To Be Deep in History - excellent article by Keith Mathison

http://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/be-deep-history/

Keith Mathison, at Ligonier Ministries, and in the September 2010 issue of Tabletalk, has an excellent article on John Henry Newman's claim to be deep in history . . . and he compares Newman's take with another Anglican who converted to Rome in the 19th Century, Henry Edward Manning.

Here is an excerpt at the end. Excellent analysis of this shibboleth that is deceiving modern day evangelicals left and right.

"Cardinal Newman recognized the obvious difference between the current Roman Church and the early church. He was too deep in history not to see it. He had to develop his famous idea of doctrinal development to explain it. He argued that all the later Roman doctrines and practices were “hidden” in the church from the beginning. They were made explicit over time under the guidance of the Spirit. But the problem that many Roman Catholics fail to see is that there is a difference between development and contradiction. It is one thing to use different language to teach something the church has always taught (e.g., the “Trinity”). It is another thing altogether to begin teaching something that the church always denied (e.g., papal supremacy or infallibility). Those doctrines in particular were built on multitudes of forgeries.

Cardinal Manning solved the problem by treating any appeal to history as treason. He called for blind faith in the papacy and magisterium. Such might have been possible had the fruits of the papacy over 1,500 years not consistently been the precise opposite of the fruit of the Spirit (Matt. 7:16).

Cardinal Newman said that to be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant. The truth is that to be deep in real history, as opposed to Rome’s whitewashed, revisionist, and often forged history, is to cease to be a Roman Catholic."

Keith Mathison

From Ligonier Ministries and R.C. Sproul. © Tabletalk magazine. Website: www.ligonier.org/tabletalk. Email: tabletalk@ligonier.org. Toll free: 1-800-435-4343.

Trueman, Newman, and Discernment

Somehow, in the flurry of comments and emails, amidst this discussion of how inconsistent it is to appreciate some part of the works of a particular theologian, without accepting the whole of his works (or even his "presuppositions") as divinely inspired, or not, Pilgrimsarbour had the presence of mind to post this link to this Carl Trueman article (and to send me an email reminder of it) which outlines how to do that very thing. (For those of you who don't know, Carl Trueman is a Professor of Historical Theology and Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary.)

Of course, broadly speaking, there have been historically, and are still, at least two approaches to discerning and understanding the truth within in Christianity. The first, of course, as evidenced by Dr. Trueman's fine appreciation for a broad range of Christian heroes:

Luther is a hero of mine, along with Nazianzus, Augustine, Aquinas, Owen, and Newman. It does not mean I agree with him (or them) on all points or even in some cases many points; it does not mean he would even have regarded me as a Christian; but it does mean he is an exceptional person from whom I have learned an enormous amount; and in reading him (and them) my own theology has been sharpened, and my understanding of the grace and beauty of God in Christ has been deepened. There is a heroic quality to the thought of men who are willing to tackle the greatest themes relating to God, creation, salvation, and the church: even when they make mistakes, they make magnificent mistakes from which we can all learn. In a day of small men and small minds, we should be grateful that the Lord is truly good, and has provided such brilliant men to inform the great traditions of the church and to provide us with immense resources of theology and devotion...

Dr. Trueman, of course is adhering to the advice of such like St. Paul ("Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect" and "test everything; hold fast what is good") and Francis Turretin ("examination of faith and knowledge ought to precede the knowledge of the church" -- that is, examine the Scriptures to discern the doctrines, and locate the church where such doctrines are held and practiced). We've heard this called "the pick-and-choose" approach, but, we'd rather go with Paul's thoughts and advice on these things.

The second, we’ll call it a philosophy or mindset, is one of something like swallowing the whole pig.* This method may or may not be unique to Roman Catholicism. But for Roman Catholics, it is an article of faith for them. Roman Catholics must receive with docility everything that the Roman Church teaches them. Mark Shea describes this second method in a particularly striking way. JB note: my comments are set below in [square brackets], whereas that which is (in parenthesis) is an original Mark Shea comment within the text:

For no part of Sacred Tradition, written or unwritten, can be set above (or below) the authority of the Church with which it is seamlessly woven together, or else the whole Tradition (and therefore the written Tradition which is the Bible – and therefore all Christianity) unravels. The authority of his Church, like Christ’s robe, is seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom.

