Chapter VI

THE CHANGE OF 1515 IN THE LIGHT OF THE COMMENTARY ON ROMANS (1515-16)

1. The New Publications

Luther’s lectures on the Epistle to the Romans which, as mentioned above (p. 93), he delivered at Wittenberg from April, 1515, to September or October, 1516, existed till recently (1904-8) only in MS. form. To Denifle belongs the merit of having first drawn public attention to this important source of information, which he exploited, and from the text of which he furnished long extracts according to the Vatican Codex palatinus lat. 1826.[447] The MS. referred to, containing the scholia, is a copy by Aurifaber of the lectures which Luther himself wrote out in full, and once belonged to the library of Ulrich Fugger, whence it came to the Palatina at Heidelberg, and, ultimately, on the transference of the Palatina to Rome, found its way to the Vatican Library. It was first made use of by Dr. Vogel, and then, in 1899, thoroughly studied by Professor Joh. Ficker.[448] While the work was in process of publication the original by Luther’s own hand was discovered in 1903 in the Codex lat. theol. 21,4º of the State Library in Berlin, or rather rediscovered, for it had already been referred to in 1752 in an account of the library.[449] According to this MS., which also contains the glosses,[450] the Commentary, after having been collated with the Roman MS., which is frequently inaccurate, was edited with a detailed introduction at Leipzig in 1908 by Joh. Ficker, Professor at Strasburg University; it forms the first volume of a collection entitled “Anfänge reformatorischer Bibelauslegung.”

Denifle’s preliminary excerpts were so ample and exact that, as a comparison with what has since been published proves, they afforded a trustworthy insight into a certain number of Luther’s doctrinal views of decisive value in forming an opinion on the general course of his development.[451] But it is only now, with the whole work before us, scholia and glosses complete, that it is possible to give a fair and well-founded account of the ideas which were coming to the front in Luther. The connection between different points of his teaching appears in a clearer light, and various opinions are disclosed which were fresh in Luther’s mind, and upon which Denifle had not touched, but which are of great importance in the history of his growth. Among such matters thus brought to light were Luther’s gloomy views on God and predestination, with which we shall deal in our next section.

The Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans ranks first among all his letters for the depth of thought and wealth of revelation which it contains. It treats of the most exalted questions of human thought, and handles the most difficult problems of Christian faith and hope. Its subject-matter is the eternal election of the Gentile and Jewish world to salvation in Christ; the guidance of the heathen by the law of nature, and of the Jews by the Mosaic law; the powers of man when left to himself, and of man supernaturally raised; the universality and potency of the saving grace of Christ, and the manner of its appropriation in justification by faith; finally the life, death and resurrection in which the Christian, through faith, unites himself with Christ.[452]

We may doubt whether the young Doctor of Wittenberg was qualified to grapple with so great a task as the explanation of this charter of faith, especially bearing in mind his comparatively insignificant knowledge of the Fathers of the Church and the theological literature of the past, his impetuosity in dealing with recondite questions, and his excitable fancy which always hurried in advance of his judgment. At any rate, he himself thought his powers sufficient for a work on which the most enlightened minds of the Church had tested their abilities. He immediately followed up this Commentary with other lectures on certain epistles of St. Paul, wherein the Apostle discloses the depths of his knowledge.

On perusing the lengthy pages of the Commentary on Romans we are amazed at the eloquence of the young author, at his dexterity in description and his skill in the apt use of biblical quotations; but his manner of working contrasts very unfavourably with that of the older Commentators on the Epistle, such as Thomas of Aquin with his brevity and definiteness and, particularly, his assurance in theological matters. Luther’s mode of treating the subject is, apart from other considerations, usually too rhetorical and not seldom quite tedious in its amplitude.

The work, with its freedom both in its language and its treatment of the subject, reveals many interesting traits which go to make up a picture of Luther’s inward self.

He starts with the assumption that the whole of the Epistle was intended by its author to “uproot from the heart the feeling of self-righteousness and any satisfaction in the same,” and—to use his own odd expression—“to implant, establish and magnify sin therein (‘plantare, ac constituere et magnificare peccatum’).”[453] “Although there may be no sin in the heart or any suspicion of its existence,” he declares, we ought and must feel ourselves to be full of sin, in contradistinction to the grace of Christ from Whom alone we receive what is pleasing to God.

In his passionate opposition to the real or imaginary self-righteous he allows himself, in these lectures, to be drawn into an ever deeper distrust of man’s ability to do anything that is good. The nightmare of self-righteousness never leaves him for a moment. His attack would have been justifiable if he had merely been fighting against sinful self-righteousness which is really selfishness, or against the delusion that natural morality will suffice before God. Nor does it appear who is defending such erroneous ideas against him, or which school upheld the thesis Luther is always opposing, viz. that there is a saving righteousness which arises, is preserved, and works without the preventing and accompanying grace of God. It is, however, clear that there was in his own soul a dislike for works; so strong in fact is his feeling in this regard that he simply calls all works “works of the law,” and cannot be too forcible in demonstrating the antagonism of the Apostle to their supposed over-estimation. Probably one reason for his selection of this Epistle for interpretation was that it appeared to him to agree even better than other biblical works with his own ideas against “self-righteousness.” We must now consider in detail some of the leading ideas of the Commentary on Romans.

2. Gloomy Views regarding God and Predestination

The tendency to a dismal conception of God plays, in combination with his ideas on predestination, an incisive part in Luther’s Commentary on Romans, which, so far, has received too little attention. The tendency is noticeable throughout his early mental history. He was never able to overcome his former temptations to sadness and despair on account of the possibility of his irrevocable predestination to hell, sufficiently to attain to the joy of the children of God and to the trustful recognition of God’s general and certain will for our salvation. The advice which Staupitz, among others, gave him was assuredly correct, viz. to take refuge in the wounds of Christ, and Luther probably tried to follow it. But we do not learn that he paid diligent heed to the further admonitions of the ancient ascetics, to exert oneself in the practice of good works, as though one’s predestination depended entirely on the works one performs with the grace of God. On the contrary, of set purpose, he avoided any effort on his own part and preferred the misleading mystical views of Quietism.

The melancholy idea of predestination again peeps out unabashed in the passage in his Commentary on the Psalms, where he says, that Christ “drank the cup of pain for His elect, but not for all.”[454]

If he set out to explain the Epistle to the Romans with a gloomy conception of God, in which we recognise the old temptations regarding predestination, owing to his misapprehension of certain passages of the Epistle concerning God’s liberty and inscrutability in the bestowal of grace, his ideas, as he advances, become progressively more stern and dismal. The editor of the Commentary remarks, not without reason, on the forcible way in which Luther, “even in chapter i., emphasises the sovereignty of the Will of God.”[455] It is true of many, Luther says there, that God gives them up to the desires of their heart, unto uncleanness (cp. Rom. i. 24), nor is this merely a permission, but an appointment and command (“non tantum permissio, sed commissio et iussio”).[456] In such a case God commands the devil or the flesh to tempt a man and conquer him. It is true that when God chooses to act graciously He prevents the evil; but He also wills to be severe and to punish, and “then He makes the wicked to sin more abundantly (‘facit abundantius peccare’)”; then “He forsakes a man so that he may not be able to resist the devil, who carries out the order and the Will of God in bringing about his fall.”

The youthful University Professor believes that he is here teaching a “more profound theology.” No one was to come to him, he says, with the shallow and hackneyed assertion that, on the above hypothesis, man’s free will was destroyed; only narrow minds (“rudiores”) take exception at this “profundior theologia.”[457] The teaching of this new theology was the following:

“This man may do what he pleases, it is God’s will that he should be overcome by sin.” “It is true that God does not desire the sin, although He wills that it shall take place (‘non sequitur quod Deus peccatum velit, licet ipsum velit fieri’); for He only wills that it shall happen, in order to manifest in man the greatness of His anger and His severity by punishing in him the sin which He hates.” “It is therefore on account of the punishment that God wills that the sin shall be committed.... God alone may will such a thing” (“Hoc autem soli Deo licitum est velle”),[458] and he repeats fearlessly: “in order that all misery and shame may be heaped upon the man, God wills he should commit this sin.”[459] He fancies he is communicating to his pupils “the highest secrets of theology,” meant only for the perfect, when he assures them that both statements are right: God wills to oblige me and all men [to do what is good] and yet He does not give His grace to all, but only to whom He will, reserving to Himself the choice. Some it does not please Him to justify because He manifests so much the more through them His honour in the elect; in the same way He also wills sin, though only indirectly, viz. “that He may be glorified in the elect.” Hence we must not make it a mere matter of permission, for “how would God permit it unless it were His will?” “Senseless chatter,” thus he describes the unanimous contrary teaching of theologians, “such is the objection they raise that man would thus be damned without any fault on his part, because he could not fulfil the law and was expected to do what was impossible.”—We can only ask how his own method is to be described when he contents himself with this solution: “If that objection had any weight it would follow that it was not necessary to preach, to pray, to exhort, and Christ’s death would also not be necessary. Yet by means of all this God has chosen to save His elect.”[460]

Luther, as this somewhat lengthy passage shows, had, at any rate at that time, no bright, kindly idea of God’s Nature, Goodness and inexhaustible Mercy, which wills to make every creature here on earth happy and to save them in eternity; his mind was imprisoned within the narrow limits to which he had before this accustomed himself; a false conception of God’s essence—perhaps a remainder of his Occamist training—was already poisoning the very vitals of his theology.

