Conscience and casuistry in early modern Europe Book

I really want to like this book more than I do. I agree with the fundamental argument, I enjoy the Paul Johnson book he's bouncing off of, and I find the writing entertaining enough. But I always read through the book happily enough until I come to the last chapter, where Jones discusses Martin Luther, and then I start to doubt everything he’s said about everyone else!

Luther was prone to hyperbole, which makes it easy for people who want to show him in a bad light to find quotations in support of their claims, but he was not the antinomian Jones presents him as. Luther may have drawn a firm line between law and gospel, but it was not a line between good and bad – Luther presents them both as representing God, and both as good. From Luther’s perspective, the law tells us what we have done wrong, while the gospel tells us how we may be made righteous before God.

According to Luther, growing in Christ means to obey God’s laws, and he firmly believed that the Bible tells us what God’s laws are. Luther’s problem was not with God’s laws per se, but with the idea that following those laws is an act of human effort (or human will), and with the idea that following the laws without love is an accomplishment, which latter directly contradicts 1 Corinthians 13:1-3.

Luther demands, not just physical obedience to the law (acts), but heart obedience to the law (feelings). Luther had no time for the argument that faith was an act of will because of verses like Romans 10:17, “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God,” or passages like 1 Corinthians 12:9 or Galatians 5:22, which list faith as a gift or fruit of the Spirit. But at the same time Luther warned people that they would be accountable for their sins if they did not turn to Christ and (as a result of that repentance) change their ways.

Even Erasmus, Mr. Freewill himself, recognized that, “As in those who lack grace (special grace, I mean), reason is darkened but not destroyed, so it is probable that their power of will is not wholly destroyed, but has become ineffective for upright actions.” Erasmus could not Biblically deny the fact that the Bible presents salvation as in some way an act of God's Grace. Where Luther and Erasmus differed is not about God’s act in salvation, but in Erasmus’ belief that Christians could, through an act of will, do good things for God. Luther’s position was that we may sometimes think or feel like that’s what’s happening, but in actual fact, if it is a truly good thing we're doing, then it is God working through us, not us working for God.

When Jones so completely misunderstands Martin Luther, I hesitate to take his word on other human beings. OTOH, I have seen people in my own life who demonstrate Jones’ fundamental argument that sinning results in philosophical justifications, while my very attempts to verify or disprove his various specific claims about people lead me to interesting places, and I have enjoyed a fair number of the books he references.

For all its faults, I have read this book a couple three times now, and will probably read it again, because it makes me think.