“I AM OF OCCAM’S PARTY”
1. A closer examination of Luther’s Theological Training
IT was not time only which was wanting in Luther’s case for a deep
course of theological study, he was even denied what was equally
essential, namely, a really scholarly presentment of theology such as
is to be found in the best period of Scholasticism.
The great Schoolmen of the Middle Ages, with their finished system,
combining a pious veneration for the traditions of the Fathers with
high flights of thought, were almost unknown to him; at least, he never
esteemed or made any attempt to penetrate himself with the learning of
Albertus Magnus, Thomas of Aquin or Bonaventure, notwithstanding the
fact that in the Church their teaching, particularly that of Aquinas,
already took the first place, owing to the approval of the Holy See.
Luther frequently displayed his utter ignorance of Thomism, as we shall
show later.[304]
The nominalistic philosophy and theology offered him by the
schools he attended has, with reason, been described as a crippled
parody of true Scholasticism. In this, its latest development,
Scholasticism had fallen from its height, and, abandoning itself to
speculative subtleties, had opened a wide field to Nominalism and its
disintegrating criticism. The critical acumen demonstrated by John Duns
Scotus, the famous Franciscan Doctor (_Doctor Subtilis_), who died at
Cologne in 1308, the late-comers would fain have further emphasised.
Incapable as they were of producing anything great themselves, they
exercised their wits in criticising every insignificant proposition
which could possibly be questioned in philosophy and theology.
The Franciscan, William of Occam (Ockham, Surrey), called _Doctor
Singularis_, or _Invincibilis_, also _Venerabilis Inceptor Nominalium_,
was one of the boldest and most prolific geniuses of the Middle Ages
in the domain of philosophy and theology. His great works, composed
during his professorship, especially his Commentary on the Sentences,
his “_Centifolium_” and his “_Quodlibeta_,” are proofs of this. On
theological questions concerning poverty he came into conflict with
the Pope, his Sentences were condemned by the University of Paris, he
appealed from the Holy See to a General Council, was excommunicated in
1328, protested against the decisions of the General Chapter of the
Order, and then took refuge with Lewis of Bavaria, the schismatic,
whose literary defender he became. He wrote for him, among other
things, his ecclesiastico-political “_Dialogus_,” and even after his
protector’s death continued to resist Clement VI. Occam died at Munich
in 1349, reconciled with his Order, though whether the excommunication
had already been removed or not is doubtful.
He revived Nominalism in philosophy and theology. His teaching was
so much that of the schools through which Luther had been that the
latter could declare: “_sum occamicæ factionis_,”[305] and speak quite
simply of Occam as “_magister meus_.”[306] It cannot, however, be
said, as it recently has been, that Luther “prided himself on being
Occam’s disciple,” and that he “would not give a refusal to his beloved
master”; for it was more in irony than in earnest that he spoke when he
said: “I also am of Occam’s party”; and when, as late as 1530, he still
speaks of “Occam, my beloved master,”[307] this is said in jest only
in order to be able to accuse him more forcibly as an expert with the
greatest of errors; nevertheless, he places Occam in point of learning
far above Thomas of Aquin, the “so-called Doctor of Doctors,” whom he
despised. Regarding, however, the esteem in which Occam was held in his
youth, he afterwards said: “We had to give him the title _Venerabilis
huius sectæ [scholæ] primus repertor_,” but adds: “Happy are you [my
table-companions] in not having to learn the dung which was offered
me.”[308] He felt compelled, nevertheless, to praise Occam’s dialectic
skill and his inexhaustible acuteness, and for his part considered him
the most gifted of the Schoolmen (“_summus dialecticus, scholasticorum
doctorum sine dubio princeps et ingeniosissimus_”).[309] It was not
only at a later period that he was ready to admit his weaknesses,
for even at the beginning of his course, in the Commentary on Romans
(1515-16), he attacks certain essential errors of Occam and his school.
His acquaintance with the master he owed, moreover, more to Occam’s
disciples, i.e. to the later theologians of the Occamist school, more
especially Gabriel Biel, than to his own reading of the voluminous and
unwieldy works of Occam himself. We are already aware that, of the
disciples and intellectual heirs of Occam, he studied more particularly
the two well-known writers d’Ailly, Cardinal of Cambrai—whom Luther
usually calls quite simply the Cardinal—whose ideas were very daring,
and the humble Gabriel Biel, Professor at Tübingen, whose writings,
clear, and rich in thought, possessed many good qualities.
Their one-sided Nominalism unfortunately led these Occamists to an
excessive estimate of the powers of nature and an undervaluing of
grace, and also to a certain incorrect view of the supernatural. We
must add that they were disposed to neglect Holy Scripture and to set
too much store on their speculations, and that, with regard to the
relations between reason and faith, they did not abide by the approved
principles and practice of the earlier Schoolmen.
The Occamist theology strongly influenced the talented and critical
pupil, though diversely. Most of the elements of which it was made
up repelled him, and as he regarded them as essential parts of
Scholasticism, they filled him with a distaste for Scholasticism
generally. Other of its elements attracted him, namely, those more in
conformity with his ideas and feeling. These he enrolled in the service
of his theological views, which—again following Occam’s example—he
developed with excessive independence. Thus the tendency to a false
separation of natural and supernatural commended itself to him; he
greedily seized upon the ideas of Nominalism with regard to imputation
after he had commenced groping about for a new system of theology. His
greatest objection was for the views of his teachers regarding the
powers of man and grace. This it was, more especially, which raised in
him the spirit of contradiction and set him on a path of his own. To
one in his timorous state such views were unsympathetic; he himself
scented sin and imperfection everywhere; also he preferred to see the
powers of the will depreciated and everything placed to the account
of grace and Divine election. Thus, what he read into Holy Scripture
concerning faith and Christ seemed to him to speak a language entirely
different from that of the subtleties of the Occamists.
His unfettered acceptance or rejection of the doctrinal views submitted
to him was quite in accordance with his character. He was not one to
surrender himself simply to authority. His unusual ability incited him
to independent criticism of opinions commonly received, and to voice
his opposition in the public disputations against his not overbrilliant
Nominalist professors; the strong appeal which he made to the Bible,
with which the others were less well acquainted, and to the rights of
faith and the grace of Christ, was in his favour.
2. Negative Influence of the Occamist School on Luther
Besides the recently published Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans
various statements in his sermons, disputations and letters prove the
opposition that existed between Luther and his own school. In the
Disputation of 1517 entitled “_Contra scholasticam theologiam_,” for
instance, he expressly names, as the opponents against whom his various
theses are aimed, Scotus, Occam, the Cardinal, Gabriel, and, generally,
“_omnes scholastici_” or “_communis sententia_,” “_dictum commune_,”
“_usus multorum_,” “_philosophi_” or “_morales_.”[310]
Before we proceed to examine the individual points of Luther’s conflict
with Occamism and with what he considered the teaching of Scholasticism
as a whole, two general points of this opposition must be mentioned.
His first grievance is the neglect of Holy Scripture.
A sensible want in the Divinity studies of that time lay, as a matter
of fact, in the insufficient use of the positive foundations of
theology, i.e. above all of Holy Scripture, and also of the tradition
of the Fathers of the Church and the decisions of the Church in her
office as teacher. “Luther had rightly recognised,” says Albert Weiss,
“what harm resulted from the regrettable neglect of Holy Scripture
on the part of so many theologians, and therefore he chose as his
watchword the cry for the improvement of theology by a return to the
Bible.”[311] “That Luther was moved to great anger by the Nominalists’
neglect of the Bible is not to be wondered at.”[312] “He would not
have been Luther,” the same author rightly says, “had he not soon
veered round to the other extreme, i.e. to the battle-cry: Scripture
only, and nothing but the Scripture, away with all Scholasticism.”
