END OF LUTHER’S LITERARY LABOURS. THE WHOLE REVIEWED
1. Towards a Christianity void of Dogma. Protestant Opinions
With the concluding years of Luther’s life we reach a point whence
may be undertaken with advantage a survey of the character of his
theological and literary labours from several sides from which we have
not as yet had opportunity to approach them.
We naturally turn first of all to the religious content of his literary
life-work; here it may be advisable to hear what Protestant theologians
have to say.
These theologians will tell us how many of the olden dogmas Luther,
explicitly or implicitly, relinquishes, and whether and how he
undermines the very idea of faith as known to Christians of old; we
shall also have to consider the Protestant strictures which assert that
the doctrines, which he either retained or set up for the first time,
were fraught with so much that was illogical that they may be said to
bear within them the seeds of dissolution. The conclusions reached will
show whether or not he was actually heading for a “Christianity void of
dogma.”
_(a) Protestant Critics on Luther’s Abandonment of Individual Christian
Dogmas and of the Olden Conception of Faith_
It is hard to deny that a certain amount of truth lurks in the
contention of a certain modern school of Protestant thought which
insists that Luther practically made an end of “the old, dogmatic
Christianity.”[1705] Luther did not, of course, look so far ahead, nor
were the consequences of his own action at all clear to him, and when
Catholics took pains to point them out he was not slow to repel them
with the utmost indignation. Still, logic is inexorable in demanding
its rights.[1706]
Here we are happily able to state the case almost entirely in the words
of Protestant theologians of the modern school, such as, for instance,
Adolf Harnack.
“The acknowledged authorities on dogma,” says Harnack, speaking of
Luther’s attitude towards the pillars of the Church’s teaching, “have
been torn down, and thereby dogma itself, _qua_ dogma, i.e. the
unfailing teaching institution ordained by the Holy Ghost, has been
done away with.... The revision has been extended even beyond the
second century of the Church’s history and up to its very beginnings,
and has everywhere been carried out radically. An end has been made
of that history of dogma which started in the age of the apologists,
nay, of the Apostolic Fathers.”[1707] Harnack therefore, in his
detailed work on the history of dogma, refrained from dealing with any
theologians later than Luther, instead of following the usual course
among Protestant authors, and giving an account of the development
of doctrine in later Protestantism and among Luther’s followers. He
pertinently asked: “How can there be in Protestantism any history
of dogma after Luther’s Prefaces to the New Testament and his great
reformation writings?”[1708]
Addressing the representatives of Lutheran “dogmatic theology,” Harnack
says: “Luther’s reformation created a new point of departure for the
development of the Christian belief in the Word of God”; “it set
aside every form of infallibility that might have offered an outward
assurance for one’s belief, the Church’s infallible organisation and
infallible tradition and the infallible code of Scripture. Thus an end
was made of the conception of Christianity from which dogma had sprung,
viz. the Christian faith, the sure knowledge of the final causes of
all things and thus of the whole Divine scheme of salvation. Christian
faith has now become merely a firm assurance of receiving forgiveness
of sins from God, as the Father of Jesus Christ, and of living under
Him in His kingdom. This at the same time spells the ruin of any
infallible dogma; for how can any dogma be unchangeable and authentic,
thought out and formulated as it was by finite men, living in sin,
and devoid of every outward guarantee?” If, nevertheless, Luther
accepted and maintained certain aspects of ancient dogma, he did so,
not as establishing “side by side with faith a law of faith based on
particular outward promises,” but rather “from his unshaken conviction
that much of this dogma corresponded exactly with the Gospel or Word of
God, and that this correspondence was self-evident”; “as dogma, it did
not constitute a rule.”[1709]
In some respects, for instance in this very matter, what Harnack says
stands in need of correction. He is at times too fond of making out
his own Christianity without dogma to have been also that of Luther.
We just heard him say that the remnant of olden dogma which Luther
preserved, “as dogma, did not constitute a rule.” He would, however,
have been nearer the truth in saying that, _logically_, as dogma, _it
ought not to have_ constituted a rule. There can be no doubt that
Luther—as will be shown below—insists, though in contradiction with
other “basic ideas and with the spirit of his reformation,” that
the Christian verities which he leaves standing must be embraced as
revealed articles of the Christian belief and indubitable truths of
faith. Even where he does not insist upon this he still takes it for
granted that faith in the whole of revelation (“_fides historica_”)
precedes that faith which consists in the assurance of the forgiveness
of sins. Even Harnack has to admit, that, with Luther, “dogma _qua_
dogma, remains to some extent in force” owing “to the logic of
things.”[1710]
Luther, according to another passage in Harnack, “under the pressure
of circumstances” and the storms raised against him by the fanatics
and the Anabaptists, was drawn into a dogmatising current of which
the issue was the Augsburg Confession. To the question: Did Luther’s
reformation do away with the ancient dogma? we must reply, that, at
least, it “demolished its foundation—as indeed our Catholic opponents
rightly object against us—that it was a mighty principle rather than
a new doctrine, and that its subsequent history through the age of
Orthodoxy, Pietism and Rationalism down to the present day is less a
falling away than a natural development.”[1711]
Even before Harnack’s day this was virtually the standpoint of some
of the best Protestant judges. It had been perceived long before that
the purely Evangelical theory led much further from the ancient dogmas
than Protestant orthodoxy was disposed to admit. Even according to so
conservative a theologian as Johann August Neander, “the spirit of the
Reformation did not at once attain to a clear consciousness of itself”;
Luther indeed, even here, “had reached the consciousness of the pure
Evangelical belief, thanks to the principle of a faith which is a free
outgrowth of the Divine power within; yet, owing to the controversies
on the Supper and to the Peasant War, this clear consciousness
again became eclipsed.”[1712] Neander finds the best statement of
Luther’s new ideas in those works which are most radically opposed to
the traditional teaching of the Church of old. Albert Ritschl, the
well-known leader of the free Protestant school, likewise declared:
“The Lutheran theory of life has not remained true to itself; it has
been hemmed in and dulled by the stress laid on objective dogma. The
pure doctrine as taught in the schools is in reality merely a passing,
not the final, form of Protestantism.”[1713]
All these critics, Harnack in particular, though blaming Luther for
not drawing the right conclusions, are nevertheless at one in their
outspoken admiration of the powerful thinker and brave spokesman of
the new belief, and particularly of those theses of his which approach
most closely their own ideal of an unfettered theology. In their
opinion Luther is to remain the hero of yore, though his garb and
attitude will no longer be the same as those to which Protestantism had
previously been accustomed. It is perhaps not superfluous to mention
this because otherwise the strong things some of the critics say might,
taken together, give the impression that their main aim and endeavour
was to decry Luther. Probably enough Harnack and his friends failed
to foresee how unfavourable a view their censures, taken in the lump,
might produce of Luther’s person and work. Harnack, however, in one
passage, pays a strange tribute to Luther’s conservatism, one, no
doubt, which would appeal to the Reformer’s more old-fashioned friends.
He points out, that, “we owe it to him, that, even to the present
day, these formularies [the olden creeds] are still in Protestantism
a living power”; nay, such is his ignorance of the state of things in
Catholicism, that he is convinced that it is only in Protestantism that
these creeds still “live,” whereas, “in the Roman Church, they are but
a dead and obsolete heirloom”; Luther, according to one bold dictum of
Harnack’s, was really “the restorer of ancient dogma.”[1714]
* * * * *
Among the olden doctrines thrown over by Luther his Protestant critics
rightly instance the Canon of Scripture and the right of the Church to
interpret the Bible. They corroborate strikingly from Luther’s writings
the results which we reached above,[1715] a circumstance which may
surprise Protestant readers.
If, according to Luther, the doctrine of the oldest confessions of
faith are only to be retained because they can be directly proved
from the Bible, then the Bible itself with all its books, so such
Protestants argue, must stand firm and inviolable. Now, awkwardly
enough, Luther himself saps the authority of the Canon.
“If the attitude is justified which Luther takes up in his famous
Prefaces to the various books of the New Testament,” says Harnack (cp.
prefaces to the Epistle of James, to the Epistle to the Hebrews and
to the Apocalypse), “then an end is made of the infallible Canon of
Scripture. It is here of the utmost importance historically, though
in itself a matter of indifference, that we find Luther, especially
after the controversy on the Supper, making statements to the effect
that every letter of Scripture is fundamental to the Christian faith;
the flagrant contradiction involved in the assertion that a thing
holds and at the same time does not hold can only be solved by saying
that it does not. The same follows from Luther’s views on faith, for,
according to him, this is produced by the Holy Ghost through the
_preaching_ of the Word of God. To-day too, all Protestants are agreed
that historical criticism of Scripture is not unevangelical, though
this unanimity of opinion extends only as far as the ‘principle,’ and
many refuse to carry it out in practice.”[1716]—“Luther, at the
very time when he was waging so brave a war against the authority of
the Councils, also opposed Scriptural infallibility, and, indeed, how
could he do otherwise?... There can be no doubt that Luther’s attitude
towards the New Testament, as we find it set forth in the Prefaces
and in one or two other passages, is the correct one, i.e. that which
really tallies with his belief.”[1717]
As F. Loofs points out, Luther leaves us without any outward guarantee
for the authority of the Canon of the Bible.[1718] Loofs quotes, for
instance, Luther’s saying: “Hence God must tell you within your heart:
This is God’s Word.”[1719] “Luther’s criticism,” the same writer
says, “did not spare even those books which he allowed to be truly
prophetic or apostolic.... He frankly admitted the human element in
Scripture.”[1720]
If Luther’s fundamental opposition to the faith once delivered is
already apparent from his criticism of the Bible, still more is this
the case when we come to look into the freedom he allowed in the
interpretation of the sense of the Bible.
