“The church of the living God [is] the pillar and foundation of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15)
Throughout the life and history of the Church, controversies have arisen which have required the clarification of Church teaching. The first Eccumenical Council, the Council of Nicaea, was called to clarify the divinity of Christ in response to a rogue priest, Arius, who claimed that Christ was not fully divine. The Council of Ephesus defined both that Christ was only one person, and that the Blessed Virgin Mary was the Theotokos, or Mother of God, in response to the heretical Archbishop Nestorius.
The Protestant Reformation, and the ideas of Martin Luther in particular, was a different beast to deal with altogether. While with previous heretics and controversies there was an understanding that there was a right and a wrong answer to a given question, and that whichever way the Church decided would, at least in theory, settle the issue: the spirit of the Reformation carried a different ethos altogether. It appealed not to the authority of the Church, nor the sentence of a council, nor the consensus of the Church Fathers, but ultimately to one’s own conscience.
In Luther’s most famous work, The Freedom of a Christian, or On Christian Liberty, he opens by stating that, “A Christian is a free lord of all things and is subject to no one.” Though he also states that Christians have duty to all of their fellow Christians, they are not bound to any judgements about the realm of religious or spiritual matters. For him, and eventually for all of the other Reformers, there is no office, argument, or cleric which can bind them to believe something that they do not wish to. This is not merely one argument against another, but an argument against arguing.
To see where Luther went awry, one must examine what the Church teaches about authority and the role of conscience. It is the purpose of the teaching office of the Church, also known as the Magisterium, “to preserve God’s people from deviations and defections and to guarantee them the objective possibility of professing the true faith without error” (CCC 890). When the Church speaks in her role as teacher, each teaching “must be adhered to with the obedience of faith” (CCC 891).
The Church also states, however, that “when he listens to his conscience, the prudent man can hear God speaking” (CCC 1777), and that “A human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience” (CCC 1790). The Church’s positions here run into an apparent paradox. If Christians ought to listen to and believe what the Church teaches, then how can Christians truly listen to their consciences and make their own free decisions?
Luther himself, after being asked to recant his views at the Diet of Worms, famously stated, “I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe.” The difference, however, between the conscience of a faithful Catholic and Luther is how their consciences are formed. While Luther adopted the erroneous position of Sola Scriptura, the belief that the Scriptures are the final authority for the Christian, he in effect made his interpretation of the Scriptures the guide for his conscience, whereas the Catholic forms his conscience by the Scriptures and the Sacred Tradition, both of which are given proper interpretation by the Magisterium.
Though one may object by saying that the conscience of the believer is sure and steady when it is guided by the Holy Spirit, it appears that Luther himself disproves this notion. Within his infamous 95 Theses, he states that, “God remits guilt to no one unless at the same time he humbles him in all things and makes him submissive to the vicar, the priest.” This is an idea which he appears to ardently detest just three years later when he published his Freedom of a Christian. He who holds to the previous position, then, runs into a dilemma. Either Luther was not guided by the Holy Spirit, or he simply grew in his understanding over time. Either way, he must admit that not everyone who claims to be enlightened by the Holy Spirit is correct, and thus should search for a more sure arbiter of truth.
So then, the Catholic is able to claim both a true allegiance to his conscience, as well as a steady source from which to form it. Faith that Christ left us a reliable source to relate the Gospel from generation to generation is what allows us, ultimately, to trust that we can hear Him speak through our consciences.
James Pritchett is a Sophomore studying History and Classics with a deep affinity for his native land, the Golden State. Despite being the most recent lover of Catholicism on the Torch staff, he is the C101 editor and his main interests consist of reading Dostoyevsky, playing devil’s advocate, and correcting people on niche theological heresies.
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