His melancholy conception of God comes to light not only in the various passages where he speaks of predestination, but also in the dark pictures, which, in his morbid frame of mind, he paints of the wickedness and sin of man pitting his unquenchable concupiscence against God, the All Holy.[461] In order to adore this stern and cruel God in his own way he had already built up on his false mysticism a practical theory of resignation and self-surrender to whatever might be the Divine Will, even should it destine him to damnation. In the first pages of the Commentary on Romans his idea of God enables him to proclaim loudly and boldly, and with full knowledge of what he is doing, his opposition to the religious practice of his many zealous contemporaries, whether clerics or laymen.

Many have, according to him, an idea of God different from his: “Oh, how many there are to-day who do not worship God as He is, but as they imagine Him to be. Look at their singularities and their superstitious rites, full of delusions. They give up what they ought to practise, they choose out the works by which they will honour Him, they fancy that God is such that He looks down upon them and their works.” “There is spread abroad to-day a sort of idolatry by which God is not served as He is. The love of their own ideas and their own righteousness entirely blinds mankind, and they call it ‘good intention.’ They imagine that God is thereby graciously disposed to them, whereas it is not so: and so they worship their phantom God rather than the true God.”[462]

Neither do they understand how to pray, because they do not know the awfulness of God. Does not the Scripture say; he asks them: “Serve ye the Lord with fear and rejoice unto Him with trembling” (Ps. ii. 11), and “with fear and trembling work out your salvation” (Phil. ii. 12)? Not wanting to look at their own works as “bad and suspicious” in the eyes of this God, “they do not assiduously call upon His grace.” They assume that their good intention arises out of themselves, whereas it is a gift of God, and desire to prepare themselves for the infusion of grace.[463] “Pelagian notions are at the bottom of all this. No one acknowledges himself now to be a Pelagian, but many are so unconsciously, with their principle that free will must set to work to obtain grace.”[464]

Such is the perilous position he reaches under the influence of his distaste for works, viz. a violent antagonism to free will. Man is unable to do the least thing to satisfy this Holy God.[465] The Occamist theology of the school in which he was trained here serves him in good stead, as the following sentences, which are closely akin to Occam’s acceptation-theory, show: “We must always be filled with anxiety, ever fear and await the Divine acceptance”; for as all our works are in themselves evil, “only those are good which God imputes as good; they are in fact something or nothing, only in so far as God accepts them or not.” “The eternal God has chosen good works from the beginning that they should please Him,”[466] “but how can I ever know that my deed pleases God? How can I even know that my good intention is from God?”[467] Hence, away with the proud self-righteous (“superbi iustitiarii”) who are so sure of their good works!

Fear, desponding humility and self-annihilation, according to Luther, are the only feelings one can cherish in front of this terrible, unaccountable God.[468] “He who despairs of himself is the one whom God accepts.”[469]

He also speaks of a certain “pavor Dei,” which is the foundation of salvation: “trepidare et terreri” is the best sign, as it is said in Psalm cxliii.: “Shoot out Thy arrows and Thou shalt trouble them,” the “terrens Deus” leads to life.[470] True love does not ask any enjoyment from God, rather, he here repeats, whoever loves Him from the hope of being made eternally happy by Him, or from fear of being wretched without Him, has a sinful and selfish love (“amor concupiscentiæ”); but to allow the terrors of God to encompass us, to be ready to accept from Him the most bitter interior and exterior cross, to all eternity, that only is perfect love. And even with such love we are dragged into thick interior darkness.[471]

All these gloomy thoughts which cloud his mind, gather, when he comes to explain chapters viii. and ix. of the Epistle to the Romans, where the Apostle deals with the question of election to grace.

Luther thinks he has here found in St. Paul the doctrine of predestination, not only to heaven, but also to hell, expressed, moreover, in the strongest terms. At the same time he warns his hearers against faint-heartedness, being well aware how dangerous his views might prove to souls.

“Let no one immerse himself in these thoughts who is not purified in spirit, lest he sink into an abyss of horror and despair; the eyes of the heart must first be purified by contemplating the wounds of Christ. I discourse upon these matters solely because the trend of the lectures leads up to them, and because they are unavoidable. It is the strongest wine there is, and the most perfect food, a solid nourishment for the perfect; it is that most exalted theology of which the Apostle says (1 Cor. ii. 6): ‘we speak wisdom among the perfect’ ... only the perfect and the strong should study the first book of the Sentences [because predestination is dealt with at the end of Peter Lombard’s first book]; it should really be the last and not the first book; to-day many who are unprepared jump at it and then go away blinded in spirit.”[472]

Luther teaches that the Apostle’s doctrine is: God did not in their lifetime exercise His mercy towards the damned; He is right and not to be blamed when He follows herein His own supreme will alone. “Why then does man murmur as though God were not acting according to the law?” His will is, for every man, the highest good. Why should we not desire, and that with the greatest fervour, the fulfilment of this will, since it is a will which can in no way be evil? “You say: Yes, but for me it is evil. No, it is evil for none. The only evil is that men cannot understand God’s will and do it”; they should know that even in hell they are doing God’s will if it is His wish that they should be there.[473]

Hence the only way he knows out of the darkness he has himself created is recognition of, and resignation to, the possibility of a purely arbitrary damnation by God. The expressions he here makes use of for reprobation, “inter reprobos haberi,” “damnari,” “morte æterna puniri” make it plain that he demands resignation to actual reprobation and to being placed on a footing with the damned. Yet, as he always considers this resignation as the most perfect proof of acquiescence in the Will of God, it does not, according to him, include within itself a readiness to hate God, but, on the contrary, the strongest and highest love.[474] With such an exalted frame of mind, however, the actual penalty of hell would cease to exist. “It is impossible that he should remain apart from God who throws himself so entirely into the Will of God. He wills what God wills, therefore he pleases God. If he pleases God, then he is loved by God; if he is loved by God, then he is saved.”[475] That he is thus cutting the ground from under his hypothesis of an inevitable predestination to hell by teaching how we can escape it, does not seem to strike him. Or does he, perhaps, mean that only those who are not predestined to hell can thus overcome the fear of hell? Will such resignation be possible to him who really believes himself destined to hell, and who sees even in his resignation no means whereby he can escape it?

To such a one even the “wounds of Christ” offer no assurance and no place of refuge. They only speak to man of the God of revelation, not of the mysterious, unsearchable God. The untenable and insulting comparison between the mysterious and the revealed Supreme Being which Luther was later on to institute is here already foreshadowed.

He explains in detail how the will of man does not in the least belong to the person who wills, or the road to the runner. “All is God’s, who gives and creates the will.” We are all instruments of God, who works all in all. Our will is like the saw and the stick—examples which he repeatedly employs later in his harshest utterances concerning the slavery of the will. Sawing is the act of the hand which saws, but the saw is passive; the animal is beaten, not by the stick, but by him who holds the stick. So the will also is nothing, but God who wields it is everything.[476]

Hence he rejects most positively the theological doctrine that God foresees the final lot of man as something “contingenter futurum,” i.e. that he sees his rejection as something dependent on man and brought about by his own fault. No, according to Luther, in the election of grace everything is preordained “inflexibili et firma voluntate,” and this, His own will, is alone present in the mind of God.

Luther speaks with scorn of “our subtle theologians,” who drag in their “contingens” and build up an election by grace on “necessitas consequentiæ, sed non consequentis,” in accordance with the well-known scholastic ideas. “With God there is absolutely no ‘contingens,’ but only with us; for no leaf ever falls from the tree to the earth without the will of the Father.” Besides, the theologians—so he accuses the Scholastics without exception—“have imagined the case so, or at least have led to its being so imagined, as though salvation were obtained or lost through our own free will.”[477]

We know that here he was wrong. As a matter of fact, true Scholasticism attributed the work of salvation to grace together with free will, so that two factors, the Divine and the human, or the supernatural and the natural, are mutually engaged in the same. But Luther, when here reporting the old teaching, does not mention the factor of grace, but only “nostrum arbitrium.”

He then adds: “Thus I once understood it.” If he really ever believed salvation to be exclusively the work of free will, then he erred grievously, and merely proves how defective his study, even of Gabriel Biel, had been.

He also interpreted quite wrongly the view of contemporary and earlier scholastic theologians on the love of God, and, again, by excluding the supernatural factor. He reproaches them with having, so he says, considered the love in question as merely natural (“ex natura”) and yet as wholesome for eternal life, and he demands that all wholesome love be made to proceed “ex Spiritu Sancto,” a thing which all theologians, even the Occamists, had insisted on. He says: “they do not know in the least what love is,”[478] “nor do they know what virtue is, because they allow themselves to be instructed on this point by Aristotle, whose definition is absolutely erroneous.”[479] It makes no impression upon him—perhaps he is even ignorant of the fact—that the Scholastics consider, on good grounds, the love which loves God’s goodness as goodness towards us, and which makes personal salvation its motive, compatible with the perfect love of friendship (amicitiæ, complacentiæ).[480] According to him, this love must be extirpated (“amor exstirpandus”) because it is full of abominable self-seeking.[481] In its place he sets up a most perfect love (which will be described below), which includes resignation to, and even a desire for, hell-fire, a resignation such as Christ Himself manifested (!) in His abandonment to suffering.

