Chapter VI: The Change of 1515 in the Light of the Commentary on Romans (1515-16) (2)

In his Commentary on Romans Luther enters upon the domain of theological and philosophical discussion regarding the questions of natural and supernatural morality, the state of grace and the infused habit, sometimes with subtilty, sometimes with coarse invective, but owing to the limits of the present work we are unable to follow him except quite cursorily.

The manner in which he flings his “curses” at the doctrines of Scholasticism is distinctive of him; he says they are entirely compounded of pride and ignorance with regard to sin, to God and the law;[516] “cursed be the word ‘_formatum charitate_,’ and also the distinction between works according to the substance of the deed and the intention of the Lawgiver.”[517] There is perhaps no previous instance of a learned, exegetical treatise intended for academic consumption being thus spiced with curses.

Certain of Luther’s remarks on his practical experience call for consideration. Such is the following: “Everywhere in the Church great relapses after confession are now noticeable. People are confident that they are justified instead of first awaiting justification, and therefore the devil has an easy task with such false assurance of safety, and overthrows men. All this is due to making righteousness consist in works. But whoever thinks like a Christian can find this out for himself.”[518]

He gives the following exhortation with great emphasis and almost as though he had made an astounding discovery: “Whoever goes to confession, let him not believe that he gets rid of his burden and can then live in peace.”[519] His new doctrine of sin, which he discloses in the same passage, lies at the bottom of this; the baptised and the absolved must on no account forthwith consider themselves free from sin, on the contrary “they must not fancy themselves sure of the righteousness they have obtained and allow their hands to drop listlessly as though they were not conscious of any sin, for they have yet to fight against it and exterminate it with sighs and tears, with sadness and effort.”[520]

“Sin, therefore, still remains in the spiritual man for his exercise in the life of grace, for the humbling of his pride, for the driving back of his presumption; whoever does not exert himself zealously in the struggle against it, is in danger of being condemned even though he cease to sin any more (‘_sine dubio habet, unde damnetur_’). We must carry on a war with our desires, for they are culpable (‘_culpa_’), they are really sins and render us worthy of damnation; only the mercy of God does not impute them to us (‘_imputare_’) when we fight manfully against them, calling upon God’s grace.”[521]

There are few passages in the Commentary where his false conception of the entire corruption of human nature by original sin and concupiscence comes out so plainly as in the words just quoted. We see here too how this conception leads him to the denial of all liberty for doing what is good, and to the idea of imputation.

We can well understand that he needed St. Augustine to assist him to cover all this. And yet, as though to emphasise his own devious course, he quotes, among other passages, one in which Augustine confutes the view of any sin being present in man simply by reason of concupiscence.

“If we do not consent to concupiscence,” Augustine says, “it is no sin in those who are regenerate, so that, even if the ‘_Non concupisces_’ is infringed, yet the injunction of Jesus Sirach (xviii. 30) ‘Go not after thy lusts’ is observed. It is merely a manner of speaking to call concupiscence sin (“_modo quodam loquendi_”), because it sprang from sin, and, when it is victorious, causes sin.”[522] To this statement of the Father of the Church, which is so antagonistic to his own ideas, Luther can only add: that, certainly, concupiscence is in this way merely the cause and effect of sin, but not formally sinful (“_causaliter et effectualiter, non formaliter_”); Augustine himself had taught in another passage,[523] that owing to the mere existence of concupiscence, we are able to do what is good only in an imperfect way, not well and perfectly (“_facere, non perficere_”; cp. Rom vii. 18); that we ought, however, to strive to act well and perfectly “if we wish to attain to the perfection of righteousness” (“_perficere bonum, est non concupiscere_”).[524]

St. Augustine’s words, which are much to the point if taken in the right sense, only encouraged Luther in his opposition to the Scholastics; he points out to them that Augustine’s manner is not theirs, and that at least he supports his statements by Holy Scripture when speaking of the desires which persist without the consent of the will; they on the other hand come along without Bible proofs and thus with less authority; those old Doctors quieted consciences with the voice of the Apostle, but these new ones do not do so at all, rather they force the Divine teaching into the bed of their own abstractions; for instance, they derive from Aristotle their theory as to how virtues and vices dwell in the soul, viz. as the form exists in the subject; all comprehension of the difference between flesh and spirit is thus made impossible.

The question which here forces itself upon Luther, viz. how virtue and vice exist in the soul, is of fundamental importance for his view of ethics, and, as it frequently occurs in the Commentary, it must not be passed over.

When he says that virtues and vices do not adhere to the soul, he means the same as what he elsewhere expresses more clearly, viz. that “it depends merely on the gracious will of God whether a thing is good or bad.”[525]

“Nothing is good of its own nature, nothing is bad of its own nature; the will of God makes it good or bad.”[526]

This is the merest Nominalism, akin to Occam’s paradox that “hatred of God, theft and adultery might be not merely not wicked, but even meritorious were the will of God to command them.”

