The “Abominable Error”

Article III of the Augsburg Confession states that Christ was “a sacrifice not only for original sin but also for all other sins” (3 German), that is, “also for all actual sins of human beings (3 Latin).  Underlying this assertion is a charge which Philipp Melanchthon and his coworkers had in mind, namely, that their Catholic opponents had been teaching that Christ made a sacrifice on the cross only for original sin, making it necessary for sinners to provide atonement for actual sins themselves.  In Art. XXIV the accusation is bluntly put:

At the same time, an abominable error was also rebuked, namely, the teaching that our Lord Jesus Christ had made satisfaction by His death only for original sin and had instituted the Mass as a sacrifice for other sins.   Thus, the Mass was made into a sacrifice for the living and the dead for the purpose of taking away sin and appeasing God.  (Augsburg Confession XXIV, 21-22 German)

The Latin version also makes the connection with Catholic doctrine of the Mass (21-22).

At about the same time, in his Iudicium de Missa (July 19, 1530, Melanchthon supplied evidence for this charge:

The first opinion is that of Thomas and those like him, which thus far in the church has not only infinitely increased the number of private masses, but also contends that the mass is a sacrifice for the living and the dead. . .

Thomas thus writes: the suffering of Christ made satisfaction for original sin, and the Lord’s Supper or mass was instituted that it might be a work that makes satisfaction for our daily offenses and merits grace not only for the one that performs it but for the whole church, and especially for those for whom it is done^[1].

In the Apology the next year he made a more precise quotation of the statement by Thomas Aquinas in his criticism of the Catholic doctrine of the Mass (XXIV, 62).

Article XXIV of the Augsburg Confession commented: “It is an unprecedented novelty in church doctrine that Christ’s death should have made satisfaction only for original sin and not for other sins as well.  Consequently, we hope everybody understands that such error is not unjustly rebuked” (26 German).  But the Catholic authors of the Confutation of the Augsburg Confession, soon presented at the Diet, protested that exactly that was what was happening: they were being unjustly rebuked.  The Confutators agreed with Art. III that Christ died for all sins: “There is nothing in the third article which is contrary to the Apostles Creed and the correct rule of faith.”^[2]

They objected to the charge made in Art. XXIV:

They attribute to Catholics the assertion that the passion of Christ was for original sin and the Mass for actual sins.  But in this the preachers deceive their princes, since they impute to Catholics an unheard of error and heresy. Let them point out to us anyone who thinks that Christ made satisfaction in his passion only for original sin, and we will oppose him as much as Luther. Catholics have never taught such a notion, but we hold that Christ made satisfaction for all sins.^[3]

This position has been maintained by Catholic theologians ever since.⁴  For example, the Dominican Peter Ansbach denounced the charge as a “fiction and lie.”⁵  Albert Pighius claimed:

They  must be reproached for lack of sincerity when in their Confession they impute to us that “opinion which brought about an unbounded increase in the number of private Masses, etc.”  In truth I, who have had many years’ experience in the schools, where there is great freedom for disputing every question and for putting forward all kinds of assertions for the sake of argument and of examination of the truth, have never yet heard or read of anyone putting forward an opinion like this until I read their Confession.  I do not think they can produce anyone, whether a schoolman or anyone else, who propounds such an opinion.  And even if they found such a man, they would still be acting uncandidly in imputing the stupidity of one man to us all, who have never heard or read anything of this kind among ourselves.⁶ 

In the twentieth century the Catholic scholar Francis Clark reported on the search for the teacher of the “abominable error”:

[A]s a matter of historical fact no such man has beenfound. . .The allegation that Catholic theologians held Christ’s expiation on the cross to avail only for original sin was a product of early Reformation polemics. . . But surely the time has come for the abandonment of this figment of sixteenth-century polemics.⁷

The accusation of the “abominable error” was also made by Zwingli, Oecolampadius,  Bullinger, and Anglican churchmen like John Jewel.⁸   Luther did it at least once, in The Three Symbols (1538):

Some have taught that he died only for original sin, and that we ourselves must make satisfaction for the rest. . . Then saint worship came into being, and pilgrimages, and purgatory, and masses, and cloisters, and more sSeeuch verminous nonsense without end and number, by means of which we have tried to propitiate Christ himself, as if he were not our advocate, but on the contrary our judge, before God.⁹

Was the charge true or not? Were the Augsburg Confession and Apology wrong?Let us inspect the evidence which was offered in the sixteenth century.