This abuse, however, had already been reproved and bewailed by the
Church before Luther’s time; there is no dearth of statements by the
very highest authorities urging a remedy, though it is true more
should have been done. Pope Clement VI wrote reprovingly to the
University of Paris, on May 20, 1346: “Most theologians do not trouble
themselves about the text of Holy Scripture, about the actual words
of their principal witnesses, about the expositions of the Saints
and Doctors, i.e. concerning the sources from which real theology is
taken, a fact which is bitterly to be deplored.... In place of this
they entangle themselves in philosophical questions and in disputes
which merely pander to their cleverness, in doubtful interpretations,
dangerous doctrines and the rest.”[313] But “with the prevalent
spirit of formalism and disorder, embodied chiefly in Nominalism,” “a
healthy and at the same time fruitful treatment of Holy Scripture had
become impossible.... These were abuses which had long been calling
for the reintroduction of a positive and more scriptural treatment
of theology.”[314] Though the judgment passed by Luther in his later
years on the neglect of Holy Scripture was somewhat too general
(for it was historically untrue to say that Scripture had ever been
altogether given up by the Church),[315] yet contemporaries agree with
him in blaming the too extensive use of Aristotle’s philosophy in
the schools to the detriment of the Bible-text. Long before, Gerson,
whose books were in Luther’s hands, had laid stress on the importance
of Holy Scripture for theology. “Holy Scripture,” he says, “is a Rule
of Faith, which it is only necessary to understand aright; against it
there is no appeal to authority or to the decisions of human reason:
nor can custom, law or practice have any weight if proved to be
contrary to Holy Scripture.”[316]
Luther, with palpable exaggeration, lays the charge at the door of
theology as a whole, even of the earlier school, and would have us
believe that the abuse was inseparable from ecclesiastical science.
He speaks to this effect more and more forcibly during the course
of his controversies. Thus in 1530 he says of the Scholastics, that
they “despised Holy Scripture.” “What! they exclaimed, the Bible?
Why, the Bible is a heretic’s book, and you need only read the
Doctors to find that out. I know that I am not lying in saying this,
for I grew up amongst them and saw and heard all about them.” And
so they had arrived at doctrines about which one must ask: “Is this
the way to honour Christ’s blood and death?” Everything was full of
“idle doctrines which did not agree among themselves, and strange
new opinions.”[317] Occam, he declares in his Table-Talk in 1540,
“excelled them all in genius and has confuted all the other schools,
but even he said and wrote in so many words that it could not be
proved from Scripture that the Holy Ghost is necessary for a good
work.”[318] “These people had intelligence, had time for work and had
grown grey in study, but about Christ they understood nothing, because
they esteemed Holy Scripture lightly. No one read the Bible so as to
steep himself in its contents with reflection, it was only treated
like a history book.[319]
It is true that the scholastic treatment of the doctrines of faith, as
advocated by Occam against the more positive school, disregarded Holy
Scripture to such an extent that, in the master’s subtle Commentaries,
it hardly finds any place; even in the treatment of the supernatural
virtues—faith, hope and charity—Scripture scarcely intervenes.[320]
But it was unjust of Luther, on this account, to speak of the
Schoolmen’s contempt for the Bible, or to say, for instance in his
Table-Talk, about his master, Gabriel Biel, whose Commentary on the
Sentences had become, so to speak, a hand-book: “The authority of
the Bible counted for nothing with Gabriel.”[321] Biel esteemed and
utilised the Bible as the true Word of God, but he did not satisfy
young Luther, who desiderated in him much more of the Bible and a
little less of philosophy. The “word,” he declares, was not cherished
by the priests, and this he had already shown in his Leitzkau
discourse to be the reason of all the corruption.[322]
The preponderance of philosophy, and more particularly the excessive
authority of Aristotle, in the theological method of his circle
offered Luther a second point of attack. Here also it was a question
of a rather widely spread abuse which the better class of Schoolmen
had prudently avoided. The Nominalistic schools, generally speaking,
showed a tendency to a rationalistic treatment of the truths of faith,
which affrighted Luther considerably. General ideas, according to the
Nominalists, were merely “_nomina_,” i.e. empty words; Nominalists
concerned themselves only with what was actual and tangible. Nominalism
was fond of displaying its dialectic and even its insolence at the
expense of theology on the despised Universal ideas. We can understand
the invective with which Luther gives expression to his hatred of
Scholasticism, though his right to do so arose only from his limited
acquaintance with those few Scholastics whom he had chosen,[323] or,
rather, who had been allotted to him, as his masters; the schools he
attended were at that time all following the method of the Nominalists,
then usually known as “modern.”
Already, in 1509 (see above, p. 22), a severe criticism of Aristotle
appears in Luther’s marginal notes. This is in a gloss on Augustine’s
work “On the City of God” which he was then devouring as a sort of
antidote: “Far more apparent is the error of our theologians when
they impudently chatter (‘_impudentissime garriunt_’) and affirm of
Aristotle that he does not deviate from Catholic truth.”[324]
Luther’s later exaggerations need not be refuted, in which he
complains so loudly of the idolatrous Aristotelian worship of reason
on the part of all the Scholastics. It was in general perfectly
well known regarding Aristotle that he had erred, and also where he
erred; books had even been written dealing with his deviations from
the faith. This, however, did not prevent many from over-estimating
him. We must set against this, however, the fact that Luther’s own
professor of philosophy in the University of Erfurt, Bartholomew
Arnoldi of Usingen, had declared, like others before him, that those
who represented the Stagirite as without errors were “not worthy of
the name of philosophers, for they were not lovers of the truth but
mocked at philosophy; they should just read their hero more carefully
and they would find that, for instance, he made out the world to be
without any beginning, a view which Moses, the prophet of truth, had
shown to be an error; Scotus, too, wrote in the first book of his
Commentary on the Sentences, that the works of Aristotle were more in
agreement with the law of Mohammed than with that of Christ.”[325]
Usingen was an earnest and moderate man, who did not shrink, even in
his philosophical writings, from preferring Divine Revelation to the
exaggeration of the rights of reason. “The inadequacy of philosophers
is as apparent as the great value of the Sacred Books. The latter rise
far above the knowledge attained by mere human reason and natural
light.”[326] Owing to the fact that he had made no secret of his
views in his intercourse with Luther, especially when they became
more intimate on Luther’s entering the Order to which he himself
belonged,[327] we can understand and explain the sympathy and respect
with which Luther long after cherished his memory, though the path
he followed was no longer that of his old teacher. Usingen was a
Nominalist, but his example shows that there were some enlightened men
who belonged to this school, and who did it honour.
In the course of time, regardless of the numerous examples giving him
the lie, Luther came ruthlessly to condemn all the Schoolmen and the
whole Middle Ages ostensibly on the ground of the pretended poisoning
of the faith by Aristotle, but really because he himself had set up a
contradiction between faith and reason.[328] He says in 1521 that the
Scholastics, headed by Aquinas, “_solus aristotelicissimus ac plane
Aristoteles ipse_,” had smuggled philosophy into the world, though the
Apostle had condemned it; thus it became too powerful, made Aristotle
equal to Christ in dignity and trustworthiness, and darkened for us
the Sun of righteousness and truth, the Son of God.[329] Three years
before he had declared in writing to his other professor of philosophy
at the University of Erfurt, Jodocus Trutfetter, who was vexed with
his theses _Contra scholasticam theologiam_, that he daily prayed to
God that in place of the perverse studies in vogue, the wholesome
study of the Bible and the Fathers might again be introduced (“_ut
rursum bibliæ et s. patrum purissima studia revocentur_”).[330] Yet
three years earlier, in his first lectures on the Epistle to the
Romans, he had said to his pupils: “let us learn to know Jesus Christ,
and him crucified,” and urged them not to waste their time in the
study of the foolish whims of metaphysicians, but at most, to treat
philosophy as a subject which one must be acquainted with in order to
be able to refute it, and on the other hand to throw themselves with
all their might into the study of Holy Scripture.[331]
There can therefore be no question, as we have seen, that his idea
that philosophy was the ruin of the Church, an idea present in his
mind even in his earliest public life, was founded on the many
actually existing abuses, though his own ultra-spiritualism and his
gloomy mistrust of man’s nature led him to feel the evil more than
others, so that, in reacting against it, he lost his balance instead
of calmly lending his assistance towards improving matters.
Luther’s reaction was not only against Occamism in general, but also
against various particular doctrines of that school, especially, as
stated before, against such doctrines as exalted the powers of nature
at the expense of grace.
