We must call to mind that the young and ardent University professor, though deficient in humility and in the capacity to assimilate the sublime teachings of the Epistle to the Romans, stood all the more under the spell of two misleading ideas which had long dominated him, viz. on the one hand, the supposed depth and transforming power of the knowledge of Scripture he had already acquired and, on the other, the need of assailing the self-righteous and hypocritical Little Saints and all excessive esteem for good works. In the latter respect the passages in Romans on works, faith and merit—of which he failed to see the real meaning—became dangerous rocks on which Luther’s earlier religious convictions suffered hopeless shipwreck. So greatly was he attracted and, as it were, fascinated by the light that seemed to him to stream in on his soul from this Epistle, that he came to see the same thing everywhere. Its suggestive power over him was all the greater because in his then pseudo-mystical train of thought he was fond of comparing himself to the Apostle and of fancying, that, as in that case so in his, inner self-annihilation would lead to his receiving similar favours from God. This self-annihilation in Luther’s case was, however, a morbid one.
Luther, in his younger days, had also been grievously tormented with thoughts on predestination. He now fancied, according to what he supposed was Paul’s teaching, that to abandon oneself in the hands of God, without will, strength or wish, was the sole means by which he and all other men could find tranquillity. Thus, on the strength of misunderstood inward experiences, he hailed the Epistle to the Romans and, a little later, the Epistle to the Galatians, as the only guide along the strange paths of his future exegesis.
His supposed “experiences of God” became the ruling power by which, thanks to an exegesis entirely new, he was to bring salvation to the whole of mankind.
Hitherto, in spite of all his diligence in the study of the Bible, any idea of upholding his own new interpretation against the existing doctrines of the Church had been altogether foreign to him. In his first manuscript notes and in the Commentary on the Psalms which has only recently come to light, likewise in his earlier sermons, he still looks at everything from the Catholic standpoint; the Church’s authority is still the appointed guardian and interpreter of Holy Scripture. There the Bible is to him unquestionably the divinely inspired book and the true Word of God, though it is, not the individual’s, but the Church’s duty to draw from its inexhaustible treasures arguments in her own defence and in refutation of the teaching of the heretics. To the teaching of Scripture and to the infallible interpretation of the Church based on the tradition of the Fathers, everyone, so he then held, must submit as Christ Himself had ordained.
Even then, however, he was already convinced that he had received an extraordinary call to deal with Holy Scripture. The very admiration of his fellow-monks for his familiarity with his red leather copy of the Bible, fostered the self-love of the youthful student of the Scriptures. This Staupitz increased by his incautious reference to the future “great Doctor,” and by his general treatment of Luther. The written Word of God in which the wide-awake and quick-witted monk felt himself at home more than any of his fellows quite evidently became so much his own peculiar domain, that, in his opinion, Bible scholarship was the only worthy form of theological learning and ruled every branch of Divine knowledge. He even went further, attributing all the corruption in the Church to “neglect of the Word,” i.e. to ignorance of and want of compliance with the Bible Word. On the strength of his accounted profounder knowledge of the “Word,” he also reproves the “holy-by-works.” Even previous to the lectures on Romans, his conviction of the antithesis between human works and Christ’s grace made him read everywhere Christ into Scripture; the Bible, so he says, must be taken to the well-spring, i.e. to the Cross of Christ, having done which we may then be “quite certain to catch” its true meaning. Before Luther’s day others in the Church had done the same, though within lawful limits. Among contemporary Humanists even Erasmus had insisted on Christ’s being made the centre of Scripture.[1521]
Widely as Luther, in his Commentary on Romans, already diverges from the Church’s interpretation of St. Paul regarding the doctrine of Justification, yet he still admits, at least in theory, the principle of authority both in the interpretation of the Bible and in general.[1522] He rejects without compunction all those heresies which deviate from the Church’s guidance. In practice, however, he sets himself above the teaching of the Fathers where-ever this runs counter to his views; St. Augustine is forced to witness in his favour even at the expense of the other representatives of tradition, and, as for mediæval scholasticism, it is treated as though it were not at all one of the links in the venerable chain of tradition. On the other hand, Luther allows his exegesis to be influenced by those later and less reputable exponents of scholasticism with whom alone he was acquainted.
On such lines as these did his exegesis of the Bible proceed; on the one hand there was his excessive regard for his own acquaintance with Scripture, and, on the other, his pseudo-mysticism leaning for its support on misunderstood interior revelations and illuminations. A certain sense of his vocation as the Columbus of the Bible ever accompanies him from that time forward.
This psychological condition manifests itself in utterances contained in the lectures on Romans and in later works.
