Abstract
This chapter maps the blend for Sin that was developed in the previous chapter’s historical engagement as Sin Is An Impurity Warranting Disinheritance. This in turn depends on the logic of baptismal regeneration as a controlling frame. It shows how this conceptual blend forces the question “is concupiscence sin?” to be answered in the negative. Nevertheless, the Council of Trent is not found to be underestimating the power of concupiscence, as some Lutherans claim. It instead has a nuanced, eschatological vision of justification as both state and trajectory. The chapter concludes by showing how this complex vision is incorporated into the JDDJ’s differentiated consensus and how, within the consensus, the Lutheran position can be accepted by Catholics.
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- 1.
Council of Trent Session V. June 17, 1546. Canon 5. DH 1515. “In renatis enim nihil odit Deus, quia ‘nihil est damnationis iis’ [Rm 8 :1], qui vere ‘consepulti sunt cum Christo per baptisma in mortem’ [Rm 6:4], qui ‘non secundum carnem ambulant’ [Rm 8:1], sed veterem hominem exuentes et novum, qui secundum Deum creatus est, induentes [cf. Eph 4:22–24; Col 3:9s], innocentes, immaculati, puri, innoxii ac Deo dilecti filii effecti sunt, ‘heredes quidem Dei, coheredes autem Christi’ [Rm 8:17], ita ut nihil prorsus eos ab ingressu caeli remoretur.” Translation Tanner II:667. Emphasis original.
- 2.
Ibid.
- 3.
Small caps, as will be remembered, denote a blend or a frame.
- 4.
At least in the USA. This is tested by seeing how long it takes subjects to sort particular objects into the proper category. A longer time is evidence of more complex processing, and therefore a more peripheral example. See Kövesces, Language, Mind, and Culture, 25–26.
- 5.
See Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things, 17–57.
- 6.
See Trent V can 2, DH 1512. Note how these are directly related to each other. Original justice is precisely the faculty that rules and orders the various desires of the human, and its removal allows them to be “disordered” or “unruled” desires or concupiscences.
- 7.
Gary Anderson, Sin: A History, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009)111–132; 189–202.
- 8.
After correctly noting that theories of the atonement did not receive the careful theological definition that the councils thought necessary in the areas of the Trinity and Christology, Anderson traces out two Syriac Christian explanations, as found in homilies of Narsai, a theologian of the Church of the East (d.503), and Jacob of Serug, from the Syrian Orthodox Church of the West. The first could be called an example of the Christus Victor theory, the second an example of Christ as wealthy benefactor repaying another’s debt. Sin, 121–130.
- 9.
DH 1515, trans. Turner, II:667.
- 10.
It is possible that the Council’s extensive effort to avoid the question of the Immaculate Conception reinforced the tendency toward the metaphoric frame of stain (macula).
- 11.
As Susan K. Wood notes, Catholics emphasize transformative language for justification, meaning that “this is an instance where Lutherans tend to use both/and language and Catholics either/or language.” This difference, as she points out, leads to an equivocation on the word sin, which is precisely what the present project is attempting to clarify. “Observations on Official Catholic Response to Joint Declaration,” Pro Ecclesia 7, no. 4 (1998), 422.
- 12.
“In the most proper sense sin is the first, mortal or deadly sin, which in itself alienates a person from God so as to result in damnation. This is where Catholics speak of being in a ‘state of sin’ which is incompatible with justification.” Ibid. Venial sins, therefore, are also not central examples of the category sin, because they neither separate from God nor require the same kind of sacramental response that mortal sins do. As Stephen J. Duffy notes, even the distinction between mortal and venial sins presupposes that in a state of grace “integral personal development is a fragile business.” Divine grace leads to healing, but this healing is gradual, and “the work of elevation is in principle complete, but healing takes a lifetime.” This is not entirely dissimilar from Luther’s description of healing and justification, as will be clear in the next chapter. The Dynamics of Grace: Perspectives in Theological Anthropology, (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1993), 154. David Yeago makes a similar point, in more traditionally Lutheran language, “Interpreting the Roman Response,” 407.
