Chapter XXXIV: End of Luther’s Literary Labours. the Whole Reviewed (2)

As regards the doctrine of good works, Protestant theology of late has been disposed to take offence at Luther’s undue extension of freedom, which seems to endanger good works and the zealous keeping of the Law.

It is the Christian’s art, so Loofs sums up Luther’s teaching, to allow no thought of the Law to trouble his conscience, but simply to regard Christ as the bearer of his sins. “Here the one-sided view of the ‘Law,’ seen only from the standpoint of the need of acquiring merit by works, has a disturbing effect”; such is Loofs’s opinion. According to Luther such contempt for the Law is often impossible, hence he determined to conquer the “dualism of the old-new man” of which we like St. Paul (Gal. ii. 20) are conscious: I live, and yet I do not; I am dead, and yet I am not; a sinner, and yet no sinner; I have the Law and yet I have it not. We ought, according to Luther, to say to ourselves: There is a time to die and a time to live, a Law to be obeyed and a Law to be despised. “Even during the Antinomian controversy,” concludes Loofs, “Luther did not abandon such thoughts.”[1788]

Luther’s want of discrimination is most apparent, he says, in the fact, that, owing to his “peculiar interest in the preaching of the grace of God,” he depreciated works and the Law as the very fount of self-righteousness.[1789]

Loofs rightly refers to a sermon in the Church-postils where Luther inveighs against the “Papists, Anabaptists and other sects” who scream against us: “What is the use of your preaching so much of faith and Christ? What good does it do the people?”[1790] Luther could not in fact “sufficiently decry the Law or urge too strongly that it was useless to Christians.”[1791]

In the passage quoted Luther says of the exhortations to works and the preaching of the Commandments: “This preaching does nothing else but kill, i.e. far from being good or useful it is only harmful ... rank poison and death.”

And he goes on: “All our works, however precious they may be, are nothing but poison and death.... People may indeed boast loudly and say: ‘If you live in this way, take pains to keep the Law and perform many good works, you will be saved.’ But that these are only vain words, nay, a harmful doctrine, will soon be apparent.”[1792] It is not in man’s power to keep the Commandments by the performance of the right and necessary works, hence he becomes troubled and at last despairs if he strives after works. “The human race is so depraved that no one can be found who does not transgress all God’s commandments even though the wrath of God and his eternal damnation be held up before him and preached to him daily; indeed if this is impressed upon a man over much he only begins to rage against it more horribly.”[1793] It is merely “reason with its human ideas” which “cannot get beyond this, viz. that God is gracious to all who live in this manner and do what the Ten Commandments require; for reason knows nothing of the misery of our depraved nature, nor does it know that no one is able to keep God’s command.” For this cause Luther had at last brought to light and taught “that other doctrine in which grace and reconciliation are proclaimed” to us according to the “spirit and letter of St. Paul, whereas even the old doctors, Origen, Jerome and others, had not grasped St. Paul’s meaning.”[1794]

In Popery “Scripture and St. Paul’s Epistles” were pushed under the bench, and, instead, we wallowed in human foolishness like the swine in their sties.[1795]

“Of what use is it to us that Moses and the Law say: This shalt thou do, this would God have of thee? Yes, good Moses, I know this well and it is indeed quite true. But do you tell me how it is that, unfortunately, I neither keep it nor am able to keep it? It is no easy thing to spend money with an empty purse or to drink out of an empty can; if I am to pay my debts and to quench my thirst, then please tell me how I may come by a full purse and a brimming can. To this the babblers have no answer,” etc.[1796]

And yet the Catholic writers whom he dubs babblers, Erasmus and Eck for instance, had demonstrated from Scripture and tradition that first, man is by no means so helpless and depraved as Luther assumes, and, secondly, that the grace of God is at his disposal every moment in order, by supernatural assistance, to enable his natural powers to keep the Law. While pointing this out they appeal at the same time to those passages of Scripture which spur us on to good works, and even make our heavenly reward dependent on them.

Of these latter passages Loofs also asks: “In reality are not those alone saved who, besides their faith, can point to good works or at least to their fulfilment of the first Commandment? Does not Scripture over and over again speak of our being judged according to our works, and of the eternal _reward_?” Luther, however, so he remarks, got over the difficulty “by assuming, that, in such passages, faith is meant even when they speak of good works”; Luther actually finds a parallel in the “rule of the ‘_communicatio idiomatum_’” which deals with the Divine attributes of Christ made man.[1797]

Another attempt to evade the difficulty, so Loofs declares, is found in Luther’s statement regarding the reward promised in the Bible to the just for their works. He argued that there must be some difference between the saved in their “degree of brightness and glory,” and thus, “_accidentaliter_,” he makes some account of the reward.[1798] Loofs, however, also draws attention to the fact that in the same sermons on Matthew, when touching cursorily on this, Luther “pokes fun at the idea of God setting some ‘particular Saint’ in a topmost place in heaven, and inveighs against the traditional idea of the ‘_præmium accidentale_.’”[1799] This is quite true, for Luther’s statements do not agree even here. In the passage quoted he is explaining his doctrine according to which, in this world, all the justified are equal in sanctity, the sinner who has just been converted being as pleasing to God as the Apostles. “For were St. Peter a better Christian than I am, he would have to have a better Christ, a better Gospel and a better baptism. But, seeing that the heritage we enjoy is one and the same, we must all be equal in this.”[1800]

There are few sayings of Luther’s where the wholly mechanical nature of the forgiveness and sanctification taught by him, stands out more clearly.

