Chapter XXVIII: The New Dogmas in an Historical and Psychological Light (2)

The olden Church had given her faithful a clear answer which set every doubt at rest: The warrant for our belief is the authority of the Church instituted by Christ and endowed by God with infallibility. In effect the voice of the General Councils, the decisions of an unbroken line of vicars of Christ on the Papal throne, the teaching of the hierarchy everywhere and at every time, the consensus of the faithful, in brief, the outward testimony of Christ’s whole Church, aroused in all hearts the happy certainty that the faith offered was indeed the revelation of God; people, indeed, believed in God and in His Word, but what they believed was what the Church proposed for belief. The Church also declared, though not in the same sense as Luther, “_Fides non ullorum auctoritate sed Spiritu solo Dei oritur in corde_.”[1469] The Church taught, what the Council of Trent emphasised anew, viz. that, by the action of the Holy Ghost alone, i.e. by the supernatural Grace of God which exalts the powers of man, faith attains to what is requisite for salvation.

Luther, who overthrew the authority of the Church’s teaching office, was unable to provide the soul in its struggle after faith with any guarantee beyond his own authority to take the Church’s place. In his “Von beider Gestallt des Sacramentes” he refers to Christ Himself the man oppressed by doubt and fear, viz. to a court of appeal inaccessible to the seeker, and this he did at a time when he himself had started all kinds of discussions on the sense of the Gospel, and when Christ was being claimed in support of the most widely divergent views. He refers the enquirer to Christ, because here he deems it better not to say plainly “hold fast to me,” though elsewhere such an admonition was not too bold a one for him to give. “Think rather for yourself,” such is his advice, “you have death or persecution in front of you, and I cannot be with you then nor you with me. Each one must fight for himself and overcome the devil, death and the world. Were you at such a time to be looking round to see where I was, or I to see where you were, or were you disturbed because I or anyone else on earth asserted differently, you would be lost already and have let the Word slip from your heart, for you would be clinging, not to the Word, but to me or to some other; in that case there is no help.”[1470]

He thus leaves the anxious man “to himself” at the most awful of moments; elsewhere, too, he does the same. When he invites every man to “taste the Word of God” betimes and to “feel” how directly “the Master speaks within his heart,” this is merely a roundabout way of repeating the comfortless warning that “each one must fight for himself.” In other words, what he means is: I have no sure warrant to give in the stead of the Church’s authority; you must find out for yourself whether you have received the true Word of Christ by consulting your own feelings.

In addition to this, in the opinion of many Protestant theologians, the faith to be derived from the Bible which everyone must necessarily arrive at was very much circumscribed by Luther. “Man’s attitude towards Christ and His saving Grace” loomed so large with him, that it “decided the question whether a man was, or was not, a believer.” If, in the Protestantism of to-day, Luther’s “idea of faith” is frequently taken rather narrowly, it must be admitted that in many of his statements and demands he himself goes even further. We have here to do with that “two-sidedness in his attitude towards Scripture,” which “is apparent at every period of his life.”[1471] If we keep to the earlier and more “liberal” side of his “Evangelical conception of faith,” then indeed the trusting and confident assumption of such a relationship with Christ would certainly be “decisive in the question whether a man was a believer or not, and Luther himself frequently used this criterion, for instance, when he answers as follows the question: Who is a member of the Church and whom must one regard as a dear brother in Christ: ‘All who confess Christ as sent by God the Father in order to reconcile us by His death and to obtain grace for us’; or again elsewhere: ‘All those who cling to Christ alone and confess Him in faith,’ or, yet again: All those ‘who seek the Lord with all their heart and soul, and trust only in God’s mercy.’[1472] In such utterances we have the purely religious conception of Evangelical faith clearly summarised.” (Cp. above, vol. iii., p. 13.)

Agreeably with this conception of faith, some Protestants have contended that Luther should have been much more broad-minded with regard to doubts and to doctrines which differed from his own; his opposition to other views, notably to those of the Zwinglians, brought him, however, to another conception of faith, to one more closely related to the Catholic theory. According to Catholic doctrine, faith is a firm assent to all that God has revealed and the Church proposes for belief. It is made up of many articles, not one of which can be set aside without injury to the whole. Luther, so we are told, “owing to his controversy with Zwingli, ran the risk of exchanging his conception of faith for this one [the Catholic one], according to which faith is the acceptance of a whole series of articles of faith.”

In reality he did not merely “run the risk” of reaching such a doctrine; he had, all along, even in earlier days, been moving on these same lines, albeit in contradiction with himself. It was in fact nothing altogether new when he wrote in the Articles of Schwabach: “Such a Church is nothing else than the faithful in Christ, who believe, hold and teach the above Articles.”[1473] The faith for which he wishes to stand always comprised the contents of the oldest Creeds, and he prefers to close his eyes to the fact that they were really undermined by his other propositions. By these articles he is determined to abide. Hence it is hardly fair to appeal to him in favour of their abrogation, and any such appeal would only serve to emphasise his self-contradiction. Luther himself, when dealing with opponents, frequently speaks of the breaking of a single link as being sufficient to make the whole chain fall apart. “All or nothing” was his cry, viz. the very same as Catholics had used against his own innovations. In short, in his “two-sidedness,” he, quite generally, seeks a sure foothold against difficulties from within and from without in the principle of authority in its widest meaning, and, when trying to safeguard the Apostles’ Creed and the “œcumenical symbols,” he appeals expressly to the Catholic past. He says that by thus vindicating the Apostles’ Creed and that of Nicæa he wished to show that he “was true to the rightful, Christian Church, which had retained them till that day.”[1474] The Fathers preserved them and, as in the case of the Athanasian Creed, supplemented and enlarged the traditional formulas, the better to counter heretics; Luther is even willing to accept new terms not found in Scripture, but coined by the Church, such as “_peccatum originale_” or “_consubstantialis_” _ὁμοούσιος_,[1475] since they might profitably be employed against false teachers.