From such ideas of Occam Luther advanced to the following: “The will of God decides whether I am pleasing to Him or not.”[527]

This explains the proposition which frequently appears, in the Commentary on Romans and elsewhere, that man is at the same time righteous and a sinner, that the righteous man has the left foot still in sin and the right in grace.[528]

In the Commentary he attacks self-complacency in the performance of good works with the cry: “Good works are not something that can please because they are good or meritorious, but because they have been chosen by God from eternity as pleasing to Himself,” words which presuppose that only the imputation matters. “Therefore,” he continues, “works do not render us good, but our goodness, or rather the goodness of God, makes us good and our works good; for in themselves they would not be good, and they are or are not good in so far as God accounts them, or does not account them good (‘_quantum ille reputat vel non reputat_’). Our own accounting or not accounting does not matter in the least. Whoever keeps this before him is always filled with fear, and waits with apprehension to see how God’s sentence will fall out. This puts an end to all that puffing up of self and quarrelling, so beloved of the proud ‘_iustitiarii_,’ who are so sure of their good works.”

“Even the very definition of virtue which Aristotle gives,” he concludes, “is all wrong, as though, forsooth, virtue made us perfect and its work rendered us worthy of praise. The truth is simply that it makes us praiseworthy in our own eyes and commends our works to us; but this is abominable in God’s sight, while the contrary is pleasing to Him.”[529]

As a matter of fact, Scholasticism, basing its teaching on Aristotle, considered virtue and vice as something real and objective, as qualities of the soul which adhere to it inwardly and “inform” it, i.e. impart to it a spiritual form and become part of it in the same way as material things have their special qualities, for instance, their natural colour without which they do not exist. These, as a matter of fact, were merely learned ways of expressing the fundamental truth naturally perceived by all, viz. that evil deeds and vices render a man evil, and good deeds and virtues render him good; no sane mind could conceive of a theory of imputation by which good is made evil or evil good.

Luther was naturally obliged by his new theology of imputation to declare war on the older theological view of the existence of virtue and vice in the soul.[530] It was in so doing that, in his excitement, he uttered the curses above referred to (p. 209). It was no mere question of words, but of the very foundation of his new theology, a fact which makes his excitement comprehensible.

As a matter of fact, by his application of the theory of imputation he was heading for a “transformation of all values” and drifting towards the admission of a “future life of good and evil” long before modern philosophy had confidently opened up a similar perspective.

6. Preparation for Justification

Notwithstanding the fact that, according to the above exposition in the Commentary on Romans, man has absolutely no freedom of choice for doing what is good and that we cannot know with regard to our works how God will account them, Luther frequently speaks in the same book of the preparation necessary for obtaining justification, namely, by works. Here his feeling and his eloquence come into full play at the expense of clear theology. He does not even take into account the irresistibility of grace, which is the point he is bound to arrive at finally. Christ alone does the work, he says (“_soli Christo iustitia relinquitur, soli ipsi opera gratiæ et spiritus_”).[531] On the other hand, the bringing about of justification, at least so far as preparation goes, is imposed upon man. There are “works which predispose to justification,” he teaches (“_opera quæ fiunt præparatorie ad iustificationem acquirendam_”). “Whoever by his works disposes himself for the grace of justification is already, to a certain extent, righteous; for righteousness largely consists in the will to be righteous.”[532]

“Such works,” he continues, “are good, because we do not trust in them, but by them prepare ourselves for justification by which alone we may hope for righteousness.”[533] “Therefore we must pray earnestly, be zealous in good works and mortify ourselves (‘_castigandum_’) until readiness and joyousness develop in the will and its old inclination to sin is overcome by grace.”

“For the grace [of justification] will not be given to man without this personal agriculture of himself” (“_non dabitur gratia sine ista agricultura sui ipsius_”).[534]

We must continue to “look upon such works as merely preparatory, just as all works of righteousness performed in grace, prepare in their turn for an increase of justification, according to Apoc. xxii. 11.”[535] “Only so can we be saved, namely, by repenting that we are laden with sin and are living in sin, and by imploring of God our deliverance.[536] He also, in other passages, emphasises the fact that works are necessary for justification as its preparation: “We must do works in order to obtain justification (‘_opera pro iustificatione quærenda_’), works of grace and faith; they confirm the desire for justification and the fulfilment of the law, but we may not think that we are justified by them.” “Rather, true believers spend their whole life in seeking justification ... whoever seeks it with the heart and by works, is without doubt already justified in God’s sight.”[537] Towards the end of the Commentary he describes in emphatic words, which will be quoted below, the humility and sighing which should bring about justification.

We need not here specify how far the demand for individual effort is here a reminiscence of his Catholic training, or more particularly due to the school of Occam. It is an undoubted fact that Occamism and pseudo-mysticism are here rubbing shoulders, and that Luther himself is aware of the incongruity.[538]

7. Appropriation of the righteousness of Christ by humility—Neither “Faith only” nor assurance of Salvation

Luther’s words, quoted above, where he says that Christ fulfilled the law for us, He made His righteousness ours and our sins His (see above, p. 95 f.), show that he applied in the fullest manner the theory of imputation to justification. Man remains a sinner, but the sin is not imputed to him, he is accounted righteous by the imputing to him of what is quite alien to him, viz. the righteousness of Christ. Thus he is at one and the same time the friend and the enemy of God.[539]

The verb “to justify” as used in Holy Scripture the author of the Commentary on Romans simply takes to mean “to account as righteous,” or “to declare righteous.” Thus he says: “The doers of the law (according to Rom. ii. 13) are justified, i.e. they are accounted righteous. In Psalm cxlii. we read: ‘In Thy sight no man living shall be justified,’ i.e. be accounted righteous.... The Pharisee in the Temple wished to ‘justify himself’ (Luke x. 29), i.e. to declare his justification.”[540]