Luther had now left the safe path of theological and ecclesiastical tradition to pursue his own ideas.

It is true that, notwithstanding his exhortation to be resigned to the holy will of God in every case, he looks with fear at the flood of blasphemies which must arise in the heart of one who fears his own irrevocable, undeserved damnation. Anxious to obviate this, or to arm the conscience against it, when pointing to the wounds of Christ he adds these words: “Should anyone, owing to overmastering temptation, come to blaspheme God, that would not involve his eternal damnation. For even towards the godless our God is not a God of impatience and cruelty. Such blasphemies are forced out of a man by the devil, therefore they may be more pleasing to God’s ear than any Alleluia or song of praise. The more terrible and abominable a blasphemy is, the more pleasing it is to God when the heart feels that it does not acquiesce in it, i.e. when it is involuntary.”[482]

Involuntary thoughts, to which alone he sees fit to refer, are, of course, not deserving of punishment; but are the murmurs and angry complaints against predestination to hell of which he speaks always only involuntary? The way to resignation which he mentions in the same connection is no less questionable. It consists largely in “not troubling about such thoughts.”[483] But will all be able to get so far as this?

He again repeats with great insistence that “everything happens according to God’s choice”; “he upon whom God does not have mercy, remains in the ‘massa’” [perditionis].[484] “For whom it is, it is,” he adds elsewhere in German, “whom it hits, him it hits.”[485] God permits at times even the elect to be reduced, as it were, to nothingness,[486] but only in order that His sole power may be made manifest and that it may quench all proud boasting; for man is so ready to believe that he can by the exercise of his free will rise again, and waxes presumptuous; but here he learns that grace exalts him before and above every choice of his own (“ante omne arbitrium et supra arbitrium suum”).[487]

We shall not here examine more closely his grave misapprehension of the teaching of the Apostle in the Epistle to the Romans, on which he tries to prop up his glaring theory concerning predestination. Suffice it to say that the principal passage to which he refers (Rom. ix. 11 ff.), according to the exegetist Cornely, is not now taken by any expositor to refer to predestination, i.e. to the selection by grace of each individual.[488] The passage treats of the promises made to the Jewish people (as a whole) which were given without desert and freely; but Israel, as St. Paul explains, has, by its fault, rendered itself unworthy of the same and excluded itself (as a whole) from the salvation which the heathen obtain by faith—a reward of Israel’s misdeeds, which, in itself, is incompatible with Luther’s doctrine of an undeserved predestination to hell.[489]

Luther also quotes St. Augustine, but does not interpret him correctly. He even overlooks the fact that this Father, in one of the passages alleged, says the very opposite to his new ideas on unconditional predestination to hell, and attributes in every case the fate of the damned to their own moral misdeeds. Augustine says, in his own profound, concise way, in the text quoted by Luther: “the saved may not pride himself on his merits, and the damned may only bewail his demerits.”[490] In his meditations on the ever-inscrutable mystery he regards the sinner’s fault as entirely voluntary, and his revolt against the eternal God as, on this account, worthy of eternal damnation. Augustine teaches that “to him as to every man who comes into this world” salvation was offered with a wealth of means of grace and with all the merits of Christ’s bitter death on the cross.[491]

Luther also quoted the Bible passages regarding God’s will for the salvation of all men, but only in order to say of them: “such expressions are always to be understood exclusively of the elect.” It is merely “wisdom of the flesh” to attempt to find a will of God that all men be saved in the assurance of St. Paul: “God wills that all men shall be saved” (1 Tim. ii. 4), or “in the passages which say, that He gave His Son for us, that He created man for eternal life, and that everything was created for man, but man for God that he might enjoy Him eternally.”[492]

Other objections which Luther makes he sets aside with the same facility by a reference to the thoughts he has developed above.[493] Thus the first: Why did God give to man free will by means of which he can merit either reward or punishment? His answer is: Where is this free will? Man has no free will for doing what is good. Then a second objection: “God damns no one without sin, and he who is forced to sin is damned unjustly.” The answer to this is new: God ordains it so that those who are to be damned are gladly, even though of necessity, in sin (“dat voluntarie velle in peccato esse et manere et diligere iniquitatem”). Finally, the last objection: “Why does God give them commandments which He does not will them to keep, yea hardens their will so much that they desire to act contrary to the law? Is not God in this case the cause of their sinning and being damned?” “Yes, that is the difficulty,” he admits, “which, as a matter of fact, has the most force; it is the weightiest of all. But to it the Apostle makes a special answer when he teaches: God so wills it, and God Who thus wills, is not evil. Everything is His, just as the clay belongs to the potter and waits on his service.” Enough, he continues, “God commands that the elect shall be saved, and that those who are destined for hell shall be entangled in evil in order that He may show forth His mercy and also His anger.”

It makes one shudder to hear how he cuts short the sighs of the unhappy soul which sees itself a victim of God’s harshness. It complains: “It is a hard and bitter lot that God should seek His honour in my misery!” And Luther replies: “See, there we have the wisdom of the flesh! My misery; ‘my,’ ‘my,’ that is the voice of the flesh. Drop the ‘my’ and say: Be Thou honoured, O Lord.... So long as you do not do that, you are seeking your own will more than the will of God. We must judge of God in a different manner from that in which we judge of man. God owes no man anything.”

“With this hard doctrine,” he concludes, “the knife is placed at the throat of holiness-by-works and fleshly wisdom and therefore the flesh is naturally incensed, and breaks out into blasphemies; but man must learn that his salvation does not depend upon his acts, but that it lies quite outside of him, namely, in God, Who has chosen him.”

He attempts, however, to mingle softer tones with the voices of despair, which, he admits, these theories have let loose. This he can only do at the expense of his own teaching, or by fining it down. He says: whoever is terrified and confused, but then tries to abandon himself with indifference to the severity of God, he, let this be his comfort, is not of the number of those predestined to hell. For only those who are really to be rejected are not afraid[?], “they pay no heed to the danger and say, if I am to be damned, so be it!” On the other hand, confusion and fear are signs of the “spiritus contribulatus,” which, according to his promise, God never rejects (Ps. 1.).

After all, then, we are forced to ask, according to this, is not man to be saved by his own act, namely, the act of heroic indifference to his eternity? For this act remains an act of man: “Whoever is filled with the fear of God, and, taking courage, throws and precipitates himself into the truth of the promises of God, he will be saved, and be one of the elect.”[494]

3. The Fight against “Holiness-by-Works” and the Observantines in the Commentary on Romans

His ideas on predestination were not the direct cause of Luther’s belittling of human effort and the value of good works; the latter tendency was present in him previous to his adoption of rigid predestinarianism; nor does he ever attribute to election by grace any diminution of man’s powers or duties, whether in the case of the chosen or of the reprobate. The same commandments are given to those whom God’s terrible decree has destined for hell as to the elect; they possess the same human abilities, the same weaknesses. It was not predestination which led him in the first instance to attribute such strength to concupiscence in man, and to invest it, as he ultimately did, with an actually sinful and culpable character.

His ideas concerning the absolute corruption of the children of Adam, even to the extinction of any liberty in the doing of what is good, had another origin, and, in their development, were influenced far more by false mysticism than by the predestinarian delusion.

He approached the lectures on the Epistle to the Romans in the conviction that, in this Epistle, he would find the sanction of his earlier efforts against the self-righteous and “holy-by-works,” against whom his peculiar mysticism had still further prejudiced him. From the very outset he interprets the great Apostolic document on the calling of the heathen and the Jews to salvation as directed exclusively against those who, according to him, were imperilling the Church; against those who (whether in his own Order or in Christendom generally) laid stress on the importance of works, on the duty of fulfilling observances and the merit of exercises of virtue for gaining heaven, and who were unmindful of the righteousness which Christ gives us. This is not the place to point out how Paul is speaking in quite another sense, against those Jewish Christians who still adhered to the works of the Mosaic Law, of the merely relative value of works, of the liberty which Christianity imparts and of the saving power of faith.

Luther, however, in the very first lines, tells the “holy-by-works” that the whole purpose of the Epistle to the Romans is a driving back and rooting out of the wisdom and righteousness of the flesh. Among the heathen and the Jews were to be found those who, though “devoted in their hearts to virtue,” yet had not suppressed all self-satisfaction in the same, and looked upon themselves as “righteous and good men”; in the Church, according to Paul, all self-righteousness and wisdom must be torn out of the affections, and self-complacency. God willed to save us not by our own righteousness but by an extraneous righteousness (“non per domesticam sed per extraneam iustitiam vult salvare”), viz. by the imputed righteousness of Christ, and, owing to the exterior righteousness which Christ gives (“externa quæ ex Christo in nobis est iustitia”), there can be no boasting, nor must there be “any depression on account of the sufferings and trials which come to us from Christ.”[495]

“Christ’s righteousness and His gifts,” he says, “shine in the true Christian.... If any man possesses natural and spiritual advantages, yet this is not considered by God as being his wisdom, righteousness and goodness (‘non ideo coram Deo talis reputatur’), rather, he must wait in humility, as though he possessed nothing, for the pure mercy of God, to see whether He will look upon him as righteous and wise. God only does this if he humbles himself deeply. We must learn to regard spiritual possessions and works of righteousness as worthless for obtaining the righteousness of Christ, we must renounce the idea that these have any value in God’s sight and merit a reward, otherwise we shall not be saved” (“opera iusta velint nihil reputare,” etc.).[496]

Any pretext, or even none at all, serves to bring him back again and again in the work to the “Pelagian-minded iustitiarii.” It is possible that amongst these the “Observantines” ranked first. Our thoughts revert to those of his brother monks, whose cause he had at first defended in the internal struggle within the Congregation, only to turn on them unmercifully afterwards. On one occasion he mentions by name the “Observants,” reproaching them with trying to outshine one another in their zeal for God, while at the same time they had no love of their neighbour, whereas, according to the passage he is just expounding, “the fulness of the law is love.”[497] He would also appear to be referring to them, when, on another occasion, he rails at such monks, who by their behaviour bring their whole profession into disgrace.