_Protestant Objections to Luther’s so-called “Formal Principle.”_

“It is not for us to tone down or conceal the contradictions which present themselves,” writes a Protestant theologian who has made Luther’s attitude towards Scripture the subject of particular study. “... Even judged by the standard of his own day Luther does not display that uniformity which we are entitled to expect.... The psychological motives in particular are very involved and spring from different sources. The very fact that throughout his life he exhibited a certain obstinacy and violence towards both himself and others, must render doubtful any attempt to trace everything back to a single source. Obstinacy always points to contradictions.” This author goes so far as to say: “We might almost give vent to the paradox, that only in these contradictions is uniformity apparent; such a proposition would, however, hold good only before the court of psychology.” “To-day it is not possible to embrace Luther’s view in its entirety.”[1476]

In an historical account of Luther’s teaching (and it is in this that most Protestant scholars are interested) we must, as we advance, ever keep in view Luther’s whole individuality with all its warring elements. The difficulty thus presented to our becoming better acquainted with his views is, however, apparent from the words already quoted from one of Luther’s biographers concerning Luther’s wealth of ideas, which also, to some extent, apply even to his statements on dogma: “Every word Luther utters plays in a hundred lights and every eye meets with a different radiance which it would gladly fix.”[1477]

In spite of the difficulties arising from this character of the Wittenberg Doctor, early orthodox Lutheranism taught that he had set up the “_sola scriptura_” as the “formal principle” of the new doctrine. According to eminent authorities in modern Protestantism, however, this formal principle was stillborn; it was never capable in practice of supporting an edifice of doctrine, still less of forming a community of believers. Hence the tendency has been to make it subservient to the “Evangelical” understanding of the Bible.

Thus F. Kropatscheck, the author of the learned work “Das Schriftprinzip der lutherischen Kirche” (1904), says candidly, “that the formal principle of Protestantism [Scripture only] does not suffice in itself as a foundation for the true Christian life whether of the individual or of a community.” “Where the Evangelical content is lacking, the formal principle does not rise above sterile criticism.”[1478]

Kropatscheck’s examination of the mediæval views on Scripture led him moreover to recognise, that, in theory at least, the Bible always occupied its due place of honour; its content was, however, so he fancies, not understood until Luther rediscovered it as the Gospel of the “forgiveness of sins through Christ.”[1479] So far, according to him, did esteem for Scripture as the Word of God go in the Middle Ages, that he even ventures to characterise the formula “_sola scriptura_” as “Catholic commonplace”;[1480] this, however, he can only have intended in the sense in which it was read and supplemented by another Protestant theologian: “In practice this did not exclude the interpretation of Scripture on the lines of tradition.”[1481] “The so-called formal principle,” the above work goes on to say, with quite remarkable fairness to the past, “was much more utilised in the Middle Ages than popular accounts would lead us to suppose. To the Reformation we owe neither the formula (‘_sola scriptura_’) nor the insisting on the literal sense, nor the theory of inspiration, nor scarcely anything else demanded on the score of pure scriptural teaching.”[1482] “Almost all” the qualities attributed to Holy Scripture in the early, orthodox days of Protestantism “are already to be met with in the Middle Ages.”[1483]

In the same work Kropatscheck rightly sums up the teaching on the inspiration of the canonical books, of St. Thomas Aquinas, the principal exponent of the mediæval biblical teaching, doing so in a couple of sentences the clearness and conclusiveness of which contrast strangely with the new doctrine: “The effect of inspiration,” according to this Doctor of the Church, implies, negatively, preservation from error, positively, an enlightenment, both for the perception of supernatural truth and for the right judging of natural verities. Beyond this, a certain impulse from on high was needed to move the sacred scribes to write the burden of their message.[1484]

That in the past the doctrine of interpretation was bound up with the doctrine of inspiration, is, according to the statements of another Protestant writer, P. Drews,[1485] expressed as follows by the Catholic voice of Willibald Pirkheimer: “We should have to look on ourselves as reprobate were we to despise even one syllable of Holy Scripture, for we know and firmly believe that our salvation rests solely and entirely on the Gospel. Hence we have it daily in our hands and read it and regard it as the guide of our lives. But no one can blame us if we place greater reliance on the interpretation of the holy, ancient Fathers than on some garbled account of Holy Scripture, since it is, alas, daily evident that there are as many different readings of the Word of God as there are men. Herein lies the source of all the evils and disorders, viz. that every fool would expound Scripture, needless to say, to his own advantage.”[1486]

Protestant theologians have recently been diligent in studying Luther’s teaching on the Bible. The conclusions arrived at by O. Scheel, who severely criticises Luther, have several times been quoted in this work. K. Thimme, in a scholarly work entitled “Luthers Stellung zur Heiligen Schrift,”[1487] has pointed out that Luther, who “affirms the existence of real inaccuracies in Holy Scripture,” nevertheless, in the very year that he expressed contempt for certain books of the New Testament, loudly demanded “the firmest belief (‘_firmissime credatur_’), that nothing erroneous is contained in the canonical books.”[1488]

A. Galley, a theologian to whom it fell to review the book, declared, that, unfortunately, in spite of this and other essays on the subject, no sure and decisive judgment on Luther’s attitude towards Holy Scripture had yet been arrived at.[1489]--Does this not, perhaps, amount to saying that any ultimate verdict of harmony, truth and absence of contradictions is out of the question?