This is not to say that all aspects of Catholic Tradition are equally important. The Church itself acknowledges the reality of the hierarchy of truth and is quite matter-of-fact in saying that some Tradition (such as the Trinity) is irreformable big “T” Tradition, while other tradition (for example, the Friday abstinence from meat or some other delectable) is small “t” tradition. The latter can be altered or even set aside by the Church and has been on occasion, for it is a mere discipline and not a cornerstone of what must be believed always, everywhere, and by all. But the big “T” stuff cannot be altered without striking at the very heart of the Faith.

Which left me (as it leaves you, good reader) with a challenge. [A footnote here says that this is “A challenge which, if you wish to take it up, can be pursued with the help of some of the handy materials offered in the appendix.”] According to Catholic belief, the very doctrines which irk most Protestant believers (such as Purgatory, the Assumption of Mary, the infallibility of the Pope, and so forth) are doctrines which cannot be set aside since they are squarely located under the Big "T" heading by the Catholic Church and are therefore immovable features of Sacred Tradition -- the very same Tradition which tells us what is and is not in our Bible and does so in a coherent voice of authority sounding down to the centuries through a line of bishops leading inexorably back to Jesus Christ himself. In other words, I was (and you by extension, good reader, are) obliged to either:

1. Find out if the whole Catholic Tradition was truly coherent; or,

2. Arbitrarily reject the bits I was [and therefore you are] uncomfortable with, but simultaneously exploit Catholic Tradition's authority (where it was useful against modernism)--all the while hoping that both Evangelicals and modernist (not to mention the Holy Spirit) would not laugh at my [i.e., your] inconsistency. [Mark Shea, By What Authority? An Evangelical Discovers Catholic Tradition Huntington: Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division, 1996, pgs 174-175.]

So you can be Roman Catholic and swallow the whole pig, or you can be Protestant, and be discerning, and use the faculty of discernment, as Paul has suggested that we do.

Of course, where the outside edges of this “Big ‘T’ Tradition” lie, now that's a different question, and the “living Magisterium,” will, uh, “pick-and-choose” for you, what it is that you are to hold and not to hold as a binding doctrine of the faith. They "discern" the difference between what's irreformable and what's merely "small 't' tradition" for you. The important thing is that you listen to them about what the pig is and only swallow that. So long as you hold to the definitions themselves, then the discussions of where those edges are is very much open to question.

As an example of this, the Blessed Newman himself rejected the concept that there was ever a time when something might be “believed always, everywhere, and by all.” He said:

It does not seem possible, then, to avoid the conclusion that, whatever be the proper key for harmonizing the records and documents of the early and later Church, and true as the dictum of Vincentius must be considered in the abstract, and possible as its application might be in his own age, when he might almost ask the primitive centuries for their testimony, it is hardly available now, or effective of any satisfactory result. The solution it offers is as difficult as the original problem.

So we can see that, while it is not possible for Roman Catholics to be good Catholics and not swallow the whole pig, it is possible to disagree about what defines the edges of that pig, as Roman apologist Scott Windsor so ably describes here.

So the difference between Roman Catholics and Protestants comes down to whether you hold that you must swallow the whole pig, or that you just eat the bacon and ribs and throw away the rest of it. Be that as it may, I’m going to follow the path of Dr. Trueman and continue to affirm that I deeply appreciate the thorough work of Peter Lampe in providing a very clear analysis of the church at Rome in the first two centuries. Whether or not he believes that Paul actually wrote the letters to Timothy.

* Note: This video is shown here merely to illustrate the process of "accepting the whole cloth of Roman Catholic authority." We would not have the whole "Tradition" to unravel. But the author does not wish to imply that Mark Shea could be adequately illustrated by a Komodo dragon, nor that the whole of Roman Catholic dogma could be illustrated as “a whole pig.” We, here, at Beggars All, do not attempt to “bind the conscience,” and we advise that the dear reader should form his or her own opinions on such matters.

Catholic Nick, Meet Cardinal Newman

Nick said something funny in the comments down below, and I thought it would be useful for some of you who weren't reading all the comments.

Nick quoted JB: To try to suggest that there was doctrinal and administrative unity is a far, far stretch.

Then Nick said: This, to me, is where the real issue rests. It's more about our starting assumptions than anything. To you, there is no such thing as "doctrinal and administrative unity" beyond the doors of each local congregation - to you it's a fiction of the Catholic mind. Given that, of course you're not going to even entertain the possibility of it when you read the Fathers or other historic documents.