“Here,” so he writes in the lectures, “a great stride has been made towards the right interpretation of Holy Scripture, by understanding it all as bearing on Christ ... even when the surface-sense of the letter does not require it.”[1523] “All Scripture deals everywhere with Christ alone.”[1524] “All this is said, written or done that human presumption may be humbled and the grace of God exalted.”[1525] He is ever reading his own thoughts into the oftentimes obscure words of St. Paul, though, that he is so doing is evident neither to his hearers nor to himself. That same eloquence and wealth of imagery are to be found here which are to characterise his later expositions. “Quite unmistakably his language, thought and imagery throughout the work is that of the mystic,” remarks the editor of the Commentary. “How much Tauler—whom Luther extols so highly, even when as yet he was so little acquainted with him—has taken possession of Luther’s mind and influences his language, would be clear from the Commentary on Romans, even were Tauler’s name not mentioned in it.”[1526]
With the mental attitude assumed quite early in his career the scant regard for Humanism and philosophy he evinces in this Commentary well agrees; further, his use of the Bible as a whip with which to lash unsparingly the abuses rampant in the Church, another peculiarity which was to remain in his treatment of Scripture. The better to appreciate his first attempts at exegesis we may recall, that, even then, he was concerned for the text and its purity, and that, no sooner was Erasmus’s Greek edition of the New Testament published, than Luther, who had now reached chapter ix. of the Epistle, began to use it for his lectures.[1527]
That Luther’s first attempts in the exegetical field were so successful was in great part due to his personal gifts, to his eloquence and to his frankness. Oldecop, a pupil of his, who remained true to the Church, wrote as an old man, that, being as he was then twenty-two years of age, he “had taken pleasure in attending Martin’s lectures.”[1528] The lectures on Romans commenced immediately after Oldecop’s matriculation. Christopher Scheurl, the Humanist Professor of Law, reckoned the new exegete among the best of the Wittenberg theologians and said: “Martin Luther, the Augustinian, expounds St. Paul’s Epistles with marvellous talent.”[1529]
In the matter of private interpretation as against the Church’s, in these earliest exegetical efforts, he remained, outwardly at least, true to the traditional standpoint, until, little by little, he forsook it, as already described (above, p. 387 ff.). Even his academic Theses of Sept., 1517 (“Against the Theology of the Schools”), based though they were on a misapprehension of Scripture, conclude with the assurance, that, “throughout, he neither intended nor had said anything contrary to the Church or at variance with her doctrines.”[1530]—Then, however, with startling suddenness the change set in.
When, after the storm aroused by the publication of the Indulgence Theses, he wrote his German “Sermon von dem Ablass und Gnade,”[1531] he appealed in it repeatedly to the Bible as against the “new teachers,” i.e. the Schoolmen, and indeed in as confident a manner as though he alone were learned in Scripture. He says on the first page: “This I say: That it cannot be proved from any Scripture, etc. Much should I like to hear anyone who can testify to the contrary in spite of the fact that some doctors have thought so.” And at the end he sums up as follows: “On these points I have no doubt, and they have sufficient warrant in Scripture. Therefore you too should have no doubt and send the Scholastic doctors about their business!” Shortly before this, in a letter about the Scholastic theologians of his day, particularly those of Leipzig, he declares: “I could almost swear that they understand not a single chapter of the Gospel or Bible.”[1532] He was, however, greatly cheered to hear that, thanks to his new interpretation of the Bible, prelates, as well as the burghers of Wittenberg, were all saying “that formerly they had neither known nor heard anything of Christ or of His Gospel.”[1533]
After Tetzel had attacked his Sermon and accused Luther of falsifying the sacred text, and of cherishing heretical opinions, the latter indited his “Eyn Freiheyt dess Sermons Bepstlichen Ablass und Gnad belangend,” where he emphasises even more strongly and pathetically the supremacy of Holy Scripture over all outward authority: “Even though all these and a thousand others of the holiest of doctors had held this or that, yet their opinion is of no account compared with a single verse of Holy Writ.... They are not in the least to be believed, because the Scripture says: The Word of God no one may set aside or alter.”[1534]
Carlstadt, whom Luther himself had instructed, outdid his master and advocated entire freedom for the private interpretation of Scripture before Luther could make up his mind to do this. He did not shrink from making his own the following defiant Thesis: “The text of the Bible does not take precedence merely of one or several Doctors of the Church, but even of the authority of the whole Church.”[1535] It was only after Luther, thanks to his obstinacy and curious methods of reasoning, had extricated himself from his examination at Augsburg, and fled, that he admitted in the statements already given (p. 388) that the word of Scripture was to be set in the first place, and, that, in its interpretation, no account need be made of ecclesiastical authority.[1536] This prelude to Luther’s new exegetical standpoint, more particularly towards the end, was marked by much fear, doubt and anxiety of conscience. He was worried, to such an extent that his “heart quaked for fear,” by a number of Scripture passages and still more by the question: Could the Author of Scripture hitherto have really left His work open to such dire misunderstanding?