“Whoever seeks peace in his righteousness, seeks it in the flesh.” “Christ only is righteousness and truth, and in Him all is given us in order that by Him we may be righteous and true and escape eternal damnation.”[541] “This justification takes place (according to Paul) outside of works of the law, i.e. without works which are outside of faith and grace, that is, which come from the law, which forces by fear and attracts by temporal promises. The Apostle calls those only works of faith which proceed from the spirit of freedom through the love of God, and these can only be done by the man who is justified by faith. The works of the law however do not help towards justification, but are rather a hindrance because they prevent a man from looking upon himself as unrighteous and in need of justification.”[542]

“Christ, according to the Apostle, has become our righteousness (1 Cor. i. 30), i.e. all the good that we possess is exterior, it is Christ’s. It is only in us by faith and hope in Him.” “Our fulness and our righteousness is outside of us, within we are empty and poor.... The pious know that sin alone dwells in them, but that this is covered over and not imputed on account of Christ.... The beauty of Christ conceals our hideousness.”[543]

“There is in this system,” says Denifle, in his description of it, “no question of the expulsion of sin. The sinner ... casts himself in his sinful condition on Christ without any means of his own, he hides himself under the wings of the hen and comforts himself with the idea: Christ has done everything in place of me, all my works would be merely sin ... Luther did not perceive what a grievous wrong he was doing to God by this theory. It entirely suppresses the inward grace of God which raises a man up again, penetrates to the depths of his soul and purifies and fills it with supernatural strength. The organic process of justification thus shrinks into a purely mechanical shifting of the scenery.” To this Denifle opposes the statement of Holy Scripture: “That man by a living faith is implanted in Christ as the sapling is grafted on to the olive tree, or the branch on the vine, so that there must be an interior change, an ennobling, and thus a new life.”[544]

Luther says, “we are outwardly righteous because we are justified, not by our works, but only by the reputation of God; but His reputation is not inwardly within us, and is not within our power.” “_Solum Deo reputante sumus iusti, ergo non nobis viventibus vel operantibus; quare intrinsece et ex nobis impii semper._”[545]

The connection between “reputation” as above and Occam’s theory of acceptation is unmistakable.

The nominalistic views of God and of His arbitrary acceptation were the form in which Luther’s ideas were moulded. The general structure of his thoughts was derived from what he had retained of the Nominalism of Occam.[546] On the principal point, however, Luther diverges from the theology of the school of Occam by not admitting in any way the saving grace which the latter teaches. There is with him no such thing as an infused virtue of righteousness.[547] Luther in his doctrine on virtue and vice had already suppressed them as “qualities,” i.e. as objective realities; still more so does he deny that the grace which makes us righteous is in any sense a real “_qualitas_,” or “_habitus_”; in fact, he leaves no actual justifying grace whatever actually inherent in man, but merely sees in God a gracious willingness not to regard us as sinners, and to lend us His all-powerful assistance for the struggle against sin (concupiscence and actual sin).

Thus the outlines of the strongest assertions which he makes later as to the imputing of the righteousness of Christ are already apparent in his interpretation of the Epistle to the Romans. Christ alone has assumed the place of what the Catholic calls saving grace. He already teaches what he was to sum up later in the short formula: “Christ Himself is my quality and my formal righteousness,” or, again, what he was to say to Melanchthon in 1536: “Born of God and at the same time a sinner; this is a contradiction; but in the things of God we must not hearken to reason.”[548] His Commentary on Romans prepares us for his later assertions: “The gospel is a teaching having no connection whatever with reason, whereas the teaching of the law can be understood by reason ... reason cannot grasp an extraneous righteousness and, even in the saints, this belief is not sufficiently strong.”[549] “The enduring sin is admitted by God as non-existent; one and the same act may be accepted before God and not accepted, be good and not good.” “Whoever terms this mere cavilling (‘_cavillatio_’) is desirous of measuring the Divine by purblind human reason and understands nothing of Holy Scripture.”[550]

* * * * *

How then are we to obtain from God the imputation of the righteousness of Christ? There is surely some condition to be supplied by man which may allow it to be conferred, for it cannot rule blindly and unconsciously. Or are we never certain of this imputation? Luther’s answer is very pessimistic: Man never knows that it has been bestowed upon him. He can only hope, by sinking himself in his own nothingness (“_humilitas_”), to placate God and obtain this imputation.

Thus the author of the Commentary on Romans is still very far from that absolute assurance of salvation by faith which he was subsequently to advocate.[551]

He insists so much on the uncertainty of salvation that he blames Catholic theologians severely for the assurance and confidence which their teaching induces in man, and refuses to admit any of the customary signs which moralists and ascetics look upon as conclusive testimony of a soul being in a state of grace.

The advantage he perceives in his new ideas is precisely that they keep man ever in a state of fear (“_semper pavidus_”).[552] That, as Luther expressly says, “we can never know whether we are justified and whether we believe, is owing to the fact that it is hidden from us whether we live in every word of God.”[553] When dealing with a passage, which he makes use of later in quite a different sense (Rom. iii. 22, “the justice of God by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all”), he says: “We must fear and tremble (‘_timent et pavent_’) lest we please not God; we must be in fear and despair (‘_pavor et desperatio_’), for such is God’s own work in us; if this fear does not take the place of the customary signs, then there is no hope possible; and, in so far, fear alone is a good sign.”[554] “Our life is in death [here speaks the mystic], our salvation in destruction, our kingdom in banishment, our heaven in hell.”[555] “Away with all trust in righteousness.” Arise and “destroy all presumption in wholesome despair.”