From the Catholic end, your outlook is a form of deism, and I can see why Matthew said some of the things he did about you not really having faith.

If Nick is correct, then Cardinal Newman was guilty of deism:

[Section 11]

Again, the six great Bishops and Saints of the Ante-nicene Church were St. Irenaeus, St. Hippolytus, St. Cyprian, St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, St. Dionysius of Alexandria, and St. Methodius. Of these, St. Dionysius is accused by St. Basil of having sown the first seeds of Arianism and St. Gregory is allowed by the same learned Father to have used language concerning our Lord, which he only defends on the plea of an economical object in the writer. St. Hippolytus speaks as if he were ignorant of our Lord's Eternal Sonship; St. Methodius speaks incorrectly at least upon the Incarnation; and St. Cyprian does not treat of theology at all. Such is the incompleteness of the extant teaching of these true saints, and, in their day, faithful witnesses of the Eternal Son.

Again, Athenagoras, St. Clement, Tertullian, and the two SS. Dionysii would appear to be the only writers whose language is at any time exact and systematic enough to remind us of the Athanasian Creed. If we limit our view of the teaching of the Fathers by what they expressly state, St. Ignatius may be considered as a Patripassian, St. Justin arianizes, and St. Hippolytus is a Photinian.

Again, there are three great theological authors of the Ante-nicene centuries, Tertullian, Origen, and, we may add, Eusebius, though he lived some way into the fourth. Tertullian is heterodox on the doctrine of our Lord's divinity, and, indeed, ultimately fell altogether into heresy or schism; Origen is, at the very least, suspected, and must be defended and explained rather than cited as a witness of orthodoxy; and Eusebius was a Semi-Arian.

12.

Moreover, It may be questioned whether any Ante-nicene father distinctly affirms either the numerical Unity or the Coequality of the Three Persons; except perhaps the heterodox Tertullian, and that chiefly in a work written after he had become a Montanist: yet to satisfy the Anti-roman use of Quod semper, &c., surely we ought not to be left for these great articles of doctrine to the testimony of a later age.

Of course, as a 19th century writer, Newman goes on at some length like this. These are the "difficulties" that he felt he needed to overcome, in order to justify his assumption that the government of the church then, which Christ and the apostles somehow instituted, is the same as the government that exists in the Roman Catholic church now.

These "heterodox" teachings are the "seeds" that developed into the great and perfect faith of the Roman Catholic Church.

Continuing on with Nick's charge of "deism" -- here are a couple of definitions, along with a couple of responses from a historical Protestant confession:

Deism: the form of theological rationalism that believes in God on the basis of reason without reference to revelation

The WCF: Chapter 1.6: The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men.

Or:

Deism: the belief in a god or gods who set the universe in motion, then ceased to interact with it...

The WCF: Chapter 3.1: Of God’s Eternal Decree: God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.

What Catholics Always Believed About the Papacy

I just want to get clear what the historical Roman Catholic Church believes about the papacy. That shouldn't be hard.

Adrian Fortescue, a Catholic priest and writer in the early 20th century, [he was a writer for the old Catholic Encyclopedia] made the case in his 1920 book "The Early Papacy to the Synod of Chalcedon in 451," that the Roman Catholic Church has always believed the same things about itself, and about the papacy.

He makes it clear from the outset:

We cannot admit that it is necessary for a Catholic today to examine the documents of the years 1 to 451 in order to know what is the nature of the primacy that Christ gave to his Church. We believe in a Church that exists and lives all days, even to the end of the world, guided by Christ, infallible in faith and morals as long as she exists. We have exactly the same confidence in the divine guidance of the Church in 1870 as in 451. [JB note: and they believe this to be true of the year 33 ad, too.] To be obliged to hark back some fifteen hundred years, to judge for yourself, according to to the measure of your scholarship, what the documents of that period imply, would be the end of any confidence in a living authority….

[If we were to go back to the ancient documents, we would] go on arguing about the meaning of the Fathers even more hopelessly than we have argued for centuries about the meaning of Matthew 16:18, when Jesus said to Peter, "Thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it" (Douay-Rheims). The only possible real standard is a living authority, an authority alive in the world at this moment, that can answer your difficulties, reject a false theory as it arises and say who is right in disputed interpretations of ancient documents (22-23 emphasis added).