Here again he committed his first fault, the indefensible injustice
of blindly charging Scholasticism and theology generally with what
he found faulty in his own narrow circle, though these errors had
been avoided by St. Thomas and the best of the Schoolmen. It has been
pointed out that he was not acquainted with this real Scholasticism,
nevertheless, in 1519, he had the assurance to say: “No one shall teach
me scholastic theology, I know it.”[332] “I was brought up amongst them
(Thomas, Bonaventure, etc.), I am also acquainted with the minds of
the most learned contemporaries and have saturated myself in the best
writings of this sort.”[333]
He, all too often, gives us the means to judge the value of this
assertion of his. In the same year, for instance, he sums up the chief
points of the theology which alone he had learnt, and calls it in all
good faith the scholastic theology of the Church, though it was merely
the meagre theology of his own Occamist professors.
In order to show all he had had to struggle with he says: “I had
formerly learned among the monstrous things (‘_monstra_’) which are
almost accounted axioms of scholastic theology ... that man can do his
part in the acquiring of grace; that he can remove obstacles to grace;
that he is able to oppose no hindrance to grace; that he can keep the
commandments of God according to the letter, though not according to
the intention of the lawgiver; that he has freedom of choice [personal
freedom in the work of salvation] between this and that, between both
contradictories and contraries; that his will is able to love God
above all things through its purely natural powers and that there is
such a thing as an act of charity, of friendship, by merely natural
powers.”[334]
We are to believe that these were the “axioms of scholastic theology!”
Such was not the case. For all acts necessary for salvation true
Scholasticism demanded the supernatural “preventing” grace of God.[335]
Yet as early as 1516 Luther had elegantly described all the scholastic
theologians as “Sow theologians,” on account of their pretended
“_Deliria_” against grace.[336] His first fault, that of unwarranted
generalisation, comes out clearly.
The second, more momentous, fault which Luther committed was to fly
to the extreme even in doctrine, abolishing all that displeased him
and setting up as his main thesis, that man can do nothing, absolutely
nothing, good. Not only did he say: “I learnt nothing in scholastic
theology worth remembering; I only learnt what must be unlearnt, what
is absolutely opposed to Holy Scripture” (“_omnino contraria divinis
litteris_”).[337] He also asserted at a very early period that Holy
Scripture teaches that God’s grace does everything in man of itself
alone without his vital participation, without liberty, without
resolve, without merit. Such a statement does not indeed appear in
the Commentary on the Psalms, but it will be found in his academic
lectures on the Pauline Epistles, more especially in the Commentary
on Romans. For a moment he thought he had discovered in St. Augustine
the necessary weapons against the formalism of his school of theology,
but now St. Paul appeared to him to give the loudest testimony against
it; the Apostle is so determined in his denunciation of the pride of
human reason and human will, and in presenting the Gospel of the Son of
God, faith and grace, as the only salvation of mankind. Luther imagined
he had found in Paul the doctrines which appealed to him: that all
human works were equally useless, whether for eternal salvation or for
natural goodness; that man’s powers are good for nothing but sin; if
grace, which the Apostle extols, is to come to its rights, then we must
say of original sin that it has utterly ruined man’s powers of thinking
and willing so far as what is good in God’s sight is concerned;
original sin still lives, even in the baptised, as a real sin, being an
invincible attraction to selfishness and all evil, more particularly to
that of the flesh; by it the will is so enslaved that only in those who
are justified by grace can there be any question of freedom for good.
As regards Occam’s teaching concerning man, his Fall and his powers,
so far as this affects the question of a correct understanding of
Luther’s development: in the matter of original sin it agreed with
that of Aquinas and Scotus, according to which its essence was a
_carentia iustitiæ debitæ_, i.e. _originalis_; likewise it asserted
the existence of concupiscence in man, the _fomes_ or tinder of sin,
as Occam is fond of calling it, as the consequence of original sin;
on the other hand it minimised too much the evil effects of original
sin on the reason and on the will, by assuming that these powers still
remain in man almost unimpaired. This was due to the nominalistic
identification of the soul with its faculties; as the soul remained
the same as before, so, they said, the powers as a whole also remained
the same.[338] The “disabling” of these powers of which St. Thomas
and the other Scholastics speak, i.e. the weakening which the Council
of Trent also teaches (“_liberum arbitrium viribus attenuatum et
inclinatum_”),[339] was not sufficiently emphasised.
Gabriel Biel, whose views are of some weight on account of his
connection with Luther, finds the rectitude of the natural will
(_rectitudo_) in its liberty, and this, he says, has remained intact
because it is, as a matter of fact, the will itself, from which it
does not differ.[340] In other passages, it is true, he speaks of
“wounds”; for owing to concupiscence the will is “inconstant and
changeable”; but he nevertheless reverts to “_rectitudo_,” erroneously
relegating the results of original sin to the lower powers alone.
Following Occam, and against St. Thomas and Scotus, he makes of
concupiscence a “_qualitas_,” viz. a “_qualitas corporalis_.”[341]
Again, following his master and d’Ailly, Biel asserts—and this is
real Occamism—that the will is able without grace to follow the
dictates of right reason (“_dictamen rectæ rationis_”) in everything,
and is therefore able of itself to keep the whole law of nature,
even to love God purely and above all things.[342] An example of how
inaccurate Biel is in the details of his theological discussions has
been pointed out by Denifle, who shows that in quoting three various
opinions of the greater Scholastics on a question of the doctrine of
original sin (“_utrum peccatum originale sit aliquid positivum in
anima vel in carne_”) “not one of the opinions is correctly given,”
and yet this “superficial and wordy author was one of Luther’s
principal sources of information regarding the best period of
Scholasticism.”[343]
The Nominalists doubtless recognised the supernatural order as
distinct from the natural, and Occam as well as Biel, d’Ailly and
Gerson do not here differ materially from the rest of the Scholastics;
but the limits of natural ability, more particularly in respect of
keeping the commandments and loving God above all, are carried too
far. Luther’s masters had here insisted with great emphasis on the
argument of Scotus which they frequently and erroneously made to
prove even more than was intended, viz. that as reason is capable of
realising that man is able to fulfil the law and to render such love,
and as the will is in a position to carry out all that reason puts
before it, therefore man is able to fulfil both requirements.[344] In
this argument insufficient attention has been paid to the difficulties
which interior and exterior circumstances place in the way of
fallen man. Theologians generally were very much divided in opinion
concerning the possibility of fulfilling these requirements, and the
better class of Scholastics denied it, declaring that the assistance
of actual grace was requisite, which, however, they held, was given to
all men of good will. Against the doctrine which Biel made his own,
that man is able, without grace, to avoid all mortal sin,[345] keep
all the commandments and love God above all things, not only Thomists,
but even some of the Nominalists protested.[346]
Here again, according to Denifle, a serious error, committed by Biel
regarding St. Thomas, must be pointed out, one, too, which may have
had its effect upon Luther. Biel erroneously makes the holy Doctor
say the opposite of what he really teaches when he ascribes to him
the proposition: “_Homo potest cavere peccata mortalia_ [_omnia_]
_sine gratia_.” As Denifle reminds us again, it was “from this
author that Luther drew in great part his knowledge of the earlier
Scholastics.”[347] Biel, however, in his sermons and instructions
to preachers restricts the thesis of the possibility of loving God
above all things through our natural powers. This, man is able to do,
he says, “according to some writers, more especially in the state
of paradisiacal innocence, but the act is not so perfect and not
so easy as with God’s grace and is without supernatural merit. God
has so ordained that He will not accept any act as meritorious for
heaven excepting only that which is elicited by grace” (“_ex gratia
elicitum_”).[348]
The views of the Occamists or “Moderns” exhibited yet other weak
points. Man, so they taught, is able to merit grace “_de congruo_.”
They admitted, it is true, that grace was a supernatural gift,
“_donata_” and “_gratuita_,” as they termed it, but they saw in man’s
natural love of God, and in his efforts, an adequate disposition
for arriving at the state of saving grace.[349] The great Schoolmen
on the contrary taught with St. Thomas, that the preparation and
disposition for saving grace, i.e. all those good works which precede
justification, do not originate in us but are due to the grace of
Christ.