As Harnack puts it: In Luther’s view “the Church is based on something
which every Christian, no matter how humble, can see and test, viz.
on the Word of God as apprehended by pure reason. This, of course,
was tantamount to a claim to ascertain the true verbal sense of
Holy Scripture.... But Luther never foresaw how far this rule would
lead.”[1721]
Luther himself often put his principle to such arbitrary usage as
to prove a warning to others (above, vol. iv., pp. 406 f., 418 f.),
and to exclude the possibility of any settled dogma. “The flagrant
contradiction,” says Harnack, “into which he was led by criticising
the Bible whilst all the time holding the idea he did about its
inspiration, he contrived to explain away by reading the Evangel
itself into texts which presented a difficulty.”[1722] “In Holy
Scripture, the infallible authority, only that was to be found, which
on other grounds was already established as the true doctrine.”[1723]
Hence in the matter of the Bible, so Harnack has it, “Criticism, in
order to be according to Luther’s mind, would have to go against him
in the interests of faith.”[1724]
Luther’s abandonment of the Church’s standpoint with regard to the
Bible is closely bound up with his renunciation of the Church’s
teaching office, of the hierarchy and of all respect for tradition.
This meant, as modern Protestant critics admit, the destruction of
the whole theory of tradition and, in fact, of all ecclesiastical
authority, though, on Harnack’s own admission, ancient Church writers,
especially “subsequent to Irenæus,” rely much on such authority.
“Luther was antagonistic to all these authorities,” says the same
scholar, “to the infallibility of Church, Pope, and Councils, to every
constitutional right of the Church to pronounce on the truth and, on
principle, to all the doctrinal formularies of the past.”[1725] His
later writing: “Von den Conciliis,” etc. (1539) proves this.
Nor have we yet exhausted the list of grievances against Luther. Not
only did he forsake the ancient teaching on justification, merit and
works, but he even declared war on human free will, though belief in
its existence is a truth of natural philosophy and though the Church
had ever held it in the highest esteem. He put aside in its primitive
form the basic dogma of original sin. The doctrine of actual sin and
its distinction into mortal and venial found no favour with him,[1726]
nor did the related doctrine of the existence of a purgatory. He
completely destroyed the teaching of antiquity on Grace by his new
discovery of the law of absolute necessity which rules all things,
not excluding even the actions of the human mind and heart; according
to Luther “Grace is the fatherly disposition of God towards us, Who
for Christ’s sake calls sinful man to Him, accepts him and wins his
confidence through faith in the _Christus passus_.”[1727] This fatherly
disposition of God no man can ever in the least resist if destined by
the Divine Omnipotence to receive the faith; those, however, who are
not numbered among the elect, know not any such invitation, or rather
constraint, for the secret Will of God unfailingly dooms them to
damnation.[1728]
After giving the above definition of Grace, Harnack asks, “What room
then is there for a Sacrament?” For Catholics the Sacraments were
pillars of the Church’s life and of her teaching. With them Luther was
perfectly willing to dispense.
“He not only strove,” says Harnack, “to break away completely from
the ancient or mediaeval conception, but he actually brought it to
nought by his doctrine of the one sacrament, which is the Word.”[1729]
The Sacraments being to him a “peculiar form of the saving Word of
God, viz. of the realisation of the ‘_promissio Dei_,’ he reduces
them to two (three), or, indeed, to one, viz. the Word of God. He
showed that even the most enlightened Fathers had had but a dim notion
of this so important matter.... Having practically laid the whole
system in ruins, he rests again on the one, simple grand act, which
is constantly being repeated in every Christian’s life, viz. the
awakening of faith thanks to the ‘_gratia_.’”[1730]
Luther turned his back not only on the ancient teaching concerning the
Sacraments, particularly the Sacrifice of the Mass, but also on the
whole outward worship of the Church.
“His attitude towards Divine Worship in the Church was a radical one.
Here too he destroyed not only the mediaeval tradition, but even that
of the ancient Church such as we may trace it back right into the
2nd century. The public worship of the Church, to him, is nothing
more than the worship of individuals united in time and place.... The
priest and the sacrifice in the usual sense of the terms are done
away with, and all worth is denied to those specific ecclesiastical
actions which were formerly held to be both wholesome and necessary.”
“The ‘divine service,’ particularly that of the Word, in which he
nevertheless wished the congregation to take part,” “can have no other
motive ... than to promote individual worship, for God deals with
us only through the Word which is not tied up with any particular
persons.”[1731] Hence public worship does no more than “edify faith
through the preaching of the Divine Word and the common offering of
prayer and praise.”[1732]
Of vast importance in this change and even more far-reaching in its
consequences was Luther’s abrogation of the ancient conception of the
Church. As bound up with it, he also harshly set aside the invocation
of Saints, that vital element of the olden worship.
The ancient teaching on perfection had to make room for new theories,
for it seemed to him to lay too much stress on man’s own works.[1733]
And yet “we cannot but admit,” says Harnack, “that Luther’s efforts
to create a new ideal of life were not characterised by any clear
discrimination.” The reason may be “that the times were not yet ripe
for it.” In those days of public stress “religion’s chief business was
to bring consolation amidst the miseries of life. To heal the soul
oppressed with sorrow for sin and to alleviate the evils in the world,”
this was what was mainly aimed at.[1734] This, however, was scarcely to
do justice to religion and to its sublime tasks.
According to Luther the Church had, even from the outset, given to
human reason a larger sphere than was due to it. Even at the cradle
of the Church Christian philosophy had taken her stand, and, with her
torch of reason, had pointed out the road to faith. Luther, however,
conceived “a distrust of reason itself not to be explained simply by
his distrust of it as the main prop of self-righteousness. He grew
hardened in his bold defiance of reason, surrendering himself to that
suspicious Catholic [!] way of looking at things, which reveres the
wisdom of God and sees the stamp of the divine truth in paradox and
in the _contradictio in adiecto...._ No one, however, can despise
reason and learning with impunity, and Luther himself was punished by
the darkening of his own views on faith.”[1735] “That is a dangerous
kind of theologism which fancies that the knowledge which comes from
worldly education may simply be ignored. The reformers were too ready
to cut themselves adrift from worldly culture where the latter seemed
to trench on the domain of faith.... The Reformation buried beneath
a mass of hatred and injustice much of the valuable learning the age
possessed and thereby made itself responsible for the later crises of
Protestantism.”[1736]
“Luther,” says Loofs, “by laying stress on that antithesis between
human reason and the divine ‘foolishness,’ which was so intimately
bound up with his own deepest and most fundamental views (and who ever
thundered more loudly against the ‘Frau Hulda’ of natural reason,
that ‘devil’s whore’ and ‘arch enemy of the faith’ than did Luther?),
imposed on his following the old Catholic idea (which he himself had
overthrown) of the verbal inspiration of the Canon, and did so so
thoroughly that after-ages were unable to shake themselves free of
it. Nay, by rightly proscribing any allegorical exegesis, he made
the burden of this old Catholic heritage even more oppressive in
Protestantism than it had ever been before.”[1737]
Depreciation of reason, had, in Luther’s case, a bad effect on his
whole teaching concerning God. As far back as theology went this
had formed the centre of religious discussion. The Fathers had by
preference dwelt on questions which concerned God, His Oneness and
Triunity, His attributes and His relations with the world and man.
Luther, according to the admission of Protestant critics, introduced
here certain arbitrary and very unfair limitations. It was his wish,
as he frequently declares, that God should be meditated on only as
Jesus Christ our Consoler and our Saviour. He has a strange and
seemingly instinctive aversion to concerning himself with the Almighty
Being, in Whom nevertheless “we live, and move, and are.” The _Deus
absconditus_ appals him. According to him it is impossible to “treat
of Predestination without being crucified and suffering the pains of
death, or without loss to ourselves and secret anger against God.”
Predestination “determines in the first instance who is and who is not
to believe, who is and who is not to be saved from sin”; of this Luther
cannot speak without at the same time solemnly emphasising that it is
only thanks to it that we can “hope to conquer sin,” as otherwise the
devil, “as we know, would soon overpower us all.” Yet we ought not,
like the “reprobate spirits,” “explore the abyss of Divine Providence,”
because otherwise we shall either “be brought to despair or kick over
the traces.” The old Adam must “have been put to death before being
able to endure this and to drink the strong wine,” i.e. a man must
first have learnt, like Luther, “to stake all in God,” and “defy” all
things in Him.[1738]
Thus it comes about that Luther ladles out reproaches indiscriminately
to the philosophers who occupy themselves with God as known to reason,
and the theologians who pursue the supernatural knowledge of God.
“Often enough did Luther deride as a product of blind reason,” writes
Harnack, “that knowledge of God, which instead of thinking of God in
Christ alone, ‘sophistically’ enumerates His attributes and speculates
on His will, viz. the whole ‘metaphysical’ doctrine of God.”[1739] If
“God be considered apart from Christ,” then He appears, according to
Luther, merely as the “terrible Judge from Whom we can await nothing
but punishment.”[1740]
According to Luther, “there is, outside of Christ, no certainty
concerning the Will of God”; for the secret Will of God threatens us
with the dreadful sword of predestination to hell. Hence Harnack even
goes so far as to say, that what is presupposed in Luther’s theories
on the assurance of salvation is a belief “not in God _in se_—for God
_in se_ belongs to the Aristotelians—but rather in the God Whom the
Holy Ghost reveals to the soul as manifest in Christ.”[1741]
“God _in se_” and “God _quoad nos_” are two different things. By
establishing such a distinction Luther “sets himself at variance with
all theology as it had existed since the days of the apologists; here
his aversion to the olden dogma is even more evident than in his
reprobation of certain of its parts. Again and again, whenever the
occasion arises, he repudiates what the olden theology had said of
God and Christ, of the Will and Attributes of God, of the two natures
in Christ, etc., with the remark: ‘This He has _in se_. Thereupon
he immediately proceeds, with the words ‘But, _quoad nos_,’ to
introduce his own new view, which to him is the main thing, if not the
whole.”[1742]
Such doctrines as have nothing to do with the justification of the
sinner or the “confession of faith, as a personal experience,” recede
so much into the background that Harnack feels justified in saying:
“Though, under the formulas ‘God _in se_,’ ‘the Hidden God,’ ‘God’s
Hidden Will,’ Luther left these old ideas standing, still they had
practically ceased to exist as doctrines of faith. Of this there can
be no doubt. That he did not throw them over completely is due to two
facts, on the one hand to his impression that he found them in the
Bible, and, on the other, to his never having systematically thought
out the problems involved.”[1743] It must, however, be noted, that,
as will be seen more clearly when we come to discuss Luther’s idea of
faith, he was by no means ready to allow that such dogmas were not
real “articles of faith.” This may be what leads Harnack here to say
that they had “practically” ceased to exist as “actual articles of
faith.”
