The millions will certainly be thrilled with this announcement that I've decided to actually read a book, the whole thing, all the way through from cover-to-cover, and then blog about the experience.
The question of personal salvation affects the believer in his whole existence. Not surprisingly, therefore, it has become an issue of fundamental importance in the theological controversies of Christendom, particularly since the Reformation. Until recently it has generally been assumed that the answers to this question as given by Catholics on one side and Protestants on the other were radically different. The divergence of opinion has been maintained for some four hundred years.
The author was therefore all the more astonished when he took a closer look some time ago at the theology of hope as developed by St. Thomas Aquinas. He reread what the "Common Doctor of the Church" - as Catholics like to call him - had written on the Christian's hope of personal salvation and the certainty of this. He put it alongside the teaching of Luther on the believer's certainty of salvation. And the more he extended his points of comparison, so much the more pressing became the question: Have the confessions hitherto properly understood one another and given perceptible expression to their appreciation of the other's view on this point of doctrine, so important for the theology of faith and justification? It became more and more clear to him that a very different picture from that offered by the controversial theology of the past would emerge if the real content of the teachings of both confessions were once given expression.
So writes Stephen Pfürtner in the Foreword to Luther und Thomas im Gespräch. Unser Heil zwischen Gewissheit und Gefährdung (1961) translated by Edward Quinn and published in the British Commonwealth as Luther and Aquinas - a Conversation (1964). As a classic work in that rare species of book concerned with Roman Catholic-Lutheran ecumenical understanding, it might be fun around these parts to give the thing a little read-through. Why not? It's short and the typeface is not that small. Besides, it's worth coming to grips with Aquinas to some degree what with Aeterni Patris and the Thomism which dominated the 20th century and all. Now I realise I'm rather late to the whole Thomist house party, what with there nowadays being an Augustinian at the helm of the good ship Romulus, all schooled up in the latest fads like aggiornamento and ressourcement and whatnot. But since no one sent me an invitation, late I am, so I'll just see what remainders from the cheezie bowl I can scrape out while drinking down this last of the warm beer. Then I'll leave and turn out the lights, OK?
Yes. That's the plan. And I'll blog about what little nuggets I discover/fail to discover. For those of you who have been there-done that with Pfürtner, no spoilers please.
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