That, in spite of all this, he does not exclude works, is sufficiently remarkable. In the very passage where Luther brings forward the objection of the Papists and Anabaptists: It must be _done_, i.e. good works, must be performed, he hastens to reply: “We have the Ten Commandments which we teach and keep as well as they”;[1801] the only difference was, that, he by his Evangelical preaching taught how the Commandments were really to be honoured.

Loofs can even say that Luther proclaims the need of good works. He quotes the following utterances, for instance, from Luther’s later years: “_Opera habent suam necessitatem_”; “they, too, must be there”; “On account of the hypocrites we must say that good works are requisite for salvation (‘_necessaria ad salutem_’),”[1802] “he did not shrink from speaking in this way when giving counsel.”[1803] It is quite true, that, when preaching to the people, mindful of their faults and vices, he is fond, as Loofs shows, of recalling how Christ says “drily and clearly”: “If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments [Mt. xix. 17]; item, Do this and thou shalt live, etc. [Luke x. 28]. This must be taken as it stands and without debate.”[1804] Hence Luther even calls those folk “mad” who say: “‘Only believe and you will be saved.’ No, good fellow, that will not do, and you will never get to the kingdom of heaven unless you keep the Commandments.... For it is written plainly enough: ‘If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.’”[1805] And Luther supports this text by others which speak of works, of their merit and demerit, their reward and punishment.[1806]

And yet immediately after he goes on to complain: “How are we to do what the Law perpetually urges and requires, seeing that we are unable to comply with its demands?”[1807]

Finally he reaches his usual answer: “I will do it, says Christ, and fulfil it”; first of all He again and again obtains forgiveness for us, “seeing that we are unable to keep the Law”; Christ, however, did not wish us “to continue sinning”; on the contrary, the grace He infuses makes us keep the Law “willingly and gladly”; good works, more particularly those of charity towards our neighbour, spring up of themselves after “we have crept beneath Christ’s mantle and wing.”[1808] Where faith is present “it cannot but work unceasingly what is good. It does not ask whether there be a call to do good works, but even before the question is put it has already done them, and is ever after doing them.”[1809] Those Christians—presumably the majority—who fail to find themselves in such a state receive but poor consolation: “Whoever does not perform such works is an unbelieving man, who gropes and looks about for faith and good works but knows neither the one nor the other.”[1810]

Luther did not see that he was endangering both faith and works and undermining their very foundations.

For, as his opponents objected, the last category of Christians, however careless they might be in the matter of good works, and however much they might fail to keep the Commandments, could, nevertheless, for the most part, at least boast of having the faith, whether regarded in the light of a “loving confidence in God’s grace” or in the more usual and ordinary sense of an acceptance of the divine revelation as true. Their faith, it was urged, was according to Luther at the outset very closely in touch with sin, indeed they had been justified by faith without either repentance or change of heart, faith having merely spread a cloak over their evil deeds; and yet now here was Luther telling them that they had lost the faith unless they lived by it, or if they transgressed the Commandments even by a venial sin—for Luther sees no distinction between mortal sin and venial.

Loofs is certainly not overstating things when he says that, “Luther was not clear in his own mind”[1811] as to his doctrine on the great questions of works and the Law, and that his “opinion comprised much that did not tally.”[1812]

Loofs adds: “How far Luther himself was aware that much of what he said voiced merely his own personal opinion it would be hard to tell.... Without his wealth of ideas and his ability to insist now on one, now on another side of a subject Luther would not have been so successful as a reformer. But he was hampered by his own qualities so soon as it became a question of putting his new views in didactic form.”[1813]

Loofs, like Harnack, spares no praise when speaking of Luther’s “qualities” and the “happy intuition” which enabled him to overthrow the olden order and to call into being a new, “religious,” Christianity.

_Luther’s Doctrine of Merit in the Eyes of Protestant Critics_

One such “happy intuition” Loofs sees in the fact, that, in the question of works and merit Luther “clearly perceived and got the better of the opinion, untenable in religion, that a scale of merit exists as between God and man.”[1814] The critic abstains from discussing the Catholic teaching on supernatural merit. Its earlier no less than its later defenders rightly emphasised, in opposition to Luther, that the olden doctrine of merit rested on the express promise of God to reward faithful service, and not, as Luther insinuated, on any absolute right of the works in themselves to such reward. The act which was to meet with such a reward must, they said, be not only good in itself but also supernaturally good, i.e. it must be performed by man’s powers aided by supernatural grace; even this, however, would not suffice were there not the gracious promise on God’s part, guaranteed by revelation, that such an act would be requited by a heavenly reward. Yet this was not to deny a certain “_condignitas in actu primo_” inherent in the act itself.