As for the teaching regarding natural and supernatural love of God,
the keeping of the commandments and the predisposition for grace,
Luther, in 1516, appears to have scarcely been acquainted with the
opinion of any of the better representatives of Scholasticism, to whom
he had access. It was only in 1518 that his attention was directed
to Gregory of Rimini (General of the Augustinian Hermits in 1357),
an eclectic whose views were somewhat unusual, and in this case,
Luther, instead of making use of the good which was to be found in
him in abundance, preferred to disregard his real opinion and to set
him up as opposed to the teaching of the Schoolmen.[350] In 1519,
labouring under a total misapprehension of the truth as regards both
Gregory and the Schoolmen, he wrote: “the ‘Moderns’ agree with the
Scotists and Thomists concerning free will and grace, with the one
exception of Gregory of Rimini, whom they all condemn, but who rightly
and effectively proves them to be worse than the Pelagians. He alone
among all the Scholastics agrees with Augustine and the Apostle
Paul, against Carlstadt and all the new Schoolmen.”[351] As though
all Scholastics, old and new, had taught what Luther here attributes
to them, viz. that “it is possible to gain heaven without grace,”
because, according to them, “a good though not meritorious work can be
done” without grace. On the contrary, not the Thomists only, but also
many other theologians were opposed to the thesis that the will could,
of itself, always and everywhere, conform itself to the dictates of
right reason and thus arrive at grace, but Gregory of Rimini, whom
Luther favours so much as a Doctor of his own Order, declares that
the keeping of the whole law was only possible through grace, and
that therefore God had, with His law, imposed nothing impossible on
man.[352] According to Luther, however, God had demanded of human
nature what was impossible.
Occam and his school deviate somewhat from the rest of the Scholastics
in the application of the well-known axiom: “_Facienti quod est in se
Deus non denegat gratiam._”[353]
While the better class of Scholastics understood it as meaning that
God allows the man to arrive at saving grace and justification,
who does his part with the help of actual grace, the schools of
the decline interpreted the principle as implying that God would
always give saving grace where there was adequate human and natural
preparation; they thus came to make this grace a mere complement of
man’s natural effort; the effect of grace was accordingly purely
formal; man’s effort remained the same as before, but, by an act of
favour, it was made conformable with God’s “intention”; for it was
God’s will that no man should enjoy the Beatific Vision, without such
grace, which, however, He never failed to bestow in response to human
efforts. Some modern writers have described this view of grace to
which the Nominalists were inclined, as a stamp imprinting on purely
human effort a higher value. At any rate, according to the Occamists,
man prepares for grace by natural acts performed under the ordinary
concurrence of God (_concursus generalis_),[354] whereas, according
to the better Scholastics, this preparation demanded, not only the
ordinary, but also the particular concurrence of God, namely, actual
grace; they maintained that ordinary concurrence was inadequate
because it belonged to the natural order.
Actual grace was entirely neglected by the Occamists; the special
help of God is, according to most of them, saving grace itself; actual
grace, i.e. the divinely infused intermediary between man’s natural
and supernatural life, finds no place in their system. This explains,
if we may anticipate a little, how it is that Luther pays so little
attention to actual grace;[355] he has no need of it, because man,
according to him, cannot keep the law at all without the (imputed)
state of grace. It is unfortunate that Biel, in whom Luther trusted,
should have misrepresented the actual teaching of true Scholasticism
concerning the necessity and nature of grace, whether of actual or
saving grace.
As early as 1515 Luther, with the insufficient knowledge he possessed,
accused the Scholastics generally of teaching that “man by his natural
powers is able to love God above all things, and substantially to do
the works commanded, though not, indeed, according to the ‘intention’
of the lawgiver, i.e. not in the state of grace.” “Therefore,
according to them,” he says, “grace was not necessary save by a
new imposition demanding more than the law (‘_per novam exactionem
ultra legem_’); for, as they teach, the law is fulfilled by our own
strength. Thus grace is not necessary to fulfil the law, save by
reason of God’s new exaction which goes beyond the law. Who will put
up with these sacrilegious views?” Assuredly his indignation against
Scholasticism would have been righteous had its teaching really
been what he imagined. In the same way, and with similarly strong
expressions, he generalises what he had learnt in his narrow world at
Erfurt and Wittenberg, and ascribes to the whole of Christendom, to
the Popes and all the schools, exactly what the Occamists said of the
results of original sin being solely confined to the lower powers.
Here, and in other connections too, he exclaims: “the whole Papacy has
taught this, and all the schools of Sophists [Scholastics].” “Have
they not denied that nature was ruined by sin when they assert that
they are able to choose what is good according to the dictates of
right reason?”[356]
From his antagonism to such views, an antagonism we find already in
1515, when he was preparing for his lectures on the Epistle to the
Romans, sprang his own gloomy doctrine of the death of free will for
good, and the poisoning of human nature by original sin. With its
first appearance in the lectures mentioned we shall deal later.
Here a more general question must first receive an answer. How came
the youthful Luther to absorb into his life the views above described
without apparently shrinking in the least from the opposition to the
Church’s teaching manifest in them?
Various answers are forthcoming. In the first place, in consequence
of his training which consisted too exclusively in the discussion
of speculative controversies, he had come to see in the theological
doctrines merely opinions of the schools, on which it was permissible
to sit in judgment. He had forgotten that there existed a positive body
of unassailable doctrine. Even when engaged in mercilessly attacking
this body of doctrine he still appears to have been unaware of having
outstepped the lines of permissible disputation. We cannot, however,
altogether exonerate him from being in some degree conscious that in
his attack on the Church he was treading dangerous ground. In the
lectures on the Epistle to the Romans he goes so far as to declare,
that the Church was almost destroyed (“_pene subversa_”) by the
teaching of the Scholastics, and that everything was full of Pelagian
errors, because grace for the support of the will had been abolished.
Things such as these and others of a like nature he could assuredly not
have uttered without, in his calmer hours, asking himself how he could
reconcile such a standpoint with his duty to the Church. It is true,
however, that such quiet hours were exceptional in his case. There
can be no doubt also that his idea of the Church and of the binding
character of her doctrine was confused. In 1519 he had no hesitation
in pointing to the action of other Doctors, who, before that date,
had engaged in controversy with each other, in vindication of the
tremendous struggle he had just commenced. I am only doing what they
did; “Scotus, single-handed, opposed the opinions of all the schools
and Doctors and gained the victory (?). Occam did the same, many others
have done and are doing likewise up to the present day (?). If then
these are at liberty to withstand all, why not I?”[357]
The second answer to the above question lies in the outward
circumstances existing in his monastic home at the time of the
beginning of his struggle. The members of his Congregation, most of
whom were of Occam’s school, were still greatly excited and divided
by the quarrel going on in their midst regarding organisation and
discipline. The Observantines with their praise of the old order
and exercises were a thorn in the flesh of the other Augustinians,
more lax and modern in their views, especially for Luther, who was
at their head. A spirit of antagonism existed not merely between the
different houses of the Order, but even in the houses themselves a
struggle seems to have been carried on. On the one side there was a
tenacious adherence to the older practices of the Order, on the other
suspicion and reproaches were levelled against the innovations of the
Observantines. The result was that the fiery young Professor, while
inveighing against the Occamist theory of self-righteousness, thundered
at the same time against the Observantines as living instances of
the self-righteous and holy-by-works. Some of the reasons for this
supposition have already been given, and more will be forthcoming when
we consider the Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans.[358]
War was to the Wittenberg Doctor even then an element of life. He found
it going on, and encouraged it amongst the wearers of the Augustinian
habit. The first and second “factions” in the Order, as Usingen calls
them, i.e. the first division caused by the question of observance,
and the second by the great controversy concerning faith, were, we may
be sure, closely allied in Luther’s mind; the controversy concerning
observance may assuredly be reckoned amongst the outward causes which
carried him along with them into the greater struggle and contributed
for a time to hide from him the danger of his position. Though details
are lacking of the resistance to Luther’s first challenge to the
theologians of his Order, to Scholasticism and the Church’s doctrine,
yet, as already said, we can see from the Commentary on Romans, from
other unprinted early lectures, and also from the disputations and
sermons, that the Order continued in a state of commotion, and that,
as a matter of fact, the second “faction” was an outgrowth of the
first.[359] The Observantines had to put up with hearing themselves
styled by Luther “_iustitiarii_” and Pharisees; but probably there were
others, even members of the Wittenberg University, perhaps some of
those jurists and philosophers[360] to whom he refers in his Commentary
on Romans, and whom he so cordially detested, who also were counted
amongst the “_iustitiarii_,” in fact all whom the outrageous assertions
of their young colleague regarding the observance of precepts and
regulations and against human freedom, roused to opposition.