“They exalt themselves against other members of their profession,” he cries, “as though they were clean and had no evil odour about them,”[498] and continues in the style of his monastic discourse on the “Little Saints” mentioned above (p. 69 f.). “And yet before, behind and within they are a pig-market and sty of sows ... they wish to withdraw from the rest, whereas they ought, were they really virtuous, to help them to conceal their faults. But in place of patient succour there is nothing in them but peevishness and a desire to be far away (‘quærunt fugam ... tediosi sunt et nolunt esse in communione aliorum’). They will not serve those who are good for nothing nor be their companions; they only desire to be the superiors and companions of the worthy, the perfect and the sound. Therefore they run from one place to another.”[499]

The struggle of which this is a picture continued among the German Augustinians. In the spring, 1520, a similar conflict broke out in the Cologne Province, one side having the sympathy of the Roman Conventuals.[500] We can well understand how the General of the Order in Rome was not disposed to grant the exemptions claimed by the Observantines of the Saxon Congregation against his own Provincials.

Luther brandishes his sharp blade against the “spiritually minded, the proud, the stiff-necked, who seek peace in works and in the flesh, the iustitiarii,”[501] without making any sharp distinction between the actual Observantines and the “self-righteous.”

With regard to himself, he admits that he is so antagonistic to the “iustitiarii,” that he is opposed to all scrupulous observance of “iustitia,” to all regulations and strict ordinances:

“The very word righteousness vexes me: if anyone were to steal from me, it would hurt me less than being obliged to listen to the word righteousness. It is a word which the jurists always have on their lips, but there is no more unlearned race than these men of the law, save, perhaps, the men of good intention and superior reason (‘bonæ-intentionarii seu sublimatæ rationis’); for I have experienced both in myself and in others, that when we were righteous, God mocked at us.”[502]

4. Attack on Predisposition to Good and on Free Will

The assertion of the complete corruption of human nature owing to the continuance of original sin and the inextinguishable tinder of concupiscence, arose from the above-mentioned position which Luther had taken up with regard to self-righteousness.

Man remains, according to what Luther says in the Commentary on Romans, in spite of all his veneer of good works, so alienated from God that he “does not love but hates the law which forces him to what is good and forbids what is evil; his will, far from seeking the law, detests it. Nature persists in its evil desires contrary to the law; it is always full of evil concupiscence when it is not assisted from above.” This concupiscence, however, is sin. Everything that is good is due only to grace, and grace must bring us to acknowledge this and to “seek Christ humbly and so be saved.”[503]

The descriptions of human doings which the author gives us in eloquent language are not wanting in fidelity and truth to nature, though we cannot approve his inferences. He has a keen eye on others and is unmerciful in his delineation of the faults which he perceived in the pious people around him.

He spies out many who only act from a desire for the praise of men, and who wish to appear, but not really to be, good. How ready are such, he says, to depreciate themselves with apparent humility. Others only do what is right because it gives them pleasure, i.e. from inclination and without any higher motive. Others do it from vain self-complacency; yea, selfishness is present in almost all, and mars their works. Outward routine and a business-like righteousness spoils a great deal. It is to be deplored that, like the Pharisees, they only keep what is commanded in view and long for the rewards of a busy and petty virtue.[504]

In such descriptions he is easily carried too far and is sometimes even obviously unjust. Thus, for instance, of evil practices he makes conscious theories, in order the more readily to gain the upper hand of his adversaries. “They teach,” he cries, “that it is only necessary to keep the law by works and not with the heart ... their efforts are not accompanied with the least inward effort, everything is wholly external.”[505]

In respect of the doctrine of original sin and its consequences in man, he not only magnifies enormously the strength of the concupiscence which remains after baptism, without sufficiently taking into account the spiritual means by which it can be repressed, but gives the most open expression to his belief that concupiscence is actually sin; it is the persistence of original sin, rendering every man actually culpable, even without any consent of the will. The “Non concupisces” of the Ten Commandments—which the Apostle emphasises in his Epistle to the Romans, though in another sense—Luther makes out to be such a prohibition that, by the mere existence of concupiscence, it is daily and hourly sinfully transgressed. He pays no attention to the theology of the Church, which had hitherto seen in the “Non concupisces” a prohibition of any voluntary consent to a concupiscence existing without actual sin.

His attack on free will is very closely bound up with his ideas on concupiscence.

“Concupiscence with weakness is against the law ‘Thou shalt not covet,’ and it is deadly [a mortal sin], but the gracious God does not impute it on account of the work of salvation which has been commenced in [pardoned] man.” “Even a venial sin,” he teaches in the same passage, “is, according to its nature [owing to human nature which is entirely alienated from God], a mortal sin, but the Creator does not impute (‘imputat’) it as mortal sin to the man whom he chooses to perfect and render whole.”[506]

He makes various attempts to deduce from concupiscence the absolute want in the will of freedom to do what is good. There is not the slightest doubt that he does deny this freedom, though, on the other hand, he grants so much to liberty in his admonitions concerning predestination (see below, p. 219) that he practically retracts his denial. The position he takes up with regard to grace ought to be a test of what he actually held: did he look upon grace as in every case irresistible? But on this very point he is as yet indisposed to commit himself as he will not hesitate to do later, to a positive, erroneous “yes.” In short, though he stands for a denial of liberty, he has not yet seen his way to solve all the difficulties.

If we seek some specimens illustrating the course of his ideas regarding lack of liberty, we find, perhaps, the strongest utterance in his comments on Romans viii. 28: “Free will apart from grace possesses absolutely no power for righteousness, it is necessarily in sin. Therefore St. Augustine in his book against Julian terms it ‘rather an enslaved than a free will.’ But after the obtaining of grace it becomes really free, at least as far as salvation is concerned. The will is, it is true, free by nature, but only for what comes within its province, not for what is above it, being bound in the chain of sin and therefore unable to choose what is good in God’s sight.”[507] Here Luther makes no distinction between natural and supernatural good, but excludes both from our choice; in fact there is no such thing as natural goodness, for what nature performs alone is only sin.

“Where is our righteousness,” he exclaims rhetorically some pages before this, “where are our works, where is the liberty of choice, where the presupposed ‘contingens’ (see above, p. 193)? This is what must be preached, this is the way to bring the wisdom of the flesh to the dust! The Apostle does so here. In former passages he cut off its hands, its feet, its tongue; here he seizes it [the wisdom of the flesh which speaks in defence of free will] and makes an end of it. Here, like a flash of light, it is seen to possess nothing in itself, all its possession being in God.”[508] This, then, is Luther’s conclusion: the elect are not saved by the co-operation of their free will, but by the Divine decree; not by their merits, but by the unalterable edict from above by means of which they conquer all the difficulties in the way of salvation. He is silent here as to whether the elect may not succumb to sin temporarily, either by the misuse of liberty, or from lack of compelling grace.

Towards the end of the Commentary he asserts quite definitely that we are unable to formulate even a good intention with our human powers which could in any way [even in the natural order] be pleasing to God.

He here examines certain opponents, who rightly denied this inability, “otherwise man would be forced to sin.” Further on he attributes to all theologians the teaching of the Occamists (see above, p. 75): “therewith we receive without fail the infusion of God’s grace”; a proposition which certainly sounds Pelagian. He passes over one point which true scholastic theologians did not omit, viz. that God’s supernatural assistance “prevents” our natural will, raises the same into the order of grace, and thus enables us to merit salvation. Further, again disregarding the scholastic teaching, he foists upon all theologians the idea that, having once formed our intention, “we need have no further anxiety, or trouble ourselves to invoke God’s grace.”[509] Such is, according to him, the position of his opponents.

In his answer he does not assert, as regards the first proposition, that God forces us to evil; “the wicked,” he says, “do what they wish, perhaps even with good intentions, but God allows them to sin even in their good works.” Of this, according to him, his opponents must be aware and therefore ought not to act with so much assurance and certainty as though they were really performing good works. Everyone should rather say: “Who knows whether God’s grace is working this in me?” Then only does man acknowledge “that he can do nothing of himself”; only thus can we escape Pelagianism, which is the curse of the self-righteous. “But because they are persuaded that it is always within their power to do what they can, and therefore also to possess grace [here he is utilising some of the real weaknesses of Occamism], therefore they do nothing but sin all the time in their assurance.”[510]

Luther does not here ask himself what else man is to perform in order to possess the grace of God, beyond doing what he can, humbling himself and praying for grace, as all preceding ages had taught. He is still looking for an assurance of salvation by some other method. Only at a later date does he learn, or thinks he learns, how it is to be obtained (by faith alone). Here he merely says: “It is the greatest plague to speak of the signs of possessing grace and thereby to lull man into security.” He has not yet found the assurance of the “Gracious God,” as he is to express it later.