While his powerful rhetoric, particularly when it came to polemics, was able to conceal all the failings of his exposition of the Bible, his real eloquence, his fervour and his popular ways of dealing with non-controversial things imparted to his pulpit-commentaries no less than to his written ones a freshness of tone which improved, stimulated and inspired his followers with love for Holy Scripture and also brought them Bible consolation amidst the trials of life.
The two propositions considered above, fundamental though they are, of the Bible being under the enlightenment of the Spirit the sole rule of faith, and of the untrustworthiness of ecclesiastical authority and tradition, far from having been the first elements to find their place in Luther’s scheme, were only advanced by him at a later date and in order to protect his pet dogma.
His doctrine of Justification was the outcome of his dislike for “holiness-by-works,” which led him to the theory of salvation by faith alone, through the imputation of the merits of Christ without any co-operation on man’s part, or any human works of merit. This doctrine, from the very first as well as later, was everything to him. This it was which he made it his earliest task to elaborate, and about it he then proceeded to hang the other theories into which he was forced by his conflict with the Church and her teaching, some of which were logically connected with his main article, whilst, in the case of others, the connection was only artificial. Later exponents of Lutheranism termed his doctrine of Justification the material principle of his theology, no doubt in the same sense as he himself reckons it, in a sermon of 1530 in his postils, as: “the only element, article or doctrine by which we become Christians and are called such.”
This Evangel, Luther’s consoling doctrine, as a matter of fact was simply the record of his own inner past, the most subjective doctrine assuredly that ever sought to enlist followers. As we know, it is already found entire in his Commentary on Romans of 1515-1516.
In order to strengthen, in himself first and then in others, the assurance of salvation it comprised, he amplified it by asserting the believer’s absolute certainty of salvation; this was lacking in his Commentary on Romans, though even then he was drifting towards it. It was only in 1518-1519 that he developed the doctrine of the so-called “special faith,” by which the individual assures himself of pardon and secures salvation. Thereby he transformed faith into trust, for what he termed fiducial faith partook more of the nature of a strong, artificially stimulated hope; it really amounted to an intense confidence that the merits of Christ obliterated every sin.
Of faith in this new sense he says that it is the faith. “To have the Faith is assentingly to accept the promises of God, laying hold on God’s gracious disposition towards us and trusting in it.”[1537] In spite of this he continues in the old style to define faith as the submission of reason to all the truths revealed, and even to make it the practical basis of all his religious demands: Whoever throws overboard even one single article of faith will be damned; faith being one whole, every article must be believed.[1538] We can understand how opponents within his own camp, of whom he demanded faith in the doctrines he had discovered in the Bible, when they themselves failed to find them there, ventured to remind him of his first definition of faith, viz. the fiducial, and to ask him whether a trustful appropriation of the merits of Christ did not really meet all the demands of “faith.” Recent Protestant biographers of Luther point out that Zwingli was quite justified in urging this against Luther. Attacked by Luther on account of his discordant teaching on the Lord’s Supper, and that on the score of faith, Zwingli rudely retorted: “It is a pestilential doctrine, by a perversion of the word faith which really means trust in Christ, to lower it to the level of an opinion”; with this behaviour on Luther’s part went “hand in hand a similar change in his conception of the Church founded on faith.”[1539]
If we take Luther’s saving faith we find that, according to him, it produces justification without the help of any other work or act on man’s part, and without contrition or charity contributing anything to the appropriation of righteousness on the part of the man to be justified.
Any contrition proceeding from the love of God, or at least from that incipient love of God such as Catholicism required agreeably with both revelation and human psychology, appeared to Luther superfluous; in view of the power of man’s ingrained concupiscence it amounted almost to a contradiction; only the fear of God’s Judgments (“timor servilis”), so he declares (vol. i., p. 291), with palpable exaggeration, had ruled his own confessions made in the monastery. At any rate, he was in error when he declared that this same fear had been the motive in the case of Catholics generally. He persuaded himself that this fear must be overcome by the Evangel of the imputed merits of Christ, because otherwise man can find no peace. The part played by the law is, according to him, almost confined to threatening and reducing man to despair, just as he himself had so often verged on hopelessness through thinking of his own inevitable reprobation; the assurance of salvation by faith, however, appears to every Christian as an angel of help and consolation even minus any repudiation of sin on the part of man’s will, for, owing to the Fall, sin cannot but persist.
