De locis theologicis

THE DISPUTATION WITH THE LUTHERANS ON THIS AND EVERY OTHER POINT SEEMS SUPERFLUOUS

Whenever I set myself to argue with the Lutherans, my speech is suddenly diverted, and every means of disputing is at once taken from me. For what purpose should I or could I argue against people who abolish all the principles of theology and use almost nothing but the audacity to assert, which is their constant substitute for every dialectical and theological topic? What can I write against those who want there to be no law in the Church by which the meanings of Scripture are settled, but instead that each person should use his own judgment; who say one ought not hold what others have held, but what one’s own reason prescribes? What could be more foolish than to dispute with someone who admits nothing but the words of Scripture, yet reserves its interpretation for himself alone and thinks everyone else is wildly deluded? So that he would not be forced to fail in a cause wrongly undertaken, if the matter were examined by reason and method, Muhammad shut off every path to disputation by issuing a law. And Luther, by removing all the principles of reasoning, will be unable to find either an entrance or an exit if he begins a debate. For to accept Scripture alone without a rule, according to each person’s arbitrary interpretation, is just the same as accepting no fixed and certain principle of reasoning at all.

Therefore, the wretched Lutherans, no less than the Muslims, cannot detect either their own absurdities or those of their teacher; and by disputing with them we can do nothing but waste time and effort. Yet they would have a right to dispute if they had retained some choice of principles, so that a way to discover the truth remained. Now, however, they leave no principles. Disputation with them will therefore be empty and futile. We must remember above all what the scholastics so often use, and what has almost become a proverb: one must not dispute with someone who denies principles, since doing so is futile. It also follows that they assert paradoxes that conflict with common sense; if you try to refute them by argument, you make matters that are not at all doubtful seem doubtful by arguing about them. For since the premises in a syllogism must be more certain and better known than what follows from them if they are to establish anything, we must certainly fear that when we refute Lutheran positions, we may commit the error of faulty and inept reasoning by using less evident things to disprove matters that are most absurd. Nor need we seek examples far away to explain this, since we have them at hand. To defend the opinion I have just mentioned, the Lutherans first assert that Sacred Scripture has not more than one meaning. This they assert falsely; but let us generously grant it to them. They next assume that this one meaning is taught in Scripture most plainly and familiarly, and that Scripture is not like some waxen nose, capable of being bent to every sense, but is self-explanatory and open to everyone at hand without any teacher or instructor. Having made these fine and clever assumptions, they easily conclude that neither the tradition of the ancients nor the judgment of the Church need be awaited to understand the Sacred Books. Since all these claims are plainly false in themselves and strongly opposed to Scripture itself, if I undertake to refute them in turn, I shall be, as the saying goes, at a loss. For I would understand how ridiculous it is to try to refute vain and fabricated opinions—monstrosities not argued by theologians but dreamed up by people; how foolish it is to answer everyone who asserts the contrary; how useless it is to bring a candle into the noonday sunlight; and finally, how pointless it is to put an evident matter at risk. Peter says that in Paul’s letters there are some things difficult to understand, which unlearned and unstable people distort to their own destruction. These people, by contrast, say all of Paul’s letters are very easy to understand. Paul speaks wisdom hidden in a mystery to the perfect, but gives milk to little ones because they cannot bear anything else; these people, without distinction, swallow down all the mysteries of Scripture and, if God wills, even digest solid food like ostriches between cups. The Father hid certain things from the wise and prudent; to these people he has revealed everything. The Son sometimes spoke to his disciples in parables; to these people he always speaks openly and tells no proverb. In the Apocalypse, a book sealed with seven seals is shown; when it is given to a person who knows letters to read, he answers, “I cannot, for it is sealed.” But the Lamb has opened the book for these people and opened their eyes too, so that they see what we wretches and blind people cannot see—not even what Origen, Basil, Gregory, Chrysostom, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and Hilary saw. That eunuch in the Actorum apostolorum was so devout that he left the royal court and came from the ends of the earth to the Temple, and so much a lover of the divine law that he read Sacred Scripture even in his carriage; yet he could not understand Isaiah unless someone taught him. These men, however, understand all the prophets without a teacher or interpreter. In short, as Jerome says,

