Chapter XXVIII: The New Dogmas in an Historical and Psychological Light (3)

From such a standpoint all that was possible was a mere outward imputation of the merits of Christ, no Justification in the sense in which it was taken by the ancient Church, viz. as a supernatural regeneration by means of sanctifying grace.

Any reliable proofs, theological or biblical, in support of this altogether novel view of Justification will be sought for in vain in the works of Melanchthon and Luther. When Luther speaks of the power of faith in the merits of Christ and of the promises of faith concerning eternal life, as he does, for instance, in the written defence which he handed to Cardinal Cajetan at Augsburg, his words and the Bible passages he quotes merely express what the Church had always taught concerning the necessity and efficacy of faith as the condition of the supernatural life to be further developed in the soul by God’s Grace and man’s co-operation.[1549] In spite of this, in that very writing he alleges that he has satisfactorily proved that Justification is effected by fiducial faith.

“No one can be justified,” he there writes, “but by faith, in the sense that he must needs believe with a firm faith (‘_certa fide credere_’) that he _is_ justified, and not doubt in any way that he is to attain to grace; for if he doubts and is uncertain, he will not be justified, rather he spits out the grace.”[1550]

His doctrine of faith alone and of the imputed merits of Christ, was, of all his theological opinions, the one which underwent the least change during his lifetime.[1551] Until old age he continued to lay great stress on it both in the University Disputations and in his sermons and writings.[1552] Even the inferences drawn from it by Johann Agricola in his Antinomian theses did not cause Luther to waver in the least.

In the Schmalkalden Articles he declares explicitly that Justification consists merely in God’s “looking upon” the sinner “as righteous and holy.”[1553] According to one of his sermons our righteousness comes “altogether from without and rests solely on Christ and His work”;[1554] elsewhere he says, with the utmost assurance: The Christian is “righteous and holy by virtue of a foreign or outward holiness.”[1555]

In view of such statements undue stress must not be laid on that Luther says in another passage, which recalls the teaching of the olden Church, viz. that the Spirit of God dwells in the righteous, and fills him with His gifts, nay, with His very “substance,”[1556] and that it was this Spirit which gave him the “feeling and the certainty” of being in a state of grace.[1557] This is much the same as when Luther describes man’s active love of God whereby he becomes united and “one kitchen” with God,[1558] whilst, nevertheless, insisting that the strength of the _sola fides_ must never be the least diminished by work. “No work must be added to this” (to faith), he says in his postils, “for whoever preaches that guilt and penalty can be atoned for by works has already denied the Evangel.”[1559] Only at times does he allow himself to follow the voice of nature speaking on behalf of man’s co-operation; this he does, for instance, in the passage just referred to, where he admits that human reason is ever inviting man to take a share in working out his salvation by means of his own works.[1560]

The forgiveness which God offers “must be seized and believed. If you believe it you are rid of sin and all is right.” “This all the Gospels teach.”[1561] Unfortunately there are “many abandoned people who misuse the Gospel ... who think that no one must punish them because the Gospel preaches nothing but forgiveness of sins. To such the Gospel is not preached.... To whom is it preached? To those who feel their misery,” i.e. to those who are sunk in remorse of conscience and in fears, similar to, or at least faintly resembling, those he had himself once endured. When he applies the words of Psalm 50 to the yearning, the prayers and the struggles of those who thirst for salvation: “A contrite and humbled heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise,” he finds himself again, all unconsciously, on the road to the Church’s olden view on man’s share in repentance.

What we read in the important notes “_De iustificatione_,” written during Luther’s stay in the fortress of Coburg and only recently published, differs not at all from his ordinary, purely mechanical view of Justification.[1562] These notes are from Luther’s amanuensis, Veit Dietrich, and record some conversations concerning a work Luther had planned in reply to the objections against the new doctrine of Justification. Dietrich entitled the collection “_Rhapsodia_.”[1563]

It is not surprising that at a later date Luther hesitated to appeal to St. Augustine in support of his doctrine so confidently as he once had done. Augustine and all the Doctors of the Church are decidedly against him. On the publication of the complete edition of his works in Latin Luther expressed himself in the preface very diplomatically concerning Augustine: “In the matter of imputation he does not explain everything clearly.”[1564] Naturally the greatest teacher on grace, who lays such stress on its supernatural character and its gifts in the soul of the righteous, could not fail to disagree with him, seeing that Luther’s system culminates in the assurance, that grace is the merest imputation in which man has no active share, a mere favour on God’s part, “_favor Dei_.”[1565]

Augustine’s views of the powers and the end of man in the natural as well as the supernatural order have been clearly set forth in their connection with the trend of present-day scholarship by an eminent Catholic researcher. The latter points out that a strong revulsion against Luther’s idea of outward imputation has shown itself in Protestantism, and that the “historical theology” of our day largely acknowledges the existence of the Catholic doctrine “in the olden ecclesiastical and, indeed, even in the New-Testament world.” The same holds good of Augustine as of Paul. “Not the ‘_sola fides_,’ but the renewal of the interior man, a ‘true and real new creation,’ was the essence of Paul’s doctrine of justification.”[1566]

_The Striving after Absolute Certainty of Salvation._

Luther was chiefly concerned in emphasising the indispensable necessity of particular faith in personal justification and personal salvation.

