewarding her for anything she had done, but, “He has done great things for me,” He has done this of His own accord without any doing of mine. For never in all her life did she think to become the Mother of God, still less did she prepare or make herself meet for it. The tidings took her all unaware, as Luke reports (Luke 1:29). Merit, however, is not unprepared for its reward, but deliberately seeks and awaits it.

 Luther’s Works, Vol. 21

For this reason, too, Scripture does not quibble or speak about the virginity of Mary after the birth of Christ, a matter about which the hypocrites are greatly concerned, as if it were something of the utmost importance on which our whole salvation depended. Actually, we should be satisfied simply to hold that she remained a virgin after the birth of Christ because Scripture does not state or indicate that she later lost her virginity. We certainly need not be so terribly afraid that someone will demonstrate, out of his own head apart from Scripture, that she did not remain a virgin. But the Scripture stops with this, that she was a virgin before and at the birth of Christ; for up to this point God had need of her virginity in order to give us the promised blessed seed without sin.

Luther’s Works, Vol. 45

A High View of Scripture? Part 1

The title of this post comes from that of a book written by Prof. Craig D. Allert of Trinity Western University in Langley, British Columbia, Canada.  It was published in 2007 by Baker Academic. First, what is “high view of Scripture”?  From what the author wrote “high view of Scripture’ is that of Evangelicals who start with doctrine of inspiration when they view Scripture and pay little or no attention on the historical issues related to the formation of the Bible. The author argues that high view of Scripture demands an understanding and integration of the Bible’s very formation (page 13, from here onwards words in italic mean they are cited directly from the book).

Most evangelicals, particularly at the popular level, have what I call a “dropped out of the sky” understanding of the Bible. What I mean by this is that since the Bible is the primary source for evangelical faith and life, it is taken for granted as being always there and handed on to us as such. We give little thought to the question of why we have this particular collection. How, when, and why did this collection come into being, and why was it raised above all other documents of the early church? How as the authority of this collection recognized and appropriated in the early church? Did it act as the church’s sole authority?

A High View of Scripture?, page 10

Prof. Allert noted that Evangelicals have typically given little consideration to the formation of the New Testament and its possible implications on a doctrine of Scripture. Many assume that as soon as a New Testament document was available, it was consciously separated from all other noncanonical documents and added to a growing New Testament canon. Prof. Allert refers this kind of thinking as “binder mentality“, i.e. like keeping documents in three-ring binder one by one from the first to be written to the last one and then the binder was snapped shut forever and its content became our canon of New Testament.  History shows that this was not the case. How and why did the church come to accept as authoritative Scripture a New Testament containing no more and no less than twenty-seven books, and to place alongside either the Hebrew or the Greek [Septuagint or LXX] Scriptures, renamed the “Old Testament”?  There are three answers or theories to this question:

1. New Testament canon as a spontaneous occurrence: The existence of quotation from New Testament books in early Christians’ writings indicates the existence of core collection of accepted writings. The problem is quotation from a book does not automatically give it scriptural status.  This is what the second theory attempts to correct.

2. A Second century canon: If a book is preceded by a citation formula referring to it as Scripture, this then becomes the test for canonicity. It is referred as second century canon because such citation appeared from second century AD. The theory assumes that there was already closed canon of Old Testament to which second century Christians cited as Scripture – then when they applied the same to Christian’ writings, it will indicate their canonicity.  The problem with this theory is second century Christians cited as Scripture not only those belonging to our New Testament books but also other writings, even their own. This leads to the third theory:

3. Scripture does not mean canon:What the church received from Judaism was not closed canon of Old Testament but religious literature that circulated freely in Judaism before 70 CE [Common Era = AD]. This comprises a closed collection of Law, a closed collection of Prophets, and a third, open body of undefined literature that included the latter defined Writings, the books Protestants have come to call the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, and other books known only by name or no longer extant. In relation to this statement my readers can read my two posts: “New Testament quotation from Old Testament” and “Jamnia council and (Jewish) Canon of Old Testament. Only in the third century did the church come to the issue of defining the Old Testament for itself. If the church did not receive an Old Testament canon from Judaism, but rather Scripture on the way to canonization, then the comparison of the citations of Christian literature with Old Testament citations cannot establish canonicity for Christian writings. In other words Scripture does not mean Canon.

