THE STARTING-POINT
1. Former Inaccurate Views
THE views formerly current with regard to the origin of Luther’s
struggle against the old Church were due to an insufficient knowledge
of history, and might be ignored were it not that their after effects
still remain in literature.
It will be sufficient to mention three of these views. It was said that
the Church’s teaching on Indulgences, and the practices of the Quæstors
or Indulgence-preachers, first brought Luther into antagonism with the
Church authorities and then gradually entangled him more and more in
the great struggle regarding other erroneous teachings and usages. As a
matter of fact, the question of Indulgences was raised only subsequent
to Luther’s first great departures from the Church’s doctrine.
Then it was said that the far-seeing teacher of Wittenberg had from
the very first directed his attention to the reformation of the whole
Church, which he found sunk in abuses, and had therefore commenced with
a doctrinal reform as a necessary preliminary. As though Luther—this
is what this childish view presupposes—had before him from the
beginning the plan of his whole momentous work, or sat down to draw
up a general programme for the reformation of doctrine, commencing
with the fall of Adam. We are to believe that the Monk at once severed
all connecting ties with the whole of the past, in faith as well
as in the practical conception of the Church’s life; that he went
through no previous long inward process, attended for him by a weary
conflict of soul; that, in fact, such a world-stirring revolution
had been dependent on the will of one man, and was not the result of
the simultaneous action of many factors which had, at the outset,
been ignored and not taken into consideration. The whole struggle for
the “betterment of the Church” was a gradual development, and the
co-operating elements led their originator, both in his teaching and
his practical changes, far beyond what he had originally aimed at. When
Luther, brooding over original sin, grace and justification, first
began to set up his new ideas against the so-called self-righteous and
“little Saints” of his immediate surroundings, he did, it is true, now
and again speak excitedly of the reforms necessary to meet certain
phases of the great decline in the public life of the Church; but the
Doctor of Holy Scripture was, as a matter of fact, far more preoccupied
with the question of the theology of Paul and Augustine than with the
abuses in the Church and outer world, which were, to tell the truth,
very remote from the Monk’s cell and lecture-room.
The third view is also incorrect which has it that it was rivalry
between two Orders, viz. dissatisfaction and envy on the part of the
Augustinians against the Dominicans, which set the Monk on his career.
The Augustinians, it was said,[245] were annoyed with the rival Order
because the preaching of the Indulgence had been entrusted to its
members and not rather to so capable a man as Luther. Notwithstanding
the early date at which this charge was made, even by Luther’s own
contemporaries, the fact remains, that not only were there Augustinian
Indulgence-preachers, as, for instance, Johann Paltz, but that Luther’s
erroneous teaching had already made its appearance before he had as
yet commenced his struggle with Tetzel, and before he had even thought
of the Dominicans Prierias and Cardinal Cajetan. Jealousy against his
adversaries, the Dominicans, afterwards added fuel to the flame, but it
was not the starting-point.
Moreover, in treating here of Luther’s starting-point, we are not
seeking to determine, as was the case with the three views mentioned
above, the origin and points of contact of the whole movement comprised
under the name of the Reformation, but only of the first rise of
Luther’s new opinions on doctrine. These originated quite apart from
any attempt at external reform of the Church, and were equally remote
from the idea of breaking away from the Pope or of proclaiming freedom
of belief or unbelief, though many have fancied that these were
Luther’s first aims.
Points of contact have been sought for not only in Humanism and its
criticism of Church doctrine, but more particularly in the teaching
and tenets of Hus, Luther’s starting-point being traced back to his
deep study of the writings of John Hus, which had ultimately led him to
revive his errors; most of Luther’s theses, so we are told, were merely
a revival of Hus’s teaching. This view calls for a closer examination
than the others.
_A priori_ we might easily fancy that he had been led to his teaching
on the Church by means of the writings of Wiclif and Hus, for here we
do find a great similarity. But it is precisely this teaching on the
Church which is not to be found amongst his earlier errors; he reached
his views on this subject only as a result of the conflict he had to
wage, and, moreover, even then he brought them forward under varying
aspects. Erasmus, it is true, thought it fair to say, not merely of
his teaching on the Church, but of his teaching in general, that if
“what he has in common with Wiclif and Hus be removed, there would
not be much left.”[246] Erasmus does not analyse Luther’s assertions,
otherwise he would certainly have experienced some difficulty in
bringing out in detail his supposed dependence. We do not, however,
deny that there may be some connection on certain points.
Luther himself is absolutely silent as regards having arrived at his
ideas through Wiclif and Hus. He evidently considers himself quite
independent. In his earlier years he even speaks very strongly against
the Bohemian heretics and the Picards, as he frequently calls the
Husites. In his Commentary on the Psalms he regards them simply as
heretics,[247] and in his lectures on the Epistle to the Romans he
once instances the “_hæresis Pighardorum_” as an example of the wilful
destruction of what is holy.[248] Later, however, at and after his
public apostasy, and even shortly after the Leipzig Disputation, he
defends some of Hus’s doctrines, and the result of his perusal of Hus’s
work, “_De ecclesia_,” was to make him more audacious in upholding the
views it contains.[249] This quite explains the great sympathy with
which he afterwards speaks of Hus and his writings in general, and
the passionate way in which he blames the Catholic Church for having
condemned him. He says in 1520: “In many parts of the German land there
still survives the memory of John Hus, and, as it did not fade, I also
took it up, and discovered that he was a worthy, highly enlightened
man.... See, all ye Papists and Romanists,” he cries, “whether you are
able to undo one page of John Hus with all your writings.”[250] That
book of Hus’s sermons which he found as a young student of theology in
the monastery library at Erfurt (p. 25), he declares that he laid aside
because it was by an arch-heretic, though he had found much good in it,
and had been horrified that such a man had suffered death as a heretic;
as he had at that time convinced himself, Hus interpreted Scripture
powerfully and in a Christian manner.[251] We also know that Luther
relates that Staupitz had told him of Proles, his predecessor, how he
disapproved of Johann Zachariæ, one of the most capable opponents of
Hus, and that Staupitz had agreed: the latter also held that “Zachariæ
had gone to the devil, but that Hus had been unfairly treated.”[252]
This opinion reinforces that of Grefenstein, mentioned above.[253]
Nor does Luther, when speaking of his later development, ever admit
having read Hus and other heretical books, or being in any way indebted
to them. On the other hand, he tries always to place himself above
Hus. What Hus, according to him, discovered was quite insignificant
(“_minora et pauciora_”); he only commenced bringing the light which
had in reality to come from him (Luther).[254] He only “reproved the
abuses and the life of the Pope,” he says on a later occasion, “but I
put the knife to his throat, I oppose his existence and his teaching
and make him merely equal to other bishops; that I did not do at
first,”[255] i.e. I did not commence that way. It is certainly true
that at the beginning he made no attempt to oppose the Papacy and the
power of the Church.