Whereas the Church had required faith in our real, objective redemption by Christ, Luther demanded over and above a further faith in one’s subjective redemption, in spite of the difficulty which circumstances might present to the attaining of this assurance. It was something very different when the olden theologians taught that there were signs from which the good man’s state of grace might be inferred with moral certainty, and that such signs were, for instance, the determination to commit no grievous sin, the desire to perform good works more especially such as were difficult, joy and peace of soul in God, and, above all, the consciousness of having done everything that was necessary for reconciliation with God. That, by such marks, it was “possible to arrive at the practical certainty of being in a state of grace” had been taught by Gabriel Biel, with whom Luther was acquainted.[1567] Later on, the Council of Trent laid down as the Catholic doctrine, against the Lutheran theory of absolute faith in personal justification, “that no good Christian may doubt of the mercy of God, of the merits of Christ or the efficacy of grace,” but that at the same time “no one can know with the certainty of faith which precludes all possibility of error that he has attained to God’s grace.”[1568]

Luther’s teaching was quite different.

He writes, for instance, in the larger Commentary on Galatians, which, as we know, he regarded next to his work “_De servo arbitrio_” as his principal legacy to posterity: “We must perceive and recognise it as certain that we are the temple of the Holy Ghost.”[1569] “The heart must be quite certain that it is in a state of grace and that it has the Holy Ghost.”[1570] It is true, he says, that, “because we feel the opposite sentiments of fear, doubt, sadness, etc., we fail to regard this as certain.”[1571] Yet do this we must: “We must day by day struggle (‘_luctari_’)[1572] towards greater and greater certainty.” We should exercise ourselves in the feeling of certainty, risk something to secure it; for it rests with our own self-acquired ability to believe ever firmly and steadfastly, even as we believe the truths of faith, that we are really justified. All depends on the practice and experience just referred to. “This matter, if it is to be achieved, cannot be learnt without experience. Everyone should therefore accustom himself resolutely to the persuasion that he is in a state of grace and that his person and deeds are pleasing [to God]. Should he feel a doubt, then let him exercise faith; he must beat down his doubts and acquire certainty, so as to be able to say: I know that I am pleasing [to God] and have the Holy Ghost, not on account of any worth or merits of my own, but on account of Christ, Who for our sakes submitted Himself to the law and took away the sins of the world. In Him I believe.”[1573] “The greatest art consists in this, that, regardless of the fact that we commit sin, we can yet say to the law: I am sinless.”[1574]

“And even when we have fought very hard for this, it will still cost us much sweat.”

It is thus that Luther was led to speak from his own inner experience, of which we have plentiful corroboration. In the passage last quoted, he proceeds: “The matter of justification is difficult and delicate (‘_causa iustificationis lubrica est_’), not indeed in itself, for in itself it is as certain as can be, but in our regard; of this I have frequent experience.”[1575]

We are already acquainted to some extent with the struggle against himself, and the better voices within him, which the unhappy man had to wage; this distress of soul remains to be treated of more in detail later (vol. v., xxxii.). It may, however, be pointed out here that he knew how to make this struggle part of his system; even when depressed by one’s painful inability to reach this unshaken consciousness of salvation he still insists that one must feel certain; faced by doubts and fears on account of his sins, man must summon defiance to his aid, then, finally, he will come to rest secure of his personal salvation.

“We must cling with all sureness to the belief that not merely our office but also our person is well-pleasing to God.”[1576] It is true that men see, “how weak is the faith even of the pious. We would assuredly joyfully give thanks to God for His unspeakable gift could we but say with entire certainty: Yes, indeed, I am in a state of grace, my sin is forgiven me, I have the Spirit of Christ and I am the son of God. We feel, however, in ourselves emotions quite contrary, viz. fear, doubt, sadness, etc., hence we do not venture to make the assertion.”[1577] Others might infer from this the uselessness of all such vain efforts. Luther, however, would not be the man he is were he not to declare: On the contrary, “we must daily struggle more and more from uncertainty to certainty!” “Christ Himself,” so he argues, “is quite certain in His Spirit that He is pleasing to God.... Hence we too, seeing that we have the Spirit of Christ, must be certain that we too stand in grace ... on account of Him Who is certain.”[1578]

The last argument is the more noteworthy in that it demonstrates so well the vicious circle involved in Luther’s conclusion.

It amounts to this: In order to possess grace and reconciliation you must believe that you have grace and reconciliation. What guarantee has one of the certainty of this belief? Nothing but the inward consciousness to be evolved in the soul that it has indeed the grace of Christ which covers over all that is evil in it.

As Luther says, “If you are to be saved you must be so sure within yourself of the Word of grace, that even were all men to say the contrary, yea all the angels to deny it, you could yet stand alone and say: I know this Word is true.”[1579]

In practice, nevertheless, Luther was content with very little in the matter of this strength of certitude: “If I have Him [Christ], I am sure that I have everything.... What is still wanting in me is, that I cannot yet grasp it or believe it perfectly. So far as I am able now to grasp it and believe it, so far do I possess it, and if I stick to it this will go on increasing.” But “still there remains an outward feeling of death, of hell, of the devil, of sin and of the law. Even though you feel this, it is merely a warfare that seeks to hinder you from attaining to life everlasting.... We should say: I believe in Christ Jesus, He is mine, and so far as I have Him and believe in Him, thus far am I pious.”[1580]--“Yet believe it I cannot.”[1581]

Luther, according to the legend which he evolved later when defending his doctrine of faith alone and Justification, had started from the intense inward need he felt of certainty of salvation, and with the object, as he says, of “finding a Gracious God.” By his discovery regarding Justification, so his admirers say, he at last found and retained for the rest of his life the sense of a merciful God. The strange thing is, however, that in his severe and protracted struggles of conscience he should, at a later date, have again arrived at this very question: “How can I find a Gracious God?”