Meanwhile he proceeds, ostensibly following St. Paul, to denounce the principle “he who does what he can,” etc., like wise freewill and the possibility of fulfilling the law.

Paul teaches, for instance, in Romans viii. 3 f.: What the Mosaic law could not do on account of the rebellion of the flesh in man, namely, conquer sin, that God did by the incarnation of His Son, who overcame sin and helps us to fulfil the law; in those who are not born again, sin lives as the “law of sin,” because they are “weak” ἠσθένει against the attacks of concupiscence; on the other hand, the saving grace of the gospel frees us from the “law of sin and death.” To the proposition with which Paul introduces this doctrine, viz. that it had not been possible for the law (i.e. the Mosaic Law) to conquer sin, Luther simply adds: “where now is the freedom of the will?[511] ... the holy Apostle Paul says here expressly that the law was unable to condemn [overcome] sin, or even the weakness which proceeds from the flesh. This is nothing else but the doctrine which I have so frequently been insisting upon, that a fulfilling of the law through our own efforts is impossible; it cannot even be said that we have the power to will and to be able, in such a way as God would have us, viz. by grace [thus it is possible to us to perform what is naturally good]; for otherwise grace would not be necessary, but only useful, and otherwise the sin of Adam would not have corrupted our nature, but have left it unimpaired.... It is true that the law of nature is written in the hearts of all; reason also has a natural desire for what is good, but this is selfish, being directed to our own good, not to that which pleases God; only faith working by love is directed towards God. All that nature desires and acquires, goodness, wisdom, virtue and whatever else there is, are evil goods (‘male bona sunt’), because nature, by original sin, is blinded in its knowledge and chained in its affections, and therefore cannot know God, nor love Him above all things nor yet refer all to Him. Therefore it follows that, without faith and love, man is unable to desire, have, or do anything that is good, but only evil, even when he does what is good.” “Without love, i.e. without the assistance of an external and higher power, he sins continually against the law ‘Thou shalt not covet,’ for this commandment requires that we should not appropriate or seek anything for ourselves, but live, act and think for God in all things. This commandment is simply beyond us.”[512]

His object in thus disparaging liberty is not for the present grounded on the Almighty Power of God, as though this stood in its way, or, as was the case later, on predestination, as though its irrefutable decree were incompatible with liberty, but merely on his exaggeration of the results of original sin with regard to doing what is good (i.e. on concupiscence); he simply moves along the old lines of his distaste for good works and for so-called self-righteousness.[513]

His misinterpretation of the Scholastics, due partly to ignorance, partly to the strength of his prejudice against them, here did him very notable service. He says on one occasion: “In their arbitrary fashion they make out that, on the infusion of grace, the whole of original sin is remitted in everyone just like all actual sin, as though sin could thus be removed at once, in the same way as darkness is dispelled by light.... It is true their Aristotle made sin and righteousness to consist in works. Either I never understood them, or they did not express themselves well.”[514] Here there can be no doubt that the former hypothesis is the correct one. That he did not understand his teachers and the school books is apparent from the following remark: If sin were completely removed in confession (“omnia ablata et evacuata”), then he who comes from confession ought to prefer himself to all others, and not look upon himself as a sinner like the rest. Even the Occamists never provided the slightest ground for such an inference, though they admitted in the justified the entire remission of all sin, original as well as actual. Luther had said in the very passage of the Commentary on Romans just quoted: “the remission of sin is, it is true, a real remission, yet not a removal of sin; the removal is only to be hoped for (“quod non sit ablatio peccati, nisi in spe”) from the giving of grace; grace commences the process of the removal in this way, that the sin is no longer imputed as sin.”[515] But, without recalling his own admission that he may possibly have misunderstood the Scholastics, he goes on to speak of the “deliria” of such Doctors.

5. Luther rudely sets aside the older doctrine of Virtue and Sin

In his Commentary on Romans Luther enters upon the domain of theological and philosophical discussion regarding the questions of natural and supernatural morality, the state of grace and the infused habit, sometimes with subtilty, sometimes with coarse invective, but owing to the limits of the present work we are unable to follow him except quite cursorily.

The manner in which he flings his “curses” at the doctrines of Scholasticism is distinctive of him; he says they are entirely compounded of pride and ignorance with regard to sin, to God and the law;[516] “cursed be the word ‘formatum charitate,’ and also the distinction between works according to the substance of the deed and the intention of the Lawgiver.”[517] There is perhaps no previous instance of a learned, exegetical treatise intended for academic consumption being thus spiced with curses.

Certain of Luther’s remarks on his practical experience call for consideration. Such is the following: “Everywhere in the Church great relapses after confession are now noticeable. People are confident that they are justified instead of first awaiting justification, and therefore the devil has an easy task with such false assurance of safety, and overthrows men. All this is due to making righteousness consist in works. But whoever thinks like a Christian can find this out for himself.”[518]

He gives the following exhortation with great emphasis and almost as though he had made an astounding discovery: “Whoever goes to confession, let him not believe that he gets rid of his burden and can then live in peace.”[519] His new doctrine of sin, which he discloses in the same passage, lies at the bottom of this; the baptised and the absolved must on no account forthwith consider themselves free from sin, on the contrary “they must not fancy themselves sure of the righteousness they have obtained and allow their hands to drop listlessly as though they were not conscious of any sin, for they have yet to fight against it and exterminate it with sighs and tears, with sadness and effort.”[520]

“Sin, therefore, still remains in the spiritual man for his exercise in the life of grace, for the humbling of his pride, for the driving back of his presumption; whoever does not exert himself zealously in the struggle against it, is in danger of being condemned even though he cease to sin any more (‘sine dubio habet, unde damnetur’). We must carry on a war with our desires, for they are culpable (‘culpa’), they are really sins and render us worthy of damnation; only the mercy of God does not impute them to us (‘imputare’) when we fight manfully against them, calling upon God’s grace.”[521]

There are few passages in the Commentary where his false conception of the entire corruption of human nature by original sin and concupiscence comes out so plainly as in the words just quoted. We see here too how this conception leads him to the denial of all liberty for doing what is good, and to the idea of imputation.

We can well understand that he needed St. Augustine to assist him to cover all this. And yet, as though to emphasise his own devious course, he quotes, among other passages, one in which Augustine confutes the view of any sin being present in man simply by reason of concupiscence.

“If we do not consent to concupiscence,” Augustine says, “it is no sin in those who are regenerate, so that, even if the ‘Non concupisces’ is infringed, yet the injunction of Jesus Sirach (xviii. 30) ‘Go not after thy lusts’ is observed. It is merely a manner of speaking to call concupiscence sin (“modo quodam loquendi”), because it sprang from sin, and, when it is victorious, causes sin.”[522] To this statement of the Father of the Church, which is so antagonistic to his own ideas, Luther can only add: that, certainly, concupiscence is in this way merely the cause and effect of sin, but not formally sinful (“causaliter et effectualiter, non formaliter”); Augustine himself had taught in another passage,[523] that owing to the mere existence of concupiscence, we are able to do what is good only in an imperfect way, not well and perfectly (“facere, non perficere”; cp. Rom vii. 18); that we ought, however, to strive to act well and perfectly “if we wish to attain to the perfection of righteousness” (“perficere bonum, est non concupiscere”).[524]

St. Augustine’s words, which are much to the point if taken in the right sense, only encouraged Luther in his opposition to the Scholastics; he points out to them that Augustine’s manner is not theirs, and that at least he supports his statements by Holy Scripture when speaking of the desires which persist without the consent of the will; they on the other hand come along without Bible proofs and thus with less authority; those old Doctors quieted consciences with the voice of the Apostle, but these new ones do not do so at all, rather they force the Divine teaching into the bed of their own abstractions; for instance, they derive from Aristotle their theory as to how virtues and vices dwell in the soul, viz. as the form exists in the subject; all comprehension of the difference between flesh and spirit is thus made impossible.

The question which here forces itself upon Luther, viz. how virtue and vice exist in the soul, is of fundamental importance for his view of ethics, and, as it frequently occurs in the Commentary, it must not be passed over.

When he says that virtues and vices do not adhere to the soul, he means the same as what he elsewhere expresses more clearly, viz. that “it depends merely on the gracious will of God whether a thing is good or bad.”[525]

“Nothing is good of its own nature, nothing is bad of its own nature; the will of God makes it good or bad.”[526]

This is the merest Nominalism, akin to Occam’s paradox that “hatred of God, theft and adultery might be not merely not wicked, but even meritorious were the will of God to command them.”

From such ideas of Occam Luther advanced to the following: “The will of God decides whether I am pleasing to Him or not.”[527]

This explains the proposition which frequently appears, in the Commentary on Romans and elsewhere, that man is at the same time righteous and a sinner, that the righteous man has the left foot still in sin and the right in grace.[528]

In the Commentary he attacks self-complacency in the performance of good works with the cry: “Good works are not something that can please because they are good or meritorious, but because they have been chosen by God from eternity as pleasing to Himself,” words which presuppose that only the imputation matters. “Therefore,” he continues, “works do not render us good, but our goodness, or rather the goodness of God, makes us good and our works good; for in themselves they would not be good, and they are or are not good in so far as God accounts them, or does not account them good (‘quantum ille reputat vel non reputat’). Our own accounting or not accounting does not matter in the least. Whoever keeps this before him is always filled with fear, and waits with apprehension to see how God’s sentence will fall out. This puts an end to all that puffing up of self and quarrelling, so beloved of the proud ‘iustitiarii,’ who are so sure of their good works.”