Luther, it is true, laughs to scorn the Popish doctrine of merit which makes God Himself our debtor. Yet long before St. Augustine had answered the objection: “God has become our debtor, not as though He has received something from us, but because He has promised what pleased Him. It is a different thing when we say to a man: You are my debtor because I have given you something, and when we say to God: Give us what Thou hast promised, for we have done what Thou didst command.”[1815]

In the fragments of the ancient doctrine of religious morality which Luther saw fit to retain he put germs of disintegration owing to his failure to recognise the above truth. Because he would hear nothing of merit and everywhere scented righteousness-by-works, he built up a theory of good works which lacks a foundation. In the last resort everything is coloured by his dread of self-righteousness and of any human co-operation. “The ‘Law,’ to Luther, seemed conditioned by that ‘_condicio meriti_,’” says Loofs, “which belonged to the Law of Moses, and, which, owing to the craving of the natural man for self-righteousness, also becomes part of the natural law.”[1816]

So strongly does Luther denounce merit and self-righteousness that he practically does away with his own doctrine of works.

First, his denial of free-will and the absolute determinism of his doctrine makes an end of all spontaneous, meritorious action on man’s part. Further, he is untrue to his position, repudiating it in his sermons and popular writings as far as possible, and replacing it by one morally more defensible. In later years we find him casting over his own teaching even in his theological disputations; in his anxiety to counter the Antinomians, he goes so far as to declare works necessary for salvation.

Even earlier the fanatics and Anabaptists had helped to some extent in the work of demolition. Their conclusions as to the dangers of Luther’s system and their protests against its evil moral consequences are really much more vigorous and damaging than might appear from Luther’s bitter rejoinders. “The unjust attitude of the reformers towards the ‘fanatics,’” says Harnack, “was disastrous to themselves and their cause. How much might they not have learnt from these despised people even though obliged to repudiate their principles.”[1817]

The work of demolition was, moreover, being carried out under Luther’s very eye by Philip Melanchthon and his friends. Luther’s doctrine, as has already been pointed out, was not at all to the taste of the dialectician of Lutheranism. “The Philippists,” says Loofs, “were very far from holding Luther’s own views,” “as far removed as” the Antinomians. Luther himself, however, “was partly to blame for the confusion.” From the standpoint adopted by Melanchthon “it was impossible to comply” with Luther’s demand for a clear “distinction to be made between Law and Gospel”;[1818] yet, according to Luther, this was one of “the things on which theology hinges.”[1819] According to Loofs, Melanchthon’s theology was a means of spoiling some “valuable reformation truths,” nay, “the most priceless of Luther’s new ideas.”[1820] As for Melanchthon’s allegation, viz. that he had merely put Luther’s doctrine more mildly, Loofs says bluntly: “If he meant this, then he deceived himself.”[1821] As to the points under discussion, Luther not only thought differently from Melanchthon at an earlier date, but persisted in so doing till his very death. Luther, nevertheless, never expressed any disapproval of Melanchthon’s ideas, widely as they differed from his own.

_Luther’s teaching on the Sacraments and on the Supper according to Protestant Teaching_

In Harnack’s opinion Luther, by his teaching on the one sacrament, viz. the Word, “destroyed the olden ecclesiastical view. Yet he unconsciously retained a certain remnant ... which had fatal results on the development of his doctrine. Though here again we find truth and error side by side in Luther, we may not shut our eyes to the fact that he opened the door to errors of a grave character.”[1822]

The principal error in his doctrine of the sacraments consisted, according to Harnack, in his having made his own a reminiscence of the Catholic view. Instead of teaching that the Holy Ghost acts by the Word alone, he came, as his statements subsequent to 1525 show, to regard this Spirit as operating by the “Word _and_ the Sacraments.”[1823]

“In his teaching on the sacraments he forsook the attitude he had once adopted as a reformer and accepted views which tended to confuse his own doctrine of faith and still more the theology of his followers. In his efforts to thwart the fanatics he came to embrace ... some highly questionable propositions.... This relapse in his views on the means of grace wrought untold damage to Lutheranism.”[1824] Here his desire to get the better of the fanatics played a part, and so did likewise the psychological starting-point of his whole teaching. He reverted to the means of grace, “because he wished to provide real consolation for troubled consciences, and to preserve them from the hell of uncertainty concerning that state of grace of which the fanatics appeared to make so small account.... It was, however, not merely by his rejection of certain definite acts as means of grace that Luther returned to the narrow views of the Middle Ages which he had previously forsaken—the spirit lives not (as Luther knew better than any other man), thanks to any means of grace, but thanks rather to that close union with its God on Whom it lays hold through Christ—he did so still more by seeking, first, to vindicate Infant Baptism as a means of grace in the strict sense; secondly, by accepting Penance as at least a preparation for grace, and, thirdly, by maintaining that the Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Supper constitutes the essential part of this sacrament.”[1825] It is true he “never ceased to maintain that the means of grace were nothing but the Word whereby faith is awakened,” but, in spite of this, the “_opus operatum_” of the olden Church “had again made its appearance and weakened or obscured the strict relations between Gospel and faith.”[1826]

Of Infant Baptism in Luther’s system Harnack rightly says: “If Luther’s Evangelical theory holds good, viz. that grace and faith are inseparably linked,[1827] then Infant Baptism is in itself no sacrament, and can be no more than an ecclesiastical rite; if it is a sacrament in the strict sense, then evidently his theory is at fault. We cannot escape the dilemma, either by appealing to the faith of the parents or god-parents [as Luther, to begin with, did]—for this is the worst kind of the ‘_fides implicita_’—or by assuming that faith is given in baptism,[1828] for an unconscious faith is almost as bad as that other ‘_fides implicita_.’ Hence the proper thing for Luther to have done would have been either to abolish Infant Baptism ... or to admit that it was a mere rite to be completed later.... Luther, however, did neither; on the contrary, he retained Infant Baptism as the sacrament of regeneration and accepted as an efficacious act what should, given his theory, have at most been a symbol of God’s preventing grace. This was, however much he might deny it, to hark back to the ‘_opus operatum_’ and to dissolve the link between faith and the working of grace.”[1829]

Again, according to Harnack, the mould in which Luther cast his doctrine of the Supper once more involved him in contradictions which rendered his position untenable.