At any rate, and this is what is most true in the above statements
regarding Luther’s connection with Hus, the feeling against Rome which
Hus had stirred up, and the memory of the latter, proved of assistance
to Luther when he came forward and brought him a speedier success; he
himself says on one occasion: “It is a tradition among honest people
that Hus suffered violence and injustice,” and calls the belief that
Hus was condemned by false judges “_robustissima_,” so that no Pope, or
Kaiser or University can shake it.[256]
Protestant biographers, as is well known, are fond of representing the
inward process through which Luther went in the monastery, agreeably
with his own descriptions in later years.[257] Unable to find peace
of conscience and assurance of salvation in the “works” of his
monastery life or of the Papacy, his one aim had been to arrive at
the knowledge of a “merciful God,” and for this purpose he had been
obliged to unearth in Holy Scripture the long-forgotten doctrine of
justification by faith. Some Protestant writers dwell not so much
upon his longing for certainty of salvation as upon his desire for
virtue and true righteousness. “Oh, when wilt thou become pious and
do enough?”[258] Others again complete the picture by laying stress
upon his recognition of the concupiscence which is always reigning in
man and which is sin, and of man’s inability to keep the commandments;
it was his recognition of this which “produced Luther’s theology; his
whole doctrine of justification culminated in the warfare against
sin.” All these descriptions are, however, based on an uncritical
acceptance of Luther’s later accounts of his life in religion, accounts
plainly inspired by his polemic against the old Church, and intended to
illustrate his false assertion that, in the cloister and in the Papacy,
the way to obtain grace from God was utterly unknown.
Here we will mention only cursorily some of Luther’s later statements,
purporting to give a picture of his life as a monk.
To these belong the assertion that in the monastery he had not prayed
with faith in Christ, because “no one knew anything” about Christ:
that there the Saviour was known only as a strict Judge, and that he
had therefore wished there were no Saviour: “I wished there had been
no God.” “None of us” believed at all that Christ was our Saviour,
and, by dint of works, we “lost our baptism.” We were always told:
“Torment yourself in the monastery ... whip yourself until you destroy
your own sin; that was the teaching and faith of the Pope.”[259]
“It was a cursed life, full of malignity, was the life of that
monkery.”[260]
The apostate monk’s object in all those statements regarding his
interior or exterior experiences in the monastery was to strike at the
Catholic Church.
We certainly cannot accept as historic the picture of religious
practice, or malpractice, given in the following: whenever his eyes
fell upon a figure of Christ, owing to his popish upbringing, he
“would have preferred to see the devil rather than Christ”; he had
thought “that he had been raised to the company of angels,” but found
he had really been “among devils”; he had “raged” in his search for
comfort in Holy Scripture; he had also continuously suffered “a
very great martyrdom and the task-mastership” of his conscience.
“Self-righteousness” only had counted for anything; so great was it
that he had been taught not to thank God for the Sacrament, but that
God should thank him; but, notwithstanding all these errors, he had
always sought after a “merciful God” and had at last found Him by
coming to understand His gospel.
The birth and growth of this fable in the mind of Luther as he
advanced in years will occupy us later. The present writer may point
out, that no convincing answer has been given to the objections
against the legend which he made public even prior to the appearance
of Denifle’s first volume,[261] and which were repeated therein
independently, and at considerably greater length. On the Protestant
side, too, much more caution is now being observed in the use of
Luther’s later descriptions of his own development, the tendency being
to use contemporary sources instead. This is seen, for instance,
in the studies by Braun on Luther’s theory of concupiscence and by
Hunzinger on Luther’s mysticism, which will be quoted later.
In explanation of the inner process through which Luther went, the
primary reason for his turning away from Catholic doctrine has been
attributed by some Catholics to scrupulosity combined with an unhealthy
self-righteousness, which by an inward reaction grew into carelessness
and despair. How far this view is correct, and how far it requires to
be supplemented by other important factors, will be shown further on.
Meanwhile another altogether too summary theory, a theory which
overshoots the mark, must first be considered.
2. Whether Evil Concupiscence is Irresistible?
Formerly, and even in recent times, many writers on the Catholic side
have endeavoured to prove that the principal motive for Luther’s new
opinions lay in worldliness, sensuality, and more especially sins of
the flesh. In order to explain his teaching attempts were made to
establish the closest connection between Luther’s views with regard
to the survival of sin in man without his consent, the covering over
of man’s guilt by the merits of Christ and the worthlessness of good
works on the one hand, and on the other a nature ravaged by sinful
habits, such as was attributed to the originator of these doctrines.
