On the Catholic failure to comprehend Luther and the Lutheran structure of thought one could write reams. It seems to persist in all times and to be a constant among all schools of Catholics. A failure which is so universal cannot be attributed to individual blindness. It must tell us something fundamental about Catholicism itself, directing us to what is taken to be so axiomatic that nothing else can be conceived to be the case. Nevertheless it is astonishing in its breadth and depth. It will be the business of this chapter first to document that failure and secondly to probe the question as to in what exactly it consists.

It may be thought that the basis of the misconception lies in this: Luther is read as though he were an Augustinian. That is to say there is a failure to switch paradigm. It is thought, as I put it, that Luther is to be situated somewhere out beyond Augustine, given a Catholic spectrum which stretches from semi-Pelagianism on the one hand to a more pessimistic Augustinian position on the other hand. But this of course is a profound misunderstanding. Luther is not saying that ‘all grace comes from God’ upon an Augustinian model. Much Lutheran scholarship of this century has been directed precisely to distinguishing Luther from Augustine. Little of this however seems to have percolated through even to Catholic scholars who devote themselves to the study of Luther.