On this road of painful despair Luther fancies he discovers the only really “good sign” of salvation, so far as any sign at all can be said to exist: “On account of the confession of their sins God accounts the saints as righteous.”[556]

“Whoever renounces everything, even himself, is ready to become nothing (_volens it in nihilum_), to go to death and to damnation, whoever voluntarily confesses and is persuaded that he deserves nothing good, such a one has done enough in God’s sight and is righteous. We must, believing in the word of the cross, die to ourselves and to everything; then we shall live for God alone.” “The saints have their sins ever before them, they beg for righteousness through the mercy of God and, for that very reason, they are always accounted righteous by God; in truth they are sinners, though righteous by imputation; unconsciously righteous and consciously unrighteous, sinners in deed but righteous in hope.” “God’s anger is great and wonderful; He accounts them at the same time righteous and unrighteous, removing sin and not removing it.”[557] Here he exclaims pathetically: “God is wonderful in His saints (Ps. lxvii. 36), who are at the same time righteous and unrighteous.” Of the “self-righteous” he immediately adds ironically: Wonderful is God in the hypocrites, “who are at the same time unrighteous and righteous!” Without any suspicion of paradox, he concludes: “It is certain that God’s elect will be saved, but no one is certain that he is chosen.”

Luther repeatedly represents the feeling of despair (under the name of “_humilitas_”) as not merely a means of recognising the imputation of God and therewith one’s salvation, but even as in itself the only means which can lead to salvation. He praises “humility” in mystical language as something man must struggle to attain and as the ideal of the devout. It occupies almost the same place in his mind as the “_sola fides_” at a later date.

That “humility” is to him the actual factor which obtains the imputation of the merits of Christ and thus makes the soul righteous and wins for it eternal salvation, is apparent not only from the above, but also from the following utterances: “When we are convinced that we are unrighteous and without the fear of God, when, thus humbled, we acknowledge ourselves to be godless and foolish, then we deserve to be justified by Him.”[558] The fear of God works humility, but humility makes us fit for all [salvation]; we must merely resign ourselves to the admission that “there is nothing so righteous that it is not unrighteous, nothing so true that it is not a lie, nothing so pure that it is not filthy and profane before God.”[559] “Let us be sinners in humility and only desire to be justified by the mercy of God.” He alone who acknowledges his entire unrighteousness, who fears and beseeches, he alone, “as an abiding sinner,” opens for himself the door to salvation.[560]

We must believe everything that is of Christ, he says, and only he does this who humbly bewails his own utter unrighteousness.[561] The mystic star of “humility” which has arisen to him he even describes as the “_vera fides_,” and makes the following inference: “As this is so, we must humble ourselves beyond bounds.” “When we have humbled ourselves wholly before God, then we have fulfilled righteousness, wholly and entirely (‘_totam perfectamque iustitiam_’); for what else does all Scripture teach but humility?”[562]

Luther ascribes to “humility” all that he later ascribes to faith; “all Scripture,” which now teaches humility, will later teach that faith is the only power which saves. In that very Epistle to the Romans, which at a later date was to be the bulwark of his “_sola fides_,” he can as yet, in 1515 and 1516, find only “_sola humilitas_.” His frequent exhortations to self-annihilation and despair of one’s own efforts, exhortations taking the form of fulsome praise of one particular kind of humility, must be traced back to mystical influence and to his irritation against the “proud self-righteous.”

It is true that Luther had, from the very beginning of his exposition, as the editor of the Commentary justly points out, “taken his stand against the scholastic [rather the Church’s] doctrine of salvation; it is apparent at the very outset of the lectures that the separation has already taken place.” It could not be otherwise, as at the commencement of the Commentary he already denies the power of man to do what is good. Ficker also says with truth: “Luther again and again comes back to his oldest and deepest torment, viz. the struggle against free will and man’s individual powers”;[563] his study of St. Paul confirms his views, which now take clearer shape, until finally “he incontinently identifies his opponents with the Pelagians.”[564]

With regard to Luther’s tenets on faith in the matter of salvation he has so far not departed in any essential from the accepted olden doctrine that faith is the commencement, root and foundation of salvation.

The editor of the Commentary also admits, though with limitations, the very remarkable fact that faith does not yet occupy in the Commentary on Romans the position which Luther assigns to it later: “the ‘_fides_,’ which Luther explains with the help of a number of terms borrowed from his lectures on the Psalms, in the exposition of the Pauline Epistle does not as yet appear in its entire fulness and depth, as the expression of the relation of man to the eternal, at least not to the same extent as it does later; frequently we have a mere reproduction of the Pauline phraseology; there is no lack of reminiscences of Augustine, and the results of an Occamist training are also apparent.”[565]

We certainly cannot say that at the very beginning of the Commentary,[566] faith or even “_sola fides_” is conceded the high place which it is afterwards to occupy in his system; the expression “_sola fides_” occurs there by pure accident and does not bear its later meaning; it is only intended to elucidate a sentence which in itself is correct: “_iustitia Dei est causa salutis_.” By this is meant that “_fides evangelii_” to which, as Luther says, Augustine ascribes justification, but which the latter, according to Luther’s own admission, did not intend to take in the sense of the later Lutheran “_sola fides_.” Above all, as already pointed out, faith, in the Commentary on Romans, lacks its chief characteristic and does not of itself alone produce an absolute assurance of the state of grace. It was only in 1518 that Luther arrived at his peculiar belief in justification by virtue of a confident faith in Christ (assurance of salvation).[567]