The principal argument in favour of this view was found in the not
unusual experience that intellectual errors frequently arise from
moral faults. When, however, we come to examine Luther’s character more
narrowly, we at once perceive that other factors must be taken into
consideration in his inward change, so that, in his case, it is not
easy to decide how far his new ideas were produced under the pressure
of his own sensuality. It was taken for granted that, owing to habitual
moral faults, and through constant indulgence in the concupiscence of
the flesh, he had been reduced to a state of utter inward degradation.
Now, in point of fact, beyond what has been already quoted nothing can
be found regarding his moral conduct previous to his change of view.
No other circumstances are known concerning Luther than those already
mentioned and those to be given later. It is true that history does
not possess the all-seeing eye of Him who searches the heart and the
reins; the sources containing information concerning the youth of
Luther, before and after his profession, are also very inadequate;
nevertheless, we must admit that the only arguments upon which the
assertion of his great inward corruption could historically be based,
namely, actual texts and facts capable of convincing anyone, are not
forthcoming in the material at our command.[262]
If Luther did actually teach the fatal invincibility of concupiscence
(of this we shall have more to say later), yet he might well have
arrived at this view by some other way than that of constant falls and
the abiding experience of his own weakness and sinfulness. It is at
least certain that sad personal experience is not the only thing which
gives rise to grave errors of judgment.
Nor does the manner in which Luther represents concupiscence prove his
own inward corruption. He does not make it to consist merely in the
concupiscence of the flesh, and when he says that it is impossible to
conquer concupiscence he is not thinking merely of this. When he speaks
of concupiscence, and of a “_fomes peccati_” in man, he usually means
concupiscence in the wide theological sense, i.e. as the attraction to
every transgression which flatters our imperfect and evil nature, in
particular to selfishness, as the centre around which clusters all that
is sinful—pride, hatred, sensuality, etc.
Luther certainly teaches, even at the outset, as we shall point out
later, that the will of man, by Adam’s Fall, has lost in our ruined
nature even the power to work anything that is good or pleasing to God,
and therefore that it is impossible for man, in his own strength, to
withstand sin and its lusts.
But he does not bring forward this doctrine under circumstances and in
words which give us to understand that he was guided by the intention
of showing any indulgence to concupiscence; on the contrary, he would
like to encourage everyone to oppose concupiscence by means of grace
and faith. Numerous texts might be quoted which clearly show this to
have been the case.
In what sense then does he allow the irresistibility of concupiscence?
We shall find the answer in what follows.
He frequently expresses the truth, taught by faith and experience
alike, regarding the continuance of concupiscence in man, even in
the most perfect, and he does so in terms so strong that he seems to
make concupiscence invincible. We can also see that he has a lively
sense of the burden of concupiscence, that he cherishes a certain
gloomy distrust of God’s readiness to come to man’s assistance—a
distrust connected with his temptations on predestination—and that he
undervalues the helps which the Church offers against evil desires.
Finally, he sees in the very existence of concupiscence a culpable
offence against the Almighty, and declares that, without grace, man
is an unhappy prisoner, who in consequence of original sin is in the
fullest sense incapable of doing what is good.
In his Commentary on the Psalms (1512-15-16) he still, it is true,
upholds the natural freedom of man as opposed to his passions. In the
Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (1515-16), and frequently in
the sermons of that period, he indeed sacrifices this freedom, but
even there he insists that the grace of God will in the end secure the
victory to those who seek aid and pray humbly, and he also instances
some of the means which, with the efficacious assistance of God, may
help to victory in the religious life. To this later standpoint of
the possibility of resistance with the assistance of grace he adhered
to his end. Exhortations to struggle not only against actual sins,
but also against the smouldering fire of concupiscence—which must be
extinguished more and more in the righteous until at length death sets
him free—occupy many pages of his writings. The jarring notes present
in the above teaching do not seem to have troubled him at any time; he
seeks to conceal them and to pass them over. Never once does he enter
upon a real theological discussion of the most difficult point of all,
the relation of grace to free will.
Luther also speaks of our freedom and our responsibility for our
personal salvation in his Commentary on the Psalms: “My soul is in my
own keeping; by the freedom of my will I can make it eternally happy
or eternally unhappy by choosing or rejecting Thy law.” Therefore
Psalm cxviii. 109 says, “My soul is always in my hands,” and although
I am free to do either, yet I have not “forgotten Thy law.”[263] He
defends the principle of the theologians, that God does not refuse
His grace to him who does his best (“_facienti quod est in se, Deus
non denegat gratiam_”).[264] He teaches also that it is possible to
prepare for grace which is always at hand.[265]
“Whoever keeps the law,” he writes in the lectures on the Epistle to
the Romans, at a time when he had already denied the freedom of the
will for good, “is in Christ, and grace is given him according as he
has prepared himself for it to the best of his power.”[266] Without
grace man is, it is true, unable to do anything that is good in God’s
sight, but “the law of nature is known to everyone, and therefore no
one is excusable” who does not follow it and fight against evil.[267]
Grace, according to him, sets the enslaved will in the righteous free
again to work for his salvation. “After he has received grace, he has
been set free, at least to work for his eternal salvation.”[268] This
remarkable passage together with its continuation will be considered
later when we deal more fully with the Commentary on Romans. We
may also draw attention to the fact, that in his Notes on Tauler’s
sermons, written about the same time as the Commentary, quite against
the supposed utter inability of the will for good, he acknowledges the
natural inclination in man towards good—the so-called Syntheresis, or
moral good conscience.[269]
In his lectures on Romans he insists that, “by means of works of
penance and the cross,” concupiscence must be fought against without
intermission, forced back and diminished; “the body of sin” must,
according to the Apostle, be destroyed.[270] Luther must therefore
certainly have regarded man as capable of resisting his evil passions,
at any rate with assistance from above.