- 13.
LK argues that the logic of baptism is central in Roman Catholic thought, while that of the confessional is more apt to the Lutheran. LK—Rechtfertigung II.1; 45–46.
- 14.
See LG §11; Tanner II:857.
- 15.
Consider the following as examples, taken from the explanatory rites of baptism. “You have become a new creation and have clothed yourself in Christ. Receive this baptismal garment and bring it unstained to the judgment seat of our Lord Jesus Christ, so that you may have everlasting life.” (RCIA §229) “You have been enlightened by Christ. Walk always as a child of the light and keep the flame of faith alive in your heart.” (RCIA §361).
- 16.
Of course, this language is exactly that of Trent. DH 1515; Tanner II:667.14–15.
- 17.
See LK Rechtfertigung II; 44–45.
- 18.
Because these are found within the same frame and constitute exclusive options to each other, they could be said to constitute a mirror network.
- 19.
LG §8. DH 4121. “Ecclesia in proprio sinu peccatores complectens….”
- 20.
JF §109; JDDJ §15, §§19–20; Annex §2E.
- 21.
Eric W. Gritch and Robert W. Jenson, Lutheranism: The Theological Movement and its Confessional Writings, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1976), 39. The idea has gained a significant place among Lutheran worries about Catholic thought. Examples include Gerhard O. Forde, A More Radical Gospel: Essays on Eschatology, Authority, Atonement, and Ecumenism, Mark C. Mattes and Steven D. Paulson, eds., (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 125, 130; Steven D. Paulson, “The Augustinian Imperfection: Faith, Christ, and Imputation and Its Role in the Ecumenical Discussion of Justification,” 104–24 in The Gospel of Justification in Christ: Where does the Church Stand Today, Wayne Stumme, ed., (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 111. Joseph Burgess and Jeffrey Gros diagnose a parallel worry among some Catholics about an “anti-Manichaean or Anti-Antinomian codicil in certain formulations of Lutheran Orthodoxy” Building Unity Ecumenical Dialogues with Roman Catholic Participation in the United States, (New York: Paulist, 1989), 190.
- 22.
In this, it may be considered a “growth” category, in Root’s schema (see Chap. 7, p. 91), but I am arguing for something more than this. It is not merely that the human is just in God’s eyes and becoming more just, (thus deepening a non-scalar reality). Instead, the human being is at the same time participating in God’s final justice (as the formal cause of his justification) but experiencing his own life as not fully embodying that end. A person is thus herself an eschatological reality that must be seen as a double vision (as she is and will be).
- 23.
DH 1535; trans. Tanner, II: 675. While the chapter itself speaks of an increase in justice, the title describes an increase in justification, “De acceptae iustificationis incremento.” The relevant canon also speaks of an increase in justice. DH 1574; Translation Tanner II:680.35–37. Emphasis original.
- 24.
Trent Session 6, Chapter 7, which 1529, Tanner II:673. This section will be important again below in considering the critique of the JDDJ offered by Christopher Malloy.
- 25.
One occurance in JDDJ §30, five in the Appendix, Resources for 4.4. In the German, it occurs five times as Konkupiszenz: one in §30, four in Anhang, Quellen zu 4.4. The other use appears in the German as Begierde. This term also appears in §12 of the JDDJ and is translated as “desires” in the English version (i.e. “the justified are assailed from within and without by powers and desires”). “Desire” in the sense of concupiscence (that is, “the selfish desires of the old Adam”) also appears in §28. In the German, this is rendered “des selbstsüchtigen Begehrens des alten Menschen.” Begehren appears in the document only this once.
- 26.
JDDJ I §26 (Geneva, 1995), ELCA Archives, Elk Grove, IL. “In terms of content, there is agreement with Lutherans when Catholics say that ‘concupiscence,’ which remains after baptism [as an inclination to be contrary to God, affects the whole human being,] is in contradiction to God and is the object of a lifelong struggle. And yet concupiscence no longer separates the justified from God. Properly speaking, it therefore is not [in that sense] sin.” The German is available in GER–DER, A.3. The additions in brackets are present in a text of the document labeled “revised 21.9.94” and found in the ELCA archives of the Lutheran/Roman Catholic Coordinating Committee. The first bracketed text seems to have been removed on the advice of Harding Meyer, noted in a German edition labeled “von Meyer redaktionell überarbeitete Fassung. 8. Okt. 1994,” available in the same archival collection.
