Luther’s Error: We Think Church Is “Over” Scripture?

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Martin Luther’s words will be in blue; the words of the Council of Trent in green.

Further they object: The church has accepted the four gospels, others they have not accepted. Thus the church is master over them. If not, who would know which gospel were true, perhaps Bartholomew’s gospel or another? That sounds just as if we had the gospels from the church and not from God. Christianity has accepted the book, they say, therefore Christianity is over the book. I accept the teaching of Paul, therefore I am over his teaching. Oh, that they had made the distinction between confessing and having authority! The Christian church confesses that the teaching, the Gospel, the book are true. But thereby the church is not given the authority over it. Then I could also say: I accept Christ, therefore I am over Christ. . . .

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So they conclude quite foolishly: The Christian church confesses that this book and its teaching are true, therefore it is over them. These are rotten hoaxes. . . . I cannot conclude: Because I accept John’s gospel, I am over the same. For this reason say: It is not true; the Christian church does not have the authority to change a single letter. For it is written in Matthew 5:19, “Whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.” Add nothing and take nothing away. It should remain as Christ has ordered it. (Irving L. Sangberg, translator, The 1529 Holy Week and Easter Sermons of Dr. Martin Luther, St. Louis: Concordia Academic Press, 1999, 40-41; my italics and bolding)

This is all well and good; that is, until we consider one very important thing: the Catholic Church does not and never did teach such an outrageous falsehood. Perhaps that’s why Luther — per his usual flawed modus operandi — never documented that she did do so: at least not in this excerpt. What a novelty! Imagine citing some actual (magisterial) source before making a sweeping false charge! Well, I shall cite three that contradict his straw man caricature.

Luther died on 18 February 1546. Less than two months later, on 8 April, the Council of Trent in its Fourth Session, issued the Decree Concerning the Canonical Scriptures, in which it affirmed that the books of Holy Scripture were “received by the Apostles from the mouth of Christ himself, or from the Apostles themselves, the Holy Ghost dictating” and “have come down even unto us, transmitted as it were from hand to hand; (the Synod) following the examples of the orthodox Fathers, receives and venerates with an equal affection of piety, and reverence, all the books both of the Old and of the New Testament–seeing that one God is the author of both” and that they were “dictated, either by Christ’s own word of mouth, or by the Holy Ghost, and preserved in the Catholic Church by a continuous succession.”

There is nothing whatsoever here of this false charge that the Catholic Church regards itself as an authority higher than inspired revelation, or that it vainly thinks that created Scripture, etc. God the Holy Spirit did that, as it clearly states. The Catholic Church merely “receives” that which was God-breathed; it has “come down” to the Church. Far from “lording it over” the Bible, the Church “venerates” it and receives it with “reverence” and it is lovingly “preserved” by the Church. The Catholic Church went on to reaffirm these thoughts in more explicit terms in its next two ecumenical councils:

First Vatican Council (1870)

These the Church holds to be sacred and canonical; not because, having been carefully composed by mere human industry, they were afterward approved by her authority; not because they contain revelation, with no admixture of error; but because, having been written by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they have God for their author, and have been delivered as such to the Church herself. (Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, chapter II; emphasis added)

Second Vatican Council (1962-1965)

The divinely-revealed realities which are contained and presented in the text of sacred Scripture, have been written down under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. For Holy Mother Church relying on the faith of the apostolic age, accepts as sacred and canonical the books of the Old and New Testaments, whole and entire, with all their parts, on the grounds that they were written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit (cf. Jn. 20:31; 2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Pet. 1:19-21; 3:15-16), they have God as their author, and have been handed on as such to the Church herself. (Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation [Dei Verbum], Chapter III, 11; emphasis added)

What the Catholic Church does contend, is that an authoritative Christian tradition and Church were necessary to establish the canon of Scripture. Sacred Scripture teaches that it is inspired and infallible, but never provides its own canon (list of books). Scripture is what it is. 1 Timothy 3:16 and other passages clearly teach inspiration. The Catholic Church simply acknowledges what is already (by its very nature) Scripture, or inspired revelation from God; it doesn’t — and doesn’t claim to – make it so.

It doesn’t follow that Catholics are placing Church above Scripture, in pointing out that human authority was needed in order to determine the canon. An analogy or comparison might be in order, to further explain this. All agree that the Bible must be properly interpreted. Protestants, to their credit, place a huge emphasis on learning to study the Bible wisely and intelligently (the sciences of exegesis and hermeneutics). Just because learning and study are needed to correctly read the Bible and to attain to truth in theology, doesn’t mean that, therefore, the Bible did not already contain truth, or that human interpretation is “higher” than “God-breathed” biblical inspiration.

Likewise, it was necessary for human church councils to decide on the specific books that were to be included in the biblical canon. This doesn’t imply in the least that the councils (let alone the Church) are “above” Scripture, any more than a Christian communion authoritatively declaring in its creed that Jesus is God in the flesh, makes them “higher” than He is, or superior. Proclamation of an existing reality has nothing to do with some supposed “superiority” of category. Both the Bible and theological truth remain what they are at all times.

Such reasoning is not even exclusively Catholic. The great Reformed Protestant theologian G. C. Berkouwer has expressed virtually the same idea:

Roman Catholics emphatically reject the view that the church posits her own canon. They claim only that, when the canonical process has come to a close, the magisterial church provides certainty. Attention is especially focused on this closing and on the authority of the church, which performs a decisive role in this closing. Behind this we find the well-known distinction between the canonical essence of Holy Scripture (quoad se), as it is grounded in divine inspiration, and the confirmation of these books as canonical by the church (quoad nos). . . .

The church can, however, only point to and name that canonical which is in itself already truly canonical. Yet, found amid the relativity of the varied historical considerations and judgments of the first few centuries, this authority is of great importance. (Studies in Dogmatics: Holy Scripture, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1975; translated from the 1967 Dutch edition by Jack B. Rogers, 78)

Berkouwer “gets” it (what a breath of fresh air!); Luther clearly did not.

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Photo Credit: [Pixabay / CC0 public domain]

Summary: Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism, mistakenly believed that the Catholic Church regarded itself as above, or superior to, the God-breathed revelation of Holy Scripture.