Of his later statements it will suffice to mention the following:
“If I will not leave sin and become pious,” he says of the struggle
against evil, “I may indeed strive to become the master, and God’s
property, and to be free, but nothing will come of it.”[271] Or again:
“As long as we live here, evil desires and passions remain in us which
draw us to sin, against which we must strive and fight, as St. Peter
says (1 Peter ii. 11 f.). We must therefore always exercise ourselves
and pray always and fight against sin ... as often as you feel
yourself tempted to impatience, pride, unchastity or other sins ...
you must forthwith think how best to withstand these arrows, and beg
the Lord Jesus that your sin may not gain the upper hand and overcome
you, but that it may be conquered by His grace.”[272] “Do you wish to
keep all the commandments,” he says later, “to be free from your evil
desires and from sin, as the commandments require and demand, then see
you believe in Christ.”[273]
Further, if we consider those passages in Luther’s earlier
writings alleged as proofs of his belief in the irresistibility of
concupiscence, we find that in every case they merely emphasise the
inevitable continuance of concupiscence in man, without in any way
implying the necessity of our acquiescing in the same, and without
excluding grace. In the Heidelberg Disputation of 1518 he says for
instance, “Why do we hold concupiscence to be irresistible? Well,
try and do something without the interference of concupiscence.
Naturally you cannot. So then your nature is incapable of fulfilling
the law.”[274] Elsewhere also Luther lays much stress upon the
indestructibility and the impossibility of rooting out of man the
smouldering fire of evil, the “_fomes peccati_,” though he is wrong
in making this condition equivalent to a culpable non-fulfilling of
the law by man; he is mistaken not only in his common statement that
man’s evil inclination, even though involuntary, is sinful in God’s
sight, that it is in fact original sin, and that it would carry man
to damnation were God not to impute to him Christ’s righteousness; he
also errs by unduly magnifying the power of concupiscence, as though
the practice of virtue, prayer and the reception of the Sacraments did
not weaken it much more than he is willing to admit.
In 1515 he declares that evil concupiscence or sin “cannot be removed
from us by any counsel or work,” and that “we all recognise it to be
quite invincible (“_invincibilem esse concupiscentiam penitus_”);[275]
invincible, i.e. in the sense of ineradicable, for which reason,
as he again repeats here, it must at least be rendered innocuous
by humble prayer for God’s help. In spite of the strong expression
“_invincibilis_,” and in spite of the comparison he makes elsewhere
between the evil inclination and Cerberus or Antæus,[276] he does not
go further here than in another assertion in the Commentary on the
Psalms which has also been urged against him: “the passion of anger,
pride, sensuality, when it is aroused, is strong, yea invincible
(‘_immo invincibilis_’), as experience teaches,” i.e. it appears so
to the person attacked by it. He had just remarked that in such a
case we must hope in God and despair of ourselves. He describes in
the strongest terms, in the Commentary on the Psalms, the strength
of concupiscence in habitual sinners who are not accustomed to turn
to God’s grace: “the sinner who is oppressed by vice, and feels the
devil and his body of sin forcing him to evil, allows the inner voice
to speak constantly against sin, and severely blames himself in his
conscience ... reason and the moral sense, remnants left over from
the ruin of original sin, awaken in him and cry without ceasing to
the Lord, even though the will sins, forced thereto by sin.”[277] We
repeat, that in his Commentary on the Psalms he does not yet actually
deny natural freedom in the doing of what is good.
The view that man, without God’s grace, is entirely lacking in freedom
with regard to his passions—a view which, it is true, permeates
Luther’s Commentary on Romans—was not the starting-point of Luther’s
theological development. It was the end of the first stage through
which he had passed. This doctrine reached later on its culminating
point in his book, “_De servo arbitrio_,” against Erasmus. Here, at
the head of his proofs, he openly confesses himself a determinist,
admitting that God has decreed beforehand all man’s actions; any such
determinism is, however, wanting in his earlier life, nor is it to be
found in his Commentary on Romans; Luther does not yet show himself to
be led by determinist ideas. Even in his work against Erasmus there are
no forcible grounds for attributing the origin of his new teaching to
his inward corruption. Therein he merely denies the freedom of the will
for good without grace, though he allows it to be free in indifferent
matters, a somewhat inconsistent theory owing to the difficulty of
determining exactly the limitations of these indifferent things.
Neither the Commentary on the Psalms nor that on Romans gives us
the impression of being the work of an immoral man, a fact which
should also carry some weight. An author who at the first assault had
capitulated to his evil desires would hardly have been able to conceal
his low moral standard; he would rather have been tempted to join the
Epicureans or the Sceptics, or the unbelieving ranks of the Humanists.
Of anything of the kind there is no trace in the books last mentioned.
Their characteristic is rather—there is no harm in mentioning it
now—a certain false spiritualism, a mysticism, which, especially in
the interpretation of the Epistle to the Romans, frequently follows
quite devious paths. In consequence of his unceasing opposition to
self-righteousness, of his poor idea of God and of human strength, and
of his false mystical train of thought, Luther came to dismiss human
freedom and to set up the power of sin on the throne. Aristotle’s
teaching regarding the natural righteousness which arises from
good actions is particularly distasteful to Luther, and equally
distasteful to the nominalistic critic is the doctrine of supernatural
righteousness through infused sanctifying grace, which he prefers to
replace by the imputation of the merits of Christ.
3. The Real Starting-point and the Co-operating Factors
The real origin of Luther’s teaching must be sought in a fundamental
principle which governed him, which was fostered by the decline in
his life as a religious and a priest, and more particularly by his
inordinate love of his own opinion and by the uncharitable criticisms
he passed upon others. This was his unfavourable estimate of good
works, and of any effort, natural or supernatural, on the part of man.
