Of the feeling called forth in circles friendly to Luther by Agricola’s part in the Interim we have proof in the preface which introduces in the edition of 1549 Luther’s letter of 1539 to the Saxon Court. Here we read: If the Eisleben fellow (Agricola) “was ever a dissolute sharper, who secretly promoted false doctrine and made use of the favour and applause of the pious as a cloak for his knavery,” much more has this now become apparent by his outcry concerning the Interim and the alleged good it does. The editors recall the fact, that “Our worthy father in God, Dr. Martin Luther of happy memory, shortly before his end, in the presence of Dr. Pommer, Philip, Creutziger, Major, Jonas and D. Paulus Benedictus” spoke as follows: “Eisleben (Agricola) is not merely ridden by the devil but the devil himself lodges in him.” In proof of the latter statement they add, that trustworthy persons, who had good grounds for their opinion, had declared, that “it was the simple truth that devils had visibly appeared in Eisleben’s house and study, and at times had made a great disturbance and clatter; whence it is clear that he is the devil’s own in body and soul.” “The truth,” they conclude, “is clear and manifest. God gives us warnings enough in the writings of pious and learned persons and also by signs in the sky and in the waters. Let whoever wills be admonished and warned. For to each one it is a matter of life eternal; to which may God assist us through Christ our Lord, Amen.”[67]
A writing of Melanchthon’s, dating from the last months of his life and brought to light only in 1894, gives further information concerning a later phase of the Antinomian controversy as fought out between Agricola and Melanchthon.[68]
Melanchthon, for all his supposed kindliness, here empties the vials of his wrath on Johann Agricola because the latter had vehemently assailed his thesis “Bona opera sunt necessaria.” As a matter of fact, so he writes, he bothered himself as little about Agricola’s “preaching, slander, abuse, insistence and threats” as about the “cackle of some crazy gander.” But Christian people were becoming scandalised at “this grand preacher of blasphemy” and were beginning to suspect his own (Melanchthon’s) faith. Hence he would have them know that Agricola’s component parts were an “asinine righteousness, a superstitious arrogance and an Epicurean belly-service.” To his thesis he could not but adhere to his last breath, even were he to be torn to pieces with red-hot pincers. He had refrained from adding the words “ad salutem” after “necessaria” lest the unwary should think of some merit. The “ad salutem” was an addition of Agricola’s, that “foolish man,” who had thrust it on him by means of a “shameless and barefaced lie.” He is anxious to win his spurs off the Lutherans. Yet donkeys of his ilk do understand nothing in the matter, and God will “punish these blasphemers and disturbers of the Churches.” But in order that “a final end may at length be put to the evil doing, slander, abuse and cavilling it will,” he says, “be necessary for God to send the Turk; nothing else will help in such a case.” Melanchthon compares himself to Joseph, who was sold by his brethren. If Joseph had to endure this “in the first Church,” what then “will be my fate in the extreme old age of this mad world (‘extrema mundi delira senecta’) when licence wanders abroad unrestrained to sully everything and when such unspeakably cruel hypocrites control our destinies? I can only pray to God that He will deign to come to the aid of His Church and graciously heal all the gaping wounds dealt her by her foes. Amen.”
A certain reaction against the Antinomian tendency, is, as already explained, noticeable in Luther’s latter years; at least he felt called upon to revise a little his former standpoint with regard to the Law, the motive of fear, indifference to sin and so forth, and to remove it from the danger of abuse. He was also at pains to contradict the view that his doctrine of faith involved an abrogation of the Law. “The fools do not know,” he remarked, for instance, alluding to Jacob Schenk, “all that faith has to do.”[69]
In his controversy with Agricola we can detect a tendency on his part “to revert to Melanchthon’s doctrine concerning repentance.”[70] He insisted far more strongly than before[71] on the necessity of preaching the Law in order to arouse contrition; he even went so far along Catholic lines as to assert, that “Penance is sorrow for sin with the resolve to lead a better life.”[72] He also admitted, that, at the outset, he had said things which the Antinomians now urged against the Law, though he also strove to show that he had taken pains to qualify and safeguard what he had said. Nor indeed can Luther ever have expected that all the strong things he had once hurled against the Law and its demands would ever be used to build up a new moral theology.