He writes in 1527 to Melanchthon: “Like a wretched, reprobate worm I am molested by the spirit of sadness.... I desire nothing and thirst after nothing but a Gracious God.” So greatly was he involved in inward contests that he says: “I am scarce able to drag on my existence; of working or writing I dare not think.”[1582] “Satan is busy,” he exclaims to his friend Wenceslaus Link during these storms, “and would fain make it impossible for me to write; he wants to drag me down to him in hell. May God tread him under foot. Amen!”[1583]

With very many of his followers the assurance of salvation failed to hold good in the presence of death. “We not only do not feel it [this assurance],” so he makes them say, “but rather the contrary.” He admits the phenomenon and seeks to account for it; nay, in his usual way, he makes capital out of it. “In God’s sight,” he says, “the matter is indeed so [i.e. as promised by his doctrine of Justification], but not yet in our eyes and in those of the world; hence our fears still persist until we are released by death.”[1584] “Whoever feels weak let him console himself with this, that no one succeeds perfectly in this [in the attainment of certainty].” “That is one of the advantages enjoyed by heretics,” he cries, “to lull themselves in security.... Nothing is more pestilential than security. Hence, when you feel weak in the faith you must rouse yourself; it is a sign of a good disposition and of the fear of God.”[1585]--Readers of Luther must be prepared for surprising statements.

It is true that he laments bitterly the increase of the fear of death among the new believers. In the case of epidemics he sees to his regret that everybody is “scared and takes to flight.” Far greater than ever under Popery, so he says, “is now, under the strong light of the Evangel, men’s fear of losing their life.”[1586] For this again he has an explanation to hand. When, for instance, the plague spread to Wittenberg in 1538 he wrote: Whence comes all this fear? “Formerly, under Popery, the people were not so much afraid. The reason is this: In Popery we trusted in the merits of the monks and of others, but now each one has to trust to and depend on himself.”[1587] Elsewhere, with the same object of reassuring himself and others, he says: The Evangel with its clear light of truth causes the holiness of God to be better perceived and thus leaves more room for the sense of fear. This he here reckons as an advantage over Popery, though, as a rule, his grievance against Catholicism had been that it excited fearsomeness by the gloomy legal spirit which prevailed in it and by its ignoring of God’s mercy.--We shall not be far wrong if we regard such statements as dictated more by psychological than by theological considerations.

“It is a great thing,” says Luther, referring to his doctrine of faith alone, “to lay claim to righteousness; then man dares to say: I am a son of God; whereas the state of grace affrights him.... Without practice (‘_sine practica_’) no one is able to repudiate righteousness-by-works and to preach faith alone.”[1588] He bewails “that we are too blind to be able to seize upon the treasure of grace.... We refuse to call ourselves holy,” in spite of the certainty which faith brings us. Here our opponents, the Papists and the Sacramentarians, are not nearly so well off; at least they could not “quiet their conscience” as he could do by his method, because, owing to their works, they were always in doubt as to their own salvation. (At any rate, they were in no state of “pestilential security.”) “They are always in doubt and wondering: Who knows whether it is really pleasing to God?” Yet they cling to works and “say Anathema to Jesus.”[1589]

“I have to labour daily,” he says, “before I can lay hold on Christ”; he adds: “That is due to force of habit, because for so many years [in Popery] I looked upon Christ as a mere judge. It is an old, rotten tree that is rooted in me.... We have, however, now again reached the light; in my case this occurred when I was made a Doctor.... But know this, that Christ is not sent to judge and to punish, not to bite and to slay sinners as I used to fancy and as some still think.”[1590]

His extraordinary esteem for the new doctrine of the power of faith alone and the assurance of salvation, would furnish quite a riddle to one not aware of the constitution of his mind.

So greatly did he prize this doctrine, that, according to the testimony of Melanchthon, he referred to it all other articles of faith, even that of creation. “The article of the forgiveness of sins,” he says, “is the foundation on which the article of the creation of the world rests.”[1591] “If we drop this article then we may well despair. The reason why heretics and fanatics [Papists and sectarians] go astray is simply their ignorance of this doctrine. Without it it is impossible to contend with Satan and with Popery, still less to be victorious.”[1592]--Thanks to such statements as these Luther’s article of Justification came to be termed the article on which the Church stands or falls.

_The “Article on which the Church Stands or Falls”: According to Modern Protestants._

Protestant scholars are far from sharing Luther’s high regard for his dogma of Justification, and what they say throws a curious light on the fashion in which he deceived himself.