On the one hand, by so strenuously insisting on the belief in the Real Presence as a binding doctrinal formula he was untrue to his own theory that doctrine was not to be formulated; on the other hand, his restatement of the doctrine of the Supper emptied it of all content. It was “in part the fault of his formulating of the faith that the later Lutheran Church, with its Christology, its teaching on the Sacrament ... and the false standard by which it judged divergent doctrines and pronounced them heretical, threatened for a while to become a sort of caricature of the Catholic Church.”[1830]

Harnack notes how Luther, the better to reach the real meaning of the words “This is My Body,” actually called tradition to his aid, in his case an extremely illogical thing to do. His consciousness that in holding fast to the Real Presence he was backed by the whole Church of yore lends his words unusual power. “Even were a hundred thousand devils and all the fanatics to fall upon it, still the doctrine must stand firm.”[1831] We may add, that, with regard to this sacrament, Luther outdid his adversaries in his attachment to tradition and antiquity, reintroducing communion under both kinds as being alone in strict accord with Scripture.

There was also much that was personal and arbitrary in the doctrine of the Sacrament of the Altar as shaped anew and established by Luther. For one thing, he dwelt far too exclusively on this sacrament being the pledge of the forgiveness of sins. Again, in his desire to counter Zwingli, he put forward theories on the sacrament, which embody all sorts of disadvantages and contradictions not to be found in the teaching of the earlier Church. He, indeed, denied Transubstantiation, but the “Swiss could not for the life of them see why he did, since he admits that a stupendous miracle takes place in the Supper.”[1832]

For the Church’s ancient doctrine of Transubstantiation he substituted Impanation, and even this he admitted only in the actual celebration and reception.[1833] “The awkward part was,” says Harnack, “that, according to Luther, the Body and Blood of Christ were present in the Supper only for the purpose of reception, though they might be partaken of even by an unbeliever or a heathen.”[1834] The concomitance (presence of both Body and Blood under either kind) taught by the olden Church, which, indeed, was a natural corollary of the Real Presence, he set aside, urged thereto by his theory that in Communion both kinds must be received; the only result was to introduce a new and uncalled-for miracle. To this must be added what Harnack calls the “crazy speculations on the ubiquity of the Body of Christ,”[1835] which furnished Melanchthon his principal reason for giving up Luther’s doctrine of the Supper, and, like Zwingli and Bucer, denying the Real Presence. According to Luther, the ubiquity of the Body of Christ rested on the supposed “real communication of the Divine ‘_idiomata_’ (and consequently of the Divine omnipresence) to the humanity of Christ.”[1836]

Nor does the Real Presence, according to Luther, begin at the consecration; as to when it does, he leaves the faithful in the dark; nor does he enlighten them as to when it ceases in the remains left over after communion; in the latter regard his practice was full of contradictions.—In allowing communion to be carried to the sick in their own houses he was again unfaithful to his tenets.[1837] To any processions of the sacrament he was averse, because Christ was only present at the time of reception.

He proposed, as the better plan, that the sacrament should not be adored save by bending the knee when receiving it, and yet his own behaviour did not tally with his proposal.[1838] It was enacted at Wittenberg, in 1542, that there should be no elevation, and yet Luther had retained this rite at an earlier date, in order to defy Carlstadt, as he says, and so as not to seem in this “indifferent matter” to sanction by his attitude Carlstadt’s attack on the sacrament.[1839] He was, to say the least, verbally illogical when he termed the Eucharist the “_sacrificium eucharisticum_,” meaning of course thereby that it was a “thank-offering” on the part of the faithful.

It is not surprising that belief in the Real Presence, though so strongly defended by Luther, gradually evaporated in his Church largely owing to the inconsistencies just noticed. Eventually the Lutherans made their own the views of Zwingli and Melanchthon on the sacrament, though they retained an affection for certain vague and elastic terms concerning the reception of the Body and Blood of Christ.[1840] Luther spoke of the attempts to introduce Zwingli’s rationalistic doctrine of the sacrament at Frankfurt-on-the-Main as “a diabolical jugglery with the words of Christ,” “whereby simple souls are shamefully duped and robbed of their sacrament.” The thing was “handled in such a way that no one was certain what was meant or what to believe.”[1841]

_Luther’s views on the Church and on Divine Worship according to Protestant Criticism_

A mass of inconsequence lies in the doctrine on the Church, which he is supposed to have retained, though, as a matter of fact, he completely altered it. Thanks to his conception of the Church as a practically invisible body his view of it was so broad as to leave far behind the old, Catholic idea; nevertheless, by and by his conception of the Church grew so narrow, that, as Harnack justly remarks, “in comparison, even the Roman view of it seems in many respects more elastic and consequently superior.... The Church threatened to become a mere school, viz. the school of ‘pure [Wittenberg] doctrine.’” In this way arose “the Christianity of the theologians and pastors.... Luther on his own side repeatedly broke away from this view.”[1842] It is quite true that many contradictions are here apparent, as we shall have occasion to see later (vol. vi., xxxviii.). “His idea of the Church became obscured. The conception of the Church (communion of faith and communion of pure doctrine) became as ambiguous as the conception of the ‘_doctrina evangelii_.’”