As noted already, Melanchthon regarded the statement about original sin from the writings of Thomas Aquinas to be decisive evidence. But Catholics are able to point out that Thomas in fact did not make a disconnect between actual sins and Christ’s suffering on the cross.  In Summa Theologica he says: “Christ by His passion freed us from our sins by a universal cause; that is, He instituted for us a liberating cause by which all manner of sins at any times, past, present, or future, could be remitted” (III.49.l, ad 3).

But more must be said, in view of the fact that the attribution of the work quoted to Thomas is disputed.¹⁰  Whoever the author is, he goes on to declare in the same work that Christ “offered on the cross a sufficient sacrifice for the debts of all men.”¹¹  Catholic writers explain that the meaning of the author, sometimes called “Pseudo-Thomas,” is that the sacrifice of the mass provides a way of applying the satisfaction for actual sins accomplished on the cross, by way of cooperation with Christ.¹²  This is in fact the official teaching of Roman Catholicism. For example, the Profession of Faith of Pope Paul VI in 1968 states: “We believe that our Lord Jesus Christ   redeemed us from original sin and all the personal sins committed by each one of          us. . .”¹³ According to the Council of Trent, Session VI, Chap. VII, “our Lord Jesus Christ. . .merited for us justification by His most holy passion on the wood of the Cross and made satisfaction for us to the Father.”¹⁴  But Trent added that Christ’s followers also make satisfactions and sacrifices for sins.¹⁵ Christ’s actions and the human actions are connected, as Pope Pius XI stated in an encyclical of 1928:

            The plentiful redemption of Christ brought us abundant forgiveness of all our sins. Nevertheless, owing to the wonderful arrangement of divine Wisdom by which what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ is to be completed in our flesh for His Body which is the Church, we are able and, in fact, we ought to join our own acts of praise and satisfaction to those which Christ has presented to God in the name of sinners. . .

For participation in the mysterious priesthood and in the duty of offering satisfaction and sacrifice is not limited to those whom our High Priest Jesus Christ uses as His ministers to offer the clean oblation to the divine Majesty in every place from the rising of the sun to its setting; no, it is the duty of the entire Christian family, which the prince of the apostles rightly calls “a chosen race, a kingdom of priests”, to offer expiatory sacrifice not only for itself but also for the whole human race, in much the same way as every priest and “every high priest chosen from among men is appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God.”. . .

We shall reap a more abundant harvest of mercy and forgiveness for ourselves and for        others to the extent that our own offering and sacrifice correspond more perfectly to the sacrifice of our Lord; in other words, to the extent that we immolate our self-love and our passions and crucify our flesh with that mystical crucifixion of which the apostle speaks.¹⁶

The sacrifice of the mass for the sins of the living and the dead is not seen as a provision of forgiveness apart from Christ’s atonement on the cross, but rather as an application of it, as Trent says in Session XXII, Chapter I:

But, because His priesthood was not to end with His death, at the Last Supper, “on the night when he was betrayed”, in order to leave to His beloved Spouse the Church a visible sacrifice (as the nature of man demands)–by which the bloody sacrifice which He was once for all to accomplish on the cross would be represented, its memory perpetuated until the end of the world, and its salutary power applied for the forgiveness of the sins which we daily commit. . .¹⁷  

This joining of the church’s atonements to Christ’s atonement for actual sin is found also in the satisfaction made in the Sacrament of Penance.  As Trent put it: “[W]hen we suffer in satisfaction for our sins, we conform ourselves to Christ Jesus who made satisfaction for our sins.”¹⁸

It appears, then, that the Catholics have been right in denying that the “abominable error” has been taught among them.  But a number of incidents in the days of the Reformation seemed to suggest that it had been. For instance, in 1523 Balthasar Sattler, a Catholic priest in Esslingen rebuked some people in his parish who refused to do penances for satisfaction, arguing that “Christ made satisfaction for all,” and Luther supported them. Sattler refused to give them absolution.  The Lutheran pastor, Hans von der Planitz, then made this report to the Elector of Saxony: “At Esslingen is a preacher who has openly said from the pulpit that Christ did not die for the sins which men commit after baptism, and did not make satisfaction for those sins, but only for original sin.”  In 1526 the accusation was repeated by Ulrich Zwingli in his Christian Epistle to the Pious Believers of Esslingen. But this was more than Sattler did say.¹⁹