R. Seeberg in one work emphasises “Luther’s independent and critical attitude towards the books of the Old and New Testament Canon.” “Scripture is to be believed not on the external authority of the Church but because it is revelation tested by experience.... Scripture was to him the standard, test and measure of all ecclesiastical doctrine, but this it was as the expression of the experienced revelation of God.”[1490]

This statement Seeberg further explains elsewhere: “Though, in his controversies, Luther pits Scripture as the ‘Divine law’ against all mere ecclesiastical law [viz. the Church’s dogma], yet he regarded it as authoritative simply in so far as it was the original, vigorous witness to Christ and His salvation. Considered in this light, Scripture, however, cannot be put side by side with justifying faith as the second principle of Protestantism. The essential and fundamental thought is faith.”--What Seeberg here says is quietly aimed at the later, orthodox, Lutheran theologians who took from Luther the so-called formal principle of Protestantism, viz. the doctrine of the verbal inspiration of the Bible. “How is it possible, in view of Luther’s reprobation of certain things in the Bible ... and his admission that it contained mistakes, to imagine any verbal inspiration?”[1491]

Seeberg has also a remarkable account of Luther’s views on the relation to Scripture of that faith which in reality is based on inward experience: “The specific content of Scripture” is “Christ, His office and kingdom.” To this content it is that faith bears witness by inward experience (see above, p. 404 f.). For faith is “the recognition by the heart of the Almighty love revealed to us in God.... This recognition involves also the certainty that I am in the Grace of God.” “The truth of Scripture is something demonstrated inwardly,” etc. “The external, legal founding of doctrine upon dogma is thus set aside, and an end is made of the ancient canon of Vincent of Lerins. Even the legal [dogmatic] application of Scripture is in principle done away with.” Of the extent to which Luther carried out these principles the author says in conclusion: “That his practice was not always exemplary and devoid of contradiction can merely be hinted at here.”[1492]

It would have been better to say straight away that no non-contradictory use of contradictory principles was possible.

Dealing with a work by K. Eger (“Luthers Auslegung des Alten Testamentes”), W. Köhler said: “Any interpretation not limited by practical considerations ... was quite unknown to Luther, hence we must not seek such a thing in him.... Our best plan is to break with Luther’s principle of interpretation.” And, before this: “Luther’s principle of interpretation is everywhere the ‘_fides_,’ and what Luther has to offer in the way of sober, ‘historical’ interpretation is no growth of his own garden but a fruit of Humanism.... Just as the Schoolmen found their theology in the Old Testament, so he did his.”[1493]

Luther’s method of interpretation, however, presents much that calls for closer examination.

2. Luther as a Bible-Expositor

“Luther in his quality of Bible-expositor is one of the most extraordinary and puzzling figures in the domain of religious psychology.”[1494]

_Some Characteristics of Luther’s Exegesis._

It is true that some of Luther’s principles of exegesis are excellent, and that he has a better perception than many of his predecessors of the need of first ascertaining the literal sense, and, for this purpose, of studying languages. He is aware that the fourfold sense of Holy Scripture, so often wrongly appealed to, must retire before the literal meaning, and that we must ever seek what the sacred writer really and obviously meant, in whatever dress we find his ideas clothed. Some quite excellent observations occur in his works on the danger of having recourse to allegorical interpretations and of not taking the text literally.

Luther himself, it is true, in his earlier postils, frequently makes use of the allegory so dear to mediæval writers, often investing what he says in poetic and fantastic forms. Later on, however, he grew more cautious. Here again the abuse of allegory by the fanatics had its effect. In addition to this his constant efforts to prove his doctrine against theological gainsayers within and without his camp, forced him in his arguments to use the literal sense of the Bible, or at least what he considered such. The advantages of his German translation of the Bible will be spoken of elsewhere (see vol. v., xxxiv., 3).

Yet he lacked one thing essentially required of an expositor, viz. theological impartiality, nor was he fair to those means by which the Church’s interpreters were guided in determining the sense of Scripture.

Concerning the latter, it is enough to remember how lightheartedly he threw overboard the interpretation of the whole of the Christian past. His wantonness, which led him to esteem as of no account all the expositions and teachings of previous ages, deprived his exegesis of much help and also of any stable foundation. Even considered from the merely natural standpoint, real progress in religious knowledge must surely be made quietly and without any sudden break with what has already been won by the best minds by dint of diligent labour.

