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Making The Most of It, Counting the Cost: Some Catholic Perspectives on Luther's Revolution
Author(s) -
Duffy Eamon
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
new blackfriars
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1741-2005
pISSN - 0028-4289
DOI - 10.1111/nbfr.12342
Subject(s) - scholarship , orthodoxy , character (mathematics) , martin luther , subject (documents) , reading (process) , theology , philosophy , religious studies , law , sociology , political science , geometry , mathematics , library science , computer science
Against the background of greatly improved ecumenical relations between the Lutheran and Roman Catholic Churches, this article discusses Catholic scholarship on Martin Luther, from the four centuries after the reformation, when Luther was subject to consistently hostile distortions of his character, to more positive twentieth century approaches by Joseph Lortz and his followers, who saw Luther as a reluctant dissenter, essentially orthodox on the contested issue of Justification, but forced by circumstances to call for the reform of a corrupt and theologically decadent Church. But more recent reformation scholarship has called into question Lortz's negative view of pre‐reformation Catholicism, while some post‐Lortzian Catholic Luther scholarship has highlighted the reformer's radical departures from Catholic orthodoxy, consequently entailing a less optimistic reading of the doctrinal divisions between Lutherans and Catholics.