In connection with the dogmas touching God it must not be lost to
sight that Luther, by his doctrine of predestination, of man’s
unfreedom and of the inevitability of all that occurs, really
endangered, if indeed he did not actually destroy, the Church’s olden
conception of God as the Highest and Most Perfect Being. The cruel God
of absolute predestination to hell is no longer a God worthy of the
name.
“Nor can it be gainsaid,” writes the Protestant theologian Arnold
Taube, “that, given Luther’s idea of God and His Omnipotence, the
negation of man’s free-will is a simple and natural consequence.”
“Luther’s conception of God is at variance with the ethical
personality of the God of Christianity, just as Schleiermacher’s
whole pantheistic scheme of theology is useless in enabling us to
grasp a religion so eminently moral as Christianity.” “Schleiermacher
was quite logical in carrying to their consequences Luther’s ideas
on predestination and free-will.” Luther’s idea of God, according
to Taube, is simply “determinist.” “The negation [of free-will] can
be escaped only by a theory of the Divine Omnipotence which regards
God as controlling His own Power and thus as practically exercising
restraint over Himself and limiting His Power. This, however, was not
Luther’s theory, who takes the Divine Omnipotence to signify that
which works all in all.”[1744]
To an outsider it sounds strange to hear Harnack and others affirm
that Luther swept away all the positive doctrines of antiquity; no
less strange is it to see Luther, the furious opponent of Catholicism,
being made by men who call themselves his followers into an advocate
of the Rationalism which they themselves profess. In the interests
of Rationalism these theologians take as their watchword Wilhelm
Herrmann’s dictum of Luther’s doctrine of penance: “We must strive to
push ahead with what Luther began and left undone.” The least they
demand is, that, as Ferdinand Kattenbusch puts it, Protestant theology
should hold fast to the “earlier” Luther, to those days “when Luther’s
genius was as yet unbroken.” In this wise they contrive to wrench away
Luther from the foundations of that faith to which he still wished to
remain true and which the “orthodox” at a later date claimed him to
have ever retained.[1745]
It is well known how, following in Ritschl’s footsteps, Harnack’s
ability, learning, and outspokenness have proved extremely awkward to
the more conservative theologians. He “carried on Luther’s interrupted
work,” declares Herrmann, and set up again in all its purity Luther’s
early conception of faith against a theology which had been stifled in
orthodoxy and pietism.[1746]
We must, however, in the light of Protestant criticism, examine a
little more closely Luther’s attitude towards the ancient Christian
conception of faith.
Starting first of all from faith subjectively considered and examining
Luther’s doctrine of the personal appropriation of the content of
faith, we immediately find ourselves brought face to face with his
doctrine of justification, for he has scarcely anything to say of
the faith of the individual save in so far as this faith operates
justification. Here all the other truths to be believed tend to
disappear from his purview and one only truth remains, viz.: Through
Christ I am pleasing to God. It is no wonder if many of his followers,
even to the present day, see in this doctrine of the certainty of
having in Christ a Gracious God, the only dogma handed down by Luther.
Does he not, for instance, in one of the most widely read passages of
his works, viz., in the Preface to Romans in his translation of the
New Testament, concisely define faith as a “daring and lively trust in
the grace of God, so strong that one would be ready to die for it a
thousand times over”? “Such a trust makes a man cheerful, defiant and
light-hearted in his attitude towards God and all creatures; such is
the working of the Holy Ghost by faith.” “Faith is the work of God in
us whereby we are transformed and born anew in God.”[1747]
Again, if we take faith objectively, i.e. as the sum-total of
revelation, then again, at least according to many passages, faith
must be merged in the one consoling conviction that we receive the
forgiveness of sins from God in Christ.
“The Reformation,” says Harnack quite rightly, regarded all the rest
of dogma as little more than “a grand testimony to God, Who has sent
Jesus Christ, His Son, to liberate us from sin, to save us and set
us free. Finding this testimony in dogma, every other incentive to
determine it more accurately disappeared.” It is, however, important
to note, that “ancient dogma was not merely the witness of the Gospel
to a Gracious God, to Christ the Saviour, and to the forgiveness
of sins”; it comprised a number of other profound and far-reaching
doctrines also binding upon all, “above all a certain knowledge of God
and of the world, and a law of belief.” According to Harnack, however,
“faith and this knowledge of God and law of belief were unguardedly
jumbled up.” In short, “a conservative attitude towards olden dogma is
not imposed on the Reformation by its principles.”[1748]
“The orthodoxy of the Luther-zealots of the 16th century had its
basis in the reformers’ retention of a series of old Catholic
presuppositions and dogmas which were really in disagreement with
their own fundamental ideas.”[1749] “Thus,” proceeds Harnack, “the
Reformation, i.e. the conception of the Evangelical faith, spells
the end of dogma unless indeed, in the stead of the old-time dogma,
we put a sort of phantom dogma.” The Reformation replaced the demand
for faith, which corresponds with the law, by the freedom of the
children of God, who are not under the constraint of the law of belief
but rejoice in the gift bestowed on them, viz. in the promise of the
forgiveness of sins in Christ.[1750]
In this, again, there is much that is true, even though we may not
be willing to subscribe to all the author says. Luther undoubtedly
lays undue stress on those tenets of the faith which seem to him
to refer to justification and spiritual freedom, and he does so to
the detriment of what remains. “Hence the Gospel,” Luther says for
instance, “is nothing else but the preaching of Christ, the Son of
God and the Son of David, true God and Man, Who by His death and
again-rising from the dead has overcome sin, death and hell for all
those who believe in Him.” The Evangelists, so he says, describe
the conquest of “Sin, death and hell” at great length, the others
“more briefly like St. Peter and St. Paul”; at any rate the “Gospel
must not be made into a code of laws or a handbook.”[1751] This was
indeed to raise the standard of revolt against doctrine. Well might
Adolf Hausrath, in a passage already quoted, speak of Luther as “the
greatest revolutionary of the 16th century.”
The question touched upon above deserves, however, to be looked into
still more closely in the light of what other more moderate Protestant
theologians say.
Gustav Kawerau, speaking from such a standpoint, points out that
Luther “runs the risk of confusing the Evangelical view of faith with
that which sees in faith the acceptance of a string of doctrinal
propositions, i.e. with that faith which is made up of so and so many
articles, all of such importance that to reject one involves the
dropping of the others.”[1752]
This is so true that the historian and theologian in question rather
understates the case by saying that Luther merely “runs the risk.”
It is no difficult task in this connection to instance definite
statements to this effect made by him, or even to enumerate the
actual “articles” of faith he regarded as essential. In No. 12 of the
articles of Schwabach (Torgau) he says, as Kawerau himself points out:
“Such a Church is nothing else than the faithful who hold, believe and
teach the above articles and propositions.... For where the Gospel is
preached and the Sacraments are rightly used, there we have the holy
Christian Church.”[1753]
Amongst such articles Luther, following the example of the oldest
Creeds, includes even the Virginity of Mary.[1754]
It was to this that the theologian, Otto Scheel, recently alluded when
compelled to make a stand against those theologians who, particularly
during the years 1519-1523, miss in Luther any adherence to the
articles of the faith. Scheel appeals to what Luther says of Mary’s
Virginity in his German version of his “_De votis monasticis_” (1521
and 1522). In one passage Luther, referring to the thesis that every
single article of faith must be believed, otherwise, no matter how
earnest and virtuous be one’s life, everlasting damnation is certain,
brings forward as an instance our Lady’s virginity: The religious, in
their “bawdy-houses of Satan” [the monasteries], by their blasphemous
vows deny the whole Gospel truth, consequently far more than merely
that article concerning Mary. Hence they cannot be saved even did
they possess “Mary’s virginity and holiness.” “Here we have,” rightly
concludes Scheel, “even as early as 1521-22 a view of faith which does
not differ materially from that which we meet with in Luther after the
controversies on the Sacrament.” This, however, means, according to
him, “that we must regard Luther’s development in a light different
from that now usual.”[1755]
Which then does Scheel hold to be the correct view? He finds in
Luther at all times contradictions which admit of no escape: “The
contradictions which clearly exist at a later date in Luther’s
life’s work were, in point of fact, always latent within him....
This is equivalent to saying that we must regard Luther’s work as a
whole, and that, too, just in its most vital parts, as one marred by
contradictions which it is impossible to explain away.”[1756]
Since Luther’s demand that all the articles of faith should be
accepted without distinction was one which he had taken over from
Catholicism, we should, continues Scheel, “seek in the Middle Ages
the clue to his attitude instead of assigning to him the solution of
modern problems as some are disposed to do.” In this, however, Scheel
is proposing nothing new, but rather something that stands to reason;
the method he suggests has, moreover, always been followed by Catholic
critics of Luther’s theology.