I was born in 1960 to Catholic parents whose identies were shaped in the Pius XII years of the 1950's -- those years which commentator Patrick Buchanan said were the real "Catholic Moment" (as opposed to J.R. Neuhaus's "Catholic Moment" which began in 1978). I grew up believing that Matt 16:18 said, "Thou art Peter, and on this Rock I will build my Catholic Church." Such was the Catholic identity that came out of those years in ethnic America.

A page later, Fortescue clarified this further, and he set down the rule:

There are two kinds of proof for any dogma. The main proof, the most efficient in every way, the proof that is the real motive for every Catholic, is simply that this dogma is taught now by the Church of Christ, that Christ has given to his Church his own authority, so that we can trust the Church as we trust Christ himself. 'Who heareth you, heareth me' (Lk 10:16). The argument is the same for every dogma (that is why the Catholic position is essentially simple, in spite of apparent complexity); it can be understood by the most ignorant, as the religion of Christ must be (it is impossible for every child and peasant to make up his own Christianity for himself by his interpretation of Scripture or the Fathers down to 451). This position admits no vagaries of private judgment for each dogma. No variety of interpretation is possible as to what the Catholic Church of today teaches, or if such misunderstanding should occur, the Church is there to declare her mind. (26 - parenthetical notes are Fortescue's)

For Fortescue, for Catholics in his day [or our day], even such an established and well-defined doctrine as the Trinity rests ultimately on the teaching of the Catholic Church today.

All we suppose, before we come to the Church, is that our Lord Jesus Christ was a man sent by God and whom we must follow if we wish to serve God in the proper way; that he founded one visible Church, to which his followers should belong; that this Church is, as a matter of historic fact, the communion of Rome (not, however, supposing anything about the papacy, but supposing only visible unity and historic continuity). This much must be presupposed and therefore does not rest on the authority of the Church. All else does (26-27, Fortescue's parentheses, emphasis added).

Well then …

Of two minds
But in a most gracious way, Fortescue does allow that some of the unconvinced won't want to accept that presupposition as the law of the land. They will say "prove it." So he allows that the second type of argument for each dogma does involve "taking each [one] separately and proving that this was taught by Christ and has been believed from the beginning. But for Catholics, "this line of argument is neither so convincing nor so safe. It does now involve our private judgment as to whether the ancient texts do, or do not, really prove what we claim. It requires knowledge of the texts, of dead languages; to be efficient it requires considerable scholarship. It is impossible that our Lord should give us a religion requiring all this before you know what it is" (27)"

So for Fortescue, "the direct proof of each dogma [including the papacy] can be only confirmation of the general argument for all, taken from the present teaching of the church."

But there is a second component, "which we are always ready to offer, as long it is understood that it is not the main reason of our belief."

Fortescue's contention is thus that, while Roman Catholics could go back and "prove" the papacy historically -- "we can do this if we want to" -- he says, essentially, we don't have to do it because we believe the current dogma, and we merely need to assume that this dogma, confirmed by centuries of belief, was simply the way it was when Christ founded the church.

The question of "development"
Some Roman Catholics today, when faced with the kind of evidence that I've been presenting, throw out John Henry Newman's "theory of development," as if to say, "well, the papacy wasn't as well-developed as it is today. It merely existed in seed form. And in fact, Newman said of the development of the papacy, "no doctrine is defined till it is violated" (Newman, "An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine: Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press edition, pg 151).

But for Fortescue, writing in 1920, there was no "seed form." "Development" of the papacy simply meant turning up the dial and just "defining more explicitly" what has always been believed.

When there was confusion in the early centuries about the papacy -- some "dispute":

When a point of faith is disputed, when some new heresy arises, the Church makes her mind clear by defining more explicitly what she has always held. She forbids a false interpretation of the faith, and so she makes it more definite. Hence vague statements, harmless before controversy began, become impossible after the definition. But we do not admit that this development means any real addition to the faith; it is only a more explicit assertion of the old faith, necessary in view of false interpretations (35).

After all, Clement was genuinely an early pope, in every sense of the word, exercising papal power and prerogatives, and the papacy had been "a constant tradition" even in the days of Irenaeus (c. 180 A.D.) The papacy essentially was what it had been from the beginning:

There is constant tradition, from Irenaeus down, that the letter written by Clement, Bishop of Rome. Clement, in his letter, commands the Corinthians to return to the obedience of their lawful hierarchy. He does not advise, he commands. He commands with an authority, one would almost say with an arbitrary tone that has not been exceeded by any modern pope. (66, emphasis added).