The rock on which Luther suffered shipwreck was however above all his complete lack of impartiality. In his work as expositor his concern was not to do homage to the truth in whatever shape he might encounter it in the texts he was interpreting, but to introduce into the texts his own ideas. Bearing in mind his controversy and his natural temperament, this cannot, however, surprise us. Hence it is not necessary to take too tragically the tricks he occasionally plays with Bible texts. Some of these have been most painstakingly examined,[1495] and, indeed, it was not without its advantages to have the general complaints raised thus verified in individual instances. Thanks to his investigations Döllinger was able to write: “False interpretations of the most obvious and arbitrary kind are quite the usual thing in his polemics. It would hardly be possible to carry this further than he did in his writings against Erasmus in the instances quoted even by Planck. Indeed, examples of utter wilfulness and violence to the text can be adduced in great number from his writings.” Most frequently, as Döllinger points out, “his interpretation is false, because he foists his own peculiar ideas on the biblical passages, ideas which on his own admission he reached not by a calm and dispassionate study of the Bible, but under conditions of painful mental disturbance and anxiety of conscience.” To this he was urged by the unrest certain Bible-sayings excited in him; in such cases, as Döllinger remarks, he knew how “to pacify his exegetical conscience by telling himself, that all this disquiet was merely a temptation of the devil, who wanted to puzzle him with passages from Scripture and thus drive him to despair.”[1496]

The whole of his exegesis is pervaded by his doctrine of Justification. In this sense he says in the preface to Galatians, the largest of his exegetico-dogmatic works: “Within me this one article of faith in Christ reigns supreme. Day and night all my ideas on theology spring from it and return thereto.”[1497]

“The article of Justification,” he declares, in a disputation in 1537, “is the master and prince, the lord, regent and judge of every form of doctrine, which preserves and rules all ecclesiastical knowledge and exalts our consciousness before God.”[1498]

Two years before this (1535) he expressed himself still more strongly in a disputation: “Scripture is not to be understood against, but for, Christ. Hence it must either be made to apply to Him--or not be regarded as true Scripture at all.”[1499]

His highly vaunted idea of Justification he sought to apply first and foremost to those books or passages of the Bible which, as he expressed it, “preach Christ.” Though giving the first place in the canonical regard to those writings where Christ is most strongly and fully preached and but scant favour (when he does not reject them entirely) to those where this is not the case, he yet contrives to introduce his own particular Christ into many parts of Scripture which really say nothing about Him. Everything that redounds to the honour of Christ, i.e. to the exaltation of His work of grace in man, as Luther understood it, must be forced into Scripture, while everything that tends to assert man’s powers and the need of his co-operation must be expunged, since Christ cannot arrive at His right which He has from the Father except through the utter helplessness of man. The Bible must nowhere know of any inner righteousness on man’s part that is of any value in God’s sight; it must never place on the lips of Christ any demand, any praise or reward for human effort. All sacred utterances which contradict this are, so he says, in spite of his preference for the literal sense, not to be taken literally. Thus, when the Bible says man _shall_, it does not follow that he _can_; God rather wishes thereby to convince man of his helplessness; nay, what is said in this connection of man and his works really applies to Christ, Who has done everything for us and makes it all ours by faith.[1500]

“There were times in his life when the antithesis between faith and works so dominated him and filled his mind, that the whole Bible seemed to him to have been written simply to illustrate and emphasise this doctrine of Justification.”[1501]

Two portions of Holy Scripture, viz. the Epistles to the Romans and to the Galatians, according to him, hold the first place in their eulogy of Christ, by their recommendation of faith in Him alone. Hence “all questions and all the more obscure passages of Scripture are to be solved and explained by these two epistles.”[1502] If, in the Bible, good works are extolled or almsgiving praised, the word “_fide_” must always be understood, since the meaning cannot but be that such works are profitable by faith.[1503]

In the case of the Evangelists, Matthew and Luke in particular, we must expound their writings in accordance with the doctrine of Justification through Christ and man’s own helplessness. “Scripture must be interpreted according to this article.... When Matthew and Luke speak of good works, they are to be understood and judged according to this rule.”[1504]

Thus, in all questions of exegesis the “preaching of Christ” is conclusive. We must, first of all, see whether each book commonly reckoned to form part of the Bible really “preaches Christ,” and, where this is so, the same thoughts will control everything else.[1505]

In the question of the relation of faith to the interpretation of Scripture, Luther hobbles strangely. On the one hand the Bible is to be interpreted strictly according to faith, on the other, faith is to be won solely from the Bible. The former proposition he thus explains in a sermon: It is a command that the interpretation of Scripture must “rhyme with faith and not teach anything contrary to or differing from what faith teaches.” True faith, however, is that which is directed against the power of works, so that any interpretation of the Bible which contradicts this is wrong. Whatever teaches us “to have a good conscience towards God, except by faith alone and without any works, neither resembles nor rhymes with faith.”[1506] Of the content of faith we are assured above all by inward experience and the Spirit. It is indeed on the “feeling and sentiment” that, in the case of faith, i.e. the acceptance of the Gospel message of salvation, Luther lays the chief stress.[1507] “If you feel it not, you have not the faith, the Word merely rings in your ears and hovers on your lips like foam on water.”[1508]

Luther is just as determined in proving faith from Scripture as he is in making Scripture subservient to and dependent on faith. “Without Scripture faith soon goes,” he exclaims after labouring to bring forward arguments from the Bible in support of the new faith in Christ.[1509] “Whatever is advanced without being attested by Scripture or a revelation need not be believed.”[1510] “To this wine no water must be added”;[1511] to this sun no lantern must be held up![1512] “You must take your stand on a plain, clear and strong word of Scripture, which will then be your support.”[1513]

The worst of it is, as O. Scheel aptly remarks, that Luther pits his Christ against Scripture and thus makes the latter void.[1514]

On the one hand, according to Adolf Harnack, Luther, when making faith the rule of Bible interpretation, becomes a “mediæval exegete” and borrows from the past even his types and allegories. Yet he cuts himself adrift in the most decided fashion from the mediæval exegesis, “not merely when it is a question of Justification,” but even “in regard to such Scripture passages as contain nothing whatever about the doctrine of Justification and faith, or only alien matter.”[1515]