Then, with regard to his teaching on public worship. Though, as remarked above (p. 147 f.), he had in principle abandoned the view held by the olden Church regarding the necessity of external worship, and had robbed it of its focus, viz. the Sacrifice of the Altar, yet he was very far from logically following this out in practice.

His standpoint, according to Harnack, was originally this: “If it is certain that man may not, and indeed cannot do anything for God’s sake, if the very idea of moving God by our works is the death of true piety, if the whole relationship between God and man depends on a believing disposition, i.e. on unshakable trust in Him, humility and constant prayer, if lastly no ceremony has any worth, then there can be no ‘Divine Service’ in the true sense of the term. The only direct service of God there is, is faith, otherwise the rule that obtains everywhere is that we serve God by charity towards our neighbour.”[1843]

Very soon, however, we find that in practice Luther reverts to some sort of common worship for the sake of the “common man,” who requires to hear the Word, to assist at public prayers, and who must also have some kind of liturgy. At times Luther seems to speak of public worship as merely a “school for the imperfect,” and, occasionally, he may really have meant it (above, p. 149 f.). By reforming the Mass and by the other directions he gave concerning public worship, scanty and faltering though they be, he introduced a practice which is at variance with his principles. “The seemingly conservative attitude he adopted in his emendation of the Missal, and his refusal to undertake a thorough reconstruction of divine worship led to many ‘Lutherans’ in the 16th, and again in the 19th century, entertaining questionable views on the specific religious value of public worship, its object and its practice. How very unlike Luther this is—seeing that Luther here can, and must, be corrected in his own light—and what a vast difference exists between the Evangelical and the Catholic doctrine of divine worship.”[1844] Harnack appeals to Gottschick’s “Luthers Anschauungen vom christlichen Gottesdienst” (1887), as clearly demonstrating this. According to Gottschick the old Lutheran liturgy is not “even relatively a genuine product of the real spirit of the Reformation.” In this theologian’s opinion, Luther “really adopted the Roman Mass, contenting himself with a few alterations.” Gottschick urges that an attempt should be made to construct “an entirely new edifice on the basis of the principles embodied in Luther’s reforming views,” etc.[1845]

Gottschick is also right when he points out, that Luther “took but little interest in liturgy.”[1846] He was, however, set on bringing the people into the new faith and Church with the utmost circumspection and with as little fuss as possible. It is not necessary to recall here how successful was his policy of retaining the external forms, particularly on the unschooled masses who were unable to see below the surface. (Cp. vol. ii., p. 319 ff.)

Luther declared that he himself, “with a few friends, really constituted the ancient Church”—“a remarkable point of view,” says Harnack, “explicable only by the idealism of his faith.”[1847]

This enabled him, so Harnack continues, “to abandon and assail the Catholic Church, and nevertheless all the while to protest that he stood with the olden Church. Though in assuming this attitude his faith was so strong that it mattered nothing to him how great or how small was the number of those who refused to bend the knee to Baal, yet it was of the greatest interest to him to show that he was a true member of that Church which had existed through the ages. Hence, he was compelled to prove the historical continuity of his position. But how could this be proved more surely than by means of the old creeds of the ancient Church still in force?”[1848]

Here, again, we are confronted by the contradiction which runs through the whole of Luther’s theology.

Even the very Creeds he had undermined by that subjectivism which he had exalted into a principle. Every Creed must submit to being tested by the Word of God, either by Luther himself or by any other man who considered himself equal to the task. Furthermore, the Word of God is subservient to the Canon set up by Luther or any other Christian scholar, and its sense may be determined by any Christian sufficiently enlightened to understand it. This was to open up the road to a Christianity minus any creed or dogma.

Luther’s claims, whether to represent the olden Church or to have furnished a better and firmer basis for the future, have never been more vigorously questioned by any Protestant theologian of modern days than by Adolf Harnack.

If we sum up in Harnack’s words the results of modern Protestant criticism exercised on Luther’s teaching, we find that they do not in the least countenance the obsolete view of some of Luther’s latest admirers, viz. that he preserved what was good and “wholesome” of the existing dogmas and merely added “one, or two supplementary doctrines.”[1849] Even to-day we still hear it said that his belief and the “ancient dogma” were really “in complete harmony”; people, in support of this statement, appeal to what might naturally be considered the best witness, viz. to Luther himself, who was quite of this opinion. But when the defenders of this view begin to speak of Luther’s “alteration” of dogma and of his having “reconstructed” it, then, says Harnack, it becomes “hard to tell what the words are intended to convey,” in any case, it is an admission that “Luther’s conception of faith in some way or other modified the whole of dogma.”[1850]