Amongst the Protestant voices raised in protest against this doctrine, the following deserve to be set on record. It is clear, says K. Hase, that the Catholic doctrine is more closely related to the “Protestant view now prevailing”; he avers, that the “Protestant theologians of our day, even those who are sticklers for the purity of Lutheranism, have described saving faith as that which works by love, quite agreeably to the scholastic conception of the ‘_fides formata_,’ and have opposed to it a pretended Catholic dogma of Justification by good works.”[1593]

This well-known controversial writer when expressing it as his opinion that Luther’s doctrine of Justification is now practically discarded, was not even at pains to exclude the conservative theologians of his party: “Döllinger[1594] is quite right in charging the so-called ‘old believers’ amongst us with having fallen away from the Reformer’s dogma of Justification as strictly and theologically defined.”[1595]

Thus oblivion seems to be the tragic fate of Luther’s great theological discovery, which, if we are to believe what he says, was to him the light of his existence and his most powerful incentive in his whole work, and which figured so prominently in all his attacks on Rome. Was it not this doctrine which played the chief part in his belief in the utter corruption of the Church of earlier days, when, instead of prizing the grace of Christ, everything was made to depend on works, which had led to the ruin of Christendom, to the debasement of the clergy and to the transformation of the Pope into Antichrist?

The sole authority of Scripture, Luther’s other palladium, had already suffered sadly since the Revolution period, and now the doctrine of Justification seems destined to a like fate. Albert Ritschl was pronouncing a severe censure when he declared, “that, amongst the differences of opinion prevalent in the ranks of the evangelical theologians, the recognition of two propositions [the sole authority of Scripture and Justification by imputation] was the minimum that could be expected of anyone who wished to be considered Evangelical.”[1596] For the fact is that the minimum required by Ritschl, is, according to the admission of Protestant critics themselves, frequently no longer held by these theologians.

Of the Lutheran doctrine of Justification here in question, P. Genrich, a theologian, in his work on the idea of regeneration, says: “If we glance at the process of salvation as described in the evangelical theological handbooks of the 19th century, we may well be astonished at the extraordinary divergencies existing as regards both the conception of regeneration, and the place it is to occupy in the system of doctrine. There are hardly two theologians who entirely agree on the point.”[1597]--Of the practical side of the Lutheran doctrine in question the same writer states: “It is an almost universal complaint that this chief article of Evangelical faith is not of much use when it is a question of implanting and fostering piety, in the school, the church or in parish-work. Perhaps the preacher says a few words about it ... the teacher, too, feels it his duty to deal with it in his catechetical instructions.... Justification by faith is extolled in more or less eloquent words as the treasure of the Reformation, because Church history and theology have taught us so to regard it. But at heart one is glad to be finished with it and vaguely conscious that all one said was in vain, and that, to the children or congregation Justification still remains something foreign and scarcely understood.”[1598] Genrich himself lays the blame on the later formularies of Lutheranism for the mistaken notion of a righteousness coming from without; yet the formularies of Concord surely voiced Luther’s teaching better than the new exponents who are so disposed to tone it down.[1599]

Of the actual theory of Luther, de Lagarde wrote some fifty years ago: “The doctrine of Justification [Luther’s] is not the Evangel.... It was not the basic principle of the Reformation, and to-day in the Protestant Churches it is quite dead.” De Lagarde did not allow himself to be misled by the flowery language concerning personal religious experience which is all that remains of Luther’s doctrine in many modern expositions of it.[1600]

“Research in the domain of New-Testament history and in that of the Reformation,” says K. Holl, “has arrived at conclusions closely akin to de Lagarde’s.... It has been made impossible simply to set the Protestant doctrine of Justification on the same level with the Pauline and with that of the Gospel of Jesus.” Amongst the Protestant objections to the doctrine, he instances “its narrowness, which constitutes a limitation of the ethical insupportable to present-day tastes.” He attempts to explain, or rather to amend, Luther’s theory, so as to give ethics its due and to evade Luther’s “paradox of a God,” Who, though inexorable in His moral demands, Himself procures for the offender salvation and life. As the new dogma originally stood “both its Catholic opponents and the Anabaptists were at one in contending that Luther’s doctrine of Justification could not fail to lead to moral laxity. Protestant theologians were not able to deny the weight of this objection.” In point of fact it involves an “antinomy, for which there is no logical solution.”[1601]

The same author writes elsewhere concerning the assurance of salvation which, according to Luther, accompanies justifying faith: Luther, standing as he did for predestinarianism, “clearly abolished thereby the possibility of attaining to any certainty of salvation. All his life Luther allowed this remarkable contradiction to remain, not because it escaped his notice, but because he had no wish to remove it.” Holl finds, moreover, in Luther’s opinions on Predestination “the climax of the thoughts underlying his doctrine of Justification”; “the strength of [justifying] faith has to be tested by one’s readiness to submit even to the sentence [of damnation].”[1602]

In conclusion we may cite what W. Köhler says of the unreasonableness of Luther’s denial of free-will, according to which either God or the devil sits astride man’s back.

