Catholic writers have discovered a fatalistic tendency in Luther's
teaching of justification by faith without works. They declare that
Luther's theory of the utter depravity of man by reason of inherited sin
and his incapacity to perform any work that can be accounted good in the
sight of God kills every ambition to virtuous living in man. They argue
that when you tell a person that he is not capable to do good, he is apt
to believe you and make no effort to perform a good deed. The situation
becomes still worse when the divine predestination is introduced at this
point, as has been done, they say, by Luther. If God has determined all
things beforehand by a sovereign decree, if there really is no such
thing as human choice, and all things occur according to a foreordained
plan, man no longer has any responsibility. He is reduced to an
automaton. Free will is denied him; he cannot elect by voluntary choice
to engage in any God-pleasing action; for he is told that his natural
reason is blinded by sin and his understanding darkened, rendering it
impossible for him to discern good and evil, and leading him constantly
into errors of judgment on what is right or wrong, while he is made to
believe that his will is enslaved by evil lusts and passions, ever prone
to wickedness and averse to godliness. As a consequence, it is claimed,
man must necessarily become morally indifferent: he will not fight
against sin nor follow after righteousness, because he has become
convinced that it is useless for him to make any effort either in the
one direction or in the other. The doctrine of man's natural depravity
and the divine foreordination of all things, it is held, must drive man
either to despair, insanity, and suicide, or land him hopelessly in
fatalism: he will simply continue his physical life in a mechanical way,
like a brute or a plant; he merely vegetates.
These fatal tendencies which are charged against Luther are refuted by
no one more effectually than by Luther himself. As regards the doctrine
of original sin and man's natural depravity, Luther preached that with
apostolic force and precision. That doctrine is a Bible-doctrine. No
person has read his Bible aright, no expounder of Scripture has begun to
explain the divine plan of salvation for sinners, if he has failed to
find this teaching in the Bible. This doctrine is, indeed, extremely
humiliating to the pride of man; it opens up appalling views of the
misery of the human race under sin. We can understand why men would want
to get away from this doctrine. But no one confers any benefit on men by
minimizing the importance of the Bible-teaching, or by weakening the
statements of Scripture regarding this matter. Any teaching which admits
the least good quality in man by which he can prepare or dispose himself
so as to induce God to view him with favor is a contradiction of the
passages of Scripture which were cited in a previous chapter, and works
a delusion upon men that will prove just as fatal as when a physician
withholds from his patient the full knowledge of his critical condition.
Yea, it is worse; for a physician who is not frank and sincere to his
patient may deprive the latter of his physical life, but the
teacher of God's Word who instils in men false notions of their moral
and spiritual power robs them of life eternal.
Luther avoided this error. He led men to a true estimate of themselves
as they are by nature. But over and against the fell power of sin he
magnified the greater power of divine grace. "Where sin abounded, grace
hath much more abounded" (Rom. 5, 20),--along this line Luther found the
solution for the awful difficulty which confronts every man when he
studies the Bible-doctrine of original sin, and when he discovers,
moreover, that this Bible-doctrine is borne out fully by his own
experience. Just for this reason, because man can do nothing to restore
himself to the divine favor, God by His grace proposes to do all, and
has sent His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to do all, and, last
not least, publishes the fact that all has been done in the Gospel of
the forgiveness of sin by grace through faith in Christ. Luther has
taught men to confess: "I believe that I cannot by my own reason or
strength believe in Jesus Christ or come to Him," but he taught them
also to follow up this true confession with the other: "The Holy Ghost
has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified
and kept me in the true faith."
The Gospel is called in the Scriptures "the Word of Life," not only
because it speaks of the life everlasting which God has prepared for His
children, but also because it gives life. It approaches man, dead in
trespasses and sins, and quickens him into new life. It removes from the
mind of man its natural blindness and from the will of man its innate
impotency. It regenerates all the dead powers of the soul, and makes man
walk in newness of life. The difficulty which original sin has created
is not greater than the means and instruments which God has provided for
coping with it. "God hath concluded all in unbelief, that He might have
mercy on all." (Rom. 11, 32.)