It would be more correct, according to Harnack, to say, that “Luther overthrew the whole doctrine of the olden and mediæval Church, retaining only a few fragments.”[1851] His own “attitude of mind towards ancient dogma” was not “altogether consistent.” His “Christianity” is, as a matter of fact, “no longer inwardly bound up” with ancient dogma; his “conception of faith, i.e. what admittedly constituted his main contribution,” stands in no need of the olden doctrinal baggage.[1852] “In Luther’s Reformation the old, dogmatic Christianity was set aside and replaced by a new, Evangelical conception. The Reformation is really [for Harnack’s Protestantism] the end of the history of dogma.... If Luther agrees with this or that definition of the ancient or mediæval Church, the agreement, seen from this standpoint, is partly only apparent, partly a coincidence which can never be the result of any _a priori_ submission to tradition.”[1853]

“So far as Luther left a ‘Theology’ to his followers it appears as an extremely complicated affair.... He did not therein give its final expression to Evangelical Christianity, but merely inaugurated it.”[1854] A philosopher may, at a pinch, find the dogmas of the Greek Church wise and profound, but no philosopher could possibly find any savour in Luther’s faith. Luther himself was not aware of the chasm that separated him from the ancient dogma, partly because he interpreted it in his own sense, partly because he retained some vestige of respect for the definitions of the Councils, partly, too, because he was only too pleased to be able to confront the Turks, heathen, Jews and fanatics with something definite, assured, exalted and incomprehensible.[1855]

We may well make Harnack’s concluding words our own: “It has been shown that the scraps of the olden belief which he retained do not tally with his views as a whole.... The whole does not merely rise above this or that dogma, but above all dogmatic Christianity in general,”[1856] i.e. the doctrines of the Christian faith are no longer binding.

2. Luther as a Popular Religious Writer. The Catechism

During the last years of his life Luther was able to put the last touch to his literary labours by undertaking a new revision of some of his more important earlier works, and by assisting in the compilation of complete editions of his writings.

Thanks partly to his own literary labours, partly to the help and support of friends and pupils, he succeeded in gathering together those works which he desired to see handed down to posterity.

In 1541 and 1545 Luther’s German translation of the Bible also received its finishing touch, and a new, amended edition was brought out, which, though slightly altered, still serves the Protestant congregations to-day. Moreover, the sermons of the Postils were revised afresh in order to furnish reading matter for the people and to help the preachers. In 1540 he himself published the first part of the Church-Postils (the winter term) and, in 1543, appeared the second portion, previously revised by Cruciger.[1857] The Home-Postils appeared for the first time in 1544, edited by Veit Dietrich. At the same time a beginning was made with the complete editions of his literary works, the first volume of the German edition appearing in 1539 and the first volume of the Latin edition in 1545.

_His Collected Works; his New Edition of the Church-Postils_

Luther’s German writings were collected by Cruciger and Rörer and printed at Wittenberg. The second volume was published only in 1548, after Luther’s death. The compilation of the Latin writings was carried out with the aid of various friends, for instance, of Spalatin and Rörer, and also first saw the light at Wittenberg. Both these editions were eagerly sought after by the booksellers and a great sale was anticipated.

In the introductions which Luther prefixed to both collections he not only followed the then universal fashion of seeking to make a favourable impression on the reader by an extravagant display of humility, but also gave free play to his love for grotesque exaggerations. He had no intention of writing any “Retractations,” as St. Augustine had done, however much such might be called for. Instead of this he professes to repudiate his books wholesale—though only, of course, to bring them forward again all the more vigorously. Whoever is familiar with Luther’s ways will not need to be told how to interpret and appreciate what he here says. There is no doubt, however, that countless readers of these introductions fell into the trap and exclaimed: How great and yet how humble is the man who speaks in these pages!

Luther begins the prefaces to his German works[1858] with the wish, which we have heard him express before: “Gladly would I see all my books unwritten or destroyed.”[1859] Why? “That Holy Scripture might be read and studied the more,” that Word of God, “which so long lay forgotten under the bench.” Because, in the Church, “many books and large libraries” had been collected “apart from and in addition to Scripture,” and “without any discrimination,” the “true understanding of the Divine Word had at last been lost.” At any rate it was “good and profitable that the writings of some of the Fathers and Councils had remained as witnesses and histories.” I myself, he says, “may venture to boast without pride or lying that I do not fall far short of some of the Fathers in the matter of the making of books; my life, however, I would not dare to liken to theirs.” It is, however, his books that “provide the ‘pure knowledge’ of the Word.” Nevertheless, he seeks comfort in the thought, “that, in time, my books, too, will lie dusty and forgotten,” “particularly now that it has begun to rain and hail books.” But whoever reads them, “let him see well to it that they do not prove a hindrance to his studying Scripture itself.”

He then goes on to give some quite excellent directions as to how best to study Holy Scripture. He himself had pursued this method, and were the reader too to make it his own he would be able, “if necessary, to compose as good books as the Fathers and the Councils.”

In the first place you must “altogether renounce your own judgment and reason,” and rather beg God “humbly and earnestly to ... enlighten you”; but if anyone “falls on it with his reason” ... then the result is only a new crop of fanatics. Secondly, he recommends that the text of the Bible, i.e. “the literal words of the book, should be ever studied, read and re-read with diligent attention and reflection as to what the Holy Ghost means thereby.” Thirdly, temptations: “As soon as the Word of God is being made known to you, the devil will attack you, make a real doctor of you, and, by his temptations, teach you to seek and love God’s Word.” He, too, had to thank his Papists and the raging of the devil at their bidding for having made him “a pretty fair theologian.” Hence “_oratio, meditatio, tentatio_.”