- 27.
JDDJ II §30 (Geneva, 1996), ELCA Archives, Elk Grove, IL. “Catholics hold that concupiscence remaining after baptism is contrary to God’s original plan for humankind. This inclination, which comes from sin and presses toward sin, is however not ‘sin’ in the proper sense, for it is not a morally wrong, free decision, nor is it a condition or inclination that merits the punishment of eternal death. They say that concupiscence is in contradiction to God and is the object of a lifelong struggle. It does not separate the justified from God.” German: GER–DER, B.1.
- 28.
JDDJ (§30), in German: “Die Katholiken sind der Auffassung, daß die Gnade Jesu Christi, die in der Taufe verliehen wird, alles was “wirklich” Sünde, was “verdammenswürdig” ist, tilgt (Röm 8,1), daß jedoch eine aus der Sünde kommende und zur Sünde drängende Neigung (Konkupiszenz) im Menschen verbleibt. Insofern nach katholischer Überzeugung zum Zustandekommen menschlicher Sünden ein personales Element gehört, sehen sie bei dessen Fehlen die gottwidrige Neigung nicht als Sünde im eigentlichen Sinne an. Damit wollen sie nicht leugnen, daß diese Neigung nicht dem ursprünglichen Plan Gottes vom Menschen entspricht, noch, daß sie objektiv Gottwidrigkeit und Gegenstand lebenslangen Kampfes ist; in Dankbarkeit für die Erlösung durch Christus wollen sie herausstellen, daß die gottwidrige Neigung nicht die Strafe des ewigen Todes verdient und den Gerechtfertigten nicht von Gott trennt. Wenn der Gerechtfertigte sich aber willentlich von Gott trennt, genügt nicht eine erneute Beobachtung der Gebote, sondern er muß im Sakrament der Versöhnung Verzeihung und Frieden empfangen durch das Wort der Vergebung, das ihm Kraft des Versöhnungswerkes Gottes in Christus gewährt wird [vgl. Quellen zu Kap. 4.4.].” (GER–DER, C.1).
- 29.
JDDJ §28.
- 30.
Ibid.
- 31.
Ibid.
- 32.
JF §99, §159.9; Wood , “Observations,” 423; Yeago , “Interpreting,” 406. In a sense, the difficulty is caused by those who would insist that the disagreement be settled in those terms, rather than in terms of a different model as JF and the JDDJ do. Another way of describing this is the idea of “double agency,” suggested as a solution to this problem by Michael Root , “Aquinas, Merit, and Reformation Theology after the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification,” Modern Theology, 20 no.1 (2004). The idea will be more directly applied below at p. 191.
- 33.
i.e. that would lead to damnation.
- 34.
See above at p. 176.
- 35.
CDF and PCPCU, “Response of the Catholic Church the JDDJ” (June 25, 1998.) Available at http://bit.ly/1iIZm4b. German: GER–DER, C.55.
- 36.
Ibid., Clarification 1.
- 37.
Ibid.
- 38.
Annex §2A.
- 39.
Ibid., citing Ps. 19:12.
- 40.
Ibid.
- 41.
Otto Hermann Pesch, Hinführung zu Luther, (Mainz: Matthias Grünewald Verlag, 1982), 191–2. “Zwischen dem Sünder, der nichts als Sünder ist, und dem Sünder, der zugleich gerecht ist, liegt ein Abgrund … Das ‘simul’ ist eine inwendige Struktur dieser Neuschöpfung, nicht etwa deren Infragestellung.”
- 42.
So, JF §157–8.
- 43.
JF §103; So also Avery Dulles, “Justification in Contemporary Catholic Theology,” 258–60. See also the discussion in LK, Rechtfertigung, III.4; 54–55.