no art can be learned without a teacher. Yet this is the only knowledge, these people claim, that everyone may seize, presume, and teach everywhere before learning it. There are many places in the Sacred Books where such difficulty and obscurity are found that, even after all the vigilance, study, and labor of the ancient commentators, they still seem scarcely understandable to the most learned and able. And will an unlearned multitude, in which there is neither reason nor judgment, easily explain and interpret every passage of Scripture? Is it really easy to resolve—leaving other matters aside—the ambiguities of Hebrew speech, tropes made obscure by age, expressions foreign to the languages to which we are accustomed, proverbs unfamiliar to us, strange parables, and translations sometimes drawn from very remote sources? Explain to me easily, if you can, the Proverbs of Solomon and the Song of Songs, the prophecies of Ezekiel, Daniel, Isaiah, and Jeremiah; explain the Psalms of David, and if you do, then the Sacred Books are neither difficult nor obscure. “Who is wise,” says Hosea, “and will understand these things? Who is discerning, and will know them?” And Solomon says: “Who is such as the wise man?” and, “Who has known the interpretation of a word?” Yet these people are all wise, and with the greatest ease resolve the most difficult questions in Scripture. If Scripture cannot be twisted or bent to various meanings, how have all the heresies arisen from a perverse understanding of Scripture? We have learned this not only from Hilary in On the Trinity 2, Jerome on Galatians 1, Irenaeus lib. 1 Adversus haeres., cap. 1, Augustine in Tractate 18 on John, Vincent of Lérins in Contra propha. nov., the Seventh Synod, session 6, but also plainly by experience. Why, then, are there controversies among the Lutherans themselves about the most important matters if Scripture cannot be bent to various meanings? For some take the words “This is my body” literally, others tropically. Since this is so, the meaning of Divine Scripture must be investigated and held by a different rule than the one these people claim. For if Scripture is directed by a private rule, how can Helvidius be convicted concerning Mary’s perpetual virginity? How can Arius be convicted concerning the true divinity of Christ? Indeed, how can it be established whether this or that interpretation is true if everyone is allowed to interpret Scripture according to his own inclination? For when, as often happens, there are various opinions about the same passage of Scripture, no one can guarantee which is certain. All who disagree will defend their own understanding on equal grounds. This is almost innate in human minds: once a matter has become controversial, they do not know how to yield; and once the controversy has grown heated, everyone thinks that what he rashly undertook to defend is most certainly true. Either each person has his own certain meaning, and the madness of the ancients that Aristotle refuted with plain arguments in Metaphysics 4 will return; or no one’s opinion is certain, and besides there being no end to dissension, we will have no certain judgment of the Christian faith, but each person will invent his own faith for himself according to his opinion. Thus there will be no Catholic faith. And in truth the Lutherans are ridiculous when they demand that their interpretation of Sacred Scripture be held with certainty, though they interpret it in a new and astonishing manner. The apostles were not believed, as Erasmus mockingly says, until they had supported their teaching with many and great miracles; yet now each person demands to be believed when he asserts that he has the spirit of understanding, although none of them has been able to heal even a lame horse. Many things must be passed over so that this speech does not become unpleasant; and yet many things are said that plainly refute their madness.

Indeed, if Cochlaeus had not anticipated me in his Letters to the Princes of Germany and to the Bernese, I would have risked setting out examples and playing them variously in both directions, so that even this risk would have shown everyone how easy it is to prove or disprove any theme from Sacred Scripture if each person interprets it according to his own inclination. Yet, I admit, there are some passages of Scripture that even contentious people cannot drag into one meaning and then another. Who, for example, could twist what Paul wrote to the Corinthians: to one person the word of wisdom is given through the Spirit, to another the word of knowledge, to another the interpretation of tongues? But these people confuse all the offices of the ecclesiastical body; for them the whole body is an eye. For they all understand every mystery of Scripture, with the Spirit as their teacher. Still, it is well that Luther himself admits that he does not understand certain passages in the Psalms. It is well that Christ gave teachers to the Church, not everyone, but some, for the perfecting of the saints for the work of ministry. I have discussed much about these things in book 2, and more will be discussed in book 7—not because we wish to fight a battle against the Lutherans, who fight blindfolded, as the saying goes, like Andabatae, but so that Catholics may see, after surveying all the passages with reason and judgment, that there is no surer, more stable, or more necessary rule for explaining Sacred Scripture than the one contained in the tradition of the Church. For this reason the Lutherans’ shamelessness is all the more detestable as they try to weaken and utterly destroy this point. But so that this whole question may be settled once and for all here, where it properly belongs, we must lay down several foundations that contain the very sinews and strength of theology and faith alike.