For instance, he finds righteousness by works condemned and faith exalted in the very first pages of the Bible; for Cain, his brother’s murderer, “clung to works and lost the faith,” that was his misfortune; whereas Abel held aloof “from free-will and the merit of works” and “kept the faith in a pure conscience.” “The same thing happened later with Isaac and Ismael, Jacob and Esau, and others.”--Yet, in spite of such condemnation of works, many passages, particularly in the New Testament, seem to tell in favour of works. This, however, is only due to the fact that at the time of the New Testament writers it was desirable to raise up a bulwark against any too great esteem for faith. Thus it was really not meant quite seriously; in the same way even he himself, so he says, had been obliged to oppose this excessive esteem for faith, because, in his day, and owing to his preaching, the people “wanted merely to believe, to the neglect of the power and fruit of faith” (in good actions).[1516]

Owing to his habit of ever reading the Bible through the glass of his doctrine of Justification, his handling of Rom. xi. 32 (in the Vulgate: “_Conclusit Deus omnia in incredulitate ut omnium misereatur_”) was such that Döllinger found in it no less than “three falsifications of the words of Paul.”[1517]

Luther’s marginal glosses to his translation of the Bible are open to plentiful objections, for their purpose is to recall the reader as often as possible to the basic theories of his doctrine.[1518]

Some Protestants have been exceedingly frank in characterising the strained relations often noticeable between Luther’s exegesis and true scholarship.

Friedrich Paulsen, in his “Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts,” when dealing with the demand made by the “exegesis of the Reformation,” viz. that the reader must cling to the plain text and letter of Scripture, says: “Luther by no means considered himself bound to the letter and the grammatical sense of the text of Scripture. Where the letter was in his favour, he indeed used it against others, the Swiss, for instance, but, where it was not, he nevertheless stands by his guns and knows what Scripture _ought_ to have said. Everybody knows with what scant regard he handled certain books of Scripture, estimating their value according as they agreed more or less with his teaching, and even amending them a little when they failed to reach his standard or to present the pure doctrine of justification by faith ‘alone’ in a light sufficiently strong.... In order to understand Scripture it is necessary [according to Luther] to know beforehand what it teaches; Scripture is indeed the rule of doctrine, but, _vice versa_, doctrine is also the rule of Scripture which must be interpreted ‘_ex analogia fidei_.’”[1519]

Referring to Luther’s interpretation of the Epistle to the Romans, Adolf Hausrath pithily observes: “Luther read this Epistle to the Romans into everything and found it everywhere.” Though Hausrath makes haste to add that this was because “his personal experiences agreed with those of the Epistle to the Romans,” still, his reference to the psychological basis of the phenomenon is quite in place. “He had been led to draw from Scripture one basic principle which to him was the embodiment of truth, viz. Justification by Faith. That only which ran counter to this ‘faith alone’ was to be set aside.”[1520]

_Luther’s Exegesis in the Light of His Early Development._

With the help of the newly published Commentary on Romans, written by Luther in his youth (vol. i., p. 184 ff.), we can trace the beginnings of his curious exegesis more easily than was possible before.

What we want first of all is a key to that more than human confidence which prompts the new teacher to blend in one his own interpretation and the actual text of the Bible and to say, “_My_ word is the truth.” This key is to be found in his early history. It was then, in those youthful days when he began morbidly to brood over the mysteries of the Epistle to the Romans, all unable to grasp the profound thoughts it contained, that the phenomenon in question made its first appearance.

We must call to mind that the young and ardent University professor, though deficient in humility and in the capacity to assimilate the sublime teachings of the Epistle to the Romans, stood all the more under the spell of two misleading ideas which had long dominated him, viz. on the one hand, the supposed depth and transforming power of the knowledge of Scripture he had already acquired and, on the other, the need of assailing the self-righteous and hypocritical Little Saints and all excessive esteem for good works. In the latter respect the passages in Romans on works, faith and merit--of which he failed to see the real meaning--became dangerous rocks on which Luther’s earlier religious convictions suffered hopeless shipwreck. So greatly was he attracted and, as it were, fascinated by the light that seemed to him to stream in on his soul from this Epistle, that he came to see the same thing everywhere. Its suggestive power over him was all the greater because in his then pseudo-mystical train of thought he was fond of comparing himself to the Apostle and of fancying, that, as in that case so in his, inner self-annihilation would lead to his receiving similar favours from God. This self-annihilation in Luther’s case was, however, a morbid one.

Luther, in his younger days, had also been grievously tormented with thoughts on predestination. He now fancied, according to what he supposed was Paul’s teaching, that to abandon oneself in the hands of God, without will, strength or wish, was the sole means by which he and all other men could find tranquillity. Thus, on the strength of misunderstood inward experiences, he hailed the Epistle to the Romans and, a little later, the Epistle to the Galatians, as the only guide along the strange paths of his future exegesis.

His supposed “experiences of God” became the ruling power by which, thanks to an exegesis entirely new, he was to bring salvation to the whole of mankind.

Hitherto, in spite of all his diligence in the study of the Bible, any idea of upholding his own new interpretation against the existing doctrines of the Church had been altogether foreign to him. In his first manuscript notes and in the Commentary on the Psalms which has only recently come to light, likewise in his earlier sermons, he still looks at everything from the Catholic standpoint; the Church’s authority is still the appointed guardian and interpreter of Holy Scripture. There the Bible is to him unquestionably the divinely inspired book and the true Word of God, though it is, not the individual’s, but the Church’s duty to draw from its inexhaustible treasures arguments in her own defence and in refutation of the teaching of the heretics. To the teaching of Scripture and to the infallible interpretation of the Church based on the tradition of the Fathers, everyone, so he then held, must submit as Christ Himself had ordained.

