Catholic writers greedily grab every opportunity to belittle Luther's
scholarship. Incentives to study at home, they say, he received none.
His common school education was wretched. During his high school studies
he was favored with good teachers, but hampered by his home-bred
roughness and uncouthness and his poverty. He applied himself diligently
to his studies, but gave no sign of being a genius. At the University of
Erfurt, too, he was studious, but he seems to have made no great
impression on the University. "He paid little attention to grammatical
details, and never attained to Ciceronian purity and elegance in speech
and writing." When he made his A. B:, he ranked thirteenth in a class of
fifty-seven. He did a little better in his effort for the title of A.
M., when he came out second among seventeen candidates. But Melanchthon
is declared entirely wrong when he relates that Luther was the wonder of
the University. His theological studies preparatory to his entering the
priesthood were very hasty and superficial. Still less prepared was he
for the work of a professor. His duties in the cloister left him little
time for learned studies. Yet he went to "bibulous Wittenberg," to a
little five-year-old university, and lectured "as best he could." By the
way, our Catholic friends seem to forget that "bibulous" Wittenberg was
a good old Catholic town at the time. All things considered, Luther's
advancement was all too rapid; it was not justified by his preparatory
studies, which had been "anything but deep, solid, systematic." "The
theological culture he received was not on a par with that required now
by the average seminarian, let alone a Doctor of Divinity." He accepted
the title of D. D. very reluctantly, being conscious that he did not
deserve it. A feeling of the insufficiency of his education tormented
him all through life. "It cannot be denied that he was industrious,
self-reliant, ambitious, but withal, he was not a methodically trained
man. At bottom, he was neither a philosopher nor a theologian, and at no
time of his life, despite his efforts to acquire knowledge, did he show
himself more than superficially equipped to grapple with serious and
difficult philosophical and religious problems. His study never rose to
brilliancy." Thus runs the Catholic account of Professor and Doctor
Luther.
We have not quoted the worst Catholic estimates of Luther's scholarship.
He has also been called a dunce, an ignoramus, a barbarian. Again it
seems to escape the Catholics that this ill-trained, insufficient,
half-baked Doctor of Divinity is a product of their own educational art.
Whatever advancement he received in those days was actually forced upon
him by Catholics. All his academic and ecclesiastical honors came from
Catholic sources, came to him, moreover, as a good Catholic. Also that
highest and noblest distinction which made him a duly called and
accredited expounder of the Holy Scriptures. If there is fault to be
found with anything in this matter, it lies with the Catholic method and
process of making a young man within the space of ten years a Bachelor
of Arts, a Master of Arts, a priest, a professor, and a Doctor of Sacred
Theology; it does not lie with the innocent subject to whom this presto!
change! process was applied.
But does this estimate of Luther square with the facts in the case? For
a dunce or a mediocre scholar Luther has been a fair success. His little
ability and scanty preparation makes his achievements all the more
remarkable. The most brilliant minds of the race, for whom the home, the
Church and the State, religion, science and art, had done their best,
have accomplished immeasurably less than this poor and mostly
self-taught country boy. God give His Church many more such dunces!
