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Sola scriptura and the regula fidei: the Reformation scripture principle and early oral tradition in Martin Chemnitz' Examination of the Council of Trent

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2010

James R. A. Merrick
James R. A. Merrick*
Affiliation:
King's College, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen AB24 3UB, Scotland, [email protected]
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Abstract

How could a sixteenth-century Protestant reformer who championed sola scriptura defend against the charge of novelty? In particular, how did a reformer understand the post-apostolic church's regula fidei as a possible early counter-precedent to the scripture principle? And what does the answer to these questions tell us about the Reformation scripture principle? These are the principal questions with which this article is concerned. By looking at Martin Chemnitz's Examination of the Council of Trent, I show that Chemnitz rebutted the charge of novelty by returning the favour, that is, he rhetorically situated the Catholics alongside the early Gnostics since both believed in an oral tradition that differed substantially from scripture. Furthermore, I find that Chemnitz contended that Irenaeus’ and Tertullian's use of the regula fidei actually supported sola scriptura since these fathers never posited a substantial distinction between scripture and tradition and, in fact, held that the content of the rule was recorded in scripture. Chemnitz concluded that Protestants holding the scripture principle are the ones who are truly faithful to early church tradition in general and the rule in particular.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 63 , Issue 3 , August 2010 , pp. 253 - 271
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 2010

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References

1 In her The Humanist–Scholastic Debate in the Renaissance and Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

2 Ibid., p. 56.

3 Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995.

4 Ibid., p. 98.

5 Ibid., p. 99.

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid., pp. 109–10.

8 Ibid., p. 107.

9 Example: Calvin's refutation of the charge in his ‘Prefatory Address to King Francis I of France’ in his Institutes of the Christian Religion where he writes: ‘novam appellant . . . novam quod appellant, Deo sunt vehementer iniurii, cuius sacrum verbum novitatis insimulari non merebatur’ (Ioannis Calvini opera quae supersunt omnia, ed. Wilhelm Baum, Edward Cunitz and Edward Reuss, 59 vols, Corpus reformatorum, vols. 29–87 (Brunswick: Schwetschke & Son, 1863–1900), 1:14–15).

10 See e.g. Elwood, Christopher, The Body Broken: The Calvinist Doctrine of the Eucharist and the Symbolization of Power in Sixteenth-Century France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)Google Scholar.

11 Euan Cameron remarks that ‘[t]o “re-form” something was to restore it to its essence: to recover what it had originally been meant to be’ (The European Reformation, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991, p. 38).

12 History of Dogma, trans. Neil Buchanan (Boston, MA: Roberts Brothers, 1897), vol. 2, pp. 245–7.

13 ‘Rule of Faith’, in idem (ed.), Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, 2nd edn (New York: Routledge, 1999), pp. 1003, 1004.

14 Early Christian Creeds, 3rd edn (London: Continuum, 1972), p. 78.

15 Ibid., p. 83.

16 ‘Reason and the Rule of Faith in the Second Century ad’, in Rowan Williams (ed.), The Making of Orthodoxy: Essays in Honour of Henry Chadwick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 57–8.

17 Divine Meaning: Studies in Patristic Hermeneutics (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1995), p. 76.

18 See Wright, N. T., The New Testament and the People of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992)Google Scholar.

19 ‘The Regula Fidei and the Narrative Character of Early Christian Faith’, Pro Ecclesia 6 (1997), pp. 199–228.

20 Nicaea and its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 39.

21 The Prescription Against Heretics, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. A. Cleveland Coxe, vol. 3 (Repr. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994).

22 Ibid., XV, p. 250.

23 Ibid., XIX, p. 251.

24 Ibid., XIX, pp. 251–2.

25 Ibid., XX–XXI, p. 252.

26 In vol. 1 of The Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. A. Cleveland Coxe (Repr. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994).

27 Ibid., I.10.1, p. 330.

28 Ibid., I.9.1–5, pp. 329–30.

29 ‘Rule of Faith’, in Kevin J. Vanhoozer et al. (eds), Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI, and London: Baker and SPCK, 2005), p. 703.

30 ‘Irenaeus of Lyon’, in Young, Frances, Ayres, Lewis and Louth, Andrew (eds), The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 One Right Reading? A Guide to Irenaeus (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1997), p. 11.

32 Here it ought to be noted that while this gives merit to the aforementioned narrative readings of the rule, it remains to be seen whether early Christians actually conceptually processed the faith narrativally or simply arranged their confessions sequentially along the progression of biblical revelation.

33 Irenaeus, Against Heresies III.2.2, p. 415.

34 Ibid. III.3.3, p. 416.

35 Ibid. III.2.2, p. 415.

36 Note his words in regards to Prov. 8:22: ‘We must interpret . . . this passage by the Regula Fidei’ (Athanasius, Against the Arians II.29, in vol. 4 of The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, series 2, vol. 4, ed. Archibald Robertson (Repr. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994), p. 372). Also ibid. II.22; III.25; III.26; III.29; III.30 among others.

37 Roy Kearsley remarked of Tertullian's use of the rule: ‘In doing this, did Tertullian place tradition (teaching handed down in the church) on the same level as Scripture itself, or even make it identical to Scripture? Probably not. Almost certainly he saw the regula as the best interpretation of Scripture and so a benchmark for other interpretations’ (‘Tertullian’, in Donald McKim (ed.), Historical Handbook of Major Biblical Interpreters (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1998), p. 64). D. H. Williams has a slightly different take, finding that tradition and scripture were relatively undistinguished in the early period, both being facets of the broader church tradition received from the apostles (‘The Search for Sola Scriptura in the Early Church’, Interpretation 52 (1998), pp. 354–66).