And yet, even at the height of the Antinomian controversy, he stood firmly by his thesis regarding the Law, fear and contrition, viz. that “Whoever seeks to be led to repentance by the Law, will never attain to it, but, on the contrary, will only turn his back on it the more”;[73] to this he was ever true.
“Luther,” says Adolf Harnack, “could never doubt that only the Christian who has been vanquished by the Gospel is capable of true repentance, and that the Law can work no real repentance.”[74] The fact however remains, that, at least if we take his words as they stand, we do find in Luther a doctrine of repentance which does not claim faith in the forgiveness of sins so exclusively as its source.[75] The fact is that his statements do not tally.[76] Other Protestant theologians will have it that no change took place in Luther’s views on penance,[77] or at least that the attempts so far made to solve the problem are not satisfactory.[78] Stress should, however, be laid on the fact, that, during his contest with Antinomianism Luther insisted that it was necessary “to drive men to penance even by the terrors of the Law,”[79] and that, alluding to his earlier statements, he admits having had much to learn: “I have been made to experience the words of St. Peter, ‘Grow in the knowledge of the Lord.’”
Of the converted, i.e. of those justified by the certainty of salvation, he says in 1538 in his Disputations against Agricola: The pious Christian as such “is dead to the Law and serves it not, but lies in the bosom of grace, secure in the righteousness imputed to him by God.... But, so far as he is still in the flesh, he serves the law of sin, repulsive as it may sound that a saint should be subject to the law of sin.”[80] If Luther finds in the saint or devout man such a double life, a free man side by side with a slave, holiness side by side with sin, this is on account of the concupiscence, or as Luther says elsewhere, original sin, which still persists, and the results of which he regarded as really sinful in God’s sight.
Elsewhere in the same Disputations he speaks of the Law as contemptuously as ever: “The Law can work in the soul nothing but wanhope; it fills us with shame; to lead us to seek God is not in the nature and might of the Law; this is the doing of another fellow,” viz. of the Gospel with its preaching of forgiveness of sins in Christ.[81] It is true he adds in a kindlier vein: “The Law ought not so greatly to terrify those who are justified (‘nec deberet ita terrere iustificatos’) for it is already much chastened by our justification in Christ. But the devil comes and makes the Law harsh and repellent to those who are justified. Thus, through the devil’s fault, many are filled with fear who have no reason to fear. But [and now follows the repudiation of the extreme theories of the Antinomians], the Law is not on that account abolished in the Church, or its preaching suppressed; for even the pious have some remnant of sin abiding in their flesh, which must be purified by the Law.... To them, however, the Law must be preached under a milder form; they should be admonished in this wise: You are now washed clean in the Blood of Christ. Yield therefore your bodies to serve justice and lay aside the lusts of the flesh that you may not become like to the world. Be zealous for the righteousness of good works.” There too he also teaches how the “Law” must be brought home to hardened sinners. In their case no “mitigation” is allowable. On the contrary, they are to be told: You will be damned, God hates you, you are full of unrighteousness, your lot is that of Cain, etc. For, “before Justification, the Law rules, and terrifies all who come in contact with it, it convicts and condemns.”[82]
Among the most instructive utterances touching the Antinomians is the following one on sin, more particularly on breach of wedlock, which may be given here as amplifying Luther’s statements on the subject recorded in our vol. iii. (pp. 245, 256 f., etc.): The Antinomians taught, so he says, that, if a man had broken wedlock, he had only to believe (“tantum ut crederet”) and he would find a Gracious God. But surely that was no Church where so horrible a doctrine (“horribilis vox”) was heard. On the contrary what was to be taught was, that, in the first place, there were adulterers and other sinners who acknowledged their sin, made good resolutions against it and possessed real faith, such as these found mercy with God. In the second place, however, there were others who neither repented of their sin nor wished to forsake it; such men had no faith, and a preacher who should discourse to them concerning faith (i.e. fiducial faith) would merely be seducing and deceiving them.