I'll have more to say about Clement; that will come later. But for now, I wanted to give some feel for what real Catholics concretely believed about the papacy, in that boastful era between 1870 and 1960, and especially in that "Catholic Moment" of the 1950's, when a pope felt free to define new dogma all by his lonesome.

Cardinal Newman, Miracle Worker

"Absurd" Attack on Newman Miracle Condemned

Article Falsely Portrays Cardinal as Liberal Dissident

BIRMINGHAM, England, MAY 11, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The Birmingham Oratory is condemning recent accusations that a miraculous healing attributed to the intercession of Cardinal John Henry Newman, who will be beatified in September, was a fake.

In a press release today, the oratory stated that the accusatory article, written by John Cornwell and published two days ago by the Sunday Times, is "seriously flawed."

The miracle that was approved last July by Benedict XVI as a step in the cause of Cardinal Newman's canonization was the 2001 healing of Deacon Jack Sullivan of the Boston, Massachusetts, area.

Sullivan had a debilitating back injury that interrupted his diaconal studies and threatened to leave him paralyzed. After praying for the intercession of Cardinal Newman, he experienced an immediate healing from the pain, and doctors stated that there was no medical explanation.

In Sunday's article, Cornwell attempted to demonstrate that the healing was not miraculous, but rather medically explicable due to surgical treatment that Sullivan received.

He suggested that Benedict XVI and the Congregation for Saints' Causes "conspired to suppress the truth about Sullivan's healing to portray it as medically inexplicable," the oratory communique noted.

"The suggestion is absurd," it added. "The Church's procedures have been faithfully adhered to and everything is in the public domain."

Misleading

The communiqué asserted that Cornwell's arguments, quoting "experts" in order to claim that "improvements in Sullivan's underlying condition can flow from purely natural influences," are "very misleading."

Members of the Birmingham Oratory, which was Cardinal Newman's community, underlined the "instantaneous, complete and lasting" cure of Sullivan after his prayer six days after his surgery.

"Nothing in the expert testimonies adduced by Cornwell show that such a recovery, in such a time period, can be attributed to surgery, or natural causes in general," it added.

In fact, the communiqué noted that Cornwell clearly states his agenda: "discrediting Pope Benedict XVI and Papal teaching, to promote a 'progressive' view of Cardinal Newman as a 'dissident,' above all concerning individual conscience in relation to the teaching of the Catholic Church in faith and morals."

It added, "The Pope however is the leading authentic interpreter of Newman's teaching on conscience, which Cornwell and other 'progressive' Catholics misunderstand and misrepresent."

Members of the oratory warned that this attack "is not only unfounded, but another attempt to recruit Newman to the factional cause of 'liberal' Catholicism."

They affirmed, "Newman's doctrine of conscience, in fact his lifelong contribution to Christianity as both an Anglican and a Catholic, are in opposition to the rejection of authority in faith and morals which 'liberal' Catholics are determined to promote."

The oratory stated its plans to publish another article later this week in order to give more details about the "failings of Cornwell's arguments."

Luther Condemned the Word "Trinity"?

Here's one I found over on the Catholic Answers Forums:

"does anybody have documentaiton [sic] on Luther's criticism of the word 'Trinity'? I read about this in Newman, but don't have a source (I don't recall Newman giving one)"

Here is the Cardinal Newman quote in question:

Lutheranism has by this time become in most places almost simple heresy or infidelity; it has terminated, if it has even yet reached its limit, in a denial both of the Canon and the Creed, nay, of many principles of morals. Accordingly the question arises, whether these conclusions are in fairness to be connected with its original teaching or are a corruption. And it is no little aid towards its resolution to find that Luther himself at one time rejected the Apocalypse, called the Epistle of St. James "straminea," condemned the word "Trinity," fell into a kind of Eutychianism in his view of the Holy Eucharist, and in a particular case sanctioned bigamy. Calvinism, again, in various distinct countries, has become Socinianism, and Calvin himself seems to have denied our Lord's Eternal Sonship and ridiculed the Nicene Creed. {199}[source]

I've been searching around looking for exactly what Newman may have been referring to. Given the examples he uses, it's obvious, his Luther scholarship was a bit weak. That is, he repeats the popular Roman Catholic polemic against Luther.