In the Commentary on Romans Luther understands by faith, first the general submission of the mind to Divine revelation, a faith which he here, as also later, in agreement with the Church’s teaching, accounts as the first preliminary for the state of grace. His opposition to works and self-righteousness frequently urges him to praise the high value of the faith which comes from God, whilst his mysticism likewise makes him accentuate the importance of trust and blind submission. “_Credite, confidite_” he cries in his exposition of the Psalms—of which the standpoint is still entirely that of the Church—also fervently recommending to his hearers the “_fiducia gratiæ Dei_.”[568] All that can be complained of is that there, as in the Commentary on the Psalms, he seizes every occasion to speak in favour of the advantages which faith possesses over works.

With regard to his teaching on faith in the Commentary on Romans, Denifle complains of “Luther’s want of clearness in respect of justifying faith,” of his exaggerations and indistinctness, of “his absolute ignorance of wholesome theology.”[569] “The medium in this doctrine of justification,” he says, “is really not faith at all, but the confession that we are always under the works of the law, always unrighteous, always sinners”; “he never, even later, arrived at a correct or uniform idea of faith.... Luther’s assertion of the bondage of the will (complete passivity) renders faith in the process of justification, a mere monstrosity.”[570]

Here we are not as yet concerned with the qualities of faith in the Lutheran process of justification, but it must be pointed out, that the acceptance of complete passivity in justification is a necessary corollary of the above ideas of “_humilitas_.” “Whereas the Christian,” Denifle says, following the Catholic teaching, “moved and inspired by the grace of God repents of his sins, and, with a trusting faith, turns to God and implores their pardon, Luther excludes from justification all acts whether inward or outward on the part of the sinner; for God could not come into our possession or be attained to without the suppression of everything that is positive. Our works must cease and we ourselves must remain passive in God’s hands.”[571] In the Commentary on Romans passivity in the work of justification is certainly insisted on. Luther does not take the trouble to reconcile this with the activity which man is to exert in steeping himself in humility in order, by his prayers and supplications, to gain salvation.[572] He says of passivity: “God cannot be possessed or touched except by the negation of everything that is in us.”[573] “Then only are we capable of receiving God’s works and plans, when our planning and our works cease; when we are altogether passive with regard to God interiorly as well as exteriorly.”[574] In the Commentary on Galatians, not long after, he calls Christian righteousness a “passive righteousness,” because we “there do nothing, and give God nothing.”[575]

8. Subjectivism and Church Authority. Storm and Stress

Subjectivism plays an important part in the exposition of the Epistle to the Romans.

It makes itself felt not merely in Luther’s treatment of the Doctors and the prevalent theological opinions, but also in his ideas concerning the Church and her authority. We cannot fail to see that the Church is beginning to take the second place in his mind. Notwithstanding the numerous long-decided controversial questions raised in the Commentary, there is hardly any mention of the teaching office of the Church, and the reader is not made aware that with regard to these questions there existed in the Church a fixed body of faith, established either by actual definition or by generally accepted theological opinion. The doctrine of absolute predestination to hell, for instance, had long before been authoritatively repudiated in the decisions against Gottschalk, but is nevertheless treated by Luther as an open question, or rather as though it had been decided in the affirmative, thus making of God a cruel avenger of involuntary guilt.

The impetuous author, following his mistaken tendency to independence, disdains to be guided by the heritage of ecclesiastical and theological truth, as the Catholic professor is wont to be in his researches in theology and in his explanations of Holy Scripture. Luther, though by no means devoid of faith in the Church, and in the existence in her of the living Spirit of God, lacks that ecclesiastical feeling which inspired so many of his contemporaries in their speculations, both theological and philosophical; we need only recall his own professor, Johann Paltz, and Gabriel Biel to whom he owed so much. Impelled by his subjectivism, and careless of the teaching of preceding ages, he usually flies straight to his own “profounder theology” for new solutions. Here the habits engendered by the then customary debates in the schools exercise a detrimental effect on him. He is heedless of the fact that his hasty and bold assertions may undermine the foundations which form the learned support to the Church’s dogmas. Important and assured truths become to him, according to this superficial method, mere “soap bubbles” which his breath can burst, “chimeras of fancy” which will melt away in the mist. This is the case, for instance, with the traditional doctrines of saving grace, of the distinction between original and actual sin, and of meritorious good works. Whoever does not agree with his terrible doctrine of predestination is simply reckoned among the subtle theologians, who are desirous of saving everything with their vain distinctions.[576] We cannot, of course, measure Luther by the standard of the Tridentine decrees, which embodied these and other questions in distinct formularies of which the Church in his time had not yet the advantage. Yet the principal points which Luther began to agitate at this time were, if not already actual dogmas, yet sufficiently expressed in the body of the Church’s teaching and illuminated by ecclesiastical theology.