How did Luther square his system of morality with his principal doctrine of Faith and Justification, and where did he find any ground for the performance of good works?
In the main he made everything to proceed from and rest upon a firm, personal certainty of salvation. The artificial system thus built up, so far as it is entitled to be called a system at all, requires only to be set forth in order to be appreciated as it deserves. It will be our duty to consider Luther’s various statements, and finally his own summary, made late in life, of the conclusions he had reached.
Quite early Luther had declared: “The ‘fides specialis,’ or assurance of salvation, of itself impels man to true morality.” For, “faith brings along with it love, peace, joy and hope.... In this faith all works are equal and one as good as the other, and any difference between works disappears, whether they be great or small, short or long, few or many; for works are not pleasing [to God] in themselves but on account of faith.... A Christian who lives in this faith has no need to be taught good works, but, whatever occurs to him, that he does, and everything is well done.” Such are his words in his “Sermon von den guten Wercken” to Duke Johann of Saxony in 1520.[83]
He frequently repeats, that “Faith brings love along with it,” which impels us to do good.
He enlarges on this in the festival sermons in his Church-Postils, and says: When I am made aware by faith, that, through the Son of God Who died for me, I am able to “resist and flaunt sin, death, devil, hell and every ill, then I cannot but love Him in return and be well disposed towards Him, keeping His commandments and doing lovingly and gladly everything He asks”; the heart will then show itself full “of gratitude and love. But, seeing that God stands in no need of our works and that He has not commanded us to do anything else for Him but to praise and thank Him, therefore such a man must proceed to devote himself entirely to his neighbour, to serve, help and counsel him freely and without reward.”[84]
All this, as Luther says in his “Von der Freyheyt eynes Christen Menschen,” must be performed “by a free, willing, cheerful and unrequited serving of our neighbour”;[85] it must be done “cheerfully and gladly for Christ’s sake Who has done so much for us.”[86] “That same Law which once was hateful to free-will,” he says in his Commentary on Galatians, “now [i.e. after we have received the faith and assurance of salvation] becomes quite pleasant since love is poured into our hearts by the Holy Ghost.... We now are lovers of the Law.”[87] From the wondrous well-spring of the imputed merits of Christ there comes first and foremost prayer; if only we cling “trustfully to the promise of grace,” then “the heart will unceasingly beat and pulsate to such prayers as the following: O, beloved Father, may Thy Name be hallowed, Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done.”[88] But all is not prayer and holy desire; even when the “soul has been cleansed by faith,” the Christian still must struggle against sin and against the body “in order to deaden its wantonness.”[89] The Christian will set himself to acquire chastity; “in this work a good, strong faith is of great help, more so here than anything else.” And why? Because whoever is assured of salvation in Christ and “enjoys the grace of God, also delights in spiritual purity.... Under such a faith the Spirit without doubt will tell him how to avoid evil thoughts and everything opposed to chastity. For as faith in the Divine mercy persists and works all good, so also it never ceases to inform us of all that is pleasing or displeasing to God.”[90]
Whence does our will derive the ability and strength to wage this struggle to the end? Only from the assurance of salvation, from its unshaken awareness that it has indeed a Gracious God. For this certainty of faith sets one free, first of all from those anxieties with regard to one’s salvation with which the righteous-by-works are plagued and thus allows one to devote time and strength to doing what is good; secondly this faith in one’s salvation teaches one how to overcome the difficulties that stand in one’s way.[91]
There was, however, an objection raised against Luther by his contemporaries and which even presented itself to his own mind: Why should a lifelong struggle and the performance of good works be requisite for a salvation of which we are already certain? It was re-formulated even by Albert Ritschl, in whose work, “Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung,” we find the words: “If one asks why God, Who makes salvation to depend on Justification by faith, prescribes good works at all, the arbitrary character of the assumption becomes quite evident.”[92] In Luther’s own writings we repeatedly hear the same stricture voiced: “If sin is forgiven me gratuitously by God’s Mercy and is blotted out in baptism, then there is nothing for me to do.” People say, “If faith is everything and suffices of itself to make us pious, why then are good works enjoined?”[93]