To these two answers a third must be added, which turns upon the
character of Luther in his youth. His extreme self-sufficiency blinded
him, and his discovery of real errors in the theology in which he
had been trained drove him in his impetuosity to imagine that he was
called, and had the right, to introduce an entirely new theology. His
searching glance had spied out real mistakes; his strength and boldness
had resulted in the bringing to light of actual abuses; his want of
consideration in the pointing out of blemishes in the Church had, in
some degree, been successful and earned for him the applause of many;
his criticism of theology was greeted as triumphant by his pupils,
the more so as the Doctors he attacked were but feeble men unable to
reply to so strong an indictment, or else living at a distance (in
Erfurt). The growing self-consciousness, which expresses itself even in
the form of his controversial language, must not be disregarded as a
psychological fact in the problem, one, too, which also helped to blind
him to the real outcome of his work.
* * * * *
Only the most extreme spirit of antagonism could have led the Monk
to make, in addition to his other harsh exaggerated charges against
Scholasticism, the following assertion, to which, as it is important
for the origin of Lutheranism, some attention must be paid. He says
the doctrine is false that righteousness which can be acquired by
means of good works (of the natural order) is even conceivable; this
was invented by Aristotle; this righteousness of the philosophers and
jurists has penetrated into the Church, while, as a matter of fact,
owing to the naughtiness, nay, corruption of mankind, resulting from
original sin, it was a monstrosity and an abomination in God’s sight;
the scholastic distinctions of distributive and commutative justice,
etc., “were also due to blindness of spirit and mere human wisdom”;
the Scholastics have put this infamous, purely human righteousness in
the place of righteousness by grace, which is of value in God’s sight;
they have said there is no original sin, and have acted as though all
men did not feel concupiscence within themselves very strongly; they
have represented righteousness as the fruit of our natural efforts,
and in consequence of this people now believe that righteousness may
be had through Indulgences costing two pence, i.e. through works of
the very slightest worth! But “the Apostle teaches,” he says, “_Corde
creditur ad iustitiam_, i.e. not by works, or wisdom, or study, not by
riches and honours can man attain to righteousness.... That is a new
way to righteousness, against, and far above, Aristotle ... and his
political, God-forsaken righteousness.”[361] Yet, according to him, the
Scholastics knew no better. “They speak like Aristotle in his ‘Ethics,’
who makes ... righteousness consist in works, as also its attainment
and its loss.”[362]
Is it possible that the writer of the above sentences was really
incapable of distinguishing between the natural and the supernatural
in moral good according to the fundamental principle of true
Scholasticism? Was Luther really ignorant of the theses which run
through the whole of Scholasticism such as this of St. Thomas:
“_Donum gratiæ excedit omnem præparationem virtutis humanæ_”?[363]
The great lack of discrimination which underlies the above attack is
characteristic of Luther in his youth and of his want of consideration
in the standpoint he assumed. He starts from some justifiable
objection to the nominalistic theology—which really was inadequate on
the subject of the preparation for supernatural righteousness—sets
up against it his own doctrine of fallen man and his salvation, and,
then, without further ado, ascribes an absolutely fanciful idea of
righteousness to the Church and the whole of Scholasticism. What he
failed to distinguish, St. Thomas, Thomism, and all true Scholastics
distinguished with very great clearness. Aquinas draws a sharp line
of demarcation between the civil virtue of righteousness and the
so-called infused righteousness of the act of justification. He
anticipates, so to speak, Luther’s objection and his confusion of one
idea with another, and teaches that by the repeated performance of
exterior works an inward habit is without doubt formed in consequence
of which man is better disposed to act rightly, as Aristotle teaches
in his “Ethics”; “but,” he says, “this only holds good of human
righteousness, by which man is disposed to what is humanly good
(‘_iustitia humana ad bonum humanum_’); by human works the habit of
such righteousness can be acquired. But the righteousness which counts
in the eyes of God (i.e. supernatural righteousness) is ordained to
the Divine good, namely, to future glory, which exceeds human strength
(‘_iustitia quæ habet gloriam apud Deum; ordinata ad bonum divinum_’)
... wherefore man’s works are of no value for producing the habit of
this righteousness, but the heart of man must first of all be inwardly
justified by God, so that he may do the works which are of worth for
eternal glory.”[364]
So speaks the most eminent of the Schoolmen in the name of the true
theology of the Middle Ages.
For Luther, who brings forward the above arbitrary objection in his
Commentary on Romans, it would have been very easy to have made use of
the explanation just given, for it is found in St. Thomas’s Commentary
on this very Epistle. Luther, one would have thought, would certainly
have consulted this work for his interpretation of the Epistle, were
it only on account of its historical interest, and even if it had not
been the best work on the subject which had so far appeared. But no,
it seems that he never looked into this Commentary, nor even into the
older glosses of Peter Lombard on the Epistle to the Romans, then
much in use; in the latter he would at once have found the refutation
of the charge he brought against the Scholastics of advocating the
doctrine of Aristotle on righteousness by works, as the gloss to the
classic passage (Romans iii. 27) runs as follows: “For righteousness
is not by works (‘_non ex operibus est iustitia_’), but works are
the result of righteousness, and therefore we do not say: ‘the
righteousness of works, but the works of righteousness.’”[365]
* * * * *
He does not even trouble to uphold the frivolous accusation that the
Schoolmen had been acquainted only with Aristotelian righteousness,
but actually refutes it by another objection. He finds fault with the
“scholastic theologians” for having, as he says in the Commentary on
Romans, “held the doctrine of the expulsion of sin and the infusion
of grace” to be a single change.[366] He hereby admits that they were
familiar with something more than mere Aristotelian righteousness, for
in Aristotle there is certainly no question of any infusion of grace.
But Luther frequently speaks in this way of the distinction which the
Scholastics made between acquired and infused righteousness.
The changeableness and inconstancy of his assertions regarding
the doctrines of the Scholastics is quite remarkable. He makes no
difficulty about admitting later, against his previous statements, that
the Scholastics did not teach that man was able to love God above all
things merely by his own strength; this was the teaching only of the
Scotists and the “Moderns” (i.e. Nominalists or Occamists).[367] At
that time he was perhaps better acquainted with Biel, who instances
Thomas and Bonaventure in opposition to this doctrine.[368] Luther
was also careless in the accounts he gave even of the theology of
his own circle, viz. that of the Occamists, and the injustice he
does Scholasticism as a whole, he repeats against his own school by
exaggerating its faults or suppressing the necessary distinctions in
order to be the better able to refute its theses by the Bible and
St. Augustine. As therefore it is impossible to form an opinion on
Scholasticism as a whole from Luther’s assertions, so we cannot trust
his account even of his own masters, in whose works he thinks himself
so well versed.
He is, for instance, neglecting a distinction when he repeatedly
asserts that Occam, his “Master,” denied the biblical truth that the
Holy Ghost is necessary for the performance of a good work. As a
matter of fact, the Occamists, like the Scotists, did not here differ
essentially from the Thomists, although differences are apparent in
their teaching on the supernatural habit, and on the preparation
for the attainment of this supernatural righteousness, i.e. for
justification.[369] He is wronging his own “_factio occamica_” when,
from its teaching that man could, by his natural powers, acquire a
love of God beyond all things, he at once infers that it declared
infused grace to be superfluous,[370] and further, when, for instance,
he asserted that the axiom quoted above, and peculiarly beloved of
the Occamists, “_Facienti quod est in se Deus non denegat gratiam_,”
was erroneous, as though it placed a “wall of iron” between man and
the grace of God.[371] No Occamist understood the axiom in the way he
wishes to make out.