This opposition to a principle, common to the Church and to
monasticism, as to the necessity in which men generally and
religious in particular stand of performing good works if they wish
to please God, is the first deviation from the right path which we
notice in him. He called it a fight against “holiness by works” and
self-righteousness, and in this fight he went still further. He made
his own the deadly error that man by his natural powers is unable to do
anything but sin. To this he added that the man who, by God’s grace,
is raised to justification through divinely infused faith and trust
must, it is true, perform good works, but that the latter are not to be
accounted meritorious. All works avail nothing as means for arriving
at righteousness and eternal salvation; faith alone effects both. Not
at the outset, but gradually, did he make his antagonism to good works
the foundation of a doctrine built up under the influence of a lively
imagination, a powerful and undisciplined self-confidence and other
factors which will be mentioned below. In his controversy with the
“holy by works” he had exclaimed (p. 81) “there is no greater pest in
the Church to-day than those men who go about saying ‘we must do good
works.’” His real enemies were soon the traditional Catholic belief
and practice regarding good works and personal activity in general;
he did not confine himself to expressing his dissatisfaction with
the Observantines in his own Order or the possible excesses of other
supporters of outward works.
It is easy to recognise how this opposition to works runs like a dark
thread through the first beginnings of his teaching of the new doctrine
and onward through the whole course of his life. We may here, starting
at the commencement, anticipate his history somewhat.
“At the first,” so he says himself in later years, “my struggle
was against trust in works,”[278] and this is confirmed by the MS.
Commentary on Romans which he commenced in 1515 (see below, chap. vi.
3). The first occasion in his correspondence in which he allows his
new views to appear is in 1516, in a recommendation to a friend that
“he should cultivate disgust with his own righteousness and despair
of himself,” that this was better than to do as “those who plague
themselves with their works until they think they are fit to stand
in God’s sight.”[279] He expresses himself in a similar strain on
self-righteousness in sermons preached at this time.[280]
The same line of thought also appears in a paradoxical form, as
the basis of a disputation held at Wittenberg in 1516 under his
presidency. Man sins, so we find it said, “when he does what is in
him” (“_quod est in se_”), and those who are “righteous in their
own eyes” by reason of their good works, i.e. all who do not simply
“despair of themselves,” are condemned. This ruling thought also
pervades another disputation of one of his pupils in 1517, where
we read: “every good work must needs at once make nature proud and
puffed up,” and “hope is not given us by our merits, but by suffering
[painful interior struggles], which root out merit,”[281] i.e. which
destroy every feeling of self-satisfaction grounded on merit. He tells
one of his confidants in the same year that his great aim was “to
grant nothing to human works, but to know only God’s grace.”[282]
In his first German work, printed in 1517, the Commentary on the
Seven Penitential Psalms, he opposes “all proud living and work and
righteousness” and bewails the “spiritual pride, the last and deepest
of all vices,”[283] with which, according to him, those are filled
who seek for “safety and false consolation” in their works instead
of simply embracing the “word of grace.” He places works so much in
the background in his teaching at that time, that he brings forward
this objection against himself, whether, instead of always speaking
of grace, he should not speak more of “human righteousness, wisdom
and strength.” Instead of defending himself he declares “a good life
does not consist in many works”; to feel oneself “a miserable, damned,
forsaken sinner” is better, even when God sends trouble of soul, which
is “a drop or foretaste of the pains of hell,” and which renders the
human corpse quite ill and weak; such suffering makes a man like
Christ who also bore the same.[284]
When in 1518 he published his Latin sermon on Penance, its chief
thesis was that man’s part in his reconciliation with God counted
for nought; we must despair in order to attain contrition, at least
from the motive of fear of God; we must merely submit with faith to
the action of grace. “Whoever trusts to his contrition when receiving
absolution, builds on the sand of his works and is guilty of shameless
presumption.”[285]
He writes in the same year that blinded adversaries accuse him of
condemning good works, more especially that he dared to declare war
against rosaries, the Little Office, and other prayers, and yet
the sum of his sermon was only this: “that we must not place our
confidence in our own work.”[286]
Thus the depreciation of works is the prevailing note, even in his
first public utterances; this it also remains.
When he began his attack on religious vows, he supported his campaign
by preference on the ostensible worthlessness of human works for
obtaining merit in heaven; vows were to be rejected because the
heart must not seek its stay in works,[287] and in his attacks on
the celibacy of the clergy and religious, he again declared that he
was attacking the “false saints” who intrench themselves behind the
holiness of the works accomplished by them in a state superior to that
of family life, but that faith makes all outward things free.[288]
This prejudice against works is the principal feature in his polemics;
for instance, he explains to King Henry VIII in a rejoinder directed
against him that the enemy he was called upon to overcome was the
pestilential doctrine of the necessity of appearing before God with
works (“_velle per opera coram Deo agere_”), whereas works were good
only in the eyes of man.[289] In season and out of season, he pours
forth his rage against the works in the Papacy with such words as
these: Away with masses, pilgrimages, Office in Choir, saint-worship,
cowls, virginity, confraternities, rules, and such-like, away with
“the lousy works”;[290] and so he preached to his very end in
1546.[291]
It is not, however, sufficient to take as Luther’s starting-point his
opposition to good works, though this always remains the chief feature
in his doctrine. Further fresh light may be thrown on the enigmatical
process of his inner change if we consider various influences which
contributed to lead him to his new doctrine and to develop the same.
A preliminary glance at the case shows us, first of all, that Luther
in his youth was trained in the theological school of Occam, i.e. in a
form of theology showing great signs of decadence. The nominalistic,
and more particularly the false anthropological speculations of Occam,
d’Ailly and Biel, which did not allow its full rights to grace,
called forth his opposition, and he soon lost all confidence in the
old theology; in his exaggeration he went to the theological extreme
contrary to Occamism and declared war against the ability of nature to
do good. This was a negative effect of Occamism. This view encouraged
him in his opposition to the “self-righteousness” which he fancied
he saw everywhere, even in the zeal of the Observantines for their
rule, especially when he had already fallen away from the ideals of
his profession, from monastic piety and the spirit of the priesthood.