Catholics found without difficulty plentiful statements of Luther’s
in support of the inviolability of the whole chain of olden dogma,
so great had been the influence exerted over him by the convictions
of his youth. It was an easy matter for controversialists to turn
such statements of his against Luther himself, the more so, since,
eminently justified though they were within Catholicism, they were
utterly out of place on his mouth and furnish a striking condemnation
of his own rash undertaking—a fact to which he, however, refused to
open his eyes. For instance, in the very evening of his days when he
himself could look back on his destruction of so many of the dogmas of
the olden Church, speaking to the Sacramentarians, Luther says of the
traditional doctrines: “This is what I thought, yea and said too, viz.
that the devil is never idle; no sooner has he started one heresy than
he must needs start others so that no error ever remains alone. When
the ring has once been broken it is no longer a ring; it has lost its
strength and is ever snapping anew.... Whoever does not or will not
believe aright one article assuredly does not believe any article with
a true and earnest faith.... Hence we may say straight out: Believe
all, or nothing! The Holy Ghost will not allow Himself to be divided
or sundered, so as to teach or make us believe one article aright
and another awry.” “Otherwise,” so he concludes, all unconsciously
justifying his Catholic critics, “no heretic would ever be condemned
nor would there be a heretic on all the earth; for it is the nature of
heretics to tamper first with one article only and then bit by bit to
deny them all.... If the bell have but a single crack, it no longer
rings true and is quite useless.”[1757]
It was on the strength of this principle of the absolutely binding
character of all the truths of religion (at least of those which he
himself retained) that he ventured to depict Zwingli as the biggest
rebel against the faith.
“Zwingel, who was miserably slain on the battlefield, and Œcolampadius
who died of grief on that account, perished in their sins because
they obstinately persisted in their errors.”[1758] He could not “but
despair of Zwingel’s salvation,” for the latter was an arch-heretic.
So harsh a judgment on Zwingli is, however, quite unjustifiable if
we start from the more liberal conception of faith which Luther had
once advocated together with the stricter view, and which indeed he
never in so many words retracted. On such grounds Kawerau may well
take Zwingli under his wing against Luther. His words will be quoted
a little further on. Meanwhile, however, it must be pointed out that
Luther’s unkindly criticism of Zwingli is not to be explained merely
by the above view of faith. In his Life of Luther Adolf Hausrath
throws some light on its psychological side. “Language so insulting as
Luther’s,” he says, “no bishop had ever used against Zwingli,”[1759]
and he lays his hand boldly on the weak spot with the object of
bringing out Luther’s astounding want of logic. He had proclaimed
the right of examining Scripture freely and without being tied down
by the teaching of the Church, yet he refused to allow Zwingli such
freedom; the latter “had applied the principle indiscriminately to
everything (?) handed down by the Church, whereas Luther wished to put
aside merely what was contrary to his convictions on justification
by faith alone, or to the plain sense of Scripture.”[1760] Luther
“fancied he could guess who had inspired the Sacramentarians with
their blasphemies. Thereby he envenomed the controversy from the very
outset. For him there could be no truce with the devil.”[1761] “In
any sign of life given by the Swiss he at once sniffed the ‘devil’s
breeches.’”[1762] Luther himself admits that “to begin with, it
was Zwingli’s wrong doctrine and the fact ‘that the Swiss wished
to be first,’”[1763] which had led to the estrangement. The “wrong
doctrine” he detected, thanks to that gift of infallibility which led
the Sacramentarians to call his behaviour “papistic.” We have here,
according to Hausrath, a “religious genius, who, by the force of his
personality and word, sought to make all others bow to the law of his
mind.” “We must resign ourselves to the fact that this great man had
the shortcomings which belong to his virtues. Disputatiousness and
love to pick a quarrel, faults which simply represented the other
side of his firm faith, and which some had already deplored in the
young monk at Erfurt, Wittenberg and Leipzig, had naturally not been
abated by his many victorious combats, and, now, more than ever,
Oldecop’s words were true: ‘He wanted to be in the right in all the
disputations and was fond of quarrelling.’ The fact is that Luther was
no exception to the rule, that man finds nothing harder to bear well
than success.”[1764]
Nevertheless, to return to the question of faith, Luther had already
laid down in his writings certain marks by which it might be
ascertained whether a man is a believer or not, and which at any rate
scarcely tally with the criteria he applies to Zwingli. Judged by
these Zwingli would emerge quite blameless.
Kawerau points this out in defence of Zwingli: “The idea of faith,” he
says, “which Luther had newly evolved, in opposition to the Catholic
assent to the teaching of the Bible and the Church, led logically to
determining from a man’s attitude towards Christ and His saving Grace
whether he was a true believer or not; Luther himself frequently made
this his criterion; for instance, in answer to the question: Who is
a member of the Church, and whom must I regard as my dear brother in
Christ? He replies, all those ‘Who confess Christ as sent by God the
Father in order to reconcile us to Him by His death and to obtain for
us grace’; or again: All ‘those who put their trust in Christ alone
and confess Him in faith,’ or yet again: ‘All those who seek the Lord
with their whole heart and soul ... and who trust in nothing but in
God’s mercy.’”[1765] But had not Zwingli loudly proclaimed himself to
be one of these?
“In such utterances of Luther’s we find,” according to Kawerau,
“summed up the purely religious and Evangelical conception of faith.”
Here there is no question of any accepting of the several articles of
faith, of any submission to a “string of doctrinal propositions,” of
any “faith made up of so and so many ‘articles’ all of such importance
that to reject one involves the dropping of the others.”[1766]
According to this theologian Luther was untrue to his own basic
theories when he assailed Zwingli as he did. Kawerau also agrees with
Hausrath in holding that the principal cause of Luther’s estrangement
was a psychological one which indeed constituted the weakest spot in
his whole position, viz. his identification of his own theological
outbuilding of an article of faith, with its religious content,[1767]
or, to speak more plainly, his setting himself up as the sole
authority after having set aside that of the Church.
(_b_) _The Melting away of Luther’s Dogmas viewed in the Light of
Protestant Criticism_
We have already put on record those doctrines of the olden Church,
which, inclusive of the idea of faith itself, Luther threw overboard;
we now come to the doctrines which he retained, which deserve to be
considered in connection with the strictures of modern Protestant
theologians, particularly of Harnack. At least these strictures bring
out very clearly their contradictory and illogical character. Evidently
Harnack is not altogether wrong when he uses as a page-heading the
words “Exit dogma in Protestantism,”[1768] and elsewhere:[1769]
“Embarrassments and problems in Luther’s heritage.”
Luther, to quote Harnack, “frequently hardened his heart against
certain consequences of his own religious principles.”[1770] But
“if ‘the whole Luther’ is to be set up as the law of faith for
the Evangelical Church, then, where it is a question of matters of
history, such consequences cannot be simply ignored.” “The Lutheran
Reformation,” writes Fr. Loofs, “would have ended otherwise as regards
the history of dogma, had Luther braved tradition and followed up his
theories to their logical conclusion. The shreds of the old which
remained hampered the growth of the new ideas, even in Luther’s own
case.”[1771]
_Original Sin and Unfreedom; Law and Gospel; Penance_
Luther took over from the olden Church the doctrine of the existence
of original sin, but he so changed it, particularly by affirming that
it resulted in the destruction of free-will, that the doctrine itself
becomes untenable.
Of this all-important groundwork of his anthropology the theologian
Taube says: “It is not surprising that Luther fails to remain faithful
to the attitude he has assumed. It is as impossible to him, as to any
other thinking mind, to fail to find freedom presupposed in every
corner, in his personal Christianity, and in his own work as pastor,
preacher or reformer. Facts are stronger than theories and _a priori_
reasonings.... Either the _data_ of experience must be held to be
mere illusion, or absolute determinism must be thrown over. We cannot
answer the same question both in the negative and in the affirmative
and then declare it to be a mystery; it would be no mystery but simply
a contradiction.”[1772]
Still, Luther found it easier than Taube thinks to proclaim things to
be mysteries which palpably were nothing but contradictions. A glance
at Köstlin’s “Luthers Theologie” shows how often Luther attempts to
distract the reader from the difficulties he himself enumerates with
the consoling words: This we must not seek to pry into.—Taube too is
optimistic with regard to the fate of the doctrine of unfreedom in
modern Protestant theology; appealing to the above contradictions,
he writes: “It is not surprising that the Lutheran theology, closely
as it keeps to Luther’s views in many other matters, has never
ventured to follow him on this all-important point, and, in fact, has
departed ever further from him.”[1773] The truth is that the period of
withdrawal inaugurated by Melanchthon in 1527 has been succeeded in
our own day by one of closer approximation. (Cp. above, vol. ii., p.
292, n. 4.)
Apart from the theory of man’s absolute depravity and lack of
free-will there are other things which are damaging to Luther’s
doctrine of original sin, particularly his opinion that original sin
persists after baptism.