Even then, however, he was already convinced that he had received an extraordinary call to deal with Holy Scripture. The very admiration of his fellow-monks for his familiarity with his red leather copy of the Bible, fostered the self-love of the youthful student of the Scriptures. This Staupitz increased by his incautious reference to the future “great Doctor,” and by his general treatment of Luther. The written Word of God in which the wide-awake and quick-witted monk felt himself at home more than any of his fellows quite evidently became so much his own peculiar domain, that, in his opinion, Bible scholarship was the only worthy form of theological learning and ruled every branch of Divine knowledge. He even went further, attributing all the corruption in the Church to “neglect of the Word,” i.e. to ignorance of and want of compliance with the Bible Word. On the strength of his accounted profounder knowledge of the “Word,” he also reproves the “holy-by-works.” Even previous to the lectures on Romans, his conviction of the antithesis between human works and Christ’s grace made him read everywhere Christ into Scripture; the Bible, so he says, must be taken to the well-spring, i.e. to the Cross of Christ, having done which we may then be “quite certain to catch” its true meaning. Before Luther’s day others in the Church had done the same, though within lawful limits. Among contemporary Humanists even Erasmus had insisted on Christ’s being made the centre of Scripture.[1521]

Widely as Luther, in his Commentary on Romans, already diverges from the Church’s interpretation of St. Paul regarding the doctrine of Justification, yet he still admits, at least in theory, the principle of authority both in the interpretation of the Bible and in general.[1522] He rejects without compunction all those heresies which deviate from the Church’s guidance. In practice, however, he sets himself above the teaching of the Fathers where-ever this runs counter to his views; St. Augustine is forced to witness in his favour even at the expense of the other representatives of tradition, and, as for mediæval scholasticism, it is treated as though it were not at all one of the links in the venerable chain of tradition. On the other hand, Luther allows his exegesis to be influenced by those later and less reputable exponents of scholasticism with whom alone he was acquainted.

On such lines as these did his exegesis of the Bible proceed; on the one hand there was his excessive regard for his own acquaintance with Scripture, and, on the other, his pseudo-mysticism leaning for its support on misunderstood interior revelations and illuminations. A certain sense of his vocation as the Columbus of the Bible ever accompanies him from that time forward.

This psychological condition manifests itself in utterances contained in the lectures on Romans and in later works.

“Here,” so he writes in the lectures, “a great stride has been made towards the right interpretation of Holy Scripture, by understanding it all as bearing on Christ ... even when the surface-sense of the letter does not require it.”[1523] “All Scripture deals everywhere with Christ alone.”[1524] “All this is said, written or done that human presumption may be humbled and the grace of God exalted.”[1525] He is ever reading his own thoughts into the oftentimes obscure words of St. Paul, though, that he is so doing is evident neither to his hearers nor to himself. That same eloquence and wealth of imagery are to be found here which are to characterise his later expositions. “Quite unmistakably his language, thought and imagery throughout the work is that of the mystic,” remarks the editor of the Commentary. “How much Tauler--whom Luther extols so highly, even when as yet he was so little acquainted with him--has taken possession of Luther’s mind and influences his language, would be clear from the Commentary on Romans, even were Tauler’s name not mentioned in it.”[1526]

With the mental attitude assumed quite early in his career the scant regard for Humanism and philosophy he evinces in this Commentary well agrees; further, his use of the Bible as a whip with which to lash unsparingly the abuses rampant in the Church, another peculiarity which was to remain in his treatment of Scripture. The better to appreciate his first attempts at exegesis we may recall, that, even then, he was concerned for the text and its purity, and that, no sooner was Erasmus’s Greek edition of the New Testament published, than Luther, who had now reached chapter ix. of the Epistle, began to use it for his lectures.[1527]

That Luther’s first attempts in the exegetical field were so successful was in great part due to his personal gifts, to his eloquence and to his frankness. Oldecop, a pupil of his, who remained true to the Church, wrote as an old man, that, being as he was then twenty-two years of age, he “had taken pleasure in attending Martin’s lectures.”[1528] The lectures on Romans commenced immediately after Oldecop’s matriculation. Christopher Scheurl, the Humanist Professor of Law, reckoned the new exegete among the best of the Wittenberg theologians and said: “Martin Luther, the Augustinian, expounds St. Paul’s Epistles with marvellous talent.”[1529]

In the matter of private interpretation as against the Church’s, in these earliest exegetical efforts, he remained, outwardly at least, true to the traditional standpoint, until, little by little, he forsook it, as already described (above, p. 387 ff.). Even his academic Theses of Sept., 1517 (“Against the Theology of the Schools”), based though they were on a misapprehension of Scripture, conclude with the assurance, that, “throughout, he neither intended nor had said anything contrary to the Church or at variance with her doctrines.”[1530]--Then, however, with startling suddenness the change set in.