A boundless self-reliance began to possess him, and led him forward
regardless of all. This was the “wisdom of his own mind” of which
he accuses himself in 1516 in a letter to a friend in the Order,
speaking of it as the “foundation and root” of much unrest; bitterly
he exclaims: “Oh, how much pain has the evil eye [this self-conceit]
already caused me, and how much does it continue to plague me.”[292] We
may take these words more seriously than they were probably meant. His
egotism and pride were flattered to such an extent by his imagination
that he seemed to find everywhere confirmation of his own preconceived
notions. Having read Tauler he at once considered him as the greatest
of writers, because he was able to credit him with some of his own
sentiments. Then again in Augustine, the Doctor of the Church, he
found, as he imagined, a true reflection of his new doctrine. Devoid of
the necessary intellectual and moral discipline, he allowed himself to
be blinded by a fanatic attachment to his own opinion.
Carried away by his own judgment and regardless of the teaching of
all the schools, yea, even of the Church herself, he passed into the
camp of the enemy, perhaps without at first being aware of it; he
came to deny entirely the merit of good works as though they were of
no importance for our salvation as compared with the power of faith,
an idea in which he fortified himself by his one-sided study of Holy
Scripture and by his misinterpretation of the Epistles of St. Paul,
that preacher of the power of faith and of the grace of Christ. He
was always accustomed to consider the Bible as his special province,
and, given his character, it was not difficult for him to identify
himself with it, and to ascribe to himself the discovery of great
Scriptural truths till then misunderstood or forgotten; for instance,
the destruction of man’s powers by original sin and their renewal
by faith and grace. The false doctrine of the outward imputation of
the merits of Christ came next. The school of Occam here prepared
the way for him by its views on sanctifying grace and “acceptation”
(imputation). Luther found in Occam’s views on this subject no
obstacle, but rather a support. This positive influence on him of
Occam will be dealt with below (chap. iv. 3), together with other
positive effects which decadent Scholasticism exercised upon him. Just
as it suited his violent character to declare in no gentle words the
renunciation of personal merit of every kind for the imputation of the
merits of Christ, so the tendency of his own religious life, which
had become alienated from the ideals of his Order, encouraged him to
make the whole moral task consist in a simple, trustful appropriation
of the saving merits of Christ, in confidence, comfort and safety,
notwithstanding the dissentient inner voices.
Further, his study of false mysticism (see below, chap. v.) helped to
clothe his new ideas in the deceptive dress of piety. To himself he
seemed to be fulfilling perfectly the precepts of the mystics to seek
everywhere the spirit and make small account of outward things: he
imagined that Christ would be truly honoured, and the importance of
Divine grace effectually made manifest, by despair of our own works,
yea, even of ourself. The power which a mysticism gone astray exercised
in those early stages upon a mind so full of imagination and feeling
cannot be overestimated.
The oldest letter we have of Luther to Staupitz is in itself a witness
to its writer’s self-deception; to his fatherly friend he speaks quite
openly and even appeals to his sermons “on the Love of God” in support
of his own errors. Staupitz had warned him in a friendly manner that
in many places his name stood in very bad repute. Luther admits in
this letter, written four months after he had affixed the well-known
Wittenberg Theses, that his doctrine of justification, his sermons on
the worthlessness of works, and his opposition to the theology in vogue
in the schools had raised a storm against him. People said that he
rejected pious practices and all good works. And yet he was merely a
disciple of Tauler’s theology, and, like Staupitz, had taught nothing
else but that “we should place our confidence in none other than Jesus
Christ, not in any prayers and merits and good works, because we are
saved not by our works, but by God’s mercy.” If God were working in
him, so he concludes enthusiastically, then no one can turn him aside;
but if it was not God’s work, then, indeed, no one can advance his
cause.[293]
We must assume that at the beginning of his alienation from the Church
among other motives he was largely deceived by the appearance of good;
there is, in any case, nothing decisive to show the process as purely
material, as a result of his efforts to relieve himself from his
moral obligations, or as due to a worldly spirit. His responsibility,
of course, became much greater when, as he advanced and was able to
review things more calmly, he obstinately adhered to his new views,
and, as his sermons and writings prove, defended them, even against the
best-meant criticism, with bitterness, hate and passion. Self-love,
which, even in his earlier life, had held too great a place, now took
complete control of him, and the spirit of contradiction closed the
gates for ever against his return. Luther’s character was one which
contradiction only served to stimulate and to drive to extremes.
Thus his spiritual pride was his real misfortune.[294]
In his case we find a sad confirmation of what is frequently observed
in the falling away from truth of highly gifted minds; self-esteem and
self-conceit suggest the first thoughts of a turning away from the
truth, hitherto held in honour, and then, with fatal strength, condemn
the wanderer to keep to the path he has chosen. Further concessions to
the spirit of the world then follow as a consequence of the apostate’s
continued enmity to the Church. Of the last moral decline so noticeable
in Luther’s later life there is also no lack of similar instances, for
it is the rule that after a man has been led astray by pride there
should follow further moral deviations from the right path. The Monk’s
subsequent breach of his vows and his marriage with a former nun was a
sacrilege, which to Catholic eyes showed plainly how he who begins in
the spirit of pride, even though his purposes be good, may end in the
flesh.
At the earliest inception of Luther’s theological errors other elements
may however be perceived which help to explain more easily his growing
antipathy to so-called holiness by works. First, there was the real
abuse then prevalent in the practice of works. Here we find a weak
spot in the religious life of the time, nor is it unlikely that grave
faults and repulsive excesses were to be found even in the Augustinian
monasteries with which Luther was acquainted. We have already drawn
attention to the formalism which in many cases had affected the
clergy and the monastic houses. The often one-sided cultivation of
exterior works, which, for instance, by the Indulgence-preachers,
were proclaimed unfailing in their effects; the popular excesses
in saint-worship; far-fetched legends and exhortations to imitate
the extraordinary practices of saintly heroes; the stepmotherly
treatment meted out in the pulpit to the regular and ordinary duties
of a Christian; the self-interest, avarice and jealousy rampant in
confraternities, pilgrimages and other public expressions of worship,
faults which had slipped in partly owing to the petty egotism of the
corporations and Orders, partly to the greed of their members, partly
to a mania for false piety; all this may well have made a painful
impression on the Wittenberg Professor, and have called forth his
eloquent reproof. His tendency to look at the worst side of things
doubtless contributed, together with the above reasons, to fill him
with distaste for good works in general.