“The doctrine of original sin as taught by the olden Church,” says
Harnack, “was amended by Luther and made to agree with his own
principles,” but it was against his principles “to make of such
things articles of faith. His own sense of sin and the need he felt
of pacifying his conscience occupied in it so large a place that he
transformed what was in reality a piece of Christian self-judgment
into an historical fact of universal appliance concerning the
beginnings of the human race.” At any rate Luther’s exaggeration of
the impotence of fallen man served “as a ground of excuse for our own
guilt.”[1774]
As regards his doctrine of the Law and the Gospel; Luther hoped, by
contrasting it with the Gospel, to bring the Law into prominence. By
the Law he understood the sum-total of what was commanded not merely
in the Old but also in the New Testament; the teaching of the Gospel,
on the other hand, contained only consoling thoughts on the fulfilment
of the Law by Christ and the appropriation of Christ’s merits by
faith.[1775]
“Plain as it is,” says Harnack, “what Luther really desired by his
distinction between the Law and the Gospel, still, coming to details,
we find that the Reformer’s statements do not always agree. Thus it
is partly left to our own private judgment to select those utterances
which we consider more important; Luther himself nevertheless gives
the preference to certain ideas which _in perpetuum_ invest the Law
with a peculiar independent significance. Is it not, however, our
duty to depict the Reformer in accordance with his most original
ideas?”[1776]
Such an “original” idea is that of the abrogation of the Law for the
Christian who is really redeemed and who voluntarily and without
compulsion leaves faith to express itself in action. “Certainty of
the abrogation of the Law constitutes a certain demand which can be
met only in one way.” Luther carries the paradox so far as to say:
The Law is given to be broken. And yet ... Luther ever cherishes the
“assumption that the Law is the expression of God’s immutable will,
and, in this sense, has its own enduring sphere of action side by
side with the Gospel, as though the Will of God were not implicitly
contained in the latter. But this admission involved a place being
found for the Law even in Christianity.” Of this difficulty Luther was
perfectly conscious, but he was deft enough in circumventing it. “The
Law _qua lex_ is undoubtedly abrogated for the Christian; whoever
tries to act up to the Law must needs go to hell; but in God’s sight
it still holds good, i.e. God’s Will remains expressed therein and He
must watch over its fulfilment.” If the law is not fulfilled God must
demand penance.[1777]
In the question of penance we again see Luther assume an attitude which
is, as a matter of fact, subversive of his own doctrine. His ideas on
this point are so contradictory that Protestant writers on dogma have
not been able to agree in their accounts, and needless to say, still
less in their judgments.
Alfred Galley, one of the most recent writers on “Luther’s doctrine of
penance,” admits: “The various attempts made to solve the matter have
so far yielded no satisfactory result.”[1778] And yet for ten years
Lipsius, Herrmann and others had been carefully exploring this central
point of Luther’s practical theology. Galley’s own efforts, kindly
disposed as he is to Luther, and in spite of his mastery of the texts,
have not as yet rallied other theologians to his opinion.
Luther’s original doctrine of Penance, to which frequent allusion
has already been made, started, according to Loofs, (1906) with
the assumption that contrition is produced solely by the “love of
righteousness,” and that true penance “does not come from the Law,”
because the latter does nothing but “kill, curse, render guilty
and pronounce judgment”; penance produced by the Law led only to
hypocrisy. “Thus, before one has faith, to think of sin and of
the Law is harmful.” Luther, however, gradually acquiesced in the
modifications introduced by Melanchthon in favour of the Law and of
that sorrow which arises from the thought of the penalties. That
“Luther to a certain extent adopted Melanchthon’s ideas on penance
is still more apparent in the Antinomian controversy [1537-1540],”
yet the ideas of his opponent, Agricola, bore some “resemblance” to
“Luther’s earlier ideas” on Christian penance.[1779]
As for Harnack, he emphasises the confusion which arose in the
Lutheran theology owing to Luther’s illogical attitude towards so
eminently practical a question as the doctrine of penance; even during
Luther’s lifetime the doctrine of penance had been a real “labyrinth.”
“Here too,” says Harnack, “Luther himself took the lead, and then
quietly winked at what was contrary to his own early principles,
which, moreover, he had never retracted. That the mediaeval Catholic
view had its after effect on him ought not to be denied.” “He was
convinced that faith works penance, the ‘dying daily,’ which indeed is
but the negative side of faith,” and that “only such penance as comes
from faith [from the Gospel] is of value in God’s sight.... This is
certainly a view which may easily grow into its dreadful opposite,
viz. the comfortable presuming on salvation.... If people are told
that they must always be performing penance, and that particular acts
of penance are of no avail, few will ever have recourse to penance at
all.”[1780]
Hence, according to Harnack, Luther made a change in the doctrine of
penance and more importance was given to the Law; “for each separate
act of sin on the part of the baptised” satisfaction must be made, and
“Christ must intervene anew with His fulfilment of the Law.”[1781]
By this means, by the creative action of God, “faith” is constantly
revived in the man who has fallen, and God, as Luther now assumes,
works by means of the Law. In this wise, faith, however, becomes,
says Harnack, “a meritorious work,” seeing that it is the seal of our
reconciliation; moreover “personal responsibility and personal action
must play some part.”[1782] But how is man to do this, devoid as he is
of any freedom of the will?
Again, for all his alteration of his doctrine of penance Luther
failed to “attain the object he was after, viz. to check laxity
and frivolity. On the contrary, the new doctrine tended, in its
later developments, to promote and foster them.”[1783] Nor was much
gained, when, in order to promote penance and greater earnestness
of life the Law was “placed before the Gospel. This Melanchthon did
with Luther’s consent in the ‘Instructions for the Visitors.’[1784]
Occasion was taken at the same time to insist strongly on the use of
the confessional in order to check at least the worst sins.” “The
intervention of the clergyman, which was undoubtedly needed by the
‘common people,’” constituted merely “a Lutheran counterpart of the
Catholic sacrament of penance,” though, adds Harnack, “minus its
burdensome Romish additions.”[1785]
_Luther’s Doctrine of Justification and Good Works, as seen by
Protestant Critics_
According to Harnack, “the idea of justification,” the central point of
Luther’s teaching, “shrinks into a merely outward act of God’s designed
to quieten consciences. Here again the superiority of the Catholic
doctrine could not fail to appear; for to be content with the ‘_fides
sola_’ could not but involve a very questionable laxity. It would,
from this point of view, have been far better to have represented the
‘_fides caritate formata_’ as alone of any value in God’s sight.”[1786]
In his doctrine of justification by faith alone, Luther never got over
the weak point, viz. his exclusion of charity, at least a commencement
of which, together with faith, hope and repentance, had been required
by the olden Church as a preparation for justification. Some return
to the Catholic requirements was called for. “Hence it is not in the
least surprising, ... that Melanchthon at a later date abandoned the
‘_sola fides_’ and came to advocate a modified form of synergism. The
Luther-zealots were thrown into hopeless confusion by the necessity
in which they found themselves, of harmonizing the older Evangelical
theory with the doctrine of penance whilst avoiding the pitfall of
Melanchthon’s synergism.” They found themselves, so Harnack says, face
to face with two “_iustificationes_,” that by faith alone, and that
by law and penance, not to speak of a third, the “_iustificatio_” of
infants by the act of baptism. “These contradictions become still
further accentuated when the ‘_regeneratio_’ was taken into account,”
etc.[1787] It is not worth while to pursue any further Harnack’s
criticism which at times tends to become carping.
As regards the doctrine of good works, Protestant theology of late has
been disposed to take offence at Luther’s undue extension of freedom,
which seems to endanger good works and the zealous keeping of the Law.
It is the Christian’s art, so Loofs sums up Luther’s teaching, to
allow no thought of the Law to trouble his conscience, but simply to
regard Christ as the bearer of his sins. “Here the one-sided view of
the ‘Law,’ seen only from the standpoint of the need of acquiring
merit by works, has a disturbing effect”; such is Loofs’s opinion.
According to Luther such contempt for the Law is often impossible,
hence he determined to conquer the “dualism of the old-new man” of
which we like St. Paul (Gal. ii. 20) are conscious: I live, and
yet I do not; I am dead, and yet I am not; a sinner, and yet no
sinner; I have the Law and yet I have it not. We ought, according to
Luther, to say to ourselves: There is a time to die and a time to
live, a Law to be obeyed and a Law to be despised. “Even during the
Antinomian controversy,” concludes Loofs, “Luther did not abandon such
thoughts.”[1788]
Luther’s want of discrimination is most apparent, he says, in the
fact, that, owing to his “peculiar interest in the preaching of the
grace of God,” he depreciated works and the Law as the very fount of
self-righteousness.[1789]
Loofs rightly refers to a sermon in the Church-postils where Luther
inveighs against the “Papists, Anabaptists and other sects” who scream
against us: “What is the use of your preaching so much of faith and
Christ? What good does it do the people?”[1790] Luther could not in
fact “sufficiently decry the Law or urge too strongly that it was
useless to Christians.”[1791]
In the passage quoted Luther says of the exhortations to works and the
preaching of the Commandments: “This preaching does nothing else but
kill, i.e. far from being good or useful it is only harmful ... rank
poison and death.”
And he goes on: “All our works, however precious they may be, are
nothing but poison and death.... People may indeed boast loudly and
say: ‘If you live in this way, take pains to keep the Law and perform
many good works, you will be saved.’ But that these are only vain
words, nay, a harmful doctrine, will soon be apparent.”[1792] It
is not in man’s power to keep the Commandments by the performance
of the right and necessary works, hence he becomes troubled and
at last despairs if he strives after works. “The human race is so
depraved that no one can be found who does not transgress all God’s
commandments even though the wrath of God and his eternal damnation
be held up before him and preached to him daily; indeed if this is
impressed upon a man over much he only begins to rage against it more
horribly.”[1793] It is merely “reason with its human ideas” which
“cannot get beyond this, viz. that God is gracious to all who live in
this manner and do what the Ten Commandments require; for reason knows
nothing of the misery of our depraved nature, nor does it know that
no one is able to keep God’s command.” For this cause Luther had at
last brought to light and taught “that other doctrine in which grace
and reconciliation are proclaimed” to us according to the “spirit and
letter of St. Paul, whereas even the old doctors, Origen, Jerome and
others, had not grasped St. Paul’s meaning.”[1794]
In Popery “Scripture and St. Paul’s Epistles” were pushed under the
bench, and, instead, we wallowed in human foolishness like the swine
in their sties.[1795]
“Of what use is it to us that Moses and the Law say: This shalt thou
do, this would God have of thee? Yes, good Moses, I know this well
and it is indeed quite true. But do you tell me how it is that,
unfortunately, I neither keep it nor am able to keep it? It is no easy
thing to spend money with an empty purse or to drink out of an empty
can; if I am to pay my debts and to quench my thirst, then please
tell me how I may come by a full purse and a brimming can. To this the
babblers have no answer,” etc.[1796]
And yet the Catholic writers whom he dubs babblers, Erasmus and Eck
for instance, had demonstrated from Scripture and tradition that
first, man is by no means so helpless and depraved as Luther assumes,
and, secondly, that the grace of God is at his disposal every moment
in order, by supernatural assistance, to enable his natural powers to
keep the Law. While pointing this out they appeal at the same time to
those passages of Scripture which spur us on to good works, and even
make our heavenly reward dependent on them.