Luther went so far in his gainsaying of the Occamist doctrine of the
almost unimpaired ability of man for purely natural good, that he
arrived at the opposite pole and began to maintain that there was no
such thing as vitally good acts on man’s part; that man as man does not
act in doing what is good, but that grace alone does everything. The
oldest statements of this sort are reserved for the quotations to be
given below from his Commentary on Romans. We give, however, a few of
his later utterances to this effect. They prove that the crass denial
of man’s doing anything good continued to characterise him in later
life as much as earlier.
In the Gospel-homilies contained in his “Postils,” he teaches the
people that it was a “shameful doctrine of the Popes, universities,
and monasteries” to say “we ought by the strength of our free will
to begin [exclusive of God’s help?] by seeking God, coming to Him,
running after Him and earning His grace.” “Beware, beware,” he cries,
“of this poison; it is the merest devil’s doctrine by which the whole
world is led astray.... You ask: How then must we begin to become
pious, and what must we do that God may begin in us? Reply: What,
don’t you hear that in you there is no doing, no beginning to be
pious, as little as there is any continuing and ending? God only is
the beginning, furthering and ending. All that you begin is sin and
remains sin, let it look as pretty as it will; you can do nothing but
sin, do how you will ... you must remain in sin, do what you will, and
all is sin whatever you do alone of your free will; for if you were
able of your own free will not to sin, or to do what is pleasing to
God, of what use would Christ be to you?”[372]
Elsewhere, on account of the supposed inability of man, he teaches
a sort of Quietism: “Is anyone to become converted, pious and a
Christian, we don’t set about it; no praying, no fasting assists it;
it must come from heaven and from grace alone.... Whoever wants to
become pious, let him not say: ‘I will set about doing good works in
order to obtain grace,’ but, ‘I will wait to see whether God by His
word will give me His grace and His spirit.’”[373]
And on another occasion his words are still stronger: “The gospel
tells us only to open our bosom and take, and says: ‘Behold what God
has done for you, He made His Son become flesh for you.’ Believe this
and accept it and you will be saved.”[374]
Seen in the light of such passages, it becomes clear that the
following must not be taken as a mere expression of humility, but as a
deprecation of good deeds. Already, in 1519, Luther says: “Man, like a
cripple with disabled hands and feet, must invoke grace as the artisan
of works (‘_operum artificem_’).”[375] The difficulty is that this
very invocation is itself a vital, though surely not a sinful, action.
Would not a man have been justified in saying even of this preliminary
act: I will wait, I may not begin? “Luther was scarcely acquainted
with the doctrine of a wholesome Scholasticism and with that of the
Church concerning the mysterious reciprocal action of grace and free
will in man. He was qualified to oppose the Occamist teaching, but was
incapable of replacing it by the true doctrine.”[376]
Against the prevalent doctrine on the powers of man, Luther, among
other verses from the Bible, brought forward John xv. 5: “Without me
ye can do nothing.” A remark on his use of this supposed scriptural
proof may serve to conclude what we have said of the far-reaching
negative influence of Occamism on the youthful Luther.
The decisive words of the Redeemer: “Without me ye can do nothing,”
so Luther says to his friend Spalatin, had hitherto been understood
quite wrongly. And, in proof of this, he adduces the interpretation
which he must have heard in his school, or read in the authors who
were there in repute: “Our masters,” he says, “have made a distinction
between the general and the particular concurrence of God” (_concursus
generalis_ and _concursus specialis_ or _gratia_); with the general
concurrence man was able, so they taught, to do what is naturally
good, i.e. what they considered to be good; with the particular,
however, that which is beyond nature (“_quæ gratiæ sunt et supra
naturam_”), and meritorious for heaven. To this statement of the
perfectly correct teaching of his masters he adds, however, the
following: they taught that “with our powers we are able, under the
general Divine concurrence, to prepare ourselves for the obtaining of
grace, i.e. for the obtaining of the particular concurrence, hence
that we can ‘_inchoative_’ do something, to gain merit and the vision
of God, notwithstanding the express teaching of Christ, though we
are indeed unable to do this ‘_perfective_,’ without the particular
assistance of grace.”[377]
What Luther says here applies at most to the Nominalists; according
to Occam’s school the preparation for sanctifying grace takes place
by purely natural acts,[378] and accordingly this school was not
disposed to take Christ’s words about eternal life too literally.
Although healthy Scholasticism knows nothing of this and holds fast
to the literal meaning of the words “Without me ye can do nothing,”
viz. nothing for eternal life (the absolute necessity of the general
concurrence is taken for granted), yet Luther, in all simplicity,
assures his friend that the whole past had taken the words of Christ
in the sense he mentions (“_Sic est hucusque autoritas ista exposita
et intellecta._”)[379] This doctrine he detests so heartily, that
he sets up the very extreme opposite in his new system. The general
Divine concursus, he says in his letter to Spalatin quoted above,
certainly leads nature on to work of itself, but it cannot do
otherwise than “seek its own and misuse the gifts of God.” Nature
merely provides stuff for the “punishing fire,” however “good and
moral its works may appear outwardly.” Hence, according to him, there
is no distinction between general and particular concurrence, between
the inchoative and the perfective act; without Christ, and “before
we have been healed by His grace,” there is absolutely nothing but
mischief and sin.
By “grace,” here and elsewhere, he means the state of justifying grace.
Whereas true Scholasticism recognises actual grace, which assists
man even before justification, this is as good as excluded by Luther
already in the beginning of his theological change. Why? Partly because
he cannot make use of it as he refers everything to justifying faith,
partly because the Occamists, his masters, erroneously reduced the
particular influence of God almost entirely to sanctifying grace, and
neglected or denied actual grace.
In the latter respect we perceive one of the positive effects of
Occamism on Luther. This leads us to another aspect of the present
theme.
3. Positive Influence of Occamism
We have so far been considering the precipitate and excessive
antagonism shown at an early date by Luther towards the school of
Occam, especially towards its anthropological doctrines; we have also
noted its influence on his new heretical principles, particularly on
his denial of man’s natural ability for good. Now we must turn our
attention to the positive influence of the Occamist teaching upon his
new line of thought, for Luther’s errors are to be ascribed not only to
the negative, but also to the positive effects of his school.
His principal dogma, that of justification, must first be taken into
consideration.
This he drew up entirely on the lines of a scheme handed down to him by
his school. It is no uncommon thing to see even the most independent
and active minds tearing themselves away from a traditional train of
thought in one particular, and yet continuing in another to pursue the
accustomed course, so great is the power which a custom acquired at
school possesses over the intellect. The similarity existing between
Luther’s and Occam’s doctrine of the imputation of righteousness is
quite remarkable. Occam had held it, at least as possible, that a
righteousness existed which was merely imputed; at any rate, it was
only because God so willed it that sanctifying grace was necessary in
the present order of things. He and his school had, as a matter of
fact, no clear perception of the supernatural habit as a supernatural
principle of life in the soul. According to the Occamist Peter d’Ailly,
whom Luther repeatedly quotes in his notes on Peter Lombard, reason
cannot be convinced of the necessity of the supernatural habit; all
that this is supposed to do can be done equally well by a naturally
acquired habit; an unworthy man might be found worthy of eternal
life without any actual change taking place in him; only owing to an
acceptation on God’s part (“_a sola divina acceptatione_”) does the
soul become worthy of eternal life, not on account of any created cause
(therefore not on account of love and grace).[380] “The whole work of
salvation here becomes external; it is mechanical, not organic.”[381]
If Luther, in consequence of his study of these Occamist doctrines,
fell into error regarding the supernatural, the consequences were even
worse when, with his head full of such Occamistic ideas, he proceeded
to expound the most difficult of the Pauline Epistles, with their dim
and mysterious handling of grace, and, at the same time, to ponder on
the writings of St. Augustine,[382] that deep-thinking Doctor of grace.
Such studies could only breed fresh confusion in his mind.
The result was as follows: regarding imputation, i.e. one of the
foundations of his theology, Luther quotes Occam in such a way as to
represent him as teaching as a fact what he merely held to be possible.
He declares sanctifying grace to be not merely superfluous, but also
non-existent, and erects the theory of Divine acceptation into a dogma.
This alone would be sufficient to demonstrate his positive dependence
on Occamism.