The extraordinary exaggerations of which he was guilty must, however,
be imputed to himself alone. It has been said to his excuse that,
as Rural Vicar, he had been able to acquire correct information
regarding the state of things. But, as it happens, his frequent and
unrestrained outbursts against abuses belong, at least in great part,
to the time when he was a simple monk, who, apart from his journeys
to Rome and Cologne and his stay at Erfurt, had seen little outside
his cell beyond the adjoining walls of Wittenberg. His lectures on the
Psalms and the Epistle to the Romans both offer strange examples of
such exaggerations, though both were delivered before he had had any
experience as Rural Vicar.
Finally his own morbid personal condition must be taken into account;
the after-effects of his passing fit of scrupulosity, and the lasting
feeling of fear which sometimes quite overmastered him. His inclination
to doubts concerning his election remained, and therewith also the
moral results which the fear of being predestined to hell would
naturally exercise upon his peculiar temperament. He remained an
outspoken predestinarian of the most violent type. (See chap. vi. 2.)
He had to come to terms with this fear of hell, and his system shows
the result; in many respects it appears as a reaction against the
oppressive burden of the thought of eternal rejection.
His state of fear, however, as already indicated, proceeded not merely
from the numerous temptations of which he himself speaks, but also from
his own inward depression, from an affection, partly psychical and
partly physical, which often prostrated him in terror. Only later, with
the help of other facts of his inner life, will it be possible to deal
with this darker side of Luther (vol. vi. xxxvi.). He imagined that
during these fits, in which troubles of conscience also intervened,
and which, according to his description, were akin to the pains of
hell, he was forsaken by God, and sunk in the eerie night of the soul
of which the mystics treat. He also considered them at an early period
as a trial sent by God and intended to prepare him for higher things.
In trying to escape from this feeling of terror, at the time of his
change he embraced all the more readily ideas of false security which
seemed to be offered by the appropriation of the merits of Christ, and
the rejection of all attempt to acquire merit on one’s own account.
Psychologically, it is comprehensible that this solution seemed to him
to let a beam of sunlight into the darkness of his terror. Anxious
to escape from fear he threw himself frantically into the opposite
extreme, into a system of self-pacification hitherto unknown to
theology. But even this new system did not serve to calm him in the
first stage of his error. There was still something lacking, so he
felt, in his doctrine, and to this he attained only in the second stage
of the process by his discovery that the seal is set on inward peace by
the doctrine of the absolute assurance of salvation imparted by Faith.
(See chap. x.)
Morbid fears prevented any childlike trust in God taking root in a mind
so inexplicably agitated as his. With what great fervour he prepared
himself for his priestly ordination, and for celebrating his first
Mass, may here be illustrated by his own statement, that he then read
Gabriel Biel’s book on the Mass (“_Sacri canonis missæ expositio
literalis ac mystica_”) “with a bleeding heart.” So he himself says
later, when he also speaks of the work, then widely used, as “an
excellent book, as I then thought.”[295] From the tone of his letter of
invitation to his first Mass we can judge of his state of commotion.
The confusion and trouble which he experienced at his first Mass,
and the fear which seized him during the procession of the Blessed
Sacrament, lead us to conclude that he was readily overcome by vain
apprehensions combined with physical excitement. Here also belongs
Luther’s later statement concerning the fears which he (and others too)
experienced when in the monastery at the smallest ritual blunders, as
though they had been great sins; such an assertion, though exaggerated
and untrue, is probably an echo of his own troubled state during the
liturgical ceremonies.
It is possible that those fears may have been the cause of his great
pessimism with regard to human works. They may have contributed to make
him see sin in what was merely the result of fallen nature with its
involuntary concupiscences, without any consent of the will. Such fears
may have pursued him when he began to brood over the doctrine of man’s
powers, original sin and grace; we speak of his “brooding,” for his
inclinations at that time were to a melancholy contemplation of things
unseen. The timidity which he had acquired in the early days of his
boyhood and at school doubtless had its effect in keeping him in such
moods, apart from his own temperament.
* * * * *
On close examination of Luther’s theological studies we find that
his preparation for the office of professor—so far as a knowledge
of the positive doctrine of the Church, of the Fathers and of good
Scholasticism is concerned—was all too meagre.
He had not at his command the time necessary for penetrating deeply
into dogma or into its presentment by earlier exponents. What was said
above of his course of studies must, however, be supplemented by some
further details.
After his ordination in Erfurt, at Easter, 1507, he began the two-year
course of theology to which alone the privileges of the Augustinians
obliged him. In addition to the lectures, which, as was usual, were
based on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, there was also the Office in
Choir; the pupils of the Order were indeed on lecture days not obliged
to attend Matins, Sext and Compline, but the latter had to be said
by Luther privately, as he was a priest. While the lectures on the
Sentences were still in progress, Luther was pursuing his scriptural
studies. Before the full time had expired however, after about
eighteen months of theological study, he was, as mentioned before,
called to the University of Wittenberg at the commencement of the
winter term, 1508, in order to deliver “_Lectiones publicæ_” on moral
philosophy, i.e. on the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle. He was, it is
true, expected to prosecute his theological studies at the same time
by attending lectures, but for this he can scarcely have found much
time, seeing that he had himself to give a daily lecture of one hour
on so difficult a subject as the Ethics in the Faculty of Philosophy.