- 44.
Christopher Malloy makes a major point of the distinction between created and uncreated grace, suggesting that created grace is ignored by much of contemporary Catholic theology including the dialogues. However, if created grace is a quality of the soul inclining us to the movement of relationship with God, then this too has a primarily relational character. The Christian is related toward God, and the gift of created grace is fundamentally related to this motion, it is not something which we possess as a thing within ourselves unrelated to our relationship to God. See ST Ia.IIa.Q110.A2.
- 45.
Ibid., 260–61.
- 46.
Michael Root , “Continuing the Conversation: Deeper Agreement on Justification as Criterion and on the Christian as simul iustus et peccator,” 42–61 in The Gospel of Justification in Christ: Where does the Church Stand Today, William C. Stumme, ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 44. For an example of what this could very practically mean for Lutheran and Catholic positions, see Robert Jenson, “On the Roman Response,” 402–403.
- 47.
Even this may require some nuance. Catholics will mean by this “without mortal sin,” while Lutherans do not make this particular distinction.
- 48.
Dulles’ language about the JDDJ was indeed harsher in 1999 than it was later. See “Two Languages of Salvation: The Lutheran-Catholic Joint Declaration,” First Things 98 (Dec 1999), 25–30.
- 49.
“Response by the Lutheran-Roman Catholic Coordinating Committee in the USA to the Proposed ‘Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification Between the Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church,” 4, cited in Patrick W. Carey, Avery Cardinal Dulles, SJ: A Model Theologian, (New York: Paulist, 2010), 371.
- 50.
It should be noted that none of these relate to the anthropology of the baptized.
- 51.
Carey, 373.
- 52.
Dulles also entertains Christopher Malloy’s contention that the JDDJ has little juridical authority. He begins by questioning the LWF’s ability to make a binding decision on behalf of the member churches. This is a complex issue. The LWF cannot formally force its churches to assent, and so it has historically reported on consensuses. The process of the JDDJ speaks to something new. The LWF Council first established that there was a consensus among the vast majority of member churches. Then by a vote of the LWF Council (in light of the report of the member churches) the LWF spoke in its own name. Robert Jenson, at least, sees in this action, the creation of “something remarkably resembling a general Lutheran magisterium … for the purpose,” of declaring the condemnations inactive on behalf of the whole LWF. See Jenson, “Vatican’s ‘Official Response,’” 401. This may be a bit of an overreach, but the opinion is not a complete outlier. What Jenson describes as a fact is raised as a question in the semi-official history of the LWF published several years earlier:
The LWF has been able to make common decisions, even about doctrinal matters, by a slow process of consensus formation sealed by an assembly action which recognizes the formed consensus. This form of decision making … remains untested. Similar procedures are being adopted in relation to the possible declaration of nonapplicability of the Reformation condemnations of the Roman Catholic Church in relation to justification. Can world Lutheranism together make an authoritative statement about the meaning of some aspect of the confessions in the contemporary ecumenical situation? (Jens Holger Schjørring, Prasanna Kumari, Norman A. Hjelm, eds. From Federation to Communion: The History of the Lutheran World Federation, (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997), 244.)
What we can positively say is that as the LWF council recognized a consensus as existing among the churches of the LWF; the JDDJ was therefore signed by the LWF in its own name and not just in the names of the assenting churches. See “Response of the Lutheran World Federation,” LWI (June 24, 1998) §e. GER–DER, C.54. See also Our Continuing Journey, 147. It therefore seems that while Jenson might be overstating the import of the LWF’s decision, Dulles is certainly understating it.