The theories of acceptation, which were peculiar to the Occamists and
which Luther took over—though what they called by this name he prefers
to call imputation—had not only met with approval, but had also been
widely applied by this school.
According to d’Ailly, evil is not evil on account of its special
nature, but only because God forbids it (“_præcise, quia lege
prohibitum_”); a law or rule of conduct does not exist by nature, for
God might have willed otherwise (“_potest non esse lex_”); He has,
however, decreed it in the present order of things. Similar views
appear in Luther’s Commentary on Romans, where little regard is paid
to the objective foundation of the moral law.[383]
According to Occam, God acts according to whim. D’Ailly actually
discovers in him the view that it is not impossible to suppose that
the created will might deserve well by hating God, because God might
conceivably command this. In Luther we at least find the opinion that
God knows of no grounds for His action and might therefore work what
is evil in man, which then, of course, would not be evil in God in
consequence of His not imputing it to Himself as such.
The Divine imputation or _pactum_ plays its part in the Occamistic
sense in Luther’s earliest theological lectures on the Psalms. “Faith
and Grace,” he there says, “by which we are justified to-day, would
not justify us of themselves save as a consequence of the ‘_pactum
Dei_.’” In the same place he teaches that, as a result of such an
“agreement and promise,” those who, before Christ, fulfilled the
law according to the letter, acquired a supernatural merit _de
congruo_.[384]
Luther’s dependence on Occamism caused him, as Denifle expresses
it, to be always “on bad terms with the supernatural”;[385] we must
not, however, take this as meaning that Luther did not do his best,
according to his own lights, to support and to encourage faith in
revelation, both in himself and in others.
We shall see how in the case of justification he regards faith, and
then his particular “faith only” as the one factor, not, however,
the faith which is animated by charity, and this because, with the
Occamists, he rejects all supernatural habits. He extols the value of
faith on every occasion at the expense of the other virtues.[386]
The positive influence of Occam on Luther is also to be traced in the
domain of faith and knowledge. Luther imagines he is fortifying faith
by laying stress on its supposed opposition to reason, a tendency which
is manifest already in his Commentary on Romans. In this Occam and his
school were his models.
The saying that there is much in faith which is “plainly against
reason and the contrary of which is established by faith”[387] comes
from d’Ailly. Occam found the arguments for the existence of one God
inadequate.[388] Biel has not so much to say against these proofs, but
he does hold that the fact that one only God exists is a matter of
faith not capable of being absolutely proved by reason.[389]
Occam, whom Biel praises as “_multum clarus et latus_,” made faith
to know almost everything, but the results achieved by reason to be
few and unreliable.[390] He employed the function of reason, of a
caustic reason to boot, in order to raise doubts, or to exercise the
mind at the expense of the truths of revelation; yet in the positive
recognition of articles of faith he allowed reason to recede into the
background. In any case he prepared the way for the saying, that a
thing may be false in theology and yet true in philosophy, and _vice
versa_, a proposition condemned at the 5th Lateran Council by the
Constitution _Apostolici Regiminis_ of Leo X.[391]
Luther came to state clearly that “it was quite false to say the
same thing was true in philosophy and also in theology”; whoever
taught this was fettering the articles of faith “as prisoners to
the judgment of reason.”[392] We shall have to speak later of many
examples of the violent and hateful language with which he disparages
reason in favour of faith. His love for the Bible at an early period
strengthened in him the idea—one which the Occamists often advanced
in the course of the dialectic criticism to which they subjected the
truths of religion—that after all, the decisions of faith are not the
same as those of the mind, and that we must make the best of this
fact. Luther even in his Commentary on Romans is ever ready to decry
the “wisdom of the flesh,” which is there described as constantly
interfering with faith.
The union of faith and knowledge, of which true Scholasticism was
proud, never appealed to Luther.
The Occamists had also been before him in attacking Aristotle. The
fact that many esteemed this philosopher too highly gave rise in their
camp to bitter and exaggerated criticism, and to excessive abuse of
the Stagirite. Against the blind Aristotelians d’Ailly had already
written somewhat unkindly: “In philosophy, i.e. in the teaching of
Aristotle, there are no, or but few, convincing proofs ... we must
call the philosophy or teaching of Aristotle an opinion rather than
a science.”[393] Gregory of Rimini, whom Luther made use of and who
was not ignorant of Occamism, says that Aristotle had shockingly gone
astray (“_turpissime erravit_”) on many points, and, in some, had
contradicted himself.
Such were the minds that inspired Luther at the time when he was
already making for a theological goal different from that of the
“rationalists,” wise ones of this world, and loquacious wiseacres,
as he calls all the Scholastics indiscriminately in his Commentary
on Romans. Wherever theology has made a right and moderate use of
philosophical proofs, philosophy has always shown itself as the
_ancilla theologiæ_, and has been of assistance in theological
development. After expelling reason from the domain of supernatural
knowledge Luther was forced to fall back on feeling and inward
experience, i.e. on elements, which, owing to their inconstancy and
variability, did not deserve the place he gave them. This was as
harmful to faith as the denial of the rights of reason.
Gerson had lamented, concerning the misuse of philosophical criticism
in religious matters, that the methods of the Nominalists made faith
grow cold,[394] and it may be that Luther had experienced these effects
in himself, since, in his lectures on the Psalms, he acknowledges and
regrets the cooling of his life of faith.[395] But, surely, in the same
way the predominance of feeling and so-called religious experience was
also to be regretted, as it crippled faith and deprived it of a sure
guide.
Staupitz spoke from feeling and not from a clear perception of facts
when, in his admiration, he praised Luther as exalting Christ and
His grace. He applauded Luther, as the latter says “at the outset
of his career”: “This pleases me in your teaching, that it gives
honour and all to God alone and nothing to man. We cannot ascribe to
God sufficient honour and goodness, etc.”[396] Staupitz sought for
enlightenment in a certain mysticism akin to Quietism, instead of in
real Scholasticism. On such mystic by-ways Luther was sure to fall in
with him, and, as a matter of fact, from the point of view of a false
mysticism, Luther was to denounce “rationalising wisdom” and to speak
in favour of religious feeling even more strongly than he had done
before.
Under the influence of both these elements, a quietistic mysticism and
an antagonism to reason in matters of faith, his scorn for all natural
works grew. This made it easier for him to regard the natural order
of human powers as having been completely upset by original sin. More
and more he comes to recognise only an appearance of natural virtues;
to consider them as the poisonous blossoms of that unconquerable
selfishness which lies ever on the watch in the heart of man, and is
only to be gradually tamed by the justifying grace of God. The denial
of all freedom, under the ban of sin, little by little becomes for
him the principal thing, the “_summa causa_,” which, as he says in so
many words, he has to defend.[397] Beside the debasement of reason and
the false fancies of his mysticism, stood as a worthy companion the
religion of the enslaved will; this we find present in his mind from
the beginning, and at a later period it obtained a lasting monument in
the work “_De servo arbitrio_,” which Luther regarded as the climax of
his theology.[398]
But there are other connecting-links between Occamism and the errors of
the young Monk.
According to Occam’s school the purely spiritual attributes of God
cannot be logically proved; it does not consider it as proved merely
by reason that God is the last and final end of man, and that outside
of Him there is no real human happiness, nor even, according to
Occam himself, that “any final cause exists on account of which all
things happen”;[399] not only, according to him, must we be on our
guard against any idea that reason can arrive at God as the origin
of happiness and as the end of salvation, but even His attributes
we must beware of examining philosophically. God’s outward action
knows no law, but is purely arbitrary. Thus Occamism, with its
theory of the arbitrary Divine Will, manifesting itself in the act
of “acceptation” or imputation, was more likely to produce a servile
feeling of dependence on God than any childlike relationship; with this
corresponded the feeling of the utter worthlessness of man’s own works
in relation to imputation, which, absolutely speaking, might have been
other than it is.