According to Prof. Allert each of three theories is correct on some important points; they are also flawed in their understanding of some fundamental points. Instead of considering two categories (Scripture and Canon) Prof Allert suggests three classes of them based on how often they were cited and he proposed three phases of the formation of New Testament canon:

1. Phase 1: This phase lasted before end of first century AD.  Christians already have as central core (or first class) some books that was accepted as Scripture.  Others like Acts, shorter Catholic epistles, some minor Pauline epistles and Revelation belonged to second class together with Shepherd of Hermas.

2. Phase 2: We have levelling out during second and third century AD.  We have more citation from books of the second class and Old Testament and New Testament scripture came to have equal status. We have three classes of books: much cited books (central core), little cited books (that later entered canon) and those that are discouraged or explicitly directed to be used only for special purposes.

3. Phase 3: Fourth-century rulings about the canon become firm. Athanasius’s Festal Letter 39 (367) is recognized as the first document to list our present twenty-seven book New Testament as “canonical”.

Prof. Allert concluded that rather than conceiving of a closed New Testament canon in the second century, to which the church appealed for its sole source of teaching, this three-class paradigm forces one to consider how the church judged and appropriated the very writings that the church included in its canon. This has direct implications for the argument that the early church appealed to the Bible and the Bible alone for its doctrine [or sola scriptura, one of fundamental tenets of Protestants and "Bible only" Christians]: one cannot properly speak of a Bible in the first several centuries of the church’s existence. To state it in simpler words: the Christians in the first several centuries AD did not adhere to “by Scripture alone” as source of authority because they did not define the limit or canon of Scripture yet.  Note that Prof. Allert is not Catholic – while he did refer to John Henry Newman (1801 – 1890) who later became Catholic, he wrote (page 76): ‘Theological history drove Newman away from Protestantism and to the Roman Catholic Church. I, however, was driven to a deeper appreciation for the church while I remained in the Protestant tradition.

To be continued

Salvation of Non-Christians

What is the fate of those who lived and died before they have the chance to hear the Gospel?  Before we answer that question we need to briefly summarize what Catholics believe about our salvation:

1. Men, though have freedom, can neither will nor save themselves without God’s Grace.  God, by His Grace, takes the first initiative for our salvation and using our freedom we response to and cooperate with His Grace.  Grace is (Catechism of the Catholic Church # 1996) favour, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons (John 1:12), partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life (2 Peter 1:4).

2. God calls all men for salvation and therefore He gives His Grace through Christ to everyone.  Scripture says (RSV): ‘For the grace of God has appeared for the salvation of all men’ (Titus 2:11) and ‘For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.’ (1 Corinthians 15:22).

3. Since the initiative for our salvation belongs to God, there is what we call as predestination. God predestines some (the Elect) to heaven but He predestines no one to hell. Scripture says that He desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy 2:4, RSV).  Those who end up in hell do so because they, in using their freedom, reject or refuse to cooperate with His Grace.

4. God’s Grace first moves us to believe in Christ and to obey His Commandments. Without His Grace we cannot do both, not even have the initiative to do them. Scripture says (RSV): ‘No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him‘ (John 6:44) and ‘Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God‘ (2 Corinthians 3:5).  Catholics believe that salvation is by grace with which we must cooperate using our freedom.  Thus Catholics reject what is known as monergism, the belief that God’s grace requires no human cooperation.  Scripture says (RSV):   ‘But by the grace of God I am what I am. and his grace toward me was not in vain.  On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God which is with me (1 Corinthians 15:10) and ‘work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure (Philippians 2:12-13). In Revelation 3:20 while Christ takes the initiative to knock at our door He waits our response to open the door to welcome Him.

