Note 788 — Chapter XIV · (continued 3)

“Sic humana voluntas in medio posita est, ceu iumentum. Si insederit Deus, vult et vadit quo vult Deus, ut psalmus (lxxiii. [lxxii.], 22) dicit: Factus sum sicut iumentum, et ego semper tecum. Si insederit Satan, vult et vadit quo vult Satan. Nec est in eius arbitrio ad utrum sessorem currere aut eum quærere, sed ipsi sessores certant ob ipsum obtinendum et possidendum” (p. 635 = 157). And yet it has recently been asserted by some Protestants, that, according to Luther, grace was “psychologically active,” whereas by the Schoolmen it was regarded as a “dead quality”; Luther’s “delicate psychological comprehension of God’s educational way” is at the same time extolled. N. Paulus rightly remarks (“Theol. Revue,” 1908, col. 344), “that the Schoolmen advocated a vital co-operation with grace is known to everyone who is at all acquainted with Scholasticism.” He quotes W. Köhler’s opinion of Luther’s system: Where man is impelled by God “every psychological factor must disappear.” “All actions become in the last instance something foreign to man” (“Theol. Literaturztng.,” 1903, col. 526). Paulus also refers to the following criticism by Köhler concerning the total depravity of man’s nature by the Fall, to which Luther ascribes our unfreedom: “Involuntarily we feel ourselves urged to ask, in view of this mass of sinfulness, how, given the total depravity of man, can redemption be possible unless by some gigantic, supernatural, mechanical means?” (“Ein Wort zu Denifles Luther,” 1904, p. 39).