This is the only true salvation, every other is fictitious. It teaches
man both to face the fearful odds against him because of his corruption,
and to relish all the more the points in his favor by reason of God's
redeeming and regenerating grace. It starts its work with crushing man's
pride and self-confidence utterly, and hurling him into the abyss of
despair, but it lifts him out of despair with a mighty power that breaks
the power of evil in him. This change is brought about in such a gentle,
tender way that the sinner has no sensation of being coerced into the
new life by some farce which he cannot resist. It wins him over to God
and his Christ in spite of his resistance, and makes out of his
unwilling heart a willing one, which gladly coincides with the leadings
of grace.
The Roman scheme of salvation might be called the ostrich method: it
teaches men the foolish strategy of the bird of the desert, which hides
its head in the sand when it sees an enemy approaching, and then
imagines the enemy does not exist. Original sin may be disputed out of
the Bible by a false interpretation, but it is not thereby ruled out of
existence. When face to face with his God--if no sooner, then in the
hour of death--every man feels that he is utterly corrupt and worthless,
and he will curse any teacher that caused him to believe otherwise. Free
will is not created by assertions. Let the apostles of free will only
try, and they will find out that their freedom is nil. Catholics
denounce Luther for having declared the free will of man to be nothing
than a word without substance: we hear the sound when the word is
pronounced, and grasp its grammatical meaning, but we do not realize it
in ourselves. Every person, however, who has truly come to know himself
will side with Luther, or rather with the Bible. Furthermore, to the
same extent to which the Roman view exalts man's natural powers for
good, it lowers and limits the work of Christ and the Holy Spirit, and
begets a false confidence and security that is rudely shaken when the
first slip and fall occurs in the person's Christian life. He has never
really laid hold of the grace of God, because he has not been taught to
trust only to the grace of God to lead and preserve him in the way of
life. He will begin to distrust the Gospel as a very inefficient
instrument, and this will lead him to become indifferent to it, and
finally fall away from it entirely. A real danger of apostasy and
despair exists wherever the Roman dogma of man's natural free will is
proclaimed.
It is, however, doing Luther a flagrant injustice when he is made to
deny that man has no longer any natural reason and will in the secular
affairs of this life. Luther used to divide the entire life of man into
two hemispheres, the upper embracing man's relation to God, holy things,
the interests of the soul here and hereafter, and the lower, embracing
the purely human, temporal, and secular interests of man. It is only in
the higher hemisphere that Luther denies the existence of free will.
Throughout his writings Luther asserts the existence, the actual
operation, and the necessity of human free will, though sadly weakened
by sin, in the affairs of this present life. It will be sufficient to
cite as evidence the Augsburg Confession which was drawn up with
Luther's aid and submitted to Emperor Charles V in 1530 as the joint
belief of Luther and his followers. "Of the Freedom of the Will," say
the Protestant confessors, "they teach that man's will has some liberty
for the attainment of civil righteousness and for the choice of things
subject to reason. Nevertheless, it has not power, without the Holy
Ghost, to work the righteousness of God, that is, spiritual
righteousness, since the natural man receiveth not the things of the
Spirit of God (1 Cor. 2, 14); but this righteousness is wrought in the
heart when the Holy Ghost is received through the Word. These things are
said in as many words by Augustine in his _Hypognosticon_ (Book III):
'We grant that all men have a certain freedom of will in judging
according to natural reason; not such freedom, however, whereby it is
capable, without God, either to begin, much less to complete aught in
things pertaining to God, but only in works of this life, whether good
or evil. "Good" I call those works which spring from the good in Nature,
that is, to have a will to labor in the field, to eat and drink, to have
a friend, to clothe oneself, to build a house, to marry, to keep cattle,
to learn divers useful arts, or whatsoever good pertains to this life,
none of which things are without dependence on the providence of God;
yea, of Him and through Him they are and have their beginning. "Evil" I
call such things as, to have a will to worship an idol, to commit
murder,' etc." (Art. 18.)