The net results of Luther's learning are open to inspection by the world
in his numerous works. Able scholars of most recent times have looked
into Luther's writings with a view of determining how much learned
knowledge he had actually acquired, even before he began his reformatory
work, They have found that Luther was "very well versed in the favorite
Latin authors of the day: Vergil, Terence, Ovid, Aesop, Cicero, Livy,
Seneca, Horace, Catullus, Juvenal, Silius, Statius, Lucan, Suetonius,
Sallust, Quintilian, Varro, Pomponius Mela, the two Plinies, and the
_Germania_ of Tacitus." He possessed a creditable amount of knowledge of
General History and Church History. He had made a profound study of the
leading philosophers and scholastic theologians of the Middle Ages:
Thomas of Aquinas, Peter Lombard, Bernard of Clairvaux, Duns Scotus,
Occam, Gregory of Rimini, Pierre d'Ailly, Gerson, and Biel. Two of these
he knew almost by heart. He had studied the ancient Church Fathers:
Irenaeus, Cyprian, Eusebius, Athanasius, Hilary, Ambrose, Gregory of
Nanzianzen, Jerome, and such later theologians as Cassiodorus, Gregory
the Great, and Anselm of Canterbury; Tauler, Lefevre, Erasmus, and Pico
della Mirandola. "He was quite at home in the exegetical Middle Ages, in
the Canon Law, in Aristotle and Porphyry." "He was one of the first
German professors to learn Greek and Hebrew." Moreover, Luther
possessed, besides knowledge, those indispensable requisites in a good
professor: "the faculty of plain, clear, correct, and independent
thought, resourcefulness, acumen" (Boehmer, p. 179 f.). He had the
courage to tell the Church that it was a shame, that a heathen
philosopher, Aristotle, should formulate the doctrines which Christians
are to believe and their pastors are to teach. He threw this heathen,
who had for ages dominated Christian teaching, out of his lecture-room,
and took his students straight to the pure fountain of religious truth,
the Word of God. He publicly burned the Canon Law by which the Roman
Church had forged chains for the consciences of men, and which she
upholds to this day. His lecture-room became crowded with eager and
enthusiastic students, and the stripling university planted on the edge
of civilization in the sands along the Elbe became for a while the
religious and theological hub of the world. The students who gathered
about Luther knew that they had a real professor in him. The world of
his day came to this fledgling doctor with the weightiest questions, and
received answers that satisfied. That part of the intelligent world of
to-day which has read and studied Luther endorses the verdict of
Luther's contemporaries as regards his ample learning and proficiency as
a teacher.
More learned men, indeed, than Luther there have been. Some of these
have also made attempts to introduce needed reforms in the corrupt Roman
Church. Rome met their learned and labored arguments with the consummate
skill of a past master in sophistry. Those learned efforts came to
naught. Rome will never be reformed by human learning and scholarship.
Scholars are rarely men of action. It is because Professor Luther taught
_and acted_ that Rome hates him. He would have been permitted to lecture
in peace whatever he wished--others in the universities were doing that
at the time--if he had only been careful not to do anything, at least
not publicly, against the authority of the Church. That was the
unpardonable blunder of Luther that he wanted to live as he believed,
and that he taught others to do the same. For this reason he is a
dullard, an ignoramus, a poor scholar, a poor writer, in a word, an
inferior person from a literary and scholarly point of view.
In Numbers (chap. 22) there is a story told of the prophet Balaam, who
went out on a wicked mission for which a great reward had been promised
him. He rode along cheerfully, feasting his avaricious heart on the
great hoard he would bring back, when suddenly the ass that bore him
balked. The prophet began to beat the animal, but it did not budge an
inch. All at once this dunce of an ass which had never been put through
a spelling-book began to talk and remonstrated with the prophet: "Am I
not thine ass? What have I done unto thee that thou hast smitten me?" To
his amazement the prophet was able to understand the ass quite well.
This dumb brute made its meaning plain to a learned man. It was an
intolerable outrage that an ass should lecture a doctor, and balk him in
his designs. Luther is that ass. Rome rode him, and he patiently bore
his wicked master until the angel of the Lord stopped him and he would
go no further. The only difference is that Balaam had his eyes opened,
left off beating his ass, and felt sorry for what he had done. Rome's
eyes have not been opened for four hundred years. It is still beating
the poor ass. It does not see the Lord who has blocked her path and
said, You shall go no further!
In 2 Kings, chap. 5, there is another story told of the Syrian captain
Naaman, who came to be healed of his leprosy by the prophet Elijah. With
his splendid suite the great statesman drove up in grand style to the
prophet's cottage. He expected that the holy man would come out to meet
him, and very deferentially engage to do the great lord's bidding. The
prophet did not even come out of his hut, but sent Naaman word to go and
wash seven times in Jordan and he would be cleansed. Now Naaman flew
into a rage, because the prophet had, in the first place, not even
deigned to speak to him, and, secondly, had ordered a ridiculously
commonplace cure for him. He stormed that he would do no such thing as
wash in that old Jordan River. He had better waters at home. Let the
prophet keep his old Jordan for such as he was. And he rode off in great
dudgeon. Rome is the leprous gentleman, and Luther is the man of God who
told her how to become clean. The only difference is this: Naaman
listened to wise counsel, and finally did what he had been told to do,
and was cleansed. Rome disdains to this day to listen to the ill-bred
son of a peasant, the theological upstart Luther, and remains as filthy
as she has been.