“Even the very definition of virtue which Aristotle gives,” he concludes, “is all wrong, as though, forsooth, virtue made us perfect and its work rendered us worthy of praise. The truth is simply that it makes us praiseworthy in our own eyes and commends our works to us; but this is abominable in God’s sight, while the contrary is pleasing to Him.”[529]

As a matter of fact, Scholasticism, basing its teaching on Aristotle, considered virtue and vice as something real and objective, as qualities of the soul which adhere to it inwardly and “inform” it, i.e. impart to it a spiritual form and become part of it in the same way as material things have their special qualities, for instance, their natural colour without which they do not exist. These, as a matter of fact, were merely learned ways of expressing the fundamental truth naturally perceived by all, viz. that evil deeds and vices render a man evil, and good deeds and virtues render him good; no sane mind could conceive of a theory of imputation by which good is made evil or evil good.

Luther was naturally obliged by his new theology of imputation to declare war on the older theological view of the existence of virtue and vice in the soul.[530] It was in so doing that, in his excitement, he uttered the curses above referred to (p. 209). It was no mere question of words, but of the very foundation of his new theology, a fact which makes his excitement comprehensible.

As a matter of fact, by his application of the theory of imputation he was heading for a “transformation of all values” and drifting towards the admission of a “future life of good and evil” long before modern philosophy had confidently opened up a similar perspective.

6. Preparation for Justification

Notwithstanding the fact that, according to the above exposition in the Commentary on Romans, man has absolutely no freedom of choice for doing what is good and that we cannot know with regard to our works how God will account them, Luther frequently speaks in the same book of the preparation necessary for obtaining justification, namely, by works. Here his feeling and his eloquence come into full play at the expense of clear theology. He does not even take into account the irresistibility of grace, which is the point he is bound to arrive at finally. Christ alone does the work, he says (“soli Christo iustitia relinquitur, soli ipsi opera gratiæ et spiritus”).[531] On the other hand, the bringing about of justification, at least so far as preparation goes, is imposed upon man. There are “works which predispose to justification,” he teaches (“opera quæ fiunt præparatorie ad iustificationem acquirendam”). “Whoever by his works disposes himself for the grace of justification is already, to a certain extent, righteous; for righteousness largely consists in the will to be righteous.”[532]

“Such works,” he continues, “are good, because we do not trust in them, but by them prepare ourselves for justification by which alone we may hope for righteousness.”[533] “Therefore we must pray earnestly, be zealous in good works and mortify ourselves (‘castigandum’) until readiness and joyousness develop in the will and its old inclination to sin is overcome by grace.”

“For the grace [of justification] will not be given to man without this personal agriculture of himself” (“non dabitur gratia sine ista agricultura sui ipsius”).[534]

We must continue to “look upon such works as merely preparatory, just as all works of righteousness performed in grace, prepare in their turn for an increase of justification, according to Apoc. xxii. 11.”[535] “Only so can we be saved, namely, by repenting that we are laden with sin and are living in sin, and by imploring of God our deliverance.[536] He also, in other passages, emphasises the fact that works are necessary for justification as its preparation: “We must do works in order to obtain justification (‘opera pro iustificatione quærenda’), works of grace and faith; they confirm the desire for justification and the fulfilment of the law, but we may not think that we are justified by them.” “Rather, true believers spend their whole life in seeking justification ... whoever seeks it with the heart and by works, is without doubt already justified in God’s sight.”[537] Towards the end of the Commentary he describes in emphatic words, which will be quoted below, the humility and sighing which should bring about justification.

We need not here specify how far the demand for individual effort is here a reminiscence of his Catholic training, or more particularly due to the school of Occam. It is an undoubted fact that Occamism and pseudo-mysticism are here rubbing shoulders, and that Luther himself is aware of the incongruity.[538]

7. Appropriation of the righteousness of Christ by humility—Neither “Faith only” nor assurance of Salvation

Luther’s words, quoted above, where he says that Christ fulfilled the law for us, He made His righteousness ours and our sins His (see above, p. 95 f.), show that he applied in the fullest manner the theory of imputation to justification. Man remains a sinner, but the sin is not imputed to him, he is accounted righteous by the imputing to him of what is quite alien to him, viz. the righteousness of Christ. Thus he is at one and the same time the friend and the enemy of God.[539]

The verb “to justify” as used in Holy Scripture the author of the Commentary on Romans simply takes to mean “to account as righteous,” or “to declare righteous.” Thus he says: “The doers of the law (according to Rom. ii. 13) are justified, i.e. they are accounted righteous. In Psalm cxlii. we read: ‘In Thy sight no man living shall be justified,’ i.e. be accounted righteous.... The Pharisee in the Temple wished to ‘justify himself’ (Luke x. 29), i.e. to declare his justification.”[540]

“Whoever seeks peace in his righteousness, seeks it in the flesh.” “Christ only is righteousness and truth, and in Him all is given us in order that by Him we may be righteous and true and escape eternal damnation.”[541] “This justification takes place (according to Paul) outside of works of the law, i.e. without works which are outside of faith and grace, that is, which come from the law, which forces by fear and attracts by temporal promises. The Apostle calls those only works of faith which proceed from the spirit of freedom through the love of God, and these can only be done by the man who is justified by faith. The works of the law however do not help towards justification, but are rather a hindrance because they prevent a man from looking upon himself as unrighteous and in need of justification.”[542]

“Christ, according to the Apostle, has become our righteousness (1 Cor. i. 30), i.e. all the good that we possess is exterior, it is Christ’s. It is only in us by faith and hope in Him.” “Our fulness and our righteousness is outside of us, within we are empty and poor.... The pious know that sin alone dwells in them, but that this is covered over and not imputed on account of Christ.... The beauty of Christ conceals our hideousness.”[543]

“There is in this system,” says Denifle, in his description of it, “no question of the expulsion of sin. The sinner ... casts himself in his sinful condition on Christ without any means of his own, he hides himself under the wings of the hen and comforts himself with the idea: Christ has done everything in place of me, all my works would be merely sin ... Luther did not perceive what a grievous wrong he was doing to God by this theory. It entirely suppresses the inward grace of God which raises a man up again, penetrates to the depths of his soul and purifies and fills it with supernatural strength. The organic process of justification thus shrinks into a purely mechanical shifting of the scenery.” To this Denifle opposes the statement of Holy Scripture: “That man by a living faith is implanted in Christ as the sapling is grafted on to the olive tree, or the branch on the vine, so that there must be an interior change, an ennobling, and thus a new life.”[544]

Luther says, “we are outwardly righteous because we are justified, not by our works, but only by the reputation of God; but His reputation is not inwardly within us, and is not within our power.” “Solum Deo reputante sumus iusti, ergo non nobis viventibus vel operantibus; quare intrinsece et ex nobis impii semper.”[545]

The connection between “reputation” as above and Occam’s theory of acceptation is unmistakable.

The nominalistic views of God and of His arbitrary acceptation were the form in which Luther’s ideas were moulded. The general structure of his thoughts was derived from what he had retained of the Nominalism of Occam.[546] On the principal point, however, Luther diverges from the theology of the school of Occam by not admitting in any way the saving grace which the latter teaches. There is with him no such thing as an infused virtue of righteousness.[547] Luther in his doctrine on virtue and vice had already suppressed them as “qualities,” i.e. as objective realities; still more so does he deny that the grace which makes us righteous is in any sense a real “qualitas,” or “habitus”; in fact, he leaves no actual justifying grace whatever actually inherent in man, but merely sees in God a gracious willingness not to regard us as sinners, and to lend us His all-powerful assistance for the struggle against sin (concupiscence and actual sin).

Thus the outlines of the strongest assertions which he makes later as to the imputing of the righteousness of Christ are already apparent in his interpretation of the Epistle to the Romans. Christ alone has assumed the place of what the Catholic calls saving grace. He already teaches what he was to sum up later in the short formula: “Christ Himself is my quality and my formal righteousness,” or, again, what he was to say to Melanchthon in 1536: “Born of God and at the same time a sinner; this is a contradiction; but in the things of God we must not hearken to reason.”[548] His Commentary on Romans prepares us for his later assertions: “The gospel is a teaching having no connection whatever with reason, whereas the teaching of the law can be understood by reason ... reason cannot grasp an extraneous righteousness and, even in the saints, this belief is not sufficiently strong.”[549] “The enduring sin is admitted by God as non-existent; one and the same act may be accepted before God and not accepted, be good and not good.” “Whoever terms this mere cavilling (‘cavillatio’) is desirous of measuring the Divine by purblind human reason and understands nothing of Holy Scripture.”[550]

How then are we to obtain from God the imputation of the righteousness of Christ? There is surely some condition to be supplied by man which may allow it to be conferred, for it cannot rule blindly and unconsciously. Or are we never certain of this imputation? Luther’s answer is very pessimistic: Man never knows that it has been bestowed upon him. He can only hope, by sinking himself in his own nothingness (“humilitas”), to placate God and obtain this imputation.

