Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud

by Peter Watson

But the major battle, as expected, was fought over the concept of justification by faith alone. Luther’s revolutionary idea was that all a sinner had to do was to truly believe in Christ and he would be redeemed. The council reiterated that this was not nearly enough. The church’s argument was that, though damaged by the Fall, man retained the capacity to choose good over evil, but that he required Christ’s example, as interpreted by the church, so as to be, in effect, good by informed consent.66 The council also reaffirmed that there were seven sacraments–Baptism, Confirmation, Holy Communion, Penance, Extreme Unction, Holy Orders, Matrimony–countermanding Luther’s claim that, in the Bible, there were just two, Baptism and Holy Communion.67 The number of sacraments was of course central to the structure of the church, for penance (confession) could only be heard by priests, who could only be appointed by bishops. And the council insisted that Purgatory, in reality a sixth-century ‘revelation’, really existed. In turn this helped maintain the doctrine of indulgences, though the council did outlaw any commerce in them.68 Thus the main thrust of the Council of Trent was to reassert Catholic doctrine in all its corrupt glory, making many issues even more black and white than they had been before. The intransigence at Trent laid down the basis for the terrible wars of religion of the seventeenth century.