In order to render Luther’s meaning adequately we must emphasise his leading answer to such objections. He is determined to insist on good works, because, as he says, they are of the utmost importance to the one thing on which everything else depends, viz. to faith and the assurance of salvation.[94]
In his “Sermon von den guten Wercken,” which deserves to be taken as conclusive, he declares outright that all good works are ordained—for the sake of faith. “Such works and sufferings must be performed in faith and in firm trust in the Divine mercy, in order that, as already stated, all works may come under the first commandment and under faith, and that they may serve to exercise and strengthen faith, on account of which all the other commandments and works are demanded.”[95] Hence morality is necessary, not primarily in order to please God, to obey Him and thus to work out our salvation, but in order to strengthen our “fides specialis” in our own salvation, which then does all the needful.[96] It is necessary, as Luther says elsewhere, in order to provide a man with a reassuring token of the reality of his “fides specialis”; he may for instance be tempted to doubt whether he possesses this saving gift of God, though the very doubt already spells its destruction; hence let him look at his works; if they are good, they will tell him at the dread hour of death: Yes, you have the “faith.”[97] Strangely enough he also takes the Bible passages which deal with works performed under grace as referring to faith, e.g. “If thou wilt enter into life keep the commandments” (Mt. xix. 17) and, “By good works make your calling and election sure” (2 Peter i. 10). The latter exhortation of St. Peter signifies according to Luther’s exegesis: “Take care to strengthen your faith,” from the works “you may see whether you have the faith.”[98] According to St. Peter you are to seek in works merely “a sign and token that the faith is there”; his meaning is not that you “are to do good works in order that you may secure your election.” “We are not to fancy that thereby we can become pious.”[99]
This thought is supplemented by another frequent exhortation of Luther’s which concerns the consciousness of sin persisting even after “justification.” The sense of sin has, according to him, no other purpose than to strengthen us in our trustful clinging to Christ, for as no one’s faith is perfect we are ever called upon to fortify it, in which we are aided by this anxiety concerning sin: “Though we still feel sin within us this is merely to drive us to faith and make our faith stronger, so that despite our feeling we may accept the Word and cling with all our heart and conscience to Christ alone,” in other words, to follow Luther’s own example amidst the pangs of conscience that had plunged him into “death and hell.”[100] “Thus does faith, against all feeling and reason, lead us quietly through sin, through death and through hell.” “The more faith waxes, the more the feeling diminishes, and vice versa. Sins still persist within us, e.g. pride, avarice, anger and so on and so forth, but only in order to move us to faith.” He refrains from adducing from Holy Scripture any proof in support of so strange a theory, but proceeds to sing a pæan on faith “in order that faith may increase from day to day until man at length becomes a Christian through and through, keeps the real Sabbath, and creeps, skin, hair and all, into Christ.”[101] The Christian, by accustoming himself to trust in the pardoning grace of Christ and by fortifying himself in this faith, becomes at length “one paste with Christ.”[102]
Hence the “fides specialis” as just explained, seems to be the chief ethical aim of life.[103] This is why it is so necessary to strengthen it by works, and so essential to beat down all anxieties of conscience.
Here Luther is speaking from his own inward experience. He says: “Thus must the conscience be lulled to rest and made content, thus must all the waves and billows subside.... Our sins towered mountain-high about us and would fain have made us despair, but in the end they are calmed, and settle down, and soon are seen no longer.”[104] It was only very late in his life that Luther reached a state of comparative calm, a calm moreover best to be compared with the utter weariness of a man worn out by fatigue.[105]
In the four sermons he preached at Eisleben—the last he ever delivered—Luther gives utterance to certain leading thoughts quite peculiar to himself regarding morality and the “fides specialis.” These utterances, under the circumstances to be regarded as the ripest fruit of his reflection, must be taken in conjunction with other statements made by him in his old age. They illustrate even more clearly than what has gone before the cardinal point of his teaching now under discussion, which, even more than any other, has had the bad luck to be so often wrongly presented by combatants on either side.