When, after the storm aroused by the publication of the Indulgence Theses, he wrote his German “Sermon von dem Ablass und Gnade,”[1531] he appealed in it repeatedly to the Bible as against the “new teachers,” i.e. the Schoolmen, and indeed in as confident a manner as though he alone were learned in Scripture. He says on the first page: “This I say: That it cannot be proved from any Scripture, etc. Much should I like to hear anyone who can testify to the contrary in spite of the fact that some doctors have thought so.” And at the end he sums up as follows: “On these points I have no doubt, and they have sufficient warrant in Scripture. Therefore you too should have no doubt and send the Scholastic doctors about their business!” Shortly before this, in a letter about the Scholastic theologians of his day, particularly those of Leipzig, he declares: “I could almost swear that they understand not a single chapter of the Gospel or Bible.”[1532] He was, however, greatly cheered to hear that, thanks to his new interpretation of the Bible, prelates, as well as the burghers of Wittenberg, were all saying “that formerly they had neither known nor heard anything of Christ or of His Gospel.”[1533]

After Tetzel had attacked his Sermon and accused Luther of falsifying the sacred text, and of cherishing heretical opinions, the latter indited his “Eyn Freiheyt dess Sermons Bepstlichen Ablass und Gnad belangend,” where he emphasises even more strongly and pathetically the supremacy of Holy Scripture over all outward authority: “Even though all these and a thousand others of the holiest of doctors had held this or that, yet their opinion is of no account compared with a single verse of Holy Writ.... They are not in the least to be believed, because the Scripture says: The Word of God no one may set aside or alter.”[1534]

Carlstadt, whom Luther himself had instructed, outdid his master and advocated entire freedom for the private interpretation of Scripture before Luther could make up his mind to do this. He did not shrink from making his own the following defiant Thesis: “The text of the Bible does not take precedence merely of one or several Doctors of the Church, but even of the authority of the whole Church.”[1535] It was only after Luther, thanks to his obstinacy and curious methods of reasoning, had extricated himself from his examination at Augsburg, and fled, that he admitted in the statements already given (p. 388) that the word of Scripture was to be set in the first place, and, that, in its interpretation, no account need be made of ecclesiastical authority.[1536] This prelude to Luther’s new exegetical standpoint, more particularly towards the end, was marked by much fear, doubt and anxiety of conscience. He was worried, to such an extent that his “heart quaked for fear,” by a number of Scripture passages and still more by the question: Could the Author of Scripture hitherto have really left His work open to such dire misunderstanding?

While his powerful rhetoric, particularly when it came to polemics, was able to conceal all the failings of his exposition of the Bible, his real eloquence, his fervour and his popular ways of dealing with non-controversial things imparted to his pulpit-commentaries no less than to his written ones a freshness of tone which improved, stimulated and inspired his followers with love for Holy Scripture and also brought them Bible consolation amidst the trials of life.

3. The Sola Fides. Justification and Assurance of Salvation

The two propositions considered above, fundamental though they are, of the Bible being under the enlightenment of the Spirit the sole rule of faith, and of the untrustworthiness of ecclesiastical authority and tradition, far from having been the first elements to find their place in Luther’s scheme, were only advanced by him at a later date and in order to protect his pet dogma.

His doctrine of Justification was the outcome of his dislike for “holiness-by-works,” which led him to the theory of salvation by faith alone, through the imputation of the merits of Christ without any co-operation on man’s part, or any human works of merit. This doctrine, from the very first as well as later, was everything to him. This it was which he made it his earliest task to elaborate, and about it he then proceeded to hang the other theories into which he was forced by his conflict with the Church and her teaching, some of which were logically connected with his main article, whilst, in the case of others, the connection was only artificial. Later exponents of Lutheranism termed his doctrine of Justification the material principle of his theology, no doubt in the same sense as he himself reckons it, in a sermon of 1530 in his postils, as: “the only element, article or doctrine by which we become Christians and are called such.”

This Evangel, Luther’s consoling doctrine, as a matter of fact was simply the record of his own inner past, the most subjective doctrine assuredly that ever sought to enlist followers. As we know, it is already found entire in his Commentary on Romans of 1515-1516.

In order to strengthen, in himself first and then in others, the assurance of salvation it comprised, he amplified it by asserting the believer’s absolute certainty of salvation; this was lacking in his Commentary on Romans, though even then he was drifting towards it. It was only in 1518-1519 that he developed the doctrine of the so-called “special faith,” by which the individual assures himself of pardon and secures salvation. Thereby he transformed faith into trust, for what he termed fiducial faith partook more of the nature of a strong, artificially stimulated hope; it really amounted to an intense confidence that the merits of Christ obliterated every sin.

Of faith in this new sense he says that it is _the_ faith. “To have the Faith is assentingly to accept the promises of God, laying hold on God’s gracious disposition towards us and trusting in it.”[1537] In spite of this he continues in the old style to define faith as the submission of reason to all the truths revealed, and even to make it the practical basis of all his religious demands: Whoever throws overboard even one single article of faith will be damned; faith being one whole, every article must be believed.[1538] We can understand how opponents within his own camp, of whom he demanded faith in the doctrines he had discovered in the Bible, when they themselves failed to find them there, ventured to remind him of his first definition of faith, viz. the fiducial, and to ask him whether a trustful appropriation of the merits of Christ did not really meet all the demands of “faith.” Recent Protestant biographers of Luther point out that Zwingli was quite justified in urging this against Luther. Attacked by Luther on account of his discordant teaching on the Lord’s Supper, and that on the score of faith, Zwingli rudely retorted: “It is a pestilential doctrine, by a perversion of the word faith which really means trust in Christ, to lower it to the level of an opinion”; with this behaviour on Luther’s part went “hand in hand a similar change in his conception of the Church founded on faith.”[1539]

_Some Characteristics of the New Doctrine of Justification._

If we take Luther’s saving faith we find that, according to him, it produces justification without the help of any other work or act on man’s part, and without contrition or charity contributing anything to the appropriation of righteousness on the part of the man to be justified.