That he still adheres in the Commentary to the principle of the hierarchy is apparent from the fact that he declares its office to be sublime, and loudly bewails the fact that so many unworthy individuals had forced themselves at that time into its ranks; he says in his curious language: “It is horrifying and the greatest of all perils that there can be in this world or the next; it is simply the one biggest danger of all.”[577] In the hierarchy, he says, God condescended to our weakness by choosing to speak to us and come to our assistance through the medium of men, and not directly, in His unapproachable and terrible majesty.[578]

He also recognises the various grades of the hierarchy, priestly and episcopal Orders. “The Church is a general hospital for healing those who are spiritually sick”;[579] the rules which she gives to the clergy, the recital of the Divine Office for instance, must be obediently carried out.[580] She has a right to temporal possessions, only “at the present day almost all declare these to be spiritual things; they, the clergy, are masters in this ‘spiritual’ domain and are more careful about it than about their real spiritualities, or about their use of thunderbolts [excommunications] in the sentences pronounced by the Church.”[581]

According to him, the prelates and the Church have a perfect right to condemn false teachers however much the latter may “utter their foolish cry of ‘we have the truth, we believe, we hear, we call upon God.’” “Just as though they must be of God because they seem to themselves to be of God. No, we have an authority which has been implanted in the Church, and the Roman Church has this authority in her hands. Therefore the preachers of the Church, unless they fall into error, preach with assurance [on account of their commission]. But false teachers are pleased with their own words, because they are according to their own ideas. They appear to demand the greatest piety, but are themselves governed by their own opinion, and their self-will.”[582] “Whoever declares that he is sent by God must either give proof of his mission by wonders and heavenly testimony, as the Apostles did, or he must be recognised and commissioned by an authority confirmed by Heaven. In the latter case, he must stand and teach in humble subjection to such authority, ever ready to submit to its judgment; he must speak what he is commissioned to speak and not what his own taste leads him to invent.... Anathema is the weapon,” he exclaims—unconscious of his own future—“which lays low the heretics.”[583]

Whenever he gets the chance he magnifies the corruption of the Church so much that his expressions might lead one to suppose that the saving institution founded by Christ was either completely decayed and fallen away or was at least on the road to forsaking its vocation as teacher and as the guardian of morals. His complaints may, it is true, be in part accounted for by the impetuosity which carries him away and by his rhetorical turn. He probably did not at that time really think that a healthy reformation from within was absolutely impossible. Still, had anyone attempted to carry out his immature and excessive demands for reform, they would hardly have achieved much in the way of a real regeneration. His ideas of a radical change were deeply ingrained in his mind; this we naturally gather from his bringing them forward so frequently and under such varied forms. In his mystical moods he sees the errors and abuses opposed to the “Word” swollen into a veritable “deluge”; his professorial chair is only just above the waves. Hence he will cry out as loudly as he can. In his voice we can, however, detect a false note, and his exaggerations and all his stormings do not avail to inspire us with confidence. He is too full of his own subjectivity, too impetuous and passionate to be a reformer, though his other gifts might have fitted him for the office. His very sensitiveness to neglect of duty in others, had it been purified and disciplined, aided by his eloquence, might have been able to inaugurate a movement of reform. In many of his sayings he comes nigh the position of a Catholic reformer, and even, at times, makes exaggerated demands on obedience and the need of feeling with the Church.[584]

We may add the following to the complaints above mentioned, as occurring in the Commentary on Romans with regard to the state of the Church.

“The Pope and the chief pastors of the Church,” so runs Luther’s general and bitter charge, “have become corrupt and their works are deserving of malediction; they stand forth at the present day as seducers of the Christian people” (“_seducti et seducentes populum Christi a vera cultura Dei_”).[585] He waxes eloquent not only against their too frequent granting of indulgences—from which in their avarice they derived worldly profit for the Church—but also against their luxurious lives which fill the whole world with the vices of Sodom, and others too; under their wicked stewardship the faithful throughout the Church have altogether forgotten what good works, faith and humility are, and make their eternal salvation depend upon external observances and foolish legends. Even those who have more insight and are better men, are all self-righteous and more like idolaters than Christians.

The Apostle Paul, he says, expounds in the Epistle to the Romans, the command of loving our neighbour (xii. 6 _seq._), but is this followed by the Church? Instead of fulfilling it “we busy ourselves with trivialities, build churches, increase the possessions of the Church, heap money together, multiply the ornaments and vessels of silver and gold in the churches, erect organs and other pomps which please the eye. We make piety to consist in this. But where is the man who sets himself to carry out the Apostle’s exhortations, not to speak of the great prevailing vices of pride, arrogance, avarice, immorality and ambition.”[586] Not long after this outburst, speaking in a milder strain, he says: “We exalt ourselves so as to instruct the whole world, and hardly understand ourselves what we are teaching.” “People without training or knowledge of the world, sent by their bishops and religious superiors, undertake to instruct men, but really only add to the number of chatterers and windbags.”[587]

On another occasion he declares, people think bustle in the church, loud organ playing and pompous solemnities at Mass are all that is needed; for such things collections are made, whereas alms-giving for the relief of our neighbour is not accounted anything. Nothing is thought of swearing, lying or backbiting, even on Feast Days, but if anyone eats flesh-meat or eggs on a Friday, he gives great scandal, so unreasonable are all people nowadays (“_adeo nunc omnes desipiunt_”). What is needed to-day is to do away with the Fast Days and to abrogate many of the Festivals ... the whole Christian Code ought to be purified and changed, and the solemnities, ceremonies, devotions and the adorning of the churches reduced. But all this is on the increase daily, so that faith and charity are stifled, and avarice, arrogance and worldliness grow apace. What is worse, the faithful hope to find in this their eternal salvation and do not trouble about the inner man.[588]