Luther’s four sermons at Eisleben, which practically constitute his Last Will and Testament of his views on faith and good works, were delivered before a great concourse of people. A note on one delivered on Feb. 2, 1546, tells us: “So great was the number of listeners collected from the surrounding neighbourhood, market-places and villages, that even Paul himself were he to come preaching could hardly expect a larger audience.”[106] For the reports of his sermons we are indebted to the pen of his pupil and companion on his journey, Johann Aurifaber.[107] From their contents we can see how much Luther was accustomed to adapt himself to his hearers and to the conditions prevailing in the district where he preached. The great indulgence then extended to the Jews in that territory of the Counts of Mansfeld; the religious scepticism shared or favoured by certain people at the Court; and, in particular, the moral licence—which, taking its cue from Luther’s teaching, argued: “Well and good, I will sin lustily since sin has been taken away and can no longer damn me,” as he himself relates in the third sermon,[108]—all this lends colour to the background of these addresses delivered at Eisleben. In particular the third sermon, on the parable of the cockle (Mt. xiii. 24-30), is well worth notice. It speaks of the weeds which infest the Church and of those which spring up in ourselves; in the latter connection Luther expatiates on the leading principles of his ethics, on faith, sin and good works, and concludes by telling the Christian how he must live and “grow in faith and the spirit.”[109] One cannot but acknowledge the force with which the preacher, who was even then suffering acutely, speaks on behalf of good works and the struggle against sin. What he says is, however, tainted by his own peculiar views.
“God forgives sin in that He does not impute it.... But from this it does not follow that you are without sin, although it is already forgiven; for in yourself you feel no hearty desire to obey God, to go to the sacrament or to hear God’s Word. Do you perhaps imagine that this is no sin, or mere child’s play?” Hence, he concludes, we must pray daily “for forgiveness and never cease to fight against ourselves and not give the rein to our sinful inclinations and lusts, nor obey them contrary to the dictates of conscience, but rather weaken and deaden sin ever more and more; for sin must not merely be forgiven but verily swept away and destroyed.”[110]
He exhorts his hearers to struggle against sin, whether original or actual sin, and does so in words which place the “fides specialis” in the first place and impose the obligation of a painful and laborious warfare which contrasts strongly with the spontaneous joy of the just in doing what is good, elsewhere taken for granted by Luther.
“Our doctrine as to how we are to deal with our own uncleanness and sin is briefly this: Believe in Jesus Christ and your sins are forgiven; then avoid and withstand sin, wage a hand-to-hand fight with it, do not allow it its way, do not hate or cheat your neighbour,” etc.[111]
Such admonitions strenuously to strive against sin involuntarily recall some very different assurances of his, viz. that the man who has once laid hold on righteousness by faith, at once and of his own accord does what is good: “Hence from faith there springs love and joy in God and a free and willing service of our neighbour out of simple love.”
Elsewhere too he says, “Good works are performed by faith and out of our heartfelt joy that we have through Christ obtained the remission of our sins.... Interiorly everything is sweet and delicious, and hence we do and suffer all things gladly.”[112] And again, just as we eat and drink naturally, so also to do what is good comes naturally to the believer; the word is fulfilled: Only believe and you will do all things of your own accord;[113] as a good tree must bring forth good fruit and cannot do otherwise, so, where there is faith, good works there must also be.[114] He speaks of this as a “necessitas immutabilitatis” and as a “necessitas gratuita,” no less necessary than that the sun must shine. In 1536 he even declared in an instruction to Melanchthon that it was not right to say that a believer should do good works, because he can’t help performing them; who thinks of ordering “the sun to shine, a good tree to bring forth good fruit, or three and seven to make ten?”[115]
Of this curious idealism, first noticed in his “Von der Freyheyt eynes Christen Menschen,” we find traces in Luther till the very end of his life.[116] In later life, however, he either altered it a little or was less prone to insist on it in and out of season. This was due to his unfortunate experiences to the contrary; as a matter of fact faith failed to produce the effects expected, and only in rare instances and at its very best was it as fruitful as Luther wished. The truth is he had overrated it, obviously misled by his enthusiasm for his alleged discovery of the power of faith for justification.
