REPLY TO ONE WHO HAS ASKED AN
 ORTHODOX TO SAY SOMETHING
ABOUT LUTHER'S SOLA FIDE 
"BY FAITH ALONE"

© 2003 by Orchid Land Publications

[updated 20030930]

SEE R 280 FOR OTHER PAGES ON THE BIBLE OR SCRIPTURE

     Since the figure changes as the background changes, it would be useful to outline the background of Luther's sola fide: 

1. It goes with two other solas--sola gratia, sola scriptura.

2. Luther redefined fides volitionally as fiducia ("confidence, trust," fidelitas).

3. Luther was brought up as an Augustinian monk in the via moderna (nominalist) philosophy, which elevated will over reason (lógos) and made it hard to understand any ontological participation of things in one another--of a Christian in Christ (not to speak of participating in God's Essence, an idea also rejected by the Orthodox, but for different reasons).  Luther had trouble with Christ's re-offering Himself at every divine Liturgy, because he held the view that Sacrifice is Immolation (unrepeatable) instead of Offering (which is repeatable).  (He could not have been unaware that many sacrifices in Levitikon have no immolation.)

4. Luther (who called himself a modernus) had a second modernism--the Gnostic-inclined devotio moderna.  Both of L's modernisms fostered individualistic authority. Combining anti-matter, anti-time (anti-tradition), and will-first motifs led to Luther's view (in one of his most famous writings, Prelude on the Babylonian captiviity of the Church) that he could have the "Mass" anytime anywhere just by WILLING (voluero) it.

5. In order to uphold sola scriptura, Luther changed the canon of the books of the Bible that he strongly disagreed with.  Of the New Testament, he put six that he didn't like at the end of his German translation in a sort of ill-defined--except for St. James, whose uncanonical status he made explicit--deuterocanonical apocrypha.  He of course did not understand the occurrence of enérgeia in James or the 26 occurrences of energy terminology (and various uses of dýnamis) in St. Paul's Epistles.  Scripture is never "alone"; it always gets interpreted according to the axioms of one's thought world (paradigm).

     Given the background, what does sola fide mean?  It means that you can take "a" Bible and believe (have faith in) some interpretation of it and receive Grace . . . and that's it . . . IN PRINCIPLE, NOTHING ELSE is needed, assuming basic sincerity. 

     In practice, of course, Luther used the power of the state to war against the Anabaptists and others who disagreed with him.  In practice, freedom to interpret and to believe belonged to him but not to everyone. 

     I find it distressing that people talk across paradigms as though saying the same words were saying the same things, when it is not so.  One must locate ideas in their conceptual background to have a hope of getting at their meaning.

     To reply to the posting at the beginning of this reply, an Orthodox thinks in a vastly different religious paradigm from either of the Mediæval Western paradigms.  The only way for to understand us is to do the mirror image of what I have done above for Luther.  You have to find out our background and what the Greek New Testament says to us (LOGOS is not a "word"), energy is neither actus nor operatio, as in the writings that both Thomas and Luther had access to.  (The Vulgate once or twice rendered eneryeîn as perficere "effectuate"--which is not far off of the mark.) 

SEE R288 and links on that pag