The Reformation of the Keys: Confession, Conscience, and Authority in Sixteenth-Century Germany (review)

Abstract

Reformation of Keys: Confession, Conscience, and Authority in Sixteenth-Century Germany. By Ronald K. Rittgers. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 2004. Pp. xii, 318. $49.95.) This is a revised Harvard Ph.D. dissertation, produced under direction of Steven Ozment, Ronald Rittgers, who is presently an assistant professor of History of Christianity at Yale. It is, regrettably, a deeply flawed work in several major respects. First, Rittgers is disturbingly confused about the power of keys and blithely accepts Luther's casual equation thereof with power to forgive sin. Since Luther's central attack was on Church's penitential system, it suited his theological and rhetorical purposes to conflate these issues; but 1530 he evidently felt obliged to respond to his many critics penning a treatise on The Keys in which he flatly denied that power of binding and loosing, conferred first on Peter (Matt. 16:19) and then on other apostles (Matt. 18:18), can have meant anything more than power to forgive sins given to them after Resurrection (John 20:23). Now modern biblical scholars agree that and loose are technical rabbinical terms meaning forbid and permit, but Luther dismissed all that as pure Roman fabrication. Unfortunately, that position makes much of previous thousand years in history of Church, especially in West, largely incomprehensible. Matt. 16:19 is arguably single most difficult text in medieval political thought, for Jesus is indisputably on record as saying, Whatsoever you bind on earth shall be bound also in heaven . . . , which suggests no clear lines of demarcation, if any at all, between spiritual and temporal authority. When Augustine famously wrote, Roma locuta, causa finita, it was not writ in heavens what limits of juridical competence of bishop of Rome were. As ecclesiastical and especially papal jurisdiction came to be worked out in protracted struggles of High Middle Ages, and as theory of papal plenitude of power pari passu came to be fully elaborated, by reason of sin (ratione peccati) was but one of several major sources of that authority. Although many questions were raised about its extent and practical limits were sometimes imposed upon it (as, for example, in Statute of Praemunire in England), no outright rejections of papal or ecclesiastical jurisdiction as such were asserted in West before onset of Protestant Reformations. Thus, for example, such matters as marriage and probate came commonly to fall under its purview, notaries everywhere did their work by imperial and papal authority, and popes drew on universal jurisdiction they claimed to launch crusades and, later, to carve up world between Spanish and Portuguese. Many criticized abuses in this system, and a few thinkers and preachers assaulted its very premises; but powers that were in Europe rarely if ever joined in these attacks before 1520's. But of all of this Rittgers is evidently completely unaware, even though he cites Brian Tierney's still essential Crisis of Church State, 1050-1300 (1964) in his bibliography. Rittgers' unwitting confessional blindspot thus constitutes a major impediment to his historical understanding of what might well be considered keystone of medieval Church, and it would therefore seem to follow that his teaching of history of Christianity must inevitably be highly problematical. (It should be pointed out that Rittgers is hardly in this respect. Indeed, most of modern scholars he cites accept Luther's neat legerdemain, just as most Protestants believe incorrectly that justification faith is asserted in Paul's epistle to Romans, when in fact Luther added word alone in seeming contradiction of what Paul says at 2:6 (For [God] will render to every man according to his works . . .). Still, for an historian of Christianity to suffer from this chasm in his understanding is frankly appalling. …