Boston College philosopher Peter Kreeft comments.
Kreeft writes:
Bad philosophy can produce bad theology. Luther was an Okhamist, that is, a Nominalist, who did not believe there were any such things as real species or universal essences like human nature. If there is no universal human nature, there can be no transformed nature.
Luther thus reduced salvation to a mental attitude on God’s part, and to a legal transaction. God looks at us as if we were his children because he looks at us covered by Christ’s blood, which hides our sins, and God declares us righteous even though we really aren’t. This merely transfers the legalism from the human to the divine.
One could go on and view Sola Fide as an attempt at over zealous Pauline scrupulosity that does violence to the integrity of the Bible as a whole, as the issue of James’ epistle points out. Sola Scriptura itself plays games with the Bible, making it to be something it was never intended to be - THE criterion of truth on earth. The very attempt to make it so demonstrates a lack of faith in God’s Providence. The Bible is not the unmoved mover, the source of meaning, or the one who says “I AM.” It is not a divine incarnation or an example of divine dictation. It is done by human hands inspired by God; and contained in that word is the crucial notion of the divine working though human agents.
Like I said, an heretic. :)
That is I'm always complaining about Phenomenology's influence on Vatican II.