He was also fond of saying—and of this assurance we find an echo in his last sermon—that a true and lively faith should govern even our feeling, and as we are so little conscious of such a feeling and impulse to what is good, it follows that we but seldom have this faith, i.e. this lively certainty of salvation.
When a Christian is lazy, starts thinking he possesses everything and refuses to grow and increase, then “neither has he earnestness nor a true faith.” Even the just are conscious of sin (i.e. original sin), but they resist it; but where there is a distaste for the beloved Word of God there can be “no real faith.” Luther, to the detriment of his ethics, was disposed to relegate faith too much to the region of feeling and personal experience; this, however, he could scarcely avoid since his was a “fides specialis” in one’s own personal salvation. True religion, in his opinion, is ever to rejoice and be glad by reason of the forgiveness of sins and cheerfully to run the way of God’s service; this idea is prominent in his third sermon at Eisleben. The right faith “is toothsome and lively; it consoles and gladdens.”[117] “It bores its way into the heart and brings comfort and cheer”; “we feel glad and ready for anything.”[118]
But because the actual facts and his experience failed to tally with his views, Luther, as already explained, had recourse to a convenient expedient; towards the close of his life we frequently hear him speaking as follows: Unfortunately we have not yet got this faith, for “we do not possess in our hearts, and cannot acquire, that joy which we would gladly feel”; thus we become conscious how the “old Adam, sin and our sinful nature, still persist within us; this it is that forces you and me to fail in our faith.”[119] “Even great saints do not always feel that joy and might, and we others, owing to our unbelief, cannot attain to this exalted consolation and strength ... and even though we would gladly believe, yet we cannot make our faith as strong as we ought.”[120] He vouchsafes no answer to the objection: But why then set up aims that cannot be reached; why make the starting-point consist in a “faith” of which man, owing to original sin, can only attain to a shadow, except perhaps in the rare instances of martyrs, or divinely endowed saints?
Luther, when insisting so strongly that good works must follow “faith,” as a moral incentive to such works also refers incidentally to our duty of gratitude and love in return for this faith bestowed on us.
Thus in the Eisleben sermons he invites the believer, the better to arouse himself to good works, to address God in this way: “Heavenly Father, there is no doubt that Thou hast given Thy Son for the forgiveness of my sins. Therefore will I thank God for this during my whole life, and praise and exalt Him, and no longer steal, practise usury or be miserly, proud or jealous.... If you rightly believe,” he continues, “that God has sent you His Son, you will, like a fruitful tree, bring forth finer and finer blossoms the older you grow.”[121] In what follows he is at pains to show that good works will depend on the constant putting into practice of the “faith”; the Justification that is won by the “fides specialis” is insufficient, in spite of all the comfort it brings; rather we must be mindful of the saying of St. Paul: “If by the spirit you mortify the deeds of the flesh you shall live.” “But if your flesh won’t do it, then leave it to the Holy Ghost.”[122]
The motive for good works which Luther here advances, viz. “To thank God, to praise and extol Him,”[123] is worthy of special attention; it is the only real one he furnishes either here or elsewhere. Owing to the love of God which arises in the heart at the thought of His benefits we must rouse ourselves to serve Him. The idea is a grand one and had always appealed to the noblest spirits in the Church before Luther’s day. It is, however, a very different thing to represent this motive of perfect love as the exclusive and only true incentive to doing what is pleasing to God. Yet throughout Luther’s teaching this is depicted as the general, necessary and only motive. “From faith and the Holy Ghost necessarily comes the love of God, and together with it love of our neighbour and every good work.”[124] When I realise by faith that God has sent His Son for my sake, etc., says Luther, in his Church-Postils, “I cannot do otherwise than love Him in return, do His behests and keep His commandments.”[125] This love, however, as he expressly states, must be altogether unselfish, i.e. must be what the Old Testament calls a “whole-hearted love,” which in turn “presupposes perfect self-denial.”[126]
It is plain that we have here an echo of the mysticism which had at one time held him in thrall;[127] but his extravagant idealism was making demands which ordinary Christians either never, or only very seldom, could attain to.