“With the rejection of man’s pure passivity, or, as Luther says, of his being ridden by the Lord God, Luther’s theology suffers a set-back, and the Catholic polemics of the 16th century receive a tardy vindication.” Only owing to his “lucky lack of logic” did Luther steer clear of the disastrous moral consequences of such a view; “in practice” he still laid stress on good works in spite of the danger that the “feeling of security” and the idea of “sinlessness” might lead people “to sink into the mire.” His doctrine, however, in itself leads “either to his usual thought: We are sinners after all, or to extravagant praise of the Divine mercy which flings ‘black sheep’ into the ‘kingdom of grace.’”[1603]

Evangelical theologians generally are, however, full of admiration for the spirit in which Luther, thanks to his “inward experiences,” convinced both himself and others of the certainty of Justification. His “experience of God” had at any rate made him capable of an “heroic faith” and, by his “risking all for God,” he pointed out to the religion of the heart the true road to contentment for all future time. Luther’s doctrine of Justification was the “final deepening of the sense of personal religion” (K. Holl).

The objections on this point, raised against Luther in his own camp, are all the more significant seeing he made all religion to consist in the cloaking of sin and the pacifying assurance of forgiveness; his Evangel had come as a “solace for troubled consciences”; it is “nothing else but forgiveness, and is concerned only with sin, which it blots out, covers over, sweeps away and cleanses so long as we live.”[1604] Thanks to it the long-forgotten true conception of the Kingdom of God had at last been happily brought again to light.

The title of a sermon of Luther’s printed in 1525 expresses this idea as follows: “A Sermon on the Kingdom of Christ, which consists in the Forgiveness of Sins,” etc. The words of Christ to the man sick of the palsy (Mat. ix. 2) form the subject: “Be of good heart, son, thy sins are forgiven thee.” “These words,” the preacher says, “indicate and sum up shortly what the Kingdom of Christ is.” Since the Kingdom of Christ must be defined in relation to the question: “How must we behave with regard to God?” it cannot and must “not be regarded otherwise” than according to these words: “Thy sins are forgiven thee”; for “this is the chief thing, viz. that which can quiet the conscience.” “Whence it follows that the Kingdom of Christ is so constituted that it contains nothing but comfort and forgiveness of sins.” The chief fault of our reason is its “inclination, everywhere manifest, to forsake this faith and knowledge and to fall back upon works.”

In Holy Scripture the object of the Kingdom of Christ is differently given. There it culminates in the glory of God. God’s glorification is the real aim of Christ’s coming, and must also be the supreme object of every believer. This does not in the least tally with that trumped-up holiness-by-works which Luther saw in Catholicism. This far higher, general, Catholic thought of God’s glory pervades the first petitions of the prayer taught by our Saviour Himself in the Our Father: “Hallowed be Thy Name,” etc.; only in the fifth petition do we hear of the forgiveness of sins for which, indeed, every human creature must implore. In the Our Father we acknowledge first of all our obligation to serve God with all our powers and strive to comply with our duty of glorifying His name. Hence Catholic religious instructions have never commenced with “the simple forgiveness of sin,” with attempts to cloak it and to induce a fancied security in the sinner; their purpose has ever been to show that man is created to serve God and to honour Him, and that he can best do so by imitation and love of Christ.

This high object, the only one worthy of man and his spiritual powers, leads us to consider the doctrine of good works.

4. Good Works in Theory and Practice

Man is naturally disposed to believe that, built as he is, he must take his share in working out his salvation, if he be in sin, by preparing himself with God’s help to enter the state of grace and then by seeking to retain it by means of good works.

The Church before Luther had taught, as she still does, and that on the strength of Holy Writ, that such co-operation on man’s part, under God’s assistance, is quite essential. Though the attaining to and the perseverance in the Divine sonship is chiefly the work of God, yet it is also man’s, carried out with the aid of grace. She assured the faithful, that, according to the order graciously established by God and warranted by Scripture, all good works have their value for temporal and eternal reward. She sought indeed to kindle religious fervour by pointing to the promises held out, yet she had no wish to see man stop short at the thought of his reward, but rather expected him to rise to a more perfect love. Generosity, so she taught, was in no way impaired by the prospect of reward, on the contrary such hopes served as stepping-stones to facilitate the ascent.[1605]

Luther, owing to his implacable, personal aversion to any good works or human co-operation, laid violent hands on this so reasonable scheme of salvation.

_Nature and Origin of the New Doctrine of Works._

Luther demanded that no importance should be set on co-operation by means of works in the business of Justification, because salvation was to be looked for from on high with simple faith and blind confidence. After reconciliation, too, man must not vainly fancy that he is capable of deserving anything by good works even by the greatest penances, sacrifices or deeds of love, but the doing of good must be allowed to follow simply as the effect of the Spirit of Christ now received, in those feelings towards God which Christ produces in us and in that love of our neighbour which is indispensable to human society.

Further light may be thrown on this standpoint of Luther’s by some traits from his inward history and writings.

Here we cannot fail to notice echoes of his transition period, of his conflict with his brother-monks and those pious folk who were intent on good works and the heaping up of merits; of his subsequent remissness in his vocation and in the performance of his duties as a monk; finally of his later prejudice, largely a result of his polemics, against so many of the Church’s public and private practices, of penance, of devotion and of the love of God. He closed his eyes to the fact, that he could have found no more effectual means of increasing amongst his followers the growing contempt for moral effort, neglect of good works and the gradual decline in religious feeling.