On the Roman Catholic side, Dulles raises the question of what it means that it was signed by the PCPCU, and worries that it merely summarizes the decades of dialogue. Finally, he wonders how the Catholic Church could teach Lutheran positions authoritatively, and vice versa. [Avery Cardinal Dulles, “Justification and the Unity of the Church,” 126–28.] I have already responded to the second critique in Chap. 2. As to the question of summarizing, we must recall that in the JDDJ, the LWF and the Catholic Church sought to recall the history so as to receive the dialogues’ and teach in common. To make this structure a reason for doubting the JDDJ’s authority is to make the exercise pointless from its beginning. Finally, his worry about teaching for the other church is merely an artifact of the genre. What is taught in common are the consensus paragraphs, and most importantly, that the condemnations do not apply to the other (Official Common Statement (OCS) §1). Of course, the document is not taught infallibly, but it is taught with the church’s authority, deserving a kind of obsequium religiosum.
- 53.
Dulles, “Justification and the Unity of the Church,” 127.
- 54.
Ibid., 17. It should be noted that this is a more full support of the JDDJ than he evidenced in 2002, when he wrote that it “tried to accomplish too much,” perhaps in part because he was then interpreting the JDDJ as “cling[ing] to the conceptuality and language of the sixteenth-century formulations.” Here also he is worried that the notion of “acceptable” may mean that Lutheran language may find its ways into Catholic pulpits and vice versa. Idem. “Justification: The Joint Declaration,” Josephinum Journal of Theology 9 no.1 (2002): 119. Available at http://www.pcj.edu/journal/essays/ dulles9-1.htm. Accessed October 4, 2014.
- 55.
Dulles, “Justification and Unity,” 19.
- 56.
Ibid., 20.
- 57.
See Dulles, “Roman Catholic Perspective,” 20–21. There have been some who expected the JDDJ to bring about full communion, and see the continued division as a fault of the JDDJ. See Hequet, 1–5.
- 58.
Christopher J. Malloy, Engrafted into Christ: A Critique of the Joint Declaration, (New York: P. Lang, 2005).
- 59.
Christopher J. Malloy, “The Nature of Justifying Grace: A Lacuna in the Joint Declaration,” The Thomist 65 (2001): 93–120; and Idem. “Marian Coredemption and the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification,” 351–409 in Mary at the Foot of the Cross, VIII: Coredemption as Key to a Correct Understanding of Redemption, and Recent Attempts to Redefine Redemption Contrary to the Belief of the Church, (New Bedford, MA: Academy of the Immaculate, 2008).
- 60.
See Chap. 4, beginning at p. 65. As Pieter de Witte comments, “It is clear for [Malloy and Scheffczyk that] the only desirable outcome of the ecumenical dialogue would be that Lutherans accept the teaching of Trent in its entirety and abjure their own heresy. In this sense their approach is clearly apologetic.” Doctrine, Dynamic Difference, 227.
- 61.
Malloy, Engrafted, 20.
- 62.
It also seems that his emphasis on the formal cause of justification leads to a disassociation of that teaching from the other causes that the council defines, namely the efficient and meritorious causes. See de Witte, 228–29.
- 63.
Malloy, Engrafted, 155.
- 64.
Malloy, Engrafted, 181.
- 65.
This is more explicitly connected to my second point, and so will be taken up again in the next sub-section.
- 66.
See, for example, his engagement with “cycles” of mortal sin on p. 191–93. It seems that his engagement with Catholic moral theology narrows the field of allowable Catholic positions more than the church itself does, although because he does not provide particular much detail on the positions he is ruling out of bounds, this is difficult to judge.
- 67.
See above, p. 154 n. 35.
- 68.
See p. 198.
- 69.
JDDJ §29.
- 70.
Malloy, “Coredemption,” 369.
- 71.
Malloy, “Coredemption,” 383–84. More surprisingly, he here quotes a longer section of §29, and still fails to notice the different logic spelled out in that paragraph by the traditional Lutheran image of the Christian as he sees himself in God’s proclamation (coram deo), and as he looks at himself on his own (coram hominibus).
- 72.
This distinction is present in LK already, see Rechtfertigung III.2.a; 50–51. See also Friedrich Beisser, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre des Tridentinums und seine Interpretation,” 34–48 in Bekenntnis Reinhard Rittner, ed. (Hannover: Lutherisches Verlagshaus, 1990), 41−42. Beisser does not accept LK’s description of Trent on grace, specifically because he thinks that Trent does not describe grace as a habitus but as something in the person.