The lawyers, he says, speaking in a mystical vein, act quite wrongly when, as soon as they see that anyone has the law on his side, they encourage him to assert his rights (“_qui statim quod secundum iura iustum sciunt, prosequendum suadent_”). “On the contrary, every Christian should rejoice in suffering injustice, even in matters of the greatest moment (‘_quoad maximas iustitias nostras_’).... But almost the whole world runs after the contrary error [i.e. sternly asserts its rights]. Cardinals, bishops, princes act like the Jews did to the King of Babylon (2 Kings xxiv. 20; xxv. 1 ff.); they cling to their petty privileges, lose sight of morality and so perish.” Someone should have told Duke George (of Saxony) when he fought against the Duke of Frisia: “Your own and your people’s deserts are not so great that you should not rather have patiently allowed yourself to be chastised by that rebel, who, though unrighteous, was the executor of God’s righteous judgment. Calm yourself therefore and acknowledge the Will of God.”[589]

He says something similar to his own bishop, Hieronymus Schulz (Scultetus) of Brandenburg,[590] and to another bishop, probably Wilhelm von Honstein, Bishop of Strasburg. The latter had put in force the ecclesiastical statutes against the infringers of the sanctity of the church. Luther says: “Why trouble a town with this wretched matter? It is merely a question of human regulations; but if the bishop desired to enforce God’s laws, he would not need to leave his own house; he is not indeed acting wrongly, but he is swallowing a camel and straining at gnats (Matt. xxiii. 24).... But the bishops thirst for vengeance, they brand the criminals and themselves deserve to be worse branded. Would to God that the time may come when rights and privileges and all who worship them are consigned to perdition! Ambition and unbelief should not be allowed to triumph over those condemned for transgressing the statutes.”[591]

“I say this with pain, but I am obliged to because I have an Apostolic commission to teach. My duty is to point out to all the wrong they are committing, even to those in high places.”[592]

In accordance with this, the young Professor loudly blames Pope Julius II. In his quarrel with the Republic of Venice “this advice should have been given him: ‘Holy Father, Venice is doing you a wrong, but the Roman Church deserves it on account of her faults, yea, she deserves even worse. Therefore do nothing, such is the Will of God.’ But the Pope replied: ‘No, no, let us vindicate our rights by force.’”[593] “He chastised them [the Venetians] with great bloodshed because they had sinned grievously and seized upon the possessions of the Church; he brought them back to the Church and so gained great merit. But the horrible corruption of the Papal Curia and the mountain of the most terrible immorality, pomp, avarice, ambition and sacrilege is accounted no sin.”[594]

On another occasion, after a no less forcible outburst against Rome, he demands the abolition of “false piety”: This so-called piety must no longer be permitted, as though it were merely a weakness; but in Rome they do not trouble about doing away with it, there is there nothing but the freedom of the flesh; “almost all are wanting in charity.” “I fear that in these days we are all on the road to utter destruction.”[595]

We must listen, he says—alluding to the formalism which he thinks is apparent everywhere—to the “inward word,” which often speaks to us quite differently from the injunctions to which we are accustomed. “The wisdom of fools always looks more to the work than to the word; it thinks itself able to gauge the meaning and value of the word from the value or worthlessness of the deeds”; what we should do is the contrary; the precious, inestimable word must always resound in our hearts and direct all our outward actions.[596] The “spirit of the believer is subject to no one,” “the spirit is free as regards all things”; “all exterior things are free to those who are in the spirit.” “The bondage [of charity] is the highest liberty.”[597]

Such words form a quite obvious preliminary to the “Evangelical freedom” which he was afterwards to vindicate. He thus gives a much wider application to the ideas he had met with in Tauler than was in the mind of that pious mystic. Tauler writes: “I tell you that you must not submit your inner man to anyone, but to God only. But your exterior man you must submit in a true and real humility to God and to all creatures.”[598] Luther says what on the surface seems quite similar: the Christian is free and master of all things and is subject to no one (by faith), and yet at the same time a willing servant of all and subject to all (by charity).[599] Yet, both in the Commentary on Romans and in the works which were soon to follow, “the willing servant” is more and more ousted by false ideas of independence, so that a danger arises of only the “free master of all things” remaining. In the Commentary on Romans all exterior submission to the Church is, in principle, menaced by a liberty which, appealing to the inward experience of the Word and a deeper conception of religion, seeks to overstep all barriers.

The confused ideas for which he was beholden to his pseudo-mysticism were in great part the cause of this and of other errors.

9. The Mystic in the Commentary on Romans

Since the appearance in print of Luther’s Commentary on Romans it has been possible to perceive more clearly the ominous power which false mysticism had gained over the young author.