His estrangement from what he was pleased to call “holiness-by-works” always remained Luther’s principal, ruling idea, just as it had been the starting-point of his change of mind in his monastic days.[1606]

His chief discovery, viz. the doctrine of Justification, he was fond of parading as an attack upon works. It is only necessary to observe how persistently, how eagerly and instinctively he seizes the smallest pretext to launch in his sermons and writings a torrent of abuse on the Catholic works. It is as though some unseen hand were ever ready to open the sluice-gates, that, whether relevant or not to the matter on hand, his anger might pour forth against fasting, and the ancient works of penance, against “cowls and tonsures,” against the recitation of the Office in choir, rules, collections, pilgrimages and Jubilees, against taking the discipline, vows, veneration of the Saints and so many other religious practices.[1607] In his habitual slanders on works, found on his lips from the beginning[1608] to within a few weeks of his death, we can hardly fail to see the real link which binds together his whole activity. As against the Popish doctrine of works he is never weary of pointing out that his own doctrine of works is based on Christ; “it allows God to be our Lord God and gives Him the glory,” a thought that pleased him all the more because it concealed the error under a mantle of piety; this deceptive idea already casts its shadow over the very first letter in his correspondence which touches on the new doctrine.[1609]

Johann Eck could well answer: “Luther is doing us an injustice when he declares that we by our works exclude Christ as Mediator.... On the contrary, we teach, that, without Christ, works are nothing.... Therefore let him keep his lies to himself; the works that are done without faith, he may indeed talk of as he likes, but, as for ours, they proceed from the bottom rock of faith and are performed with the aid of Divine grace.”[1610]

Equally deceptive was the idea, so alluring in itself, that Luther’s doctrine of works bore the stamp of true freedom, viz. the freedom of the Gospel. Here, again, we can only see a new expression of his profound alienation from works and from the sacrifice entailed by self-conquest. He is desirous, so he says, of hoisting on the shield the freedom of the man who is guided solely by God’s Spirit. But will this not serve as an excuse for weakness? Here we seem to find an after-effect of that late-mediæval pseudo-mysticism which had once been a danger to him, which went so far as to demand of the righteous complete indifference to works, and, that, in language apparently most affecting and sublime.

These two thoughts, that Christ would thus be restored to His place of honour and man secure evangelical freedom, were a great temptation to many hearers of Luther’s call to leave the Catholic Church. In all great intellectual revolutions there are always at work certain impelling ideas, either true ones which rightly prove attractive, or false ones which yet assume the appearance of truth and thus move people’s minds. Without the intervention of the two thoughts just referred to, the spread of the religious movement in the 16th century is not fully to be explained.

How many of the apostles and followers of the new preaching were really moved by these two thoughts must even then have been difficult to determine. Noble and privileged souls may not have been wanting amongst them. The masses, however, introduced so earthly an element into these better and pious ideals that the ideals only remained as a pretext, a very effective pretext indeed, to allege for their own pacification and in extenuation of their other aims. Great watchwords, once put forward, often serve as a useful cloak for other things. In this respect the demand for the freedom of the Gospel proved very popular. The age clamoured to be set free from bonds which were proving irksome, for instance, to mention but one point, from exorbitant ecclesiastical dues and spiritual penalties. Hence evangelical freedom was readily accepted as synonymous with deliverance, and, in time, ceased to be “evangelical” at all.

That Luther’s doctrine of works and of the freedom bestowed by Christ the fulfiller of the Law, embodied a great moral danger, is now recognised even by Protestants.

“How terribly dangerous,” a Protestant Church-historian says, “is that ‘To be for ever and ever secure of life in Christ’ in the sense in which Luther understands it! We Protestants are merely toning it down when we find in it simply the consciousness of being supported by God; to Luther it is much more ... it is a feeling of spiritual mastery.” The author quotes as descriptive of Luther’s attitude the characteristic watchword from his writing “Von der Freyheyt eynes Christen Menschen”: “The Christian is so far exalted above everything by faith that he becomes spiritually lord over all, for there is nothing that can endanger his salvation.” To these we may append Luther’s spoken words: “This is Christian freedom ... to have no need of any work in order to attain to piety and salvation”; a Christian may say: I possess “such a Saviour that I need have no fear of death, and am certain of life for ever and ever; I can snap my fingers at the devil and his hell, and am no longer called upon to tremble before the wrath of God.”[1611] The same writer also points out, that, according to Luther, this happy believer “remains for all this inwardly (‘_intrinsece_’) a sinner and is righteous only outwardly (‘_extrinsece_’).” From such teaching as this respect for works was bound to suffer: the question of “religion and morality,” whether from the point of view of religion in the process of salvation or from the point of view of morals in social action, could not be satisfactorily solved thereby. “In both cases morality comes short. Theologically no sufficient bulwark is erected against misinterpretation.” “Luther had trouble enough, and through his own fault, in stemming the incroachments of immorality.”

More strongly, and with the frankness usual in the polemics of his day, Willibald Pirkheimer, Luther’s former friend, voices the same thought when he speaks of the “not evangelical, but rather devilish freedom” which, owing to the preaching of the new “evangelical truth,” had made itself so “shockingly” felt amongst so many apostates, both male and female, and had induced him, after long hesitation, to betake himself back to the Catholic fold.[1612]

Before quoting the opinion of other critics of the preaching against works in his own time, we may give Luther the chance to describe the extent of his opposition to the olden doctrine.