The olden Church set up before the faithful a number of motives adapted to rouse them to do good works; such motives she found in the holy fear of God and His chastisements, in the hope of temporal or everlasting reward; in the need of making satisfaction for sin committed, or, finally, for those who had advanced furthest, in the love of God, whether as the most perfect Being and deserving of all our love, or on account of the benefits received from Him; she invited people to weld all these various motives into one strong bond; those whose dispositions were less exalted she strove to animate with the higher motives of love, so far as the weakness of human nature allowed. Luther, on the contrary, in the case of the righteous already assured of salvation, not only excluded every motive other than love, but also, quite unjustifiably, refused to hear of any love save that arising from gratitude for the redemption and the faith. “To love God,” in his eyes, “is nothing more than to be grateful for the benefit bestowed” (through the redemption).[128] And, again, he imputes such power to this sadly curtailed motive of love, or rather gratitude, that it is his only prescription, even for those who are so cold-hearted that the Word of God “comes in at one ear and goes out at the other,” and who hear of the death of Christ with as little devotion as though they had been told, “that the Turks had beaten the Sultan, or some other such tit-bit of news.”[129]
Hitherto we have been considering what Luther had to say on the question of faith and morality in his last sermons. It remains to point out what he did not say, and what, on account of his own doctrines, it was impossible for him to say; as descriptive of his ethics the latter is perhaps of even greater importance.
In the first place he says nothing of the supernatural life, which, according to the ancient teaching of the Church, begins with the infusion of sanctifying grace in the soul of the man who is justified. As we know, he would not hear of this new and vital principle in the righteous, which indeed was incompatible with his theory of the mere non-imputation of sin. Further, he also ignores the so-called “infused virtues” whence, with the help of actual grace, springs the new motive force of the man received into the Divine sonship. By his denial of the complete renewal of the inner man he placed himself in opposition to the ancient witnesses of Christendom, as Protestant historians of dogma now admit.[130]
Secondly, he dismisses in silence the so-called actual grace. Not even in answering the question as to the source whence the believer draws strength and ability to strive after what is good, does he refer to it, so hostile is his whole system to any co-operation between the natural and the supernatural in man.
Thirdly, he does not give its due to man’s freedom in co-operating in the doing of what is good; it is true he does not expressly deny it, but it was his usual practice in his addresses to the people to say as little as possible of his doctrine of the enslaved will.[131] Along with faith, however, he extols the Holy Ghost. “Leave it to the Holy Ghost!” Indeed faith itself, and the strong feeling which should accompany it, are exclusively the work of the Holy Ghost. It is the Holy Ghost alone Who believes, and feels, and works in man, according to Luther’s teaching elsewhere. This action of God alone is something different from actual grace. In the instructions he gave to Melanchthon in 1536 concerning justification and works,[132] Luther entirely ignores any action on man’s part as a free agent, and yet here we have the “clearest expression” of his doctrine of how good works follow on justification. The Protestant author of “Luthers Theologie in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung” remarks of this work (and the same applies to the above sermons and other statements): “Luther is always desirous, on the one hand of depreciating man’s claim to personal worth and merit, and on the other by his testimony to God’s mercy in Christ, of furthering faith and the impulses and desires which spring from faith and the spirit; here, too, he says nothing of any choice as open to man between the Divine impulses working within him and those of his sinful nature.”[133]
Fourthly, and most important of all, Luther says nothing of the true significance of morality for the attainment of everlasting life.