38 Note Blowers: ‘it is doubtless true that the earliest exponents of a Christian regula regarded it as representing the kind of authority which “Scripture” (broadly speaking) conveyed’ (‘The Regula Fidei’, p. 205).

39 Bagchi, David and Steinmetz, David C. (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Reformation Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

41 Chemnitz is barely mentioned in Cameron's European Reformation; Diarmaid MacCulloch's mammoth The Reformation: A History (New York: Viking, 2004); and Rudolph W. Heinze's Reform and Conflict: From the Medieval World to the Wars of Religion AD 1350–1648, Baker History of the Church, 4 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2005); and is absent entirely from both Carter Lindberg's The European Reformations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996); and Roland Bainton's The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century (Boston, MA: Beacon, 1985). Oddly, even after applauding Chemnitz (see above), Owen Chadwick devotes only a few sentences to him.

42 The Reformation, Penguin History of the Church, 3 (New York: Penguin, 1972), p. 150.

43 The Second Martin: The Life and Theology of Martin Chemnitz (St Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1994), p. 326.

44 The Theology of Post-Reformation Lutheranism: A Study of Theological Prolegomena (St Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1970), p. 90.

45 Note J. Preus's words: ‘Chemnitz can be called the undisputed father of normative Lutheran theology, the father of Lutheran orthodoxy, and the father of Lutheran unity’ (Second Martin, p. 338).

46 Here I simply follow the generally accepted term ‘Catholic Reformation’ without wishing to get into debates about historiography, on which see O'Malley's, John, Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

47 For detailed discussion, see Baepler, Richard, ‘Scripture and Tradition in the Council of Trent’, Concordia Theological Monthly 31 (1960), pp. 341–62Google Scholar.

48 ‘Dogmatic Decrees of the Council of Trent, 1545–63’, in Pelikan, Jaroslav and Hotchkiss, Valerie (eds), Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition, vol. 2, Reformation Era (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), p. 822Google Scholar, italics added for emphasis.

49 Ibid., p. 823.

50 Note e.g. David Steinmetz: ‘To describe the dual nature of God's self-revelation the council used the words partim-partim, “partly-partly”. Explicit Catholic teaching is found partly in scripture and partly in the church's tradition’ (‘The Council of Trent’, in Cambridge Companion to Reformation Theology, p. 238).

51 Baepler, ‘Scripture and Tradition’, p. 353.

52 Review of Examination of the Council of Trent, part 1, trans. Fred Kramer, by Martin Chemnitz, Dialog 12 (1973), pp. 238–40, 239. Steinmetz agrees: ‘The most extensive Protestant response to the Council of Trent was undoubtedly the Examen Concilii Tridentini’ (‘Council of Trent’, p. 244).

53 Second Martin, p. 126.

54 For purposes of accessibility, this article will use the English trans. (Martin Chemnitz, Examination of the Council of Trent, 4 Parts, trans. Fred Kramer, St Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1971) which I find to be in little need of emendation. In the interest of space, I will not include the original Latin. However, after citation of the English, readers will find in parentheses the corresponding page number from the following Latin edn: Examinis Concilii Tridentini, per D. D. Martinum Chemnicium scripti; opus integrum, quatuor partes, in quibus praecipuorum capitum totius doctrinae Papisticae, firma & solida refutatio, tum ex sacrae Scripturae fontibus, tum ex orthodoxorum patrum consensu, collecta est; uno volumine complectens (Frankfurt: Impensis haeredum Sigis. Feyrabendii., 1596).

55 Theodore Beza and the Quest for Peace in France, 1572–1598 (Leiden: Brill, 2000), p. 125.

56 Examination, part 1, p. 45 (7).

57 Ibid., p. 50 (8); cf. p. 118.

58 Ibid., p. 78 (17).

59 Irenaeus, Against Heresies III.1.1, p. 414.

60 Examination, part 1, p. 81 (18), parenthetical content original.

61 Ibid., p. 82 (18).

62 Ibid., p. 220 (62).

63 Ibid., p. 232 (65).

64 Ibid., p. 232.

65 Ibid., p. 232 (65).

66 Ibid., p. 233 (65).

67 Ibid., p. 241.

68 The Dawn of the Reformation: Essays in Late Medieval and Early Reformation Thought (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1986), p. 286.

69 Ibid., p. 288.

70 ‘Search for Sola Scriptura’, p. 357.

71 After analysing Chemnitz' use of tradition, Arthur Olsen remarked that Chemnitz ‘would be puzzled by the historical assumption that the Scriptural principle of the Reformation is anti-traditional’ (‘The Hermeneutical Vision of Martin Chemnitz: The Role of Scripture and Tradition in the Teaching Church’, in Kenneth Hagen (ed.), Augustine, the Harvest, and Theology (1300–1650): Essays Dedicated to Heiko Augustinus Oberman in Honor of his Sixtieth Birthday, Leiden: Brill, 1990, p. 315).

72 See Chemnitz, Examination, part 1, pp. 234–6.

73 Ibid., p. 234–5 (65).

74 Ibid., p. 238 (66).

75 Ibid., p. 237 (66).

76 Ibid., p. 239 (67).

77 Ibid., p. 239 (67).

78 Ibid., p. 242 (68).