He is determined, as he says as early as 1516, “to root out utterly the stupid, fleshly affectation that trusts in such works.”[1613] “Many graces and merits,” so he taught even then, “lead man from God; we are so ready to rely on good works, more than on God Himself”; yet we should rather, “in absolute nakedness, pay homage to God’s mercy from the bottom of our heart.”[1614] “The multitude of our sins must not arouse despair, what should make us distrustful is any striving after good works”; we “ought rather to take refuge in the mercy of God.” The sense of good works is our ruin, for it induces in us “a feeling of self-righteousness.”[1615] The latter words portray his own psychological state at that time. It was these lax ideas that led to his quarrel with the Observantines amongst his brethren and with the so-called “Little Saints.” Here also we have an echo from the world of thought already described as the real starting-point of his sad development.

During this crucial period of his mental growth he preached in 1515 on the glad tidings of the Gospel; it was “glad” because it taught us “that the law had already been fulfilled by Christ, so that it was no longer necessary for us to fulfil it, but only, by faith, to hang it about the Man who had fulfilled it and become conformed to Him, because Christ is our Righteousness, Holiness and Redemption.”[1616]

Later he comes to speak still more strongly. He fully admitted it was natural to all men, himself included, to turn to good works in trouble of conscience; it was beyond reason not to rest on them,[1617] yet, according to him, in solacing our conscience we must pay no heed either to sin or to works, but put our whole trust in the righteousness of Christ; we must, to quote him literally, “set up grace and forgiveness, not only against sin, but also against good works.”[1618] It is true that he protests that he has no intention to exclude works (other statements of his in favour of good works will be quoted in due time), yet he abases them to a level which fails to explain why Christ and the Apostles so earnestly recommended them and promised an eternal reward for their performance. Luther assures us that good works form “worldly righteousness”; that love of our neighbour is enjoined for the welfare of society and because we live together; yet he steadfastly condemns as a “shameful delusion,” the view “that works are of any value to righteousness in the sight of God.”[1619]

Who of his contemporaries could deny that Luther preached a wonderfully simple and easy road to “life everlasting”? If this and the “forgiveness of sins” were to cost no more than he insists upon elsewhere, viz. “that you hear the Word and believe it when you have heard it; if you believe it, then you have it without any trouble, expense, delay or pains; thus does the Gospel of Christ and the Christian teaching do everything with a few short words, for it is God’s own Word.”[1620]

Worthy of notice in connection with his ideas of evangelical freedom (see above, p. 453, and vol. ii., p. 27 ff.) is the significant use he makes of the term applied in the New Testament to all Christians, viz. members of a “royal priesthood,” which Luther takes as meaning that all believers have a certain supremacy over sin.

As every Christian, so he teaches, by virtue of the universal priesthood possesses authority to “proclaim the Gospel,” as everyone, “man, woman or maid,” is qualified to “teach” who “knows how to and is able,” so the “Spirit of Christ encourages” all without exception and makes of each one “a great Lord and King of all.” But, “where works are preached, there the right of primogeniture is taken from us,” and this privilege of “royal and priestly dignity disappears completely.” Sometimes the devil tries to force us to sin, for “he is a servant and has his own way. If he forces me to sin then I run to Christ and invoke His help; then he is ashamed. The more he does, the greater his shame. Thus this power is omnipotent. ‘Thou hast set all things under his feet’ [Ps. viii. 8], we are told. ‘We shall judge the angels,’ says St. Paul [1 Cor. vi. 3]. That is our right of primogeniture which we must ascribe, not to ourselves, but to Christ. But when Christ has cleansed you, then you do what is good, not for yourself [by gaining merit], but for others.”--Such a doctrine he could truly say the Papists failed to understand. But he adds further: They cannot even pray; “with their prayers they merely mock God.”[1621]

If all the faithful are, as the new Evangel teaches, by virtue of their right of primogeniture great Lords and Kings, then that fear of God’s chastisements is no longer justified which the ancient Church had always put forward as one of the motives for performing good works and leading a moral life. On the contrary, we are not to open our hearts too readily to such fear. Luther’s injunctions concerning fear of the Judge go to form a further chapter in the psychological and historical criticism of his doctrine of works. Here we see plainly his instinctive aversion to the views and practice of the olden Church.

The Catholic doctrine of fear had been expressed with wonderful simplicity in the “Imitation of Christ,” already widely read in the years previous to the Reformation: “It is well, my son, that so long as love avails not to restrain thee, fear of eternal punishment should at least affright thee from evil. Whoever disregards fear will not long be able to persevere in good.”--“Consider how thou mayest answer for thyself before the stern judge”: “Now thy labour is still fruitful, now thy contrition still cleanses and makes satisfaction.” “At the day of judgment the man who has mortified his flesh here below will rejoice more than he who has indulged it in luxury.”--The “Imitation” desires, however, that fear should be allied with confidence and love. “Look on Me,” it makes Christ say, “let not thy heart be troubled nor afraid. Believe in Me and trust in My mercy. When thou thinkest thou art far from Me, I am often closest to thee.” “If thou but trust in the Lord,” it says again, “strength will be given thee from above.” “Thou hast no need to fear the devil if thou art armed with the cross of Christ.” Nor do we meet in this book with any trace of that frozen fear which Luther represented as prevalent in the monasteries, on the contrary it insists no less on love: “In the cloister no one can persevere unless he be ready for the love of God to humble himself from the bottom of his heart.”