Each instance I've read from Luther using the word "Trinity" is positive. If Luther did strongly condemn the word, it must have been an isolated instance, or a few isolated instances. That is, if one simply searches Luther's Works for the word "Trinity," you would never arrive at Newman's "Luther condemned the word 'Trinity' ".... at least as something consistently held throughout Luther's career. Keep in mind, condemning a word is not the same thing as condemning a doctrine. Even Roman Catholic historian Hartmann Grisar stated,

Certain controversialists have undoubtedly been in the wrong in making out Luther to have been skeptical about, or even opposed at heart to, many of the ancient dogmas which he never attacked, for instance, the Trinity, or the Divinity of Christ. A few vague and incautious statements occasionally let slip by him are more than counterbalanced by a wealth of others which tell in favour of his faith, and he himself would have been the last to admit the unfortunate inferences drawn more or less rightly from certain propositions emitted by him. [source]

Even the folks on the Catholic Answers board figured this one out. One person quoted a sermon from Luther that states:

Today we celebrate the festival of the Holy Trinity, to which we must briefly allude, so that we may not celebrate it in vain. It is indeed true that the name “Trinity” is nowhere to be found in the Holy Scriptures, but has been conceived and invented by man. For this reason it sounds somewhat cold and we had better speak of “God” than of the “Trinity.”
This word signifies that there are three persons in God. It is a heavenly mystery which the world cannot understand. I have often told you that this, as well as every other article of faith, must not be based upon reason or comparison, but must be understood and established by means of passages from the Scriptures, for God has the only perfect knowledge and knows how to speak concerning himself.

The source for this quote can be found here in a limited preview with some pages missing. The full text can be found in the Complete Sermons of Martin Luther Volume 2 (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2000), vol. 2.1 p. 406-407). In this early sermon from 1522, Luther goes on to vigorously argue for the Trinity from the Bible.

A very helpful explanation as to Luther's approach to the word "Trinity" and the limitations of human language and reason can be found here:

In fact, in the very sermon quoted on the Catholic answers forum, Luther immediately goes on to say:

The great universities have invented manifold distinctions, dreams and fictions by means of which they would explain the Holy Trinity, and have made fools of themselves. We shall therefore quote only passages from the Scriptures in order to determine and establish the divinity of Christ. In the first place, we quote from the New Testament, where we find many proof texts; for instance, John I, I-3 : "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him; and without him was not anything made that hath been made." Now if he is not made, but is himself the Maker, he must indeed be God. John also says afterwards: "And the Word became flesh." [Sermons of Martin Luther 2.1 p. 407].

He concludes a few sections later, "Therefore we cling to the Scriptures, those passages which testify of the Trinity of God, and we say: I know very well that in God there are the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; but how they can be one I do not know, neither should I know it."

Elsewhere Luther comments on the inadequacy of the term "Trinity": "The words trinitas, unitas are really mathematical terms. And yet we can't talk about God without using such words. But at the same time, it is also true that when we use human language to speak about God, it seems to have a ring to it, a whole new connotation" [Complete Sermons of Martin Luther Volume 6, pp. 206-207]. "True [Trinity] is not choice German, nor has it a pleasing sound, when we designate God by the word 'Dreifaltigkeit' (nor is the Latin, Trinitas, more elegant): but since we have no better term, we must employee these" [Complete Sermons of Martin Luther Volume 4.2, pp. 7-8]. I'm sure a plentiful supply of similar sentiment from Luther could be brought forth as testimony to the fact he didn't deny the Trinity, and also used the word positively.

Paul Althaus provides a good overview of Luther's understanding of the Trinty:

Source: Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966], pp. 199-201

Here's another tidbit to go along with this:

Though correct for leading the Reformation Movement, Martin Luther had been deceived for years on 95 or more points of Roman Catholic teaching. The trinity was not a subject of concern to him. As it turns out, the trinity was the 96th point that Martin Luther did not include in his thesis nailed to the church door.[source]

First it's asserted The Trinity didn't concern Luther. Then it's asserted the Trinity was left off the 95 Theses. Interestingly, the Trinity does appear in Luther's earlier Disputation Against Scholastic Theology, but in no sense important to the charge being asserted. Perhaps the writer is intending to say, "the Trinity should have been the 96th point." That is, the author of the web page finds the Trinity to be a heretical concoction of the Roman Catholic Church. This is probably the sense in which it's intended.