It is highly probable that the bewildered soul of the young Augustinian
greedily lent an ear to such ideas, and laboured to make them meet
his own needs. The doubts as to predestination which tormented him
were certainly not thereby diminished, but rather increased. How could
the idea of an arbitrary God have been of any use to him? In all
likelihood the apprehensiveness and obscurity which colours his idea
of God, in the Commentary on Romans, was due to notions imbibed by him
in his school. Luther was later on to express this conception in his
teaching regarding the “_Deus absconditus_,” on whom, as the source of
all predestination (even to hell), we may not look, and whom we may
only timidly adore. Already in the Commentary referred to he teaches
the absolute predestination to hell of those who are to be damned, a
doctrine which no Occamist had yet ventured to put forward.
Among the other points of contact between Luther’s teaching and
Occamism, or Nominalism, we may mention, as a striking example, his
denial of Transubstantiation, which he expressly associates with one
of the theses of the Occamist d’Ailly. Here his especial hatred of the
school of St. Thomas comes out very glaringly.
Luther himself confesses later how the Occamist school had led him
to this denial.[400] When studying scholastic theology he had read
in d’Ailly that the mystery of Christ’s presence in the Sacrament
of the Altar would be much more comprehensible could we but assume
that He was present _with_ the bread, i.e. without any change of
substance, but that this was impossible owing to the unassailable
contrary teaching of the Church on Transubstantiation. The same idea
is found in Occam, but of this Luther was unaware. Luther criticises
d’Ailly’s appeal to the Church, and then proceeds: “I found out
later on what sort of Church it is which sets up such a doctrine;
it is the Thomistic, the Aristotelian. My discovery made me bolder,
and therefore I decided for Consubstantiation. The opinions of the
Thomists, even though approved by Pope or Council, remain opinions and
do not become articles of faith, though an angel from heaven should
say the contrary; what is asserted apart from Scripture and without
manifest revelation, cannot be believed.”[401] Yet in point of fact
the term “_Transsubstantiatio_” had been first used in a definition by
the Œcumenical Lateran Council of 1215 to express the ancient teaching
of the Church regarding the change of substance. According to what
Luther here says, St. Thomas of Aquin (whose birth occurred some ten
years later) was responsible for the introduction of the word and
what it stood for, in other words for the doctrine itself. A little
later Luther solemnly reaffirmed that “Transubstantiation is purely
Thomistic” (1522).[402] “The Decretals settled the word, but there
is no doubt that it was introduced into the Church by those coarse
blockheads the Thomists” (1541).[403] Hence either he did not know of
the Council or its date, or he did not know when St. Thomas wrote; in
any case he was ignorant of the relation in which the teaching of St.
Thomas on this point stood to the teaching of earlier ages. He was
unaware of the historical fact of the general adoption of the term
since the end of the eleventh century;[404] he was not acquainted
with the theologians who taught in the interval between the Lateran
Council and St. Thomas, and who used both the name and the idea of
Transubstantiation, and among whom were Albertus Magnus and Alexander
of Hales; he cannot even have noted the title of the Decretal from
which he derived the knowledge of the existence of the doctrine of
Transubstantiation in the Middle Ages, for it is headed: “_Innocentius
tertius in concilio generali_.”
That he should have made St. Thomas responsible for the doctrine of
Transubstantiation, and that so rudely, appears to be a result of his
ever-increasing hatred for Aquinas. In the first period of his change
of view, his opposition was to the Scholastics in general, but from
1518 onwards his assaults are on St. Thomas and the Thomists. Why was
this? A Thomist, Prierias of Rome, was the author of the first pamphlet
against him; another Thomist, Cardinal Cajetan, had summoned him to
appear before his tribunal; both belonged to the Dominican Order, in
which Thomas, the great Dominican Saint, was most enthusiastically
studied. Tetzel, too, was a Dominican and a Thomist. Any examination
of Luther’s development cannot but pay attention to this circumstance,
though it is true it does not belong to his earliest period. It
makes many of the outbreaks of anger to which he gave way later more
comprehensible. In 1522 Luther pours out his ire on the “asinine
coarseness of the Thomists,” on “the Thomist hogs and donkeys,” on
the “stupid audacity and thickheadedness of the Thomists,” who “have
neither judgment, nor insight, nor industry in their whole body.”[405]
His theology, we may remark, largely owed its growth to this quarrel
and the contradiction it called forth.
Luther’s tendency to controversial theology and his very manner of
proceeding, in itself far less positive than negative, bore the
Occamist stamp. It is true he was predisposed this way by nature, yet
the criticism of the nominalistic school, the acuteness and questioning
attitude of Occam and d’Ailly, lent an additional impulse to his
putting forth like efforts. We shall not be mistaken in assuming that
his doctrinal arbitrariness was, to a certain extent at least, a result
of the atmosphere of decadent theology in which his lot had been
cast. The paradoxes to which he so frequently descends are manifestly
modelled on the antilogies with which Occam’s works abound; like
Occam, he frequently leaves the reader in doubt as to his meaning, or
speaks later in quite a different way from what he did before. Occam’s
garrulity was, so it would appear, infectious. Luther himself, while
praising his acuteness, blames Occam for the long amplifications
to which he was addicted.[406] On more than one occasion Luther
reproaches himself for his discursiveness and superabundance of
rhetoric. Even the Commentaries he wrote in his youth on the Psalms and
the Epistle to the Romans prove to the reader that his self-reproof was
well deserved, whilst the second Commentary also manifests that spirit
of criticism and arbitrariness, bold to overstep the barriers of the
traditional teaching of the Church, which he had likewise received from
his Occamist masters.
* * * * *
Various attempts have been made to point out other theological
influences, besides those considered above, as having worked upon
Luther in his earlier years.
It would carry us too far to discuss these opinions individually,
the more so that there are scarcely sufficient data to hand to lead
to a decision. Luther himself, who should be the principal witness,
is very reticent concerning the authors and the opinions he made use
of in forming his own ideas. He would rather give the impression
that everything had grown up spontaneously from his own thought and
research; that his teaching sprang into being from himself alone
without the concurrence of outsiders, like Minerva from the head of
Jupiter. He assumes to himself with the utmost emphasis the precedence
in the discovery of the Gospel, for instance, against rivals such as
Carlstadt and Zwingli; he alone had read his Bible, and Carlstadt was
quite unacquainted with it; he only, with illumination from above, had
discovered everything.
As we find in his writings so few allusions to outside influences—save
to that of Occamism—it does not appear worth while to philosophise as
to whether he had, or had not, been touched by the Gallicanism which
was in the air. It is very doubtful whether he, in the comparative
seclusion of his little world of Erfurt and Wittenberg, came to
any extent under this influence, especially as his studies were so
cursory and brief and confined within such narrow limits. The Gallican
tendencies did not find in Germany anything like so fruitful a soil as
in France. It is true that Luther soon after his change of opinions
was capable of rivalling any Paris professor of Gallican sympathies in
his depreciation of the Holy See. Hence though no immediate influence
on Luther can be allowed to Gallicanism, yet the fact remains that
the prevalent anti-Roman tendencies greatly contributed to the wide
acceptance of the Lutheran schism in Germany, and even beyond its
borders.
Again, that Luther, as has been asserted, after having tasted the food
provided by Nominalism, was so disgusted as to rush to the opposite
extreme in Scholasticism, making his own the very worst elements of
realism, both philosophical and theological, seems to rest on fancy
rather than on facts. We may likewise refuse to see in Wiclifism, with
which Luther was acquainted only through the Constance Theses, any
element of inspiration, and also shake our heads when some Protestants,
at the other extreme, try to show that the Doctors of the Church, St.
Augustine and St. Bernard, were really the parties responsible for
Luther’s turning his back on the doctrines of the Church.
On the other hand, the influence of mysticism, with which we have now
to deal, deserves much more attention. It cannot be denied that a very
considerable part in the development of his new ideas was played by
mysticism; already at an early date the mystic spirit which Augustine’s
works owed to their writer’s Platonic studies, had attracted Luther
without, however, making him a Neo-Platonist.[407] During the time of
his mental growth he was likewise warmly attached to German mysticism.
Yet, here again, it is an exaggeration, as we can already see, to
state as some non-Catholics do that Luther, “as the theologian of the
Reformation,” was merely “a disciple of Tauler and the Frankfort author
of the German Theology,” or that “it was only through meeting with the
Frankfort theologian that he was changed from a despairing swimmer
struggling in the billows of a gloomy sea into a great reformer.”