In 1524 Barthlomew von Usingen, Luther’s former teacher at Erfurt, was brought before the magistrates of that city on the charge that he had said in a sermon that Christ died only for infants, i.e., only for the original sin which they inherit. He successfully refuted the accusation, appealing to the testimony of the large crowd who had heard him.²⁰

In Nuremberg the same year the Franciscan friar Jeremias Mielich was accused before the city council of preaching that “Christ died only for original sin, and men cannot be rid of their personal sins except by penance and good works.”  It can be shown from the manuscripts of his sermons that he did not say this.  But he was not allowed by the magistrates to explain his statements and was ordered to stop preaching.²¹

The rector of Bremgarten, Fridolin Lindauer, was accused by Zwingli of teaching that the actual sins of Christians are excluded from Christ’s expiation on the cross and have to be blotted out by sacramental absolution instead.  But the controversy brought out the fact that Lindauer’s emphasis on the power of absolution was not a denial that the sacraments get their power from Christ’s passion.²²

In 1524 a Dominican friar in Nuremberg and in 1528 Theobald Huter, the rector of Appenzell, were charged with saying that Christ suffered only for original sin.  They too maintained that they were being misrepresented.²³

Ambrose Catharinus (1487-1553) was considered by some Protestants to be a  unmistakable Catholic teacher of the “abominable error.”  In a commentary on Hebrews he stated: “It appears that for sins committed under the new testament, after we have received the virtue of the saving victim through baptism, we no longer have that sin-offering which Christ offered for the sin of the world and for offences before baptism.”²⁴  Even the Jesuit theologians Melchior  Cano, Gabriel Vasquez, and Francisco Suarez were appalled by this assertion and accused him of “ raving” insanely and teaching false doctrine.  But the majority of Catholics have

defended him, pointing out that in his Hebrews commentary and elsewhere he did teach that the bloody sacrifice of Christ freed the whole world from original sin and consequently from all other sins and that He was offered once to bear the sins of many.  Why then did he say that after baptism Christian no longer have Christ’s sin-offering?  He explained himself to mean that they don’t have it or receive its forgiveness in the same way as in baptism, because the sin-offering is applied in a different manner in Penance and the Sacrifice of the Mass than in Baptism.  That is, after Baptism they obtain forgiveness by way of cooperation.  Now the application gives man a part to play, joining Christ in sacrifice and satisfaction.²⁵

But some Protestants did perceive that this particular complaint against Catholics was unsubstantiated.  For example, the Lutheran Urbanus Rhegius quoted the same sentence from “Thomas” which Melanchthon used later in the Apology and interpreted it differently. As Rhegius understood it, the meaning was not that the Savior did not suffer for daily sins, but that the efficacy of his suffering for the daily sins is applied in the sacrifice which the church offers on the altar for those same sins.  He opposed this teaching on the grounds that sinful men cannot use the sacrifice of the cross as the source for a sacrifice which, they think, they can actively offer in the Mass for their sins, but rather they are to remember that sacrifice of the cross and receive its benefits.  And later in the sixteenth century the Anglican Richard Hooker took issue with the Puritan Walter Travers, who had lodged the same complaint against the Catholics about teaching that Christ suffered only for original sin.  Hooker replied:

[T]he Council of Trent reckoning up the causes of our first justification doth name no end  but God’s glory and our felicity, no efficient [cause] but his mercy, no instrumental [cause] but Baptism, no meritorious [cause] but Christ; [asserting] whom to have merited the taking away of no sin but original is not their opinion, which [Travers] himself will find when he hath well examined his Witnesses Catherinus and Thomas. Their Jesuits are marvelous angry with the men out of whose gleanings Master Travers seemeth to have taken this, they openly disclaim it, they say plainly: “of all the Catholics there is none that did ever so teach,” they make solemn protestation: “We believe and profess that Christ upon the cross hath altogether satisfied for all sins as well original as actual.” . . As for the Council of Trent concerning inherent righteousness, what doth it here?  No man doubteth but they make another formal cause of  justification than we do, in respect whereof I have showed already that we disagree about the very essence of that which cureth our spiritual disease.  Most true it is which the grand philosopher hath: “Every man judgeth well of that he knoweth.” And therefore till we know the things thoroughly whereof we judge it is a point of judgement to stay our judgement.²⁷

In his Religious Bodies of America F. E. Mayer presented this explanation:

While Rome today teaches that Christ is the Propitiation for both original and actual sins, it nevertheless states that Christ purposed primarily to remove original sin. . . Accordingly Roman theologians can still maintain that although Christ has removed the guilt of original sin, the expiation of actual sins is primarily man’s own obligation. . . The Lutheran Confessions specifically condemned this view.  A.C. III,3; XXIV, 24-33.²⁸

Mayer cites some theologians to show that this view is current Catholic teaching. But when he asserts that it was the view specifically condemned in the Augsburg Confession passages, he overlooks the fact that the Augsburg Confession does not say “primarily,” but “only”.  Or if he means that Rome once did teach the “abominable error”, but “today” does not, he does not provide the evidence for that.