But if anyone seeks to win praise by writing books, then let him pull his own ears and he will find “a fine long pair of big rough donkey’s ears”; these he may adorn with golden bells so that everyone may point at him and say: “There goes the elegant animal who writes such precious books.” No, so he concludes his preface, “in this book all the praise is God’s.”

In the preface to the first volume of his Latin works Luther seeks, not so much to enhance his knowledge of Scripture as he does in the German preface, but rather to explain in his own way how he was led to take up the position he did.

He represents the indulgence controversy as the sole cause of his breach with Catholicism and does so in language in which readers, unacquainted with the real state of the case, would detect simply a defence of his struggle against the “fury and wrath of Satan.” Of the real motive of the struggle, viz. his rupture with the doctrines of the Church even previous to the Leipzig Disputation, or, indeed, to the Theses against Tetzel, he says never a word. On the other hand, he launches out into a dissertation on his Popish views at that time, which he urges had been deeper and more ingrained than those of Eck and all his opponents, and, which, unfortunately, had disfigured his earliest writings. He had been terribly afraid of the Last Judgment but at the same time had longed ardently to be eternally saved. God knew that it was only by the merest chance that he had been drawn into public controversy (“_casu, non voluntate nec studio_”). Only when beginning his second exposition of the Psalms (1518-19) had the knowledge dawned upon him of that “Justice of God,” whereby we are justified; before this he had hated the term “Justice of God.”[1860] He is at great pains to impress on the reader that he had “gradually advanced, thanks to much writing and teaching,” and was not one of those, “who [like the fanatics], from nothing, become all at once the greatest of men ... without labour, or temptations, or experience.” No great stress need be laid on the statement he again makes at the commencement of this preface, viz. that he would fain see all his books “buried in oblivion,” and that only the urgent entreaties of friends had won his consent to their bringing out a complete edition of his “muddled books.”

In the evening of his life Luther could look back with a certain satisfaction on the numerous popular works he had composed for the instruction and edification of the masses and the “simple,” and on the success with which they had been crowned. Again and again his fondness for thus instructing the populace had drawn him into this sphere of work; he had always striven with great perseverance and patience to better, both as to their language and their matter, the little tracts he composed. How highly he valued such works of instruction we can see from the writings which appeared from time to time as precursors of his Catechisms. They show how diligent he was in dealing with popular religious subjects.

He himself bears witness to his laborious literary labours and their results in the preface to his Church-Postils of 1543.[1861] Conscious of what he had achieved he there quotes the passage where St. Paul says that the faithful were “enriched in all things, in all knowledge and understanding,” etc. (1 Cor. i. 5). “In the same way we may say to our Germans that God has richly given us His Word in the German tongue.... For what more can we have or desire?” He points to the catechism which he has preached “clearly and with power,” to his exposition of the Commandments, of the Our Father and the Creed; in his writings they would find explained “Holy Baptism, the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of our Lord, the keys, the ban, and absolution. We have been instructed definitely how each one is to understand his own state and calling and behave himself; whether he be a cleric or a layman, or of high or low estate. We know what conjugal life is, what widowhood and maidenhood, and how we are to live and act therein in a Christian manner.”—Although the people were already sufficiently instructed on these points, and though Luther’s teaching in so far as it was something new cannot meet with our approval, yet it must be admitted that in his writings for the people Luther treated of these things, according to his light, in language both popular and forcible.

Herewith, so he says in the same preface, you receive from my friend Cruciger the Church-Postils amended and enlarged, with its “lucid and amusing” explanations of the Gospel-lessons. Just as a mother pulps the food for her baby, so the Epistles and Gospels of the year have been pulped for you. As now they had already in print a corrected edition of the lives of the Saints, a German version of the Psalter and, in particular, the whole Bible in “good German,” the preachers should be better able to teach the people how to be saved. “We have done our part faithfully and in full measure; let us therefore be for ever thankful to God, the Father of all mercies.” Luther’s allusion to his Postils as being “lucid and amusing,” and to the “good German” of his translation of the Bible, are perfectly justified.

* * * * *

Luther, in 1527, spoke of his Church-Postils as the “best book I ever wrote ... which, indeed, pleases even the Papists.”[1862] It is obvious that he bestowed this praise upon it in view of its positive contents. It is true that, some eight or nine years later, he declared with his customary exaggeration, he wished the “whole of this book could be blotted out”; this was, however, at a time when he was already planning a new edition to be undertaken by Cruciger, “which might be useful to the whole Church.”[1863] The work, however, even in its first dress, undoubtedly contained much that was good.

_Good Points and Shortcomings of Luther’s Popular Works_

Not only is the number of popular writings Luther composed surprising, but they are distinguished by the energy and originality of their style, and, in many passages where no fault is to be found with what he says, his instructions and exhortations are admittedly seasoned with much that is truly thoughtful and edifying. In spite of all the admixture of falsehood to the ancient treasure of doctrine a certain current of believing Christianity flows through these popular writings and contrasts agreeably with both the more or less infidel literature of recent times and the shallow religious productions of an earlier date.

