The Face of Opposition
John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, was the face of opposition to the evangelical/Protestant teaching that was finding its way into 16th century England. On the heals of the 1534 Act of Supremacy (in which Henry VIII was made the Supreme Head of the Church of England, severing all ecclesiastical ties to Rome), on May 20, 1535, the newly elected Pope Paul III made Fisher “Cardinal Priest of San Vitale.” Not surprisingly, Henry didn’t cow to this intimidation and responded that Fisher’s head would be delivered to Rome before a cardinal’s hat was permitted to enter England. Fisher is rumored to have penned the famous “Defense of Seven Sacraments” (1521) which won Henry the title “Defender of the Faith,” he took Catherine of Aragon’s side in her divorce dispute with the King, stubbornly refused subscription to the Church of England, and at one point he even invited Emperor Charles V to invade England. He was a constant annoyance to Thomas Cranmer and the Reformation cause in England.
The biggest difference between Cranmer and Fisher, the English reformers and Medieval scholasticism, was not the things mentioned above, as formidable as they were. The biggest difference was theological - how each of them answers the most fundamental human question: How can humans be righteous before God and holy before their Maker? (Job 4:17). Catholics believe that justification is a process (salvation by increments - salvation by sanctification) by which a person is actually, innately made righteous by the infused righteousness that God distributes in the grace of the sacraments. Protestants, on the other hand, believe that we are never righteous enough, not innately and not in this life, therefore our salvation depends on an outside-righteousness, Christ’s righteousness credited to the account of unworthy sinners (the power of God’s transforming grace).
“Cranmer embraced the forensic understanding in which God imputed Christ’s righteousness to the ungodly who turned to him in faith. Yet he did not believe that justification based on the external merits of Christ had no internal effect in the justified. Quite the contrary. For if the glory of divine love was to love the unworthy, the duty and joy of the justified was to return that love to God and to others. Consequently, in the moment of justification Cranmer held that God imparted both faith and love. The believer’s faith laid hold of the extrinsic righteousness of Christ on which basis alone his sins were pardoned. At the same time, however the holy Spirit indwells the believer, stirring in him a love for God and his commandments. . . In short, Cranmer believed that justification was being made ‘right-willed’ by faith, not being made inherently righteous, and its evidence was love and repentance toward God and neighbor.”
The guilt/grace/gratitude theology of Reformation Anglicanism was memorialized in the 1552 Book of Common Prayer and the Articles of Religion. The reformers considered scholasticism “Pelagian,” a condemned heresy that holds to a picture of human potential and free will more optimistic than the Bible teaches. Cranmer (and all the English reformers) believed that sinners are never righteous enough such that we can ever do enough for salvation. St. Paul wrote the Philippians, “Not having a righteousness of my own that comes through the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness of God that depends on faith” (3:9). Each Sunday in Anglican and Episcopal churches around the world we acknowledge and pray this: “we do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies...” (The Prayer of Humble Access).
Is saving righteousness imputed or infused over time? Are we righteous because of our own righteousness or because of the righteousness of God credited to our account by the sheer love of God? Are works and moral improvement "for" salvation or "from" salvation? Is the ground of assurance our own righteousness or the unwavering righteousness of God available to those who don’t deserve it? There is not a more glorious and liberating biblical doctrine than justification by grace through faith alone. This is the heart of the gospel of Jesus Christ who lived the life we cannot live and died the death that we deserve to die, as our substitute. This is my greatest hope and conviction.
John Fisher, along with his friend and fellow contrarian, Thomas More, were canonized by the Roman Catholic Church in 1935.