A capable young man was needed by Staupitz to supply the requirements
of the University, which was largely under his care, for the former
lecturer on Ethics, Wolfgang Ostermayr, had, so it appears, suddenly
left, and dire necessity caused the incompleteness of Luther’s
philosophical training to be overlooked. Staupitz was the more willing
to shut his eyes to what was wanting, as he was personally much
attached to the highly promising lecturer, about whom moreover he had
already his plans. That Luther was not particularly pleased at the way
in which he was employed, we learn from his Table-Talk: “At Erfurt I
was reading nothing but the Bible, when God, in a wonderful manner,
and contrary to everyone’s expectations, sent me from Erfurt to
Wittenberg; that was a nice come down for me.”[296] The word actually
made use of in the last sentence was a slang expression of the
students and implied that his new position was not to his liking. It
was less the overwork than his antipathy to philosophy and Aristotle
that made him feel uncomfortable; he himself complains: “_violentum
est studium, maxime philosophiæ_” in his letter from Wittenberg to
Johann Braun in Eisenach (March 17, 1509). In this letter he also
confesses that he is longing to exchange philosophy for theology.[297]
After a single term his professors thought him worthy of the degree of
“Bacularius (Baccalaureus) Biblicus.” This was the lowest theological
degree, and was conferred on him by Staupitz the Dean on March 9,
1509, according to the Dean’s Register of the Theological Faculty.
Thus did he pass the two years of his course of theology.
Besides the lecture on philosophy he had now also to discourse daily
for one hour on portions of Holy Scripture, teaching being then
considered a part of the course of studies. In addition to this he was
obliged to attend the theological lectures and disputations. “Indeed
a colossal task,” says a Protestant Luther-scholar, “which shows what
great demands Staupitz made on the powers of his pupils.”[298]
The next degree in theology, that of “Sententiarius” was to have
been conferred on Luther, as we know, in the autumn of 1509, when
suddenly, owing to internal disputes, he was recalled from Wittenberg
to his monastery at Erfurt. What prospect of quiet theological study
opened out before him there? At Erfurt his preparation again consisted
principally in teaching and in disputing in his own peculiar way. As
soon as the University had accepted him as “Sententiarius,” he had
at once to give theological lectures on the Sentences. He was also
employed in the monastery, together with Dr. Nathin, as sub-regent of
house studies, i.e. in the instruction of the novices in the duties
of their profession. At the same time he not only continued his
accustomed biblical reading, but, in order to be able to prosecute
it more thoroughly, began to study Greek and Hebrew, in which Johann
Lang, an Augustinian who has been frequently mentioned and who was
a trained Humanist, rendered him appreciable service. The eighteen
months he spent in the Erfurt monastery were distracted by the
dissensions within the Order, by his journeys to Halle and then to
Rome and his intercourse with Erfurt Humanists, such as Petrejus
(Peter Eberbach). After his return from five months’ absence in Rome,
the dispute in the Order continued to hinder his studies and finally
drove him to the friends of Staupitz at Wittenberg, as soon as he had
declared himself against the Erfurt Observantines. Thence the affairs
of the Order carried him in May, 1512, to the Chapter at Cologne,
where the degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred upon him. During
his preparation for his doctorate he already began, urged on by
Staupitz, to preach in the monastery church at Wittenberg, where the
Elector once heard him and was filled with admiration. He was also
always ready to assist others with their work, as for instance when
he prepared for the Provost the address to be delivered before the
Synod at Leitzkau. And when at thirty years of age, in October, 1515,
he undertook, as Doctor, to deliver the _lectura in biblia_ at the
University of Wittenberg, this was not in his case the commencement of
a career of learned leisure, but the filling of a position encumbered
with the cure of souls, with preaching and much monastic business.
In view of his defective education in theology properly so called, we
may well raise the question how, without any thorough knowledge of the
subject, he could feel himself summoned to undertake such far-reaching
theological changes.
“At the parting of the ways,” says Denifle, regarding Luther’s
knowledge of theology, “and even when he had already set up his
first momentous theses and declared war on Scholasticism, he was
still but half-educated.... He knew nothing of the golden age of
Scholasticism, and was even unacquainted with the doctor of his own
Order [who followed the greater Schoolmen] Ægydius of Rome.” “He was
a self-taught, not a methodically trained, man.”[299] In spite of
his self-reliance, a feeling of the insufficiency of his education
seems to have tormented him at the outset. We should not perhaps
be justified in accepting what he said in later years, that he had
at first “been greatly afraid of the pulpit” even when (in his
second stay at Wittenberg) it was only a question of preaching “in
the Refectory before the brethren.”[300] But according to his own
statement, he expressed very strongly to Staupitz his fear of taking
the degree of Doctor of Divinity, and two years later he declared
that he had only yielded to pressure.[301] But Staupitz, who urged
him forward with excessive zeal, had said in his presence when Luther
preached before the Elector: “I will prepare for Your Highness in this
man a very special Doctor, who will please you well,” words which the
Elector did not forget and of which he reminded Staupitz in 1518.[302]
The fact that Staupitz made such slight demands in Luther’s case
regarding theological preparation may be explained from his own
course of studies. His previous history shows his studies to have
been anything but deep, and this is a matter worth noting, because
it is an example of how a solid study of theology was at that time
often wanting even in eminent men in the Church. After he had been
entered at Tübingen in 1497 as Master of Arts, he commenced (October
29, 1498), the biblical course, and, a little more than two months
later (January 10, 1499), began to deliver theological lectures on
the Sentences. Half a year of this qualified him for the Licentiate,
and, a day after, he became Doctor of Divinity. “These untrained
theologians,” says Denifle, after giving the dates just mentioned,
“wanted to reform theology, and looked with contempt on the theology
of the Middle Ages, of which they were utterly ignorant.”[303]