The mediæval language, feelings and world of thought, all so instinct with faith and piety, find a splendid exponent in Luther as soon as, putting controversy aside, he seeks to seize the hearts of the people; such passages even make the reader ask whether the author can really be one and the same with the writer who elsewhere fulminates with such revolting malice against the Church of the past. Then, again, the plentiful quotations from the Bible in which he was so much at home, impart a devout tone to what he says without, however, in the least rendering it insipid or unnatural. From the latter fault he was preserved by a certain soberness of outlook, by his native realistic coarseness and his general tendency to be rude rather than sentimental.

Nor would it by any means be right were Luther’s opponents to attribute the above favourable traits in his writings exclusively to the influence of the Catholic past. It is true that it is the latter which is mainly responsible for the elements of truth found in his writings, and also, not seldom, for the attractive and sympathetic way in which he presents his matter to the reader; but to deny that the author’s peculiar talent for speaking to the people and his rare gift of adapting himself to his German readers had also its share, would be to go too far. Luther, who hailed from among the lower class and had ever been in touch with it, knew the German character as well as any man (see vol. iii., p. 93 ff.). In his style he embodied to some extent the nation’s mode of thought and speech. Hence his success with the Germans, whom he drew by the strongest ties, viz. those of nationalism, into circles where the motherly warnings of the Church were no longer heard.

We are, however, unable to discern in his writings the mystical qualities which some of his admirers find everywhere. Echoes of the sayings of the olden mystics, such as we have had occasion to quote from his earlier works, obviously do not suffice to prove his own mystic gifts. Moreover, these echoes tend to become feebler as time goes on, and the nearer his literary labours draw to their close the less can they be considered to bear the character of true mystical productions. Certain leanings met with in Luther at the beginning, and even later, we have already had to characterise as the outcome of an untheological pseudo-mysticism.[1864]

In his Exposition of the Magnificat (1521), for instance, we meet with trains of thought expressed in words which by their beauty recall those of the mystics of old. One cannot read without being edified what he says at the commencement of this little work, of the love of God which makes “the heart overflow with joy,”[1865] or of the glories of Mary; of her, nothing greater can be said than that she was the Mother of God, “even had one as many tongues as there are leaves on the trees, blades of grass in the field, stars in heaven, or grains of sand on the sea-shore.”[1866]—Akin to this is the touching conclusion of his little writing on the Our Father, where he pictures the soul as pouring forth its desires to God the Father.[1867] Such jewels are, however, not offered to his readers as frequently as his talent in this respect would have rendered desirable.

To what good account he put this gift in his earlier years is well seen even in his controversial “Von der Freyheyt eynes Christen Menschen” (1520), where he is at pains to expound the sum of the Christian life, though “only for the plain man.” Our present subject invites us to return once more to this side of the writing.[1868]

Of works of charity Luther there speaks as follows: “The inward man is at one with God, is joyful and merry by reason of Christ Who has done so much for him, and all his joy is in wishing to serve God in return freely and out of pure love. In his flesh, however, he finds a will which is quite other and which wishes to serve the world and to seek what it pleases. But this, faith cannot bear, and it sets vigorously to work to check and restrain it. As St. Paul says, Rom. vii. [23]: I see another law in my members fighting against the law of my mind and ensnaring me in the law of sin.”[1869]

Later, coming to the works imposed upon man by self-restraint, he says: “So much of works in general, such as it suits a Christian to practise against his own flesh. Now we have to speak of works which he does for other men. For on this earth man does not live by himself but among other folk. Hence he cannot live without performing works for them, for he has to speak and have dealings with them.... Look how plainly Paul makes the Christian life to consist in works done for the good of our neighbour.... He instances Christ as our example and says [Phil. ii. 6-7]: ‘Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, Who being in the form of God thought it no robbery to be equal to God, and yet emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant,’ and doing and suffering all things for our sakes alone. In the same way the Christian man, though he is free, ought willingly to become a slave in his neighbour’s service, and treat him as God through Christ has treated us, and all this, too, without reward; to seek nothing thereby but to be well-pleasing to God, and to think thus: See, God in and through Christ has bestowed on me, unworthy and guilty wretch that I am, without any merit, and solely out of pure mercy, an abundance of riches, piety and salvation.... Hence, in my turn, I will readily, gladly and without reward do what is well-pleasing to such a Father Who has heaped upon me His unspeakable riches, and be a Christ to my neighbour as Christ was to me; only what I see him to need and what is useful and profitable to him, will I do, now that, by my faith, I myself have all things abundantly in Christ. See, how joy and love of God spring from faith, and, how, from love comes a ready, willing, cheerful life of service towards our neighbour.”[1870]—“It is thus that God’s gifts must flow from the one to the other and become common to all, so that each one cares as much for his neighbour as he does for himself. They flow to us from Christ, Who, in His life, took us on Him as though He had been what we are. From us they should flow to those who need them.”[1871]

Though, intermingled with such excellent matter, we find ever-recurring allusions to his peculiar doctrine of justification by faith alone, and though he fails to see the true organic connection between good works and the life of faith and thus condemns to inanity all works not performed out of perfect charity, yet it cannot be gainsaid that certain aspects of neighbourly love are here admirably portrayed.

Later on we often miss this sympathetic tone, for it was blighted by his polemics. As for his aptitude for instructing the people he retained it, however, to the end.