In order to supply a suitable background for his new doctrine, Luther made out Catholic antiquity to have fostered both in theory and in practice a craven fear, of which in reality it knew nothing at all. By excluding the elements of trust and love, he reduced Catholic life to the merest state of fear, as though this had actually been the sphere in which it moved; he charges it with having cultivated that servile fear which would at once commit sin were there no penalty attached; he also finds in monastic life an element of excitement and confusion which, as our readers already know, was really peculiar to his own personal temperament at one time.

Far more characteristic than such calumnies is his own attitude to that fear of God’s judgments which is just and indispensable.

Not as though, generally, he did not recommend and praise the “fear of God.” This, however, falls beside the mark since such a fear may exist without any adverting to the punishments of the judge, and, as Luther himself puts it, not altogether incorrectly, is more “an awe that holds God in honour and which is always expected of the Christian, just as a good child should fear his father.”[1622] This is the “_timor reverentialis_,” to use the earlier theological term. But to the actual fear of the Divine judgments as an expiatory and saving motive, Luther gives no place whatever; neither in the justification of the sinner, seeing that he makes faith the one condition for its attainment, or subsequent to justification and in the state of grace, because there all that obtains is confidence in the covering over of sin by grace, while the state of grace, in his opinion, of its own nature necessarily works what is good. The Law and its threats, is, in his opinion, useful “for revealing sin” in order that, knowing this, “grace may be sought and obtained”; “thus the Law works fear and wrath, whereas grace works hope and mercy.”[1623]

Fear, in reality, is contemptible; it “is there because sin prevails,” hence it is not found in the pious, not even in Old-Testament times.[1624] “Let us,” he cries, “cast at our feet all free-will.... Nature and free-will cannot stand before God, for they fear lest He should fall upon them with His club.... Where the Holy Spirit does not whisper to the heart the Evangelical promises, man looks upon God as a devil, executioner, taskmaster and judge.... To the devil with such holiness!”[1625] The above is no mere momentary outburst; it is a theological system and the expression of his deep psychological prejudice. We are carried back to his monastic days and to the theory which fear led him to invent to allay his own personal agitation, but to which he could hold fast only by dint of doing violence to himself.

When he came to see, that, to preserve the people from moral degradation, fear of the Judgments of God had to be preached, he urged that it should be emphasised and declared it quite essential. This he did particularly in his instructions for the Visitation of the Saxon Electorate, which accordingly contain what is practically a repudiation of his teaching. The reasonable and wholesome fear of the judge, which he would have preached to the “simple people” for the moving of their hearts, in spite of all his protests has surely a right and claim to work on the minds not merely of the “simple” but even of the educated, and accordingly to be urged even by the theologians.

Luther’s attitude here was as ambiguous as elsewhere, for instance, in the case of his whole doctrine of grace and justification, no less than in its premises, viz. unfreedom, concupiscence and original sin. Everywhere we meet with contradictions, which make it almost impossible to furnish any connected description of his doctrinal system.

_Augustine as the Authority for the New Doctrine of Works._

We have an example of Luther’s want of theological acumen in his appeal to Augustine in support of his doctrine of works.

In order to understand this we must recollect that, from the beginning, Luther had described his new theology as simply that of Augustine the great Father of the Church. Of Augustine’s--of whom he said in 1516 that he had not felt the slightest leaning towards him until he had “tumbled on” his writings[1626]--he had merely read in 1509 a small number of works, and he became acquainted with what were for him the more important of this Father’s writings only after he had already largely deviated from the Church’s doctrine.[1627] Even later, his knowledge of Augustine was scanty. He was, however, as a monk, fond of identifying his own new doctrine of grace with Augustine’s;[1628] he tried to enlist the help of his colleague, Amsdorf, by a present of St. Augustine’s works; in this he was completely successful.[1629] On May 18, 1517, he wrote to Lang on the state of things at Wittenberg, the triumphant words already quoted: “Our theology and St. Augustine are making happy progress with God’s help and are now paramount at the University,” etc.[1630] From that time forward he was fond of saying, that Augustine was opposed “to Gabriel Biel, Thomas of Aquin and the whole crowd of Sententiaries, and would hold the field against them because he was grounded on the pure Gospel, particularly on the testimony of Paul.”[1631] To what extent he really in his heart believed this of Augustine must remain a moot question.

“Luther,” says Julius Köstlin, one of the best-known authorities on Luther’s theology, “could, indeed, appeal to St. Augustine in support of the thesis that man becomes righteous and is saved purely by God’s gracious decree and the working of His Grace and not by any natural powers and achievements [which is the Catholic doctrine], but not for the further theory that man is regarded by God as just purely by virtue of faith ... nor that the Christian thus justified can never perform anything meritorious in God’s sight but is saved merely by the pardoning grace of God which must ever anew be laid hold of by faith” [i.e. the specifically Lutheran theses on faith and works]. The same author adds: “Only gradually did the fundamental difference between the Augustinian view, his own and that of Paul become entirely clear to Luther.”[1632]

When this happened it is hard to say; at any rate, his strictures on Augustine and the Fathers in his lectures of 1527 on the 1st Epistle of St. John, and in his later Table-Talk prove, that, as time went on he had given up all idea of finding in these authorities any confirmation of his doctrine on faith alone and works.[1633]