5. The Elect have assurance of salvation but unless God reveals it to us we cannot identify them.

6. Christ died on the cross for all men – He ‘who gave himself as a ransom for all’ (1 Timothy 2:6, RSV), who ‘came into the world to save sinners’ (1 Timothy 1:15, RSV) and who ‘came to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10, RSV).

7. Faith in Christ and in God is God’s free gift – He gave it to us not because we did something to deserve it; faith is necessary and is the beginning of our salvation.  Once we believe in Christ and if we have the opportunity we should be baptized and become the member of His Church, which is His Body; then with the help of and moved by God’s Grace we obey His commandments – we undergo what Scripture calls as Sanctification.  Scripture says (RSV): ‘He who believes and is baptized will be saved’ (Mark 16:16), Do this and you will live“! (Luke 10:28) and ‘God chose you from the beginning to be saved through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth’ (2 Thessalonians 2:13). Scripture nowhere says that faith alone saves us.  Christ said (RSV): ‘Not every one who says to me, Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is ion heaven (Matthew 7:21).  ‘You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone (James 2:24, RSV)

From these seven points Catholics believe that salvation is still possible to those who NOT through their own fault, do not hear the Gospel and therefore do not know the Church.  Since God, by His Grace offers salvation to all (Titus 2:11) and through Christ all shall be made alive (1 Corinthians 15:22) then He should provide a mean to those who never heard the Gospel – He would not contradict Himself or makes empty promise.

Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience – those too may achieve eternal salvation.

Catechism of the Catholic Church # 847

Is there any biblical basis for what Catholics believe? 

And Peter opened his mouth and said: “Truly I perceive that God shows no partiality, but in every nation any one who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.

Acts 10:34 (RSV)

One might argue that here Scripture talks about Cornelius who later became believers of Christ.   But certainly there are other Cornelius’ in every nation who fear God and do what is right, which is acceptable to God, even if they do not know Christ.   Are they saved by their works?   Recall that Catholics believe no one can do any good works without being first moved by God’s Grace.

It is worth to mention that Clause 847 should be read together with:

Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.

Catechism of the Catholic Church # 846

Although in ways known to himself God can lead those who, through no fault of their own, are ignorant of the Gospel, to that faith without which it is impossible to please him, the Church still has the obligation and also the sacred right to evangelize all men.”

Catechism of the Catholic Church # 848

Epiphanius and canon of Old Testament

Epiphanius (c. 315 to 403 AD) was bishop of Salamis in Cyprus.  He was known in his attempts to refute heresies from the beginning of the Church to his days through his works: Panarion (Medicine Chest) or Adversus Haereses.  His other mostly known work is de Mensuris et Ponderibus (On Weights and Measurements).  In those two works Epiphanius gave us three lists of Old Testament canon. 

The first one (Adversus Haereses 8.6) comprises Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, 4 books of Kingdoms (Samuels and Kings), 2 books of Chronicles, The Twelve, Isaiah, Jeremiah + Lamentations + Epistle of Jeremiah + Baruch in one book, Ezekiel, Daniel, 2 books of Esdras (Ezra and Nehemiah), Esther. 

The second list (de Mensuris et Ponderibus 4) has Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Joshua, Judges & Ruth in one book, 1 & 2 Chronicles in one book, 1 & 2 Kingdoms in one book, 3 & 4 Kingdoms in one book, the Twelve, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, 2 books of Esdras, Esther. 

The third list (de Mensuris et Ponderibus 23) comprises Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Job, Judges, Ruth, Psalms, 2 books of Chronicles, 4 books of Kingdoms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, the Twelve, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, 2 books of Esdras, Esther. 

The first list includes deuterocanonical Epistle of Jeremiah and Baruch, both combined with Jeremiah and Lamentations.  The second and third lists are identical with different order and grouping of books. Lamentations is missing in the second and third lists, unless it is combined with Jeremiah and all deuterocanonical books are excluded.  Interestingly Epiphanius considered deuterocanonical Wisdom and Sirach to be part of New Testament (Adversus Haereses 76 Conf. Act 5 p. 941).