The best and theologically most convincing reply to the objection of which he spoke: “Well and good, then I shall sin lustily,” etc. would have been: No, a good moral life is essential for salvation! The strongest Bible texts would have been there to back such a statement, and, to his powerful eloquence, it should have proved an attractive task to crush his frivolous opponents by so weighty an argument. Yet we find never a word concerning the necessity of good works for salvation, but merely an account of the wonders worked by faith of its own accord alone after it has laid hold on the heart. This is readily understood, if justification is purely passive and effected solely by the Spirit of God which enkindles faith and, with it, covers over sin as with a shield, then the very being of the life of faith must be mere passivity, and there can be no more question of attaining to salvation by means of good deeds performed with the aid of grace. In the instruction for Melanchthon mentioned above we find at the end this clear query: “Is this saying true: Righteousness by works is necessary for salvation?” Luther answers by a distinction: “Not as if works operate or bring about salvation,” he says, “but rather they are present together with the faith that operates righteousness; just as of necessity I must be present in order to be saved.” This distinction, however, leaves the question just where it was before. He concludes his remarks on this vital matter with a jest on the purely external and fortuitous presence of works in the man received into eternal life: “I too shall be in at the death, said the rascal when he was about to be hanged and many people were hurrying to see the scene.”[134]
All the more strongly did Luther in his usual way describe in his last sermon the natural sinfulness which persists in man owing to original sin.
The sin that still dwells within us “forces” man to prevent faith and works coming to their own.[135] For “he is not yet without sin, though he has the forgiveness of sins and is sanctified by the Holy Ghost.” In consequence of the “foulness” within him “the longer he lives the worse he gets.” “We cannot get rid of our sinful body.”[136] For this reason even the “best minds” so often are indifferent to eternal life. On account of the evil taint in our flesh we are unable to rise as high as we ought.[137] But if original sin and its workings were declared really sinful in man (for even the very motions against “heartfelt pleasure” in God’s service are, so we are told, “sins”[138]), then it is no wonder that Luther should have been confronted with the question of which he speaks: “If sin be in me, how then can I be pleasing to God?”—a question which formerly could not have been asked of those whose original sin had been washed away in baptism. The teaching of the olden Church had been, that original sin was blotted out by baptism, but that the inclination to evil persisted in man to his last breath, though without any fault on his part so long as consent was lacking.[139]
Still less to be wondered at was it, that many, unable to regard themselves as responsible or guilty on account of the involuntary motions of original sin, began to doubt whether any responsibility existed for evil actions or whether moral effort was within the bounds of possibility.
Further, according to Luther, our constant exercise of ourselves in faith and our “rubbing” ourselves against sin was finally to lead “not merely to our sins being forgiven but to their being altogether rooted up and swept away; for your shabby, smelly body could not enter heaven without first being cleansed and beautified.”[140] Taking for granted his mystic assumption that sinful concupiscence can at last be “swept away,” he insists on our continuing hopefully “to amend by faith and prayer our weakness and to fight against it until such a change takes place in our sinful body that sin no longer exists therein,”[141] though, in his opinion, this cannot entirely be until we reach heaven. Yet experience, had he but opened his eyes to it, here once again contradicted him. The “fomes peccati,” as the Catholic Church rightly teaches, cannot be extinguished so long as man is on this earth, though it may be damped, and, by the practice of what is right and the use of the means of grace, be rendered harmless to our moral life. The Church expected nothing unreasonable from man, though her moral standards were of the highest. Luther, however, by abandoning the Church’s ethics, came to teach a strange mixture of perverted, unworkable idealism and all too great indulgence towards human frailty.
Many discordant utterances, betraying his uncertainty and his struggles, have been bequeathed to us by Luther regarding the main questions of morality and as to how we may insure salvation. First we have his statements with regard to the importance of morality in God’s sight.