- 73.
Cf. de Witte’s contention that dialogue presupposes a kind of learning process, and that this process could show that the structure of Catholic thought “due to its existential-sapiential structure, implies a more paradoxical view of sin than is admitted by Malloy.” The definitions of Trent might therefore be “open to the dynamic that led to the presentation of the Roman Catholic doctrine of justification in the JDDJ and that it even calls for such a development.” Doctrine, Dynamic Difference, 229.
- 74.
Malloy, “Coredemption,” 392.
- 75.
ST I.II.Q110.A2. As Stephen J. Duffy notes, “Following Aristotle’s view of habit as a quality and an accident, Thomas presents grace as a mode of personal being. It is not a substance; it is an accident, whose being is a being-in-another. Grace is not reified as some thing or as being like redness in a rose, but is viewed as a modification of personal being so that the person exists in a different way. Quality is the least inadequate category Aquinas could invoke given his context. .. Firmly planted in the scriptural and patristic tradition he could shear it of its material analogate, which, all too often after Thomas, led some to reify grace by converting quality to quantity so that grace became a magic elixir poured into the soul.” Duffy, Dynamics of Grace, 157–58.
- 76.
DH 1515. A better expression of the action of this grace (so as to prevent the tendency to slide into the problematic metaphoric frame described) would be that that the Christian is “formed into the image of this justice.”
- 77.
Malloy, “The Nature of Justifying Grace,” The Thomist 65 (2001), 93–94.
- 78.
Malloy, “Justifying Grace,” 75.
- 79.
Malloy, Engrafted, 75. He says something quite similar in his first article on the subject, “First, the Catholic Church teaches that justification’s singular formal cause is the grace which, infused by God on account of Christ’s merits, sanctifies a man by inhering within him.[1]That is, the repentant sinner is justified precisely by an infusion of the grace or charity that constitutes justification, the culmination of the instantaneous process whereby ‘there is a transition from that state in which a man is born a son of the first Adam to the state of grace and of adoption of the sons of God, through the second Adam, Jesus Christ our Savior.’[2]” Idem., “Justifying Grace,” 104–105. His citations point to Trent. The first he directs to the definition of the formal cause, Tanner II:673.26-32; the second to Chapter 4 of the same session, which describes” the justification of a sinner and its character in the state of grace,” Tanner II:672.14–16. Despite the first footnote pointing to Chapter 7, his language of “inhering within him” is an imposition onto that text, although it is certainly used elsewhere.
- 80.
This “by means of which X produces effect Y” is the very definition of an instrumental cause.
- 81.
Malloy, “Coredemption,” 384.
- 82.
Malloy, “Justifying Grace,” 96. Otto Hermann Pesch has described this difference between Lutherans and Catholics as a difference between an understanding in which sin (and therefore also righteousness) is a quality of a substance inhering within the person, and one in which they are descriptions of the relationship that exists between a person (or humanity) and God. See “Existential and Sapiential Theology: The Theological Confrontation Between Luther and Thomas Aquinas,” 61–81 in Catholic Scholars Dialogue with Luther, Jared Wicks, ed., (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1970), 61–81; 182–93.
- 83.
It represents a slippage from the language of Trent that produces problems. It tends to make God’s action and the human action separate things (God puts something in the human, who then acts to keep or reject it), rather than what is better described as “double agency.” This “is not a cooperation where two agents each do part; rather God is at work moving human action. God (and God alone) can move the human person in this way without violating that person’s freedom, for as Creator and Preserver God’s relation to the person is, so to speak, an internal one.” Michael Root, “Aquinas, Merit, and Reformation Theology,” 12.
- 84.
This has an opposite among some Lutheran, who want to see the human’s justification to be framed entirely by the future. See Chap. 11, p. 236.
- 85.
See ST I.II. Q110.A2.
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Rinderknecht, J.K. (2016). The Catholic Blend Sin and the JDDJ. In: Mapping the Differentiated Consensus of the Joint Declaration. Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40099-0_9
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