Thus the author of the Commentary on Romans is still very far from that absolute assurance of salvation by faith which he was subsequently to advocate.[551]

He insists so much on the uncertainty of salvation that he blames Catholic theologians severely for the assurance and confidence which their teaching induces in man, and refuses to admit any of the customary signs which moralists and ascetics look upon as conclusive testimony of a soul being in a state of grace.

The advantage he perceives in his new ideas is precisely that they keep man ever in a state of fear (“semper pavidus”).[552] That, as Luther expressly says, “we can never know whether we are justified and whether we believe, is owing to the fact that it is hidden from us whether we live in every word of God.”[553] When dealing with a passage, which he makes use of later in quite a different sense (Rom. iii. 22, “the justice of God by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all”), he says: “We must fear and tremble (‘timent et pavent’) lest we please not God; we must be in fear and despair (‘pavor et desperatio’), for such is God’s own work in us; if this fear does not take the place of the customary signs, then there is no hope possible; and, in so far, fear alone is a good sign.”[554] “Our life is in death [here speaks the mystic], our salvation in destruction, our kingdom in banishment, our heaven in hell.”[555] “Away with all trust in righteousness.” Arise and “destroy all presumption in wholesome despair.”

On this road of painful despair Luther fancies he discovers the only really “good sign” of salvation, so far as any sign at all can be said to exist: “On account of the confession of their sins God accounts the saints as righteous.”[556]

“Whoever renounces everything, even himself, is ready to become nothing (volens it in nihilum), to go to death and to damnation, whoever voluntarily confesses and is persuaded that he deserves nothing good, such a one has done enough in God’s sight and is righteous. We must, believing in the word of the cross, die to ourselves and to everything; then we shall live for God alone.” “The saints have their sins ever before them, they beg for righteousness through the mercy of God and, for that very reason, they are always accounted righteous by God; in truth they are sinners, though righteous by imputation; unconsciously righteous and consciously unrighteous, sinners in deed but righteous in hope.” “God’s anger is great and wonderful; He accounts them at the same time righteous and unrighteous, removing sin and not removing it.”[557] Here he exclaims pathetically: “God is wonderful in His saints (Ps. lxvii. 36), who are at the same time righteous and unrighteous.” Of the “self-righteous” he immediately adds ironically: Wonderful is God in the hypocrites, “who are at the same time unrighteous and righteous!” Without any suspicion of paradox, he concludes: “It is certain that God’s elect will be saved, but no one is certain that he is chosen.”

Luther repeatedly represents the feeling of despair (under the name of “humilitas”) as not merely a means of recognising the imputation of God and therewith one’s salvation, but even as in itself the only means which can lead to salvation. He praises “humility” in mystical language as something man must struggle to attain and as the ideal of the devout. It occupies almost the same place in his mind as the “sola fides” at a later date.

That “humility” is to him the actual factor which obtains the imputation of the merits of Christ and thus makes the soul righteous and wins for it eternal salvation, is apparent not only from the above, but also from the following utterances: “When we are convinced that we are unrighteous and without the fear of God, when, thus humbled, we acknowledge ourselves to be godless and foolish, then we deserve to be justified by Him.”[558] The fear of God works humility, but humility makes us fit for all [salvation]; we must merely resign ourselves to the admission that “there is nothing so righteous that it is not unrighteous, nothing so true that it is not a lie, nothing so pure that it is not filthy and profane before God.”[559] “Let us be sinners in humility and only desire to be justified by the mercy of God.” He alone who acknowledges his entire unrighteousness, who fears and beseeches, he alone, “as an abiding sinner,” opens for himself the door to salvation.[560]

We must believe everything that is of Christ, he says, and only he does this who humbly bewails his own utter unrighteousness.[561] The mystic star of “humility” which has arisen to him he even describes as the “vera fides,” and makes the following inference: “As this is so, we must humble ourselves beyond bounds.” “When we have humbled ourselves wholly before God, then we have fulfilled righteousness, wholly and entirely (‘totam perfectamque iustitiam’); for what else does all Scripture teach but humility?”[562]

Luther ascribes to “humility” all that he later ascribes to faith; “all Scripture,” which now teaches humility, will later teach that faith is the only power which saves. In that very Epistle to the Romans, which at a later date was to be the bulwark of his “sola fides,” he can as yet, in 1515 and 1516, find only “sola humilitas.” His frequent exhortations to self-annihilation and despair of one’s own efforts, exhortations taking the form of fulsome praise of one particular kind of humility, must be traced back to mystical influence and to his irritation against the “proud self-righteous.”

It is true that Luther had, from the very beginning of his exposition, as the editor of the Commentary justly points out, “taken his stand against the scholastic [rather the Church’s] doctrine of salvation; it is apparent at the very outset of the lectures that the separation has already taken place.” It could not be otherwise, as at the commencement of the Commentary he already denies the power of man to do what is good. Ficker also says with truth: “Luther again and again comes back to his oldest and deepest torment, viz. the struggle against free will and man’s individual powers”;[563] his study of St. Paul confirms his views, which now take clearer shape, until finally “he incontinently identifies his opponents with the Pelagians.”[564]

With regard to Luther’s tenets on faith in the matter of salvation he has so far not departed in any essential from the accepted olden doctrine that faith is the commencement, root and foundation of salvation.

The editor of the Commentary also admits, though with limitations, the very remarkable fact that faith does not yet occupy in the Commentary on Romans the position which Luther assigns to it later: “the ‘fides,’ which Luther explains with the help of a number of terms borrowed from his lectures on the Psalms, in the exposition of the Pauline Epistle does not as yet appear in its entire fulness and depth, as the expression of the relation of man to the eternal, at least not to the same extent as it does later; frequently we have a mere reproduction of the Pauline phraseology; there is no lack of reminiscences of Augustine, and the results of an Occamist training are also apparent.”[565]

We certainly cannot say that at the very beginning of the Commentary,[566] faith or even “sola fides” is conceded the high place which it is afterwards to occupy in his system; the expression “sola fides” occurs there by pure accident and does not bear its later meaning; it is only intended to elucidate a sentence which in itself is correct: “iustitia Dei est causa salutis.” By this is meant that “fides evangelii” to which, as Luther says, Augustine ascribes justification, but which the latter, according to Luther’s own admission, did not intend to take in the sense of the later Lutheran “sola fides.” Above all, as already pointed out, faith, in the Commentary on Romans, lacks its chief characteristic and does not of itself alone produce an absolute assurance of the state of grace. It was only in 1518 that Luther arrived at his peculiar belief in justification by virtue of a confident faith in Christ (assurance of salvation).[567]

In the Commentary on Romans Luther understands by faith, first the general submission of the mind to Divine revelation, a faith which he here, as also later, in agreement with the Church’s teaching, accounts as the first preliminary for the state of grace. His opposition to works and self-righteousness frequently urges him to praise the high value of the faith which comes from God, whilst his mysticism likewise makes him accentuate the importance of trust and blind submission. “Credite, confidite” he cries in his exposition of the Psalms—of which the standpoint is still entirely that of the Church—also fervently recommending to his hearers the “fiducia gratiæ Dei.”[568] All that can be complained of is that there, as in the Commentary on the Psalms, he seizes every occasion to speak in favour of the advantages which faith possesses over works.

With regard to his teaching on faith in the Commentary on Romans, Denifle complains of “Luther’s want of clearness in respect of justifying faith,” of his exaggerations and indistinctness, of “his absolute ignorance of wholesome theology.”[569] “The medium in this doctrine of justification,” he says, “is really not faith at all, but the confession that we are always under the works of the law, always unrighteous, always sinners”; “he never, even later, arrived at a correct or uniform idea of faith.... Luther’s assertion of the bondage of the will (complete passivity) renders faith in the process of justification, a mere monstrosity.”[570]

Here we are not as yet concerned with the qualities of faith in the Lutheran process of justification, but it must be pointed out, that the acceptance of complete passivity in justification is a necessary corollary of the above ideas of “humilitas.” “Whereas the Christian,” Denifle says, following the Catholic teaching, “moved and inspired by the grace of God repents of his sins, and, with a trusting faith, turns to God and implores their pardon, Luther excludes from justification all acts whether inward or outward on the part of the sinner; for God could not come into our possession or be attained to without the suppression of everything that is positive. Our works must cease and we ourselves must remain passive in God’s hands.”[571] In the Commentary on Romans passivity in the work of justification is certainly insisted on. Luther does not take the trouble to reconcile this with the activity which man is to exert in steeping himself in humility in order, by his prayers and supplications, to gain salvation.[572] He says of passivity: “God cannot be possessed or touched except by the negation of everything that is in us.”[573] “Then only are we capable of receiving God’s works and plans, when our planning and our works cease; when we are altogether passive with regard to God interiorly as well as exteriorly.”[574] In the Commentary on Galatians, not long after, he calls Christian righteousness a “passive righteousness,” because we “there do nothing, and give God nothing.”[575]

8. Subjectivism and Church Authority. Storm and Stress

Subjectivism plays an important part in the exposition of the Epistle to the Romans.

