Note 860 — Chapter XIV · (continued 3)

Köstlin, “Luthers Theologie,” 2², pp. 124 and 82. In the last passage Köstlin attempts to base “Luther’s reticence” on a certain “conviction” which he does not describe more particularly and which it is difficult to recognise; he attributes to Luther “a purer, more resigned readiness to listen to the other side.” Yet he had remarked previously: “From all that we know with certainty of Luther, it is plain that he stuck to his earlier views as to the hidden God and Divine predestination. Nor does Luther make any attempt to solve the difficulty, which must appear to us a contradiction; he simply discourages reflection on the subject.” M. Staube (“Das Verhältnis der menschlichen Willensfreiheit zur Gotteslehre bei Luther und Zwingli,” Zürich, 1894) writes with less indulgence than Köstlin on Luther’s doctrine. This theologian, an admirer of Zwingli, says bluntly: Luther’s doctrine of predestination and the lack of free-will “leads to the destruction of all evangelical belief, not only of the personal assurance of salvation but also of Holy Scripture, which itself knows nothing of an arbitrary and faithless God in the matter of man’s salvation” (p. 36). “What then is left of Luther’s Deity?” “A Divine Person Who dispenses His grace and mercy according to His mood” (p. 37). “God appears and acts as a blind, naked force, fortuna, fatum,” because what He does is “beyond good and evil” (p. 38). “Why invent the fable of God’s justice and holiness?... We do nothing, God works all in all.... This religion, which is the logical outcome of Luther’s work ‘De servo arbitrio,’ is surely not Christianity but Materialism”; only the name is wanting for morality and law to become “foolish fancies” (p. 39). Diametrically opposed to this are the explanations of certain of Luther’s modern theological admirers, who not only pay homage to the author of “De servo arbitrio” on account of his true piety, but see in Erasmus’s vindication of free-will mere frivolous Pelagianism. Adolf Harnack, in the fourth edition of his “Dogmengeschichte,” 3, p. 841, says: “Rightly the ‘Diatribe’ is looked upon as the masterpiece of Erasmus, yet it is an altogether secular, and, at bottom, irreligious work. Luther, on the other hand, insists on the fundamental fact of Christian experience. On this rests his doctrine of predestination, which is simply the expression of the Omnipotence of the grace of God.” With his doctrine of predestination and the enslaved will, and his treatment of the Deus absconditus, he “gave back religion to religion.” In the Weimar ed. of Luther’s works (18, p. 593), Harnack’s opinion is accepted and (p. 595) we are told that Luther “refuted in a masterly fashion the obscure and unintelligible definition given by Erasmus [of free-will].” Luther’s work appears to the author of the Preface to the “De servo arbitrio,” in this edition, as “a real achievement” (p. 596), and he quotes with satisfaction A. Ritschl’s opinion, that Luther, its writer, in his sovereign certainty, did not shrink from the contradictio in adiecto. In the “Deutsch-evangel. Blätter” (p. 528, n. 1 [reprint, p. 14]), G. Kawerau states that Luther asserted “with relentless logic man’s inability to turn to God, and did not shrink from the harshest predestinarian expressions, phrases, indeed, which gave great trouble to Lutherans at a later date, and which they would gladly have seen expunged from his writings that Calvin’s followers might not appeal to them. And yet we agree with Harnack,” etc. (then follow Harnack’s words as given above). Köstlin concludes: “The death of all religion, as K. Müller (‘Kirchengesch.,’ 2, p. 307) rightly remarks, is to take our own works and doings into account.”