Of these latter passages Loofs also asks: “In reality are not those
alone saved who, besides their faith, can point to good works or at
least to their fulfilment of the first Commandment? Does not Scripture
over and over again speak of our being judged according to our works,
and of the eternal _reward_?” Luther, however, so he remarks, got over
the difficulty “by assuming, that, in such passages, faith is meant
even when they speak of good works”; Luther actually finds a parallel
in the “rule of the ‘_communicatio idiomatum_’” which deals with the
Divine attributes of Christ made man.[1797]
Another attempt to evade the difficulty, so Loofs declares, is found
in Luther’s statement regarding the reward promised in the Bible to
the just for their works. He argued that there must be some difference
between the saved in their “degree of brightness and glory,” and thus,
“_accidentaliter_,” he makes some account of the reward.[1798] Loofs,
however, also draws attention to the fact that in the same sermons on
Matthew, when touching cursorily on this, Luther “pokes fun at the
idea of God setting some ‘particular Saint’ in a topmost place in
heaven, and inveighs against the traditional idea of the ‘_præmium
accidentale_.’”[1799] This is quite true, for Luther’s statements
do not agree even here. In the passage quoted he is explaining his
doctrine according to which, in this world, all the justified are
equal in sanctity, the sinner who has just been converted being
as pleasing to God as the Apostles. “For were St. Peter a better
Christian than I am, he would have to have a better Christ, a better
Gospel and a better baptism. But, seeing that the heritage we enjoy is
one and the same, we must all be equal in this.”[1800]
There are few sayings of Luther’s where the wholly mechanical nature
of the forgiveness and sanctification taught by him, stands out more
clearly.
That, in spite of all this, he does not exclude works, is sufficiently
remarkable. In the very passage where Luther brings forward the
objection of the Papists and Anabaptists: It must be _done_, i.e.
good works, must be performed, he hastens to reply: “We have the Ten
Commandments which we teach and keep as well as they”;[1801] the only
difference was, that, he by his Evangelical preaching taught how the
Commandments were really to be honoured.
Loofs can even say that Luther proclaims the need of good works. He
quotes the following utterances, for instance, from Luther’s later
years: “_Opera habent suam necessitatem_”; “they, too, must be
there”; “On account of the hypocrites we must say that good works
are requisite for salvation (‘_necessaria ad salutem_’),”[1802] “he
did not shrink from speaking in this way when giving counsel.”[1803]
It is quite true, that, when preaching to the people, mindful of
their faults and vices, he is fond, as Loofs shows, of recalling
how Christ says “drily and clearly”: “If thou wilt enter into life,
keep the commandments [Mt. xix. 17]; item, Do this and thou shalt
live, etc. [Luke x. 28]. This must be taken as it stands and without
debate.”[1804] Hence Luther even calls those folk “mad” who say:
“‘Only believe and you will be saved.’ No, good fellow, that will not
do, and you will never get to the kingdom of heaven unless you keep
the Commandments.... For it is written plainly enough: ‘If thou wilt
enter into life, keep the commandments.’”[1805] And Luther supports
this text by others which speak of works, of their merit and demerit,
their reward and punishment.[1806]
And yet immediately after he goes on to complain: “How are we to do
what the Law perpetually urges and requires, seeing that we are unable
to comply with its demands?”[1807]
Finally he reaches his usual answer: “I will do it, says Christ, and
fulfil it”; first of all He again and again obtains forgiveness for
us, “seeing that we are unable to keep the Law”; Christ, however,
did not wish us “to continue sinning”; on the contrary, the grace He
infuses makes us keep the Law “willingly and gladly”; good works,
more particularly those of charity towards our neighbour, spring
up of themselves after “we have crept beneath Christ’s mantle and
wing.”[1808] Where faith is present “it cannot but work unceasingly
what is good. It does not ask whether there be a call to do good
works, but even before the question is put it has already done them,
and is ever after doing them.”[1809] Those Christians—presumably the
majority—who fail to find themselves in such a state receive but poor
consolation: “Whoever does not perform such works is an unbelieving
man, who gropes and looks about for faith and good works but knows
neither the one nor the other.”[1810]
Luther did not see that he was endangering both faith and works and
undermining their very foundations.
For, as his opponents objected, the last category of Christians,
however careless they might be in the matter of good works, and
however much they might fail to keep the Commandments, could,
nevertheless, for the most part, at least boast of having the faith,
whether regarded in the light of a “loving confidence in God’s grace”
or in the more usual and ordinary sense of an acceptance of the divine
revelation as true. Their faith, it was urged, was according to Luther
at the outset very closely in touch with sin, indeed they had been
justified by faith without either repentance or change of heart,
faith having merely spread a cloak over their evil deeds; and yet now
here was Luther telling them that they had lost the faith unless they
lived by it, or if they transgressed the Commandments even by a venial
sin—for Luther sees no distinction between mortal sin and venial.
Loofs is certainly not overstating things when he says that, “Luther
was not clear in his own mind”[1811] as to his doctrine on the great
questions of works and the Law, and that his “opinion comprised much
that did not tally.”[1812]
Loofs adds: “How far Luther himself was aware that much of what he said
voiced merely his own personal opinion it would be hard to tell....
Without his wealth of ideas and his ability to insist now on one, now
on another side of a subject Luther would not have been so successful
as a reformer. But he was hampered by his own qualities so soon as it
became a question of putting his new views in didactic form.”[1813]
Loofs, like Harnack, spares no praise when speaking of Luther’s
“qualities” and the “happy intuition” which enabled him to overthrow
the olden order and to call into being a new, “religious,”
Christianity.
_Luther’s Doctrine of Merit in the Eyes of Protestant Critics_
One such “happy intuition” Loofs sees in the fact, that, in the
question of works and merit Luther “clearly perceived and got the
better of the opinion, untenable in religion, that a scale of merit
exists as between God and man.”[1814] The critic abstains from
discussing the Catholic teaching on supernatural merit. Its earlier
no less than its later defenders rightly emphasised, in opposition to
Luther, that the olden doctrine of merit rested on the express promise
of God to reward faithful service, and not, as Luther insinuated, on
any absolute right of the works in themselves to such reward. The act
which was to meet with such a reward must, they said, be not only good
in itself but also supernaturally good, i.e. it must be performed by
man’s powers aided by supernatural grace; even this, however, would not
suffice were there not the gracious promise on God’s part, guaranteed
by revelation, that such an act would be requited by a heavenly reward.
Yet this was not to deny a certain “_condignitas in actu primo_”
inherent in the act itself.
Luther, it is true, laughs to scorn the Popish doctrine of merit
which makes God Himself our debtor. Yet long before St. Augustine had
answered the objection: “God has become our debtor, not as though
He has received something from us, but because He has promised what
pleased Him. It is a different thing when we say to a man: You are my
debtor because I have given you something, and when we say to God:
Give us what Thou hast promised, for we have done what Thou didst
command.”[1815]
In the fragments of the ancient doctrine of religious morality which
Luther saw fit to retain he put germs of disintegration owing to his
failure to recognise the above truth. Because he would hear nothing
of merit and everywhere scented righteousness-by-works, he built up
a theory of good works which lacks a foundation. In the last resort
everything is coloured by his dread of self-righteousness and of any
human co-operation. “The ‘Law,’ to Luther, seemed conditioned by
that ‘_condicio meriti_,’” says Loofs, “which belonged to the Law
of Moses, and, which, owing to the craving of the natural man for
self-righteousness, also becomes part of the natural law.”[1816]
So strongly does Luther denounce merit and self-righteousness that he
practically does away with his own doctrine of works.
First, his denial of free-will and the absolute determinism of his
doctrine makes an end of all spontaneous, meritorious action on man’s
part. Further, he is untrue to his position, repudiating it in his
sermons and popular writings as far as possible, and replacing it
by one morally more defensible. In later years we find him casting
over his own teaching even in his theological disputations; in his
anxiety to counter the Antinomians, he goes so far as to declare works
necessary for salvation.
Even earlier the fanatics and Anabaptists had helped to some extent in
the work of demolition. Their conclusions as to the dangers of Luther’s
system and their protests against its evil moral consequences are
really much more vigorous and damaging than might appear from Luther’s
bitter rejoinders. “The unjust attitude of the reformers towards the
‘fanatics,’” says Harnack, “was disastrous to themselves and their
cause. How much might they not have learnt from these despised people
even though obliged to repudiate their principles.”[1817]
The work of demolition was, moreover, being carried out under Luther’s
very eye by Philip Melanchthon and his friends. Luther’s doctrine,
as has already been pointed out, was not at all to the taste of the
dialectician of Lutheranism. “The Philippists,” says Loofs, “were
very far from holding Luther’s own views,” “as far removed as” the
Antinomians. Luther himself, however, “was partly to blame for the
confusion.” From the standpoint adopted by Melanchthon “it was
impossible to comply” with Luther’s demand for a clear “distinction
to be made between Law and Gospel”;[1818] yet, according to Luther,
this was one of “the things on which theology hinges.”[1819] According
to Loofs, Melanchthon’s theology was a means of spoiling some
“valuable reformation truths,” nay, “the most priceless of Luther’s
new ideas.”[1820] As for Melanchthon’s allegation, viz. that he had
merely put Luther’s doctrine more mildly, Loofs says bluntly: “If he
meant this, then he deceived himself.”[1821] As to the points under
discussion, Luther not only thought differently from Melanchthon at an
earlier date, but persisted in so doing till his very death. Luther,
nevertheless, never expressed any disapproval of Melanchthon’s ideas,
widely as they differed from his own.