Luther has always held that there is a natural intelligence and wisdom,
a natural will-power and energy which men employ in their daily
occupations, their trades and professions, their trade and commerce,
their literature and art, their culture and refinement, yea, that there
is also a natural knowledge of God even among the Gentiles, who yet
"know not God," and a seeming performance of the things which God has
commanded. But these natural abilities do not reach into the higher
hemisphere; they cannot pass muster at the bar of divine justice. They
do not spring from right motives, nor do they aim at right ends; they
are determined by man's self-interest. They come short of that glory
which God ought to receive from worshipers in spirit and in truth (Rom.
3, 23; John 4, 23); they are evil in as far as they are the corrupt
fruits of corrupt trees. In condemning the moral quality of these
natural works of civil righteousness, Luther has said no more than
Christ and His apostles have said.
Luther taught the Bible-doctrine that there is in God a hidden will
which He has reserved to His majesty (Dent. 29); that His judgments are
unsearchable and His ways past finding out (Rom. 11, 33); that not even
a sparrow falls to the ground without His will, and that the very hairs
of our head are numbered (Matt. 10, 29. 30); that no evil can occur
anywhere without His permission (Amos 3, 6; Is. 45, 7). To deny these
truths is to reject the Bible and to destroy the sovereign omniscience
and omnipotence of God. Those who attack Luther for believing that also
the evil in this world is related to God will have to change their bill
of indictment: their charge is really directed against Scripture. Luther
has, however, warned men not to attempt a study of this secret will of
God, for the plain reason that it is secret, and it would be blasphemous
presumption to try and find it out. All our dealings with God must be on
the basis of His revealed will. If we only will study that, we will be
fully occupied our whole life.
As regards the Scriptural doctrine of predestination, that those who
ultimately attain to the life everlasting have been chosen to that end,
Luther has warned men not to study this doctrine outside of Christ and
the Gospel. God has told His children for their comfort amid the
vicissitudes of this life that He has secured their eternal happiness
against all dangers, but He has not asked them, nor does He permit them,
to find out _a priori_ whether this or that person is elect. Jesus
Christ is the Book of Life in which the elect are to find their names
recorded, and in the general way of salvation through repentance, faith,
and sanctification of life they are to be led to the heritage of the
saints in light. In his summary of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh
chapters of Romans, Luther states that by His eternal election God has
taken our salvation entirely out of our hands and placed it in His own
hands. "And this is most highly necessary. For we are so feeble and
fickle that, if salvation depended upon us, not a person would be saved;
the devil would overcome them all. But since God is reliable and His
election cannot fail or be thwarted by any one, we still have hope over
and against sin. But at this point a limit must be fixed for the
presumptuous spirits who soar too high. They lead their reason first to
this subject, they start at the pinnacle, they want to explore first the
abyss of the divine election, and wrestle vainly with the question
whether they are elect. These people bring about their own overthrow:
they are either driven to despair or become reckless.--Follow the order
of this Epistle: First, occupy yourself with Christ and the Gospel, in
order that you may learn to know your sin and His grace; next, begin to
wrestle with your sin, as chapters 1-8 teach you to do. Then, after you
have reached the doctrine concerning crosses and tribulations in the
eighth chapter, you will rightly learn the doctrine of election in
chapters 9-11, because you will realize what a comfort this doctrine
contains. For the doctrine of election can be studied without injury and
secret anger against God only by those who have passed through
suffering, crosses, and anguish of death. Accordingly, the old Adam in
you must be dead before you can bear this subject and drink this strong
wine. See that you do not drink wine while you are still a babe. There
is a proper time, age, and manner for propounding the various doctrines
of God to men." What is there fatalistic about this?