At this point it will be useful to remember that the Book of Concord is a normative summary

of doctrine (e.g., Preface to the Book of Concord, 22; Solid Declaration of the Formula of Concord, Concerning the Binding Summary, 1-2).  C. F. W. Walther, in his essay before the Western District   in 1858, elaborated the implications of that fact. Subscription to the Book of Concord is an unconditional commitment to all the doctrines taught therein and the rejection of their antitheses. But the Lutheran pastor is free to disagree with non-doctrinal material found there, such as ascriptions of ancient writings to Ambrose, Augustine, and others; historical references; details of interpretation of individual Scripture passages; modes, procedures, and illustrations of argumentation; or matters of adiaphora.²⁹

In the case under discussion here this means that Lutheran pastors and teachers are expected to subscribe to and teach the doctrine of the Confessions about the Lord’s Supper, but not necessarily the Confessors’ understanding (or misunderstanding) of the position of their opponents, or the interpretation of the patristic source quoted in Apol. XXIV, 62, or the attribution of it to

Thomas Aquinas, or any theory about how one false doctrine leads to others. The denial that the Savior suffered for actual sins is to be recognized as false doctrine, no matter who did or did not teach it, since the Augsburg Confession treats it as such, giving Scripture grounds ((XXIV, 21-27).   The Lord’s Supper is to be recognized as a sacrament bringing forgiveness, but definitely not as a sacrifice offered by the church for the sins of the living and the dead.  There is no basis in Scripture for making it a sacrifice.  We obtain grace through faith in Christ, remembering the sacrifice He offered once for all and receiving its benefit, not by a work or sacrifice performed by us. Sinners cannot take part in offering the atoning sacrifice for their sins.(AC XXIV, 24-33).  As the Smalcald Articles say, the Sacrifice of the Mass directly and violently opposes the chief article (II, Art. II, 1), which is the Gospel of redemption through faith in Christ (II, Art. I).

Lutherans don’t need to invent an “abominable error” (greulich Irrtum) in order to oppose Catholics on these matters.  The teachings which they do not deny advocating, but vigorously defend, are abominable enough.  In the words of the Smalcald Articles, “the Mass under the papacy has to be the greatest and most terrible abomination (Greuel) (II, Art. II, 1).

APPENDIX: QUOTES ON THE “ABOMINABLE ERROR”

Christ] suffered, was crucified, died, and was buried in order both to be a sacrifice not only for original sin but also for all other sins and to conciliate God’s wrath. (Augsburg Confession III, 3 German)

[Christ] suffered, was crucified, died and was buried that He might reconcile the Father to us and be a sacrifice not only for original guilt but also for actual sins of human beings. (Augsburg Confession III,3 Latin)

The following view increased private Masses without end: Christ had by His passion made satisfaction for original sin and had instituted the Mass in which an offering might be made for daily sins, mortal and venial.  From this came the common opinion that the Mass is a work which ex opere operato blots out the sins of the living and the dead. (Augsburg Confession XXIV, 21-22 Latin)

We must therefore reject the error of Thomas when he wrote: “the body of the Lord, once offered on the cross for original debt, is daily offered on the altar for daily offenses so that in this the church might have a service that reconciles God to itself.” (Apology XXIV, 62)

The Catholic protest at Augsburg:

They attribute to Catholics the assertion that the passion of Christ was for original sin and the Mass for actual sins.  But in this the preachers deceive their princes, since they impute to Catholics an unheard of error and heresy. Let them point out to us anyone who thinks that Christ made satisfaction in his passion only for original sin, and we will oppose him as much as Luther. Catholics have never taught such a notion, but we hold that Christ made satisfaction for all sins. (First Draft of The Confutation of the Augsburg Confession, Article XXIV)

Thomas Manteufel

2007