The ban, or excommunication, is the correlative of communion. Our
conception of excommunication depends then, of course, upon our view
of what constitutes communion. Luther gives us his view of communion
in the preceding _Treatise concerning the Blessed Sacrament_. From the
premise there laid down it follows that excommunication, or the ban,
excludes only from external membership in the Church, but cannot
really separate a man from the Church if he is in personal fellowship
with his Lord[1]. Sin and unbelief cause this separation from Him, and
the real ban, therefore, is put into effect not by the Church, but by
the man himself when he sins against God. The ban of the Church cannot
even deprive one of the Sacrament, but only of the outward use of it,
for it can still be partaken of spiritually. This whole position, of
course, is fatal to the Roman Catholic conception of the Church, and
we do not wonder that it was vigorously opposed by the hierarchy.
Of like significance is Luther's advocacy of the separation of the
temporal and spiritual powers, practically of Church and State,--the
position which he develops later in the _Open Letter to the Nobility_.
But in this treatise, again, Luther shows himself to be anything but
the immoral monster his vilifiers have tried to make of him. He is
again the man of conscience--will his critics say, "of oversensitive
conscience"? Thank God that there were some sensitive consciences in
an almost conscienceless age! Luther fears sin more than the ban, and
sin has for him more than an ecclesiastical meaning. Sin is not
primarily an act against the Church, but an offence against God. This
the ban is to teach; it is to be the symbol of God's wrath against sin
and it is to be used by the Church only remedially and in love. When
so used it becomes the chastening rod of the dear Mother Church,
provided it be accepted and borne in this spirit.
Why, then, did not Luther bear his own ban in this way? The
justification for his subsequent conduct is to be found in two brief
but important conditional clauses in this treatise. "God," he says,
"cannot and will not permit authority to be wantonly and impudently
resisted, _when it does not force us to do what is against God or His
commandments_."[2] Again he says, "When unjustly put under the ban we
should be very careful not to do, omit, say or withhold that on
account of which we are under the ban, _unless we cannot do so without
sin and without injury to our neighbor_."[3] God and his neighbor were
for Luther the actors which made it necessary for him to speak and
act, when for selfish reasons he would often rather have remained
passive.
The inception of our treatise is to be found in a sermon preached in
Wittenberg in the spring of 1518. Luther's pastoral concern for his
people made it necessary for him to speak on this subject in order to
quiet the consciences both embittered and distressed by the wanton and
unjust use of the power of excommunication. Added to this must have
been his own personal interest in the ban certain to fall on him. In a
letter to Link[4], dated July 10, 1518, he speaks of having preached a
sermon on the power of the ban which produced general consternation
and fear that the ire enkindled by the XCV Theses would start afresh.
He had desired a public disputation on the subject, but the Bishop of
Brandenburg persuaded him to defer the matter. Under date of September
1st, Luther writes Staupitz[5] that because his sermon had been
misrepresented and spread by unfriendly spies it became necessary for
him to publish it. It appeared in August after Luther's summons to
Rome, under the title _De Virtute Excommunicationis_. Our treatise is
an elaboration in popular form of this Latin treatise of 1515.
The Grunberg text given in Clemen, Vol. I, which we have followed in
most cases, is dated 1520, and must have appeared in its original
edition at the end of 1519 or the beginning of 1520.
The text of the treatise is found in the following editions: Weimar
Ed., vol. vi, 63; Erlangen Ed., vol. xxvii, 51; Walch Ed., vol. xix,
1089; St. Louis Ed., vol. .xix, 884; Clemen, vol. i, 213; Berlin Ed.,
vol. iii, 291.