His misapprehension of some of the principal elements of Tauler’s sermons and of the “Theologia Deutsch” stands out in sharp relief in these lectures on the Pauline Epistle, and we see more plainly how the obscure ideas he finds in the mystics at once amalgamate with his own. The connection between the pseudo-mysticism which he has built up on the basis of true mysticism, and the method of theology which he is already pursuing, appears here so great, and he follows so closely the rather elastic figures and thoughts provided by the mystical science of the soul, that we are almost tempted, after reading his exposition of the Epistle to the Romans, to ask whether all his intellectual mistakes were not an outcome of his mysticism. The fact is, however, that he began his study of mysticism only after having commenced formulating the principles of his new world of thought. It was only after the ferment had gone on working for a considerable time that he chanced upon certain mystic works. Yet, strange to say, the mysticism with which he then became acquainted was not that German variety which had already been infected with the errors of Master Eckhart, but the sounder mysticism which had avoided the pitfalls. It is a tragic coincidence that mysticism, the most delicate blossom of the theology of the Middle Ages and of true Catholicism, should have served to confirm him in so many errors. True mysticism has in all ages been a protest against all moral cowardice and inertia, against tepidity and self-complacent mediocrity; false mysticism, on the other hand, debases itself to Quietism and even to Antinomianism; the world has lived to see pseudo-mysticism deny evil the better to permit it.[600] Even true mysticism is constantly open to the danger not only of conscious and intentional exaggeration of its theses, but of unintentional misapprehension.

Misapprehension is a misfortune to which mysticism was ever exposed, owing mainly to the inadequacy of human language to express the mystic’s thoughts,[601] whereas Scholasticism, thanks to its clear-cut terminology, has been spared such a fate, and for the same reason has never been in favour with confused and cloudy minds. Tauler had originally been trained in the Scholasticism of St. Thomas of Aquin, and in the teaching of the Frankfort author of the “Theologia Deutsch” the true principles of the old school still shine out. This, however, did not save these writers from having formerly been considered, by Protestants, precursors of Luther’s doctrines. Denifle, by his studies on these and the later mystics, threw such valuable light on the subject that the Protestant theologian Wilhelm Braun, in the work he recently devoted to tracing the development of Luther, says: “it is wrong for Protestants to claim mysticism as a pre-Reformation reforming movement; this Denifle has proved in his epoch-making researches.”[602]

_False Passivity_

As regards the important new data furnished by the Commentary on Romans on Luther’s mysticism, the editor himself admits in the preface that “the ideal of resignation [preached by the Catholic mystics] was raised by Luther to an unconditional passivity and to a real system of Quietism, which he completely identified with the theme of the Epistle to the Romans and with the piety of St. Augustine. In this he found the bond of union combining all his experiences. Mysticism it is which lends its deep and fiery hue to his thoughts; where Luther is describing the most intimate processes and gives their highest expression to the thoughts which inspire him, it is mysticism which is speaking through him ... the complete and unconditional surrender of man to God.”[603]

Luther gives in a peculiar fashion his reasons for taking such a standpoint: “The Nature of God demands that He should first destroy and annihilate everything there is in us before He imparts His gifts. For it is written: ‘The Lord maketh poor and maketh rich, He bringeth down to hell and bringeth back again.’ By this most gracious plan He renders us fit for the reception of His gifts and His works. We are then receptive to His works and plans when our own plans and our own works have ceased, and we become quite passive towards God (‘_quando nostra consilia cessant et opera quiescunt et efficimur pure passivi respectu Dei_’) both as regards exterior and interior activity.... Then the ‘utterable sighs’ commence, then ‘the Spirit comes and helps our infirmity.’”[604] It is in the description of this “suffering and bearing of God” that he expressly quotes Tauler as the teacher of the higher form of prayer, adding: “Yes, yes, ‘we know not how we should pray,’ therefore the Spirit is necessary to assist us in our weakness.” “As a woman remains passive in conception, so we must remain passive to the first grace and eternal salvation. For our soul is Christ’s bride. Before grace, it is true, we pray and implore, but when grace comes and the soul is to be impregnated by the Spirit, then it must neither pray nor act, but only endure. To the soul this seems hard and it is downcast, for that the soul should be without act of the understanding and the will, that is much like sinking into darkness, destruction and annihilation (‘_in perditionem et annihilationem_’); from this prospect she shrinks back in horror, but in so doing she often deprives herself of the most precious gifts of grace.”[605]

It was just on this point that Luther most completely misapprehended Tauler. It is true that this mediæval mystic speaks strongly against any too great esteem of human activity, and that he also recommends the spiritual man, in certain circumstances, to “refuse all exterior works the better to devote himself with the necessary submission and in entire peace” to interior communication with his Maker and Highest Good, and, as he says, “to suffer God.”[606] But he does not thereby recommend man to long after a state without thought or will, or after mere nothingness—in order to magnify God and His powers alone; according to Tauler, grace does not work in the soul “without the co-operation of the understanding and the will.”

_The Quenching of the “Good Spark in the Soul”_

Luther in the above recommendation to passivity falsely assumes that the soul is entirely corrupted by original sin and only offends God with its acts. This also appears clearly in the Commentary on Romans. Protestants themselves now admit that Luther deviated from the standpoint of the orthodox mystics, particularly from that of Tauler, and that “in the view of the mystics of the Middle Ages there is no doubt that the natural good in man outweighs the natural evil. The central point in which all the lines of mystic theology converge is this indestructible goodness.” So speaks a Protestant theologian.[607]

In Gerson, the mystic whom Luther had studied in his early days at Erfurt, he must have met with the beautiful teaching, that the soul had received from God a natural tendency towards what is good, that this is “the virginal portion of the soul,” which is the “source and seat of mystical theology.”[608] Tauler is fond of treating of this “noble spark of fire in the soul,” of “this interior nobility which lies hidden in the depths.”[609] The Scholastics, too, unanimously teach this disposition to good which remains after original sin.