_Luther’s teaching on the Sacraments and on the Supper according to
Protestant Teaching_
In Harnack’s opinion Luther, by his teaching on the one sacrament,
viz. the Word, “destroyed the olden ecclesiastical view. Yet he
unconsciously retained a certain remnant ... which had fatal results on
the development of his doctrine. Though here again we find truth and
error side by side in Luther, we may not shut our eyes to the fact that
he opened the door to errors of a grave character.”[1822]
The principal error in his doctrine of the sacraments consisted,
according to Harnack, in his having made his own a reminiscence of
the Catholic view. Instead of teaching that the Holy Ghost acts
by the Word alone, he came, as his statements subsequent to 1525
show, to regard this Spirit as operating by the “Word _and_ the
Sacraments.”[1823]
“In his teaching on the sacraments he forsook the attitude he had once
adopted as a reformer and accepted views which tended to confuse his
own doctrine of faith and still more the theology of his followers. In
his efforts to thwart the fanatics he came to embrace ... some highly
questionable propositions.... This relapse in his views on the means
of grace wrought untold damage to Lutheranism.”[1824] Here his desire
to get the better of the fanatics played a part, and so did likewise
the psychological starting-point of his whole teaching. He reverted
to the means of grace, “because he wished to provide real consolation
for troubled consciences, and to preserve them from the hell of
uncertainty concerning that state of grace of which the fanatics
appeared to make so small account.... It was, however, not merely
by his rejection of certain definite acts as means of grace that
Luther returned to the narrow views of the Middle Ages which he had
previously forsaken—the spirit lives not (as Luther knew better than
any other man), thanks to any means of grace, but thanks rather to
that close union with its God on Whom it lays hold through Christ—he
did so still more by seeking, first, to vindicate Infant Baptism as
a means of grace in the strict sense; secondly, by accepting Penance
as at least a preparation for grace, and, thirdly, by maintaining
that the Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Supper
constitutes the essential part of this sacrament.”[1825] It is true
he “never ceased to maintain that the means of grace were nothing
but the Word whereby faith is awakened,” but, in spite of this, the
“_opus operatum_” of the olden Church “had again made its appearance
and weakened or obscured the strict relations between Gospel and
faith.”[1826]
Of Infant Baptism in Luther’s system Harnack rightly says: “If
Luther’s Evangelical theory holds good, viz. that grace and faith
are inseparably linked,[1827] then Infant Baptism is in itself no
sacrament, and can be no more than an ecclesiastical rite; if it is a
sacrament in the strict sense, then evidently his theory is at fault.
We cannot escape the dilemma, either by appealing to the faith of the
parents or god-parents [as Luther, to begin with, did]—for this is
the worst kind of the ‘_fides implicita_’—or by assuming that faith
is given in baptism,[1828] for an unconscious faith is almost as bad
as that other ‘_fides implicita_.’ Hence the proper thing for Luther
to have done would have been either to abolish Infant Baptism ... or
to admit that it was a mere rite to be completed later.... Luther,
however, did neither; on the contrary, he retained Infant Baptism
as the sacrament of regeneration and accepted as an efficacious act
what should, given his theory, have at most been a symbol of God’s
preventing grace. This was, however much he might deny it, to hark
back to the ‘_opus operatum_’ and to dissolve the link between faith
and the working of grace.”[1829]
Again, according to Harnack, the mould in which Luther cast his
doctrine of the Supper once more involved him in contradictions which
rendered his position untenable.
On the one hand, by so strenuously insisting on the belief in the
Real Presence as a binding doctrinal formula he was untrue to his own
theory that doctrine was not to be formulated; on the other hand, his
restatement of the doctrine of the Supper emptied it of all content.
It was “in part the fault of his formulating of the faith that the
later Lutheran Church, with its Christology, its teaching on the
Sacrament ... and the false standard by which it judged divergent
doctrines and pronounced them heretical, threatened for a while to
become a sort of caricature of the Catholic Church.”[1830]
Harnack notes how Luther, the better to reach the real meaning of the
words “This is My Body,” actually called tradition to his aid, in his
case an extremely illogical thing to do. His consciousness that in
holding fast to the Real Presence he was backed by the whole Church
of yore lends his words unusual power. “Even were a hundred thousand
devils and all the fanatics to fall upon it, still the doctrine must
stand firm.”[1831] We may add, that, with regard to this sacrament,
Luther outdid his adversaries in his attachment to tradition and
antiquity, reintroducing communion under both kinds as being alone in
strict accord with Scripture.
There was also much that was personal and arbitrary in the doctrine of
the Sacrament of the Altar as shaped anew and established by Luther.
For one thing, he dwelt far too exclusively on this sacrament being
the pledge of the forgiveness of sins. Again, in his desire to counter
Zwingli, he put forward theories on the sacrament, which embody all
sorts of disadvantages and contradictions not to be found in the
teaching of the earlier Church. He, indeed, denied Transubstantiation,
but the “Swiss could not for the life of them see why he did, since he
admits that a stupendous miracle takes place in the Supper.”[1832]
For the Church’s ancient doctrine of Transubstantiation he substituted
Impanation, and even this he admitted only in the actual celebration
and reception.[1833] “The awkward part was,” says Harnack, “that,
according to Luther, the Body and Blood of Christ were present in
the Supper only for the purpose of reception, though they might
be partaken of even by an unbeliever or a heathen.”[1834] The
concomitance (presence of both Body and Blood under either kind)
taught by the olden Church, which, indeed, was a natural corollary
of the Real Presence, he set aside, urged thereto by his theory that
in Communion both kinds must be received; the only result was to
introduce a new and uncalled-for miracle. To this must be added what
Harnack calls the “crazy speculations on the ubiquity of the Body
of Christ,”[1835] which furnished Melanchthon his principal reason
for giving up Luther’s doctrine of the Supper, and, like Zwingli and
Bucer, denying the Real Presence. According to Luther, the ubiquity of
the Body of Christ rested on the supposed “real communication of the
Divine ‘_idiomata_’ (and consequently of the Divine omnipresence) to
the humanity of Christ.”[1836]
Nor does the Real Presence, according to Luther, begin at the
consecration; as to when it does, he leaves the faithful in the dark;
nor does he enlighten them as to when it ceases in the remains left
over after communion; in the latter regard his practice was full of
contradictions.—In allowing communion to be carried to the sick in
their own houses he was again unfaithful to his tenets.[1837] To any
processions of the sacrament he was averse, because Christ was only
present at the time of reception.
He proposed, as the better plan, that the sacrament should not be
adored save by bending the knee when receiving it, and yet his own
behaviour did not tally with his proposal.[1838] It was enacted at
Wittenberg, in 1542, that there should be no elevation, and yet Luther
had retained this rite at an earlier date, in order to defy Carlstadt,
as he says, and so as not to seem in this “indifferent matter” to
sanction by his attitude Carlstadt’s attack on the sacrament.[1839] He
was, to say the least, verbally illogical when he termed the Eucharist
the “_sacrificium eucharisticum_,” meaning of course thereby that it
was a “thank-offering” on the part of the faithful.
It is not surprising that belief in the Real Presence, though so
strongly defended by Luther, gradually evaporated in his Church
largely owing to the inconsistencies just noticed. Eventually the
Lutherans made their own the views of Zwingli and Melanchthon on
the sacrament, though they retained an affection for certain vague
and elastic terms concerning the reception of the Body and Blood of
Christ.[1840] Luther spoke of the attempts to introduce Zwingli’s
rationalistic doctrine of the sacrament at Frankfurt-on-the-Main as “a
diabolical jugglery with the words of Christ,” “whereby simple souls
are shamefully duped and robbed of their sacrament.” The thing was
“handled in such a way that no one was certain what was meant or what
to believe.”[1841]
_Luther’s views on the Church and on Divine Worship according to
Protestant Criticism_
A mass of inconsequence lies in the doctrine on the Church, which he is
supposed to have retained, though, as a matter of fact, he completely
altered it. Thanks to his conception of the Church as a practically
invisible body his view of it was so broad as to leave far behind the
old, Catholic idea; nevertheless, by and by his conception of the
Church grew so narrow, that, as Harnack justly remarks, “in comparison,
even the Roman view of it seems in many respects more elastic and
consequently superior.... The Church threatened to become a mere
school, viz. the school of ‘pure [Wittenberg] doctrine.’” In this way
arose “the Christianity of the theologians and pastors.... Luther on
his own side repeatedly broke away from this view.”[1842] It is quite
true that many contradictions are here apparent, as we shall have
occasion to see later (vol. vi., xxxviii.). “His idea of the Church
became obscured. The conception of the Church (communion of faith and
communion of pure doctrine) became as ambiguous as the conception of
the ‘_doctrina evangelii_.’”
Then, with regard to his teaching on public worship. Though, as
remarked above (p. 147 f.), he had in principle abandoned the view held
by the olden Church regarding the necessity of external worship, and
had robbed it of its focus, viz. the Sacrifice of the Altar, yet he was
very far from logically following this out in practice.