When he attempts to prove this by his “experiences,” we must remind the reader how uncertain his statements are, concerning his own “inward feelings” during his monastic days. It will be pointed out elsewhere (vol. vi., xxxvii.) that these “recollections,” with their polemical animus, were of comparatively late growth, though they would have been of far greater service at the outset when still quite fresh.
A more solid basis for estimating the value of his doctrine of Justification is afforded by its connection with his other theological views. As we know, he regarded original sin and the concupiscence resulting from it as actual sin, still persisting in spite of baptism; he exaggerated beyond measure man’s powerlessness to withstand the concupiscence which remains with him to the end. Owing to the unfreedom of the will, the devil, according to Luther, holds the field in man’s heart and rules over all his spiritual faculties. The Divine Omnipotence alone is able to vanquish this redoubtable master by bestowing on the unhappy soul pardon and salvation; yet sin still reigns in the depths of the heart. No act of man has any part in the work of salvation. Actual grace is no less unknown to him than sanctifying grace. Good works are of no avail for salvation and of no importance for heaven, though, accidentally, they may accompany the state of grace, God working them in the man on whom He has cast His eye by choosing him to be a recipient of faith and salvation. Such election and predestination is, however, purely God’s work which man himself can do absolutely nothing to deserve.—Thanks to these errors, the “sola fides” and assurance of salvation stand bereft of their theological support.
We must, however, revert to one point again and examine it more closely on account of its historical and psychological importance. This is Luther’s doctrine of the slavery of the will, and of God’s being the sole agent in man.
This doctrine, already expressed in his Commentary on Romans in connection with his opinion on unconditional predestination,[1540] he was afterwards to expound with increasing vehemence.[1541] He was delighted to find his rigid views expressed in the Notes of the lectures on Romans and 1 Corinthians, which Melanchthon delivered in 1521 and 1522. These Notes he caused to be printed, and sent them to the author with a preface cast in the form of a letter.[1542]
In this letter he assumes the whole responsibility for the publication, and assures Melanchthon that “no one has written better than you on Paul.” “I hold that the Commentaries of Jerome and Origen are the merest nonsense and rubbish compared with your exposition.... They, and Thomas too, wrote commentaries that are filled with their own conceits rather than with that which is Paul’s or Christ’s, whereas on the contrary yours teaches us how to read Scripture and to know Christ, and thus excels any mere commentary, which is more than one can say of the others hitherto in vogue.”
Such praise for Melanchthon’s work, indirectly intended to recoil upon his own doctrine, caused Erasmus to remark of the Preface: “How full of pride it is!”[1543]
The doctrine of the unfreedom of the will as here expressed by Melanchthon who then was still the true mouthpiece of Luther, though free from Luther’s rhetorical exaggerations, remains extremely harsh.
It contains, for instance, the following propositions: “Everything in every creature occurs of necessity.... It must be firmly held that everything, both good and bad, is done by God.” “God does not merely allow His creatures to act, but it is He Himself Who acts.” As He does what is good, so also He does what is indifferent in man, such as eating and drinking and the other animal functions, and also what is evil, “such as David’s adultery and Manlius’s execution of his son.” The treason of Judas was not merely permitted of God, but, as Augustine says, was the effect of His power. “It is a huge blasphemy to deny predestination, the actuality of which we have briefly proved above.”[1544]
Ten years later Melanchthon had grown shy of views so monstrous; he thought it advisable to repudiate this book, and, in 1532, he dedicated a new Commentary on Romans to the Archbishop of Mayence, whom he was anxious to win over. In the preface he says, that he no longer acknowledged (“plane non agnosco”)[1545] the earlier work which had appeared under his name. Later, after Luther’s death, he went so far as to demand the severe punishment of those who denied free-will and questioned the need of good works for salvation.[1546]
Luther, on the other hand, as we know, never relinquished his standpoint on the doctrine of free-will. Beside his statements already quoted may be put the following: The will is not only unfree “in everything,”[1547] but is so greatly depraved by original sin, that, not content with being entirely passive in the matter of Justification, it actually resists God like the devil. “What I say is, that the spiritual powers are not merely depraved, but altogether annihilated by sin, not less in man than in the devils.... Their reason and their will seek those things alone which are opposed to God. Whatever is in our will is evil and whatever is in our reason is mere error and blindness. Thus, in things Divine, man is nothing but darkness, error and depravity, his will is evil and his understanding nowhere.”[1548]
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]
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.
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.