Any contrition proceeding from the love of God, or at least from that incipient love of God such as Catholicism required agreeably with both revelation and human psychology, appeared to Luther superfluous; in view of the power of man’s ingrained concupiscence it amounted almost to a contradiction; only the fear of God’s Judgments (“_timor servilis_”), so he declares (vol. i., p. 291), with palpable exaggeration, had ruled his own confessions made in the monastery. At any rate, he was in error when he declared that this same fear had been the motive in the case of Catholics generally. He persuaded himself that this fear must be overcome by the Evangel of the imputed merits of Christ, because otherwise man can find no peace. The part played by the law is, according to him, almost confined to threatening and reducing man to despair, just as he himself had so often verged on hopelessness through thinking of his own inevitable reprobation; the assurance of salvation by faith, however, appears to every Christian as an angel of help and consolation even minus any repudiation of sin on the part of man’s will, for, owing to the Fall, sin cannot but persist.

When he attempts to prove this by his “experiences,” we must remind the reader how uncertain his statements are, concerning his own “inward feelings” during his monastic days. It will be pointed out elsewhere (vol. vi., xxxvii.) that these “recollections,” with their polemical animus, were of comparatively late growth, though they would have been of far greater service at the outset when still quite fresh.

A more solid basis for estimating the value of his doctrine of Justification is afforded by its connection with his other theological views. As we know, he regarded original sin and the concupiscence resulting from it as actual sin, still persisting in spite of baptism; he exaggerated beyond measure man’s powerlessness to withstand the concupiscence which remains with him to the end. Owing to the unfreedom of the will, the devil, according to Luther, holds the field in man’s heart and rules over all his spiritual faculties. The Divine Omnipotence alone is able to vanquish this redoubtable master by bestowing on the unhappy soul pardon and salvation; yet sin still reigns in the depths of the heart. No act of man has any part in the work of salvation. Actual grace is no less unknown to him than sanctifying grace. Good works are of no avail for salvation and of no importance for heaven, though, accidentally, they may accompany the state of grace, God working them in the man on whom He has cast His eye by choosing him to be a recipient of faith and salvation. Such election and predestination is, however, purely God’s work which man himself can do absolutely nothing to deserve.--Thanks to these errors, the “_sola fides_” and assurance of salvation stand bereft of their theological support.

We must, however, revert to one point again and examine it more closely on account of its historical and psychological importance. This is Luther’s doctrine of the slavery of the will, and of God’s being the sole agent in man.

This doctrine, already expressed in his Commentary on Romans in connection with his opinion on unconditional predestination,[1540] he was afterwards to expound with increasing vehemence.[1541] He was delighted to find his rigid views expressed in the Notes of the lectures on Romans and 1 Corinthians, which Melanchthon delivered in 1521 and 1522. These Notes he caused to be printed, and sent them to the author with a preface cast in the form of a letter.[1542]

In this letter he assumes the whole responsibility for the publication, and assures Melanchthon that “no one has written better than you on Paul.” “I hold that the Commentaries of Jerome and Origen are the merest nonsense and rubbish compared with your exposition.... They, and Thomas too, wrote commentaries that are filled with their own conceits rather than with that which is Paul’s or Christ’s, whereas on the contrary yours teaches us how to read Scripture and to know Christ, and thus excels any mere commentary, which is more than one can say of the others hitherto in vogue.”

Such praise for Melanchthon’s work, indirectly intended to recoil upon his own doctrine, caused Erasmus to remark of the Preface: “How full of pride it is!”[1543]

The doctrine of the unfreedom of the will as here expressed by Melanchthon who then was still the true mouthpiece of Luther, though free from Luther’s rhetorical exaggerations, remains extremely harsh.

It contains, for instance, the following propositions: “Everything in every creature occurs of necessity.... It must be firmly held that everything, both good and bad, is done by God.” “God does not merely allow His creatures to act, but it is He Himself Who acts.” As He does what is good, so also He does what is indifferent in man, such as eating and drinking and the other animal functions, and also what is evil, “such as David’s adultery and Manlius’s execution of his son.” The treason of Judas was not merely permitted of God, but, as Augustine says, was the effect of His power. “It is a huge blasphemy to deny predestination, the actuality of which we have briefly proved above.”[1544]

Ten years later Melanchthon had grown shy of views so monstrous; he thought it advisable to repudiate this book, and, in 1532, he dedicated a new Commentary on Romans to the Archbishop of Mayence, whom he was anxious to win over. In the preface he says, that he no longer acknowledged (“_plane non agnosco_”)[1545] the earlier work which had appeared under his name. Later, after Luther’s death, he went so far as to demand the severe punishment of those who denied free-will and questioned the need of good works for salvation.[1546]

Luther, on the other hand, as we know, never relinquished his standpoint on the doctrine of free-will. Beside his statements already quoted may be put the following: The will is not only unfree “in everything,”[1547] but is so greatly depraved by original sin, that, not content with being entirely passive in the matter of Justification, it actually resists God like the devil. “What I say is, that the spiritual powers are not merely depraved, but altogether annihilated by sin, not less in man than in the devils.... Their reason and their will seek those things alone which are opposed to God. Whatever is in our will is evil and whatever is in our reason is mere error and blindness. Thus, in things Divine, man is nothing but darkness, error and depravity, his will is evil and his understanding nowhere.”[1548]