His standpoint, according to Harnack, was originally this: “If it is
certain that man may not, and indeed cannot do anything for God’s
sake, if the very idea of moving God by our works is the death of
true piety, if the whole relationship between God and man depends on
a believing disposition, i.e. on unshakable trust in Him, humility
and constant prayer, if lastly no ceremony has any worth, then
there can be no ‘Divine Service’ in the true sense of the term. The
only direct service of God there is, is faith, otherwise the rule
that obtains everywhere is that we serve God by charity towards our
neighbour.”[1843]
Very soon, however, we find that in practice Luther reverts to some
sort of common worship for the sake of the “common man,” who requires
to hear the Word, to assist at public prayers, and who must also
have some kind of liturgy. At times Luther seems to speak of public
worship as merely a “school for the imperfect,” and, occasionally, he
may really have meant it (above, p. 149 f.). By reforming the Mass
and by the other directions he gave concerning public worship, scanty
and faltering though they be, he introduced a practice which is at
variance with his principles. “The seemingly conservative attitude he
adopted in his emendation of the Missal, and his refusal to undertake
a thorough reconstruction of divine worship led to many ‘Lutherans’
in the 16th, and again in the 19th century, entertaining questionable
views on the specific religious value of public worship, its object
and its practice. How very unlike Luther this is—seeing that Luther
here can, and must, be corrected in his own light—and what a vast
difference exists between the Evangelical and the Catholic doctrine
of divine worship.”[1844] Harnack appeals to Gottschick’s “Luthers
Anschauungen vom christlichen Gottesdienst” (1887), as clearly
demonstrating this. According to Gottschick the old Lutheran liturgy
is not “even relatively a genuine product of the real spirit of the
Reformation.” In this theologian’s opinion, Luther “really adopted the
Roman Mass, contenting himself with a few alterations.” Gottschick
urges that an attempt should be made to construct “an entirely new
edifice on the basis of the principles embodied in Luther’s reforming
views,” etc.[1845]
Gottschick is also right when he points out, that Luther “took
but little interest in liturgy.”[1846] He was, however, set on
bringing the people into the new faith and Church with the utmost
circumspection and with as little fuss as possible. It is not
necessary to recall here how successful was his policy of retaining
the external forms, particularly on the unschooled masses who were
unable to see below the surface. (Cp. vol. ii., p. 319 ff.)
Luther declared that he himself, “with a few friends, really
constituted the ancient Church”—“a remarkable point of view,” says
Harnack, “explicable only by the idealism of his faith.”[1847]
This enabled him, so Harnack continues, “to abandon and assail the
Catholic Church, and nevertheless all the while to protest that he
stood with the olden Church. Though in assuming this attitude his
faith was so strong that it mattered nothing to him how great or how
small was the number of those who refused to bend the knee to Baal,
yet it was of the greatest interest to him to show that he was a true
member of that Church which had existed through the ages. Hence, he was
compelled to prove the historical continuity of his position. But how
could this be proved more surely than by means of the old creeds of the
ancient Church still in force?”[1848]
Here, again, we are confronted by the contradiction which runs through
the whole of Luther’s theology.
Even the very Creeds he had undermined by that subjectivism which he
had exalted into a principle. Every Creed must submit to being tested
by the Word of God, either by Luther himself or by any other man who
considered himself equal to the task. Furthermore, the Word of God
is subservient to the Canon set up by Luther or any other Christian
scholar, and its sense may be determined by any Christian sufficiently
enlightened to understand it. This was to open up the road to a
Christianity minus any creed or dogma.
Luther’s claims, whether to represent the olden Church or to have
furnished a better and firmer basis for the future, have never been
more vigorously questioned by any Protestant theologian of modern days
than by Adolf Harnack.
If we sum up in Harnack’s words the results of modern Protestant
criticism exercised on Luther’s teaching, we find that they do not in
the least countenance the obsolete view of some of Luther’s latest
admirers, viz. that he preserved what was good and “wholesome” of
the existing dogmas and merely added “one, or two supplementary
doctrines.”[1849] Even to-day we still hear it said that his belief
and the “ancient dogma” were really “in complete harmony”; people, in
support of this statement, appeal to what might naturally be considered
the best witness, viz. to Luther himself, who was quite of this
opinion. But when the defenders of this view begin to speak of Luther’s
“alteration” of dogma and of his having “reconstructed” it, then,
says Harnack, it becomes “hard to tell what the words are intended to
convey,” in any case, it is an admission that “Luther’s conception of
faith in some way or other modified the whole of dogma.”[1850]
It would be more correct, according to Harnack, to say, that
“Luther overthrew the whole doctrine of the olden and mediæval
Church, retaining only a few fragments.”[1851] His own “attitude of
mind towards ancient dogma” was not “altogether consistent.” His
“Christianity” is, as a matter of fact, “no longer inwardly bound up”
with ancient dogma; his “conception of faith, i.e. what admittedly
constituted his main contribution,” stands in no need of the olden
doctrinal baggage.[1852] “In Luther’s Reformation the old, dogmatic
Christianity was set aside and replaced by a new, Evangelical
conception. The Reformation is really [for Harnack’s Protestantism]
the end of the history of dogma.... If Luther agrees with this or that
definition of the ancient or mediæval Church, the agreement, seen
from this standpoint, is partly only apparent, partly a coincidence
which can never be the result of any _a priori_ submission to
tradition.”[1853]
“So far as Luther left a ‘Theology’ to his followers it appears as
an extremely complicated affair.... He did not therein give its
final expression to Evangelical Christianity, but merely inaugurated
it.”[1854] A philosopher may, at a pinch, find the dogmas of the
Greek Church wise and profound, but no philosopher could possibly
find any savour in Luther’s faith. Luther himself was not aware of
the chasm that separated him from the ancient dogma, partly because
he interpreted it in his own sense, partly because he retained some
vestige of respect for the definitions of the Councils, partly, too,
because he was only too pleased to be able to confront the Turks,
heathen, Jews and fanatics with something definite, assured, exalted
and incomprehensible.[1855]
We may well make Harnack’s concluding words our own: “It has been shown
that the scraps of the olden belief which he retained do not tally with
his views as a whole.... The whole does not merely rise above this or
that dogma, but above all dogmatic Christianity in general,”[1856] i.e.
the doctrines of the Christian faith are no longer binding.
2. Luther as a Popular Religious Writer. The Catechism
During the last years of his life Luther was able to put the last touch
to his literary labours by undertaking a new revision of some of his
more important earlier works, and by assisting in the compilation of
complete editions of his writings.
Thanks partly to his own literary labours, partly to the help and
support of friends and pupils, he succeeded in gathering together those
works which he desired to see handed down to posterity.
In 1541 and 1545 Luther’s German translation of the Bible also
received its finishing touch, and a new, amended edition was brought
out, which, though slightly altered, still serves the Protestant
congregations to-day. Moreover, the sermons of the Postils were
revised afresh in order to furnish reading matter for the people and
to help the preachers. In 1540 he himself published the first part
of the Church-Postils (the winter term) and, in 1543, appeared the
second portion, previously revised by Cruciger.[1857] The Home-Postils
appeared for the first time in 1544, edited by Veit Dietrich. At the
same time a beginning was made with the complete editions of his
literary works, the first volume of the German edition appearing in
1539 and the first volume of the Latin edition in 1545.
_His Collected Works; his New Edition of the Church-Postils_
Luther’s German writings were collected by Cruciger and Rörer and
printed at Wittenberg. The second volume was published only in 1548,
after Luther’s death. The compilation of the Latin writings was carried
out with the aid of various friends, for instance, of Spalatin and
Rörer, and also first saw the light at Wittenberg. Both these editions
were eagerly sought after by the booksellers and a great sale was
anticipated.
In the introductions which Luther prefixed to both collections he
not only followed the then universal fashion of seeking to make
a favourable impression on the reader by an extravagant display
of humility, but also gave free play to his love for grotesque
exaggerations. He had no intention of writing any “Retractations,”
as St. Augustine had done, however much such might be called for.
Instead of this he professes to repudiate his books wholesale—though
only, of course, to bring them forward again all the more vigorously.
Whoever is familiar with Luther’s ways will not need to be told how to
interpret and appreciate what he here says. There is no doubt, however,
that countless readers of these introductions fell into the trap and
exclaimed: How great and yet how humble is the man who speaks in these
pages!
Luther begins the prefaces to his German works[1858] with the wish,
which we have heard him express before: “Gladly would I see all my
books unwritten or destroyed.”[1859] Why? “That Holy Scripture might
be read and studied the more,” that Word of God, “which so long lay
forgotten under the bench.” Because, in the Church, “many books and
large libraries” had been collected “apart from and in addition to
Scripture,” and “without any discrimination,” the “true understanding
of the Divine Word had at last been lost.” At any rate it was “good
and profitable that the writings of some of the Fathers and Councils
had remained as witnesses and histories.” I myself, he says, “may
venture to boast without pride or lying that I do not fall far short
of some of the Fathers in the matter of the making of books; my life,
however, I would not dare to liken to theirs.” It is, however, his
books that “provide the ‘pure knowledge’ of the Word.” Nevertheless,
he seeks comfort in the thought, “that, in time, my books, too, will
lie dusty and forgotten,” “particularly now that it has begun to rain
and hail books.” But whoever reads them, “let him see well to it that
they do not prove a hindrance to his studying Scripture itself.”
He then goes on to give some quite excellent directions as to how best
to study Holy Scripture. He himself had pursued this method, and were
the reader too to make it his own he would be able, “if necessary, to
compose as good books as the Fathers and the Councils.”
In the first place you must “altogether renounce your own judgment and
reason,” and rather beg God “humbly and earnestly to ... enlighten
you”; but if anyone “falls on it with his reason” ... then the result
is only a new crop of fanatics. Secondly, he recommends that the text
of the Bible, i.e. “the literal words of the book, should be ever
studied, read and re-read with diligent attention and reflection as
to what the Holy Ghost means thereby.” Thirdly, temptations: “As soon
as the Word of God is being made known to you, the devil will attack
you, make a real doctor of you, and, by his temptations, teach you to
seek and love God’s Word.” He, too, had to thank his Papists and the
raging of the devil at their bidding for having made him “a pretty
fair theologian.” Hence “_oratio, meditatio, tentatio_.”