It makes itself felt not merely in Luther’s treatment of the Doctors and the prevalent theological opinions, but also in his ideas concerning the Church and her authority. We cannot fail to see that the Church is beginning to take the second place in his mind. Notwithstanding the numerous long-decided controversial questions raised in the Commentary, there is hardly any mention of the teaching office of the Church, and the reader is not made aware that with regard to these questions there existed in the Church a fixed body of faith, established either by actual definition or by generally accepted theological opinion. The doctrine of absolute predestination to hell, for instance, had long before been authoritatively repudiated in the decisions against Gottschalk, but is nevertheless treated by Luther as an open question, or rather as though it had been decided in the affirmative, thus making of God a cruel avenger of involuntary guilt.

The impetuous author, following his mistaken tendency to independence, disdains to be guided by the heritage of ecclesiastical and theological truth, as the Catholic professor is wont to be in his researches in theology and in his explanations of Holy Scripture. Luther, though by no means devoid of faith in the Church, and in the existence in her of the living Spirit of God, lacks that ecclesiastical feeling which inspired so many of his contemporaries in their speculations, both theological and philosophical; we need only recall his own professor, Johann Paltz, and Gabriel Biel to whom he owed so much. Impelled by his subjectivism, and careless of the teaching of preceding ages, he usually flies straight to his own “profounder theology” for new solutions. Here the habits engendered by the then customary debates in the schools exercise a detrimental effect on him. He is heedless of the fact that his hasty and bold assertions may undermine the foundations which form the learned support to the Church’s dogmas. Important and assured truths become to him, according to this superficial method, mere “soap bubbles” which his breath can burst, “chimeras of fancy” which will melt away in the mist. This is the case, for instance, with the traditional doctrines of saving grace, of the distinction between original and actual sin, and of meritorious good works. Whoever does not agree with his terrible doctrine of predestination is simply reckoned among the subtle theologians, who are desirous of saving everything with their vain distinctions.[576] We cannot, of course, measure Luther by the standard of the Tridentine decrees, which embodied these and other questions in distinct formularies of which the Church in his time had not yet the advantage. Yet the principal points which Luther began to agitate at this time were, if not already actual dogmas, yet sufficiently expressed in the body of the Church’s teaching and illuminated by ecclesiastical theology.

That he still adheres in the Commentary to the principle of the hierarchy is apparent from the fact that he declares its office to be sublime, and loudly bewails the fact that so many unworthy individuals had forced themselves at that time into its ranks; he says in his curious language: “It is horrifying and the greatest of all perils that there can be in this world or the next; it is simply the one biggest danger of all.”[577] In the hierarchy, he says, God condescended to our weakness by choosing to speak to us and come to our assistance through the medium of men, and not directly, in His unapproachable and terrible majesty.[578]

He also recognises the various grades of the hierarchy, priestly and episcopal Orders. “The Church is a general hospital for healing those who are spiritually sick”;[579] the rules which she gives to the clergy, the recital of the Divine Office for instance, must be obediently carried out.[580] She has a right to temporal possessions, only “at the present day almost all declare these to be spiritual things; they, the clergy, are masters in this ‘spiritual’ domain and are more careful about it than about their real spiritualities, or about their use of thunderbolts [excommunications] in the sentences pronounced by the Church.”[581]

According to him, the prelates and the Church have a perfect right to condemn false teachers however much the latter may “utter their foolish cry of ‘we have the truth, we believe, we hear, we call upon God.’” “Just as though they must be of God because they seem to themselves to be of God. No, we have an authority which has been implanted in the Church, and the Roman Church has this authority in her hands. Therefore the preachers of the Church, unless they fall into error, preach with assurance [on account of their commission]. But false teachers are pleased with their own words, because they are according to their own ideas. They appear to demand the greatest piety, but are themselves governed by their own opinion, and their self-will.”[582] “Whoever declares that he is sent by God must either give proof of his mission by wonders and heavenly testimony, as the Apostles did, or he must be recognised and commissioned by an authority confirmed by Heaven. In the latter case, he must stand and teach in humble subjection to such authority, ever ready to submit to its judgment; he must speak what he is commissioned to speak and not what his own taste leads him to invent.... Anathema is the weapon,” he exclaims—unconscious of his own future—“which lays low the heretics.”[583]

Whenever he gets the chance he magnifies the corruption of the Church so much that his expressions might lead one to suppose that the saving institution founded by Christ was either completely decayed and fallen away or was at least on the road to forsaking its vocation as teacher and as the guardian of morals. His complaints may, it is true, be in part accounted for by the impetuosity which carries him away and by his rhetorical turn. He probably did not at that time really think that a healthy reformation from within was absolutely impossible. Still, had anyone attempted to carry out his immature and excessive demands for reform, they would hardly have achieved much in the way of a real regeneration. His ideas of a radical change were deeply ingrained in his mind; this we naturally gather from his bringing them forward so frequently and under such varied forms. In his mystical moods he sees the errors and abuses opposed to the “Word” swollen into a veritable “deluge”; his professorial chair is only just above the waves. Hence he will cry out as loudly as he can. In his voice we can, however, detect a false note, and his exaggerations and all his stormings do not avail to inspire us with confidence. He is too full of his own subjectivity, too impetuous and passionate to be a reformer, though his other gifts might have fitted him for the office. His very sensitiveness to neglect of duty in others, had it been purified and disciplined, aided by his eloquence, might have been able to inaugurate a movement of reform. In many of his sayings he comes nigh the position of a Catholic reformer, and even, at times, makes exaggerated demands on obedience and the need of feeling with the Church.[584]

We may add the following to the complaints above mentioned, as occurring in the Commentary on Romans with regard to the state of the Church.

“The Pope and the chief pastors of the Church,” so runs Luther’s general and bitter charge, “have become corrupt and their works are deserving of malediction; they stand forth at the present day as seducers of the Christian people” (“seducti et seducentes populum Christi a vera cultura Dei”).[585] He waxes eloquent not only against their too frequent granting of indulgences—from which in their avarice they derived worldly profit for the Church—but also against their luxurious lives which fill the whole world with the vices of Sodom, and others too; under their wicked stewardship the faithful throughout the Church have altogether forgotten what good works, faith and humility are, and make their eternal salvation depend upon external observances and foolish legends. Even those who have more insight and are better men, are all self-righteous and more like idolaters than Christians.

The Apostle Paul, he says, expounds in the Epistle to the Romans, the command of loving our neighbour (xii. 6 seq.), but is this followed by the Church? Instead of fulfilling it “we busy ourselves with trivialities, build churches, increase the possessions of the Church, heap money together, multiply the ornaments and vessels of silver and gold in the churches, erect organs and other pomps which please the eye. We make piety to consist in this. But where is the man who sets himself to carry out the Apostle’s exhortations, not to speak of the great prevailing vices of pride, arrogance, avarice, immorality and ambition.”[586] Not long after this outburst, speaking in a milder strain, he says: “We exalt ourselves so as to instruct the whole world, and hardly understand ourselves what we are teaching.” “People without training or knowledge of the world, sent by their bishops and religious superiors, undertake to instruct men, but really only add to the number of chatterers and windbags.”[587]

On another occasion he declares, people think bustle in the church, loud organ playing and pompous solemnities at Mass are all that is needed; for such things collections are made, whereas alms-giving for the relief of our neighbour is not accounted anything. Nothing is thought of swearing, lying or backbiting, even on Feast Days, but if anyone eats flesh-meat or eggs on a Friday, he gives great scandal, so unreasonable are all people nowadays (“adeo nunc omnes desipiunt”). What is needed to-day is to do away with the Fast Days and to abrogate many of the Festivals ... the whole Christian Code ought to be purified and changed, and the solemnities, ceremonies, devotions and the adorning of the churches reduced. But all this is on the increase daily, so that faith and charity are stifled, and avarice, arrogance and worldliness grow apace. What is worse, the faithful hope to find in this their eternal salvation and do not trouble about the inner man.[588]

The lawyers, he says, speaking in a mystical vein, act quite wrongly when, as soon as they see that anyone has the law on his side, they encourage him to assert his rights (“qui statim quod secundum iura iustum sciunt, prosequendum suadent”). “On the contrary, every Christian should rejoice in suffering injustice, even in matters of the greatest moment (‘quoad maximas iustitias nostras’).... But almost the whole world runs after the contrary error [i.e. sternly asserts its rights]. Cardinals, bishops, princes act like the Jews did to the King of Babylon (2 Kings xxiv. 20; xxv. 1 ff.); they cling to their petty privileges, lose sight of morality and so perish.” Someone should have told Duke George (of Saxony) when he fought against the Duke of Frisia: “Your own and your people’s deserts are not so great that you should not rather have patiently allowed yourself to be chastised by that rebel, who, though unrighteous, was the executor of God’s righteous judgment. Calm yourself therefore and acknowledge the Will of God.”[589]

He says something similar to his own bishop, Hieronymus Schulz (Scultetus) of Brandenburg,[590] and to another bishop, probably Wilhelm von Honstein, Bishop of Strasburg. The latter had put in force the ecclesiastical statutes against the infringers of the sanctity of the church. Luther says: “Why trouble a town with this wretched matter? It is merely a question of human regulations; but if the bishop desired to enforce God’s laws, he would not need to leave his own house; he is not indeed acting wrongly, but he is swallowing a camel and straining at gnats (Matt. xxiii. 24).... But the bishops thirst for vengeance, they brand the criminals and themselves deserve to be worse branded. Would to God that the time may come when rights and privileges and all who worship them are consigned to perdition! Ambition and unbelief should not